FOURTEEN DAYS TO STOP HIS RELEASE. MONTHS OF DELAY WHEN HE SEEKS FREEDOM. WHY?

FOURTEEN DAYS TO STOP HIS RELEASE. MONTHS OF DELAY WHEN HE SEEKS FREEDOM. WHY?

FOURTEEN DAYS TO STOP HIS RELEASE. MONTHS OF DELAY WHEN HE SEEKS FREEDOM. WHY?

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Writes Chief Justice of Nigeria and President of the Court of Appeal Asking for His Cases to Be Listed Immediately

Federal Government Shows No Willingness to Join Issues in Either Court

United States Congress, Israeli Knesset and International Bar Association Will Be Formally Notified

The Okwu-Kanu Family wishes to inform Nigerians and the international community that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has now written separately to the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the President of the Court of Appeal requesting the immediate listing and hearing of his two pending cases.

The reason is simple.

The Federal Government has shown no sign of willingness to join issues in either proceeding, while Mazi Nnamdi Kanu remains in detention serving a life sentence.

He is not asking for special treatment.

He is asking the Nigerian judiciary to show the same urgency when his freedom is at stake that it showed when the Federal Government wanted to stop his release.

The benchmark was set by the judiciary itself in October 2022.

FOURTEEN DAYS TO STOP HIS RELEASE

On 13 October 2022, the Court of Appeal delivered its final judgment discharging Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and quashing the criminal counts against him.

It was an acquittal-equivalent discharge.

The Federal Government refused to release him.

By 28 October 2022—barely two weeks later—the Federal Government had filed, listed, argued and obtained a civil stay of execution from a differently constituted panel of the same Court of Appeal, even though the criminal appeal had already been finally determined and the Court was functus officio.

The stay stopped Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from enjoying the liberty granted by his acquittal-equivalent discharge.

Fourteen days.

In fourteen days, the machinery of the Court of Appeal moved from an acquittal-equivalent discharge to a civil stay that kept Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in detention.

The criminal appeal had already been finally determined. The Court was functus officio. Yet a differently constituted panel was assembled and civil procedure was deployed to restrain liberty arising from a concluded criminal proceeding.

That is the constitutionally impermissible hybridisation of civil and criminal procedure at the heart of the 28 October 2022 order.

A civil stay is not a criminal charge.

A civil stay is not a remand warrant.

A civil stay does not revive quashed criminal counts.

And a civil procedural rule cannot be transformed into a criminal power to keep a discharged person in detention.

To our knowledge, never before in Nigeria has a civil procedural rule been deployed in this manner to deny liberty to a person following an acquittal-equivalent discharge. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu appears to be the first and only person subjected to it.

The common-law world should take notice of what occurred:

A finally determined criminal appeal.

A functus officio Court of Appeal.

A differently constituted panel.

Civil procedure imported into a concluded criminal case.

And the result was continued detention of the man the same Court of Appeal had discharged fourteen days earlier.

FOURTEEN DAYS THEN. MONTHS NOW.

Where is that same urgency today?

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu commenced proceedings before the Supreme Court on 7 November 2025, challenging the legality of the Supreme Court’s remittal judgment of 15 December 2023.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria was served.

More than nine months have passed.

According to the records available to the family, the Government has filed no substantive response.

The case has not been listed for hearing.

There is also a separate appeal before the Court of Appeal challenging Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s 20 November 2025 conviction and life sentence.