Breaking News - Court rejects Nnamdi Kanu’s fresh bail request.

The Supreme Court granted leave to the federal government in March last year to bring nine new grounds of appeal against the release of Nnamdi Kanu. Photo: Radio Nigeria Archive

Justice Binta Fatimat Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja has dismissed the request by the detained leader of the Biafra nation agitators, Nnamdi Kanu, for the restoration of his revoked bail and the removal from the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) to house arrest or prison custody.

The judge said on Monday that the same request had been brought before her by Kanu and dismissed for lack of merit.

In a ruling on Kanu’s request, Justice Nyako said that she found it a fact that Kanu jumped the bail earlier granted him and escaped out of the country.

The judge also held that the sureties who stood for him in the earlier bail had applied to be discharged and had been discharged on the ground that they could not locate Kanu and did not know his whereabouts.

Justice Nyako said that the only option left for Kanu was to go to the Court of Appeal and should proceed to the appellate court to exercise his right of appeal.

Kanu’s lead counsel, Alloy Ejimako, argued that in its earlier ruling, the Supreme Court confirmed that Kanu never jumped bail. As such, the bail granted him earlier by the appellate court ought to have been upheld and not revoked.

He added that the essence of the fresh bail request and removal of Kanu from the DSS custody to prison custody or house arrest was to enable him to stand a fair hearing within the ambit of the law

Reacting to the ruling, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu insisted that, with the current situation, which has still left him in the hands of the DSS, he would not stand trial before any court in Nigeria.

The IPOB leader added that any attempt to put him on trial would amount to a breach of Nigeria’s Constitution and international laws.