Nnamdi Kanu files $800 million lawsuit against FG

Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu has filed a $800 million lawsuit against the federal government of Nigeria at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court in Abuja.

The Biafra group leader who has been in detention since October 2015, informed the ECOWAS court that the federal government has grossly violated his human rights in a suit filed on his behalf on March 2, 2016, by his lawyers, Hon. Ifeanyi Ejiofor Esq. and Chinwe C. Umeche (Miss) from Ugochinyere Law Chambers, Abuja.

Kanu is seeking a declaration of the ECOWAS court that his arrest and detention since October 14, 2015, torture and his incarceration in the federal government’s detention centre is in flagrant disobedience of several Orders of Court of competent jurisdiction which directed his unconditional release.

According to Kanu, the action of the government constitutes serious breaches of Nigerian’s human rights obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and other International Human Rights Treaties to which Nigeria is a state party.

The second and third defendants in the suit are the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, as well as the Director-General of State Security Services.