A legal expert, Emeka Ugwuonye, has described as misguided the claim by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), that he was tried under an unwritten law. In a video discovered by The Legal Observer, the legal expert clarified that the laws under which Kanu was tried had indeed been repealed, but they still apply to offenses committed before the repeal.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 20, 2025, by Justice Omotosho of an Abuja Federal High Court for offenses related to terrorism and was subsequently transferred to a Sokoto prison.
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Ugwuonye referred to a legal principle that allows the court to punish the accused under the repealed law as “Semi Clause,” stating:
“I wondered if you noticed something very peculiar about Nnamdi Kanu’s trial and the defences. There are two things that really shocked me which I think should be examined further. Nnamdi kept saying that he was being tried under a repealed law and not a written law. These claims were very absurd. I had initially dismissed them as silly things but Nnamdi had legal consultants as at the time he was defending himself. At that time, after firing his lawyers and taking up his own defence, he began to ask that he is shown the written law or that he is being tried under a repealed law.”
Pinpointing the laws under which Kanu was tried, Ugwuonye stated:
“There is absolutely nothing like that. He was tried under a written law, that law was the Terrorism Prevention Act, 2013, that is the substantive law governing his trial. The Procedural Law governing his trial was the Administration of Criminal Justice Act. But let us focus on the substantive law, that is the law on Terrorism. While he was saying unwritten law, what the hell does he mean?”
He added, “And he had consultants, somebody must have been telling him to say that. Whoever told him that must be incredibly grossly mistaken. He was hammering on that.”
Ugwuonye further questioned Kanu’s understanding of his legal situation, saying:
“Was Nnamdi deliberately trying to fool everyone or did he really believe that he was being tried under an unwritten law? I am beginning to think he really thought so that it was not a written law. It is a written law and was there.”
Explaining the concept of a repealed law, he commented:
“Now, I will explain to you, the repealing of law. The fact that a law is repealed doesn’t mean that the offences committed under them are no longer punishable. There is a way of carrying them over to the next floor. The new law will say the old law is repealed, however, all cases pending under that old law are still in force under it. It is called semi-clause – the clause that handles transition, moving from one piece of legislation to a subsequent one. So it carries over because it will be strange if upon repealing a law, the terrorism committed in the past are forgiven. That doesn’t work that way. It carries it over to the new law.”
He concluded, “Ask me, was it a repealed law? The answer is yes but it doesn’t affect anything. It was repealed because new offences can no longer be covered by them. But they still cover old or former offences. So this is what everyone should understand.”
