MASSOB rejects life sentence for Nnamdi Kanu, describes ruling as vengeful and anti-Igbo

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has rejected the life sentence handed to IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, condemning the verdict as politically motivated and a direct attack on the Igbo people.

In a statement released on Friday, MASSOB leader Comrade Uchenna Madu said the judgment delivered by Justice James Omotosho reflected “open anger and tribalism,” accusing the judge of “sentencing Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to his master’s prison.” The group added, “This is not justice but vengeance from a man playing a script loaded with pathological hatred and jealousy against Ndigbo. Ndigbo have been sentenced to life imprisonment in Nigeria.”

Madu further accused President Bola Tinubu of plunging the country into deeper crisis, saying the ruling had “set Nigeria on irredeemable fire” and “shot the Nigerian state on her deteriorated foundation.”

MASSOB argued that Kanu’s life sentence was based on “words spoken from foreign soil,” insisting that Nigeria “illegally kidnapped him from Kenya,” ignored a United Nations directive demanding his release, and prosecuted him under “a law that no longer exists.”

The group also criticised what it described as double standards in terrorism-related prosecutions, contrasting Kanu’s treatment with the five-year sentence recently handed to Boko Haram co-founder Mamman Nur, whom it described as “a chief Islamic terrorist commander responsible for over 2,000 deaths.” MASSOB said, “In Nigeria today, words from London carry a heavier penalty than mass murder.”

The organisation maintained that Kanu was “illegally rendered” to Nigeria from Kenya in 2021, citing a June 2025 ruling by Kenyan High Court Justice Anthony Mrima, who reportedly described the rendition as “a blatant violation” of Kanu’s rights.

MASSOB also referenced opinions issued by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2022 and 2025, which declared Kanu’s detention arbitrary and insisted that “the appropriate remedy is his immediate release.”

The group reminded the public that the United States government has, since 2017, publicly stated that it does not classify IPOB as a terrorist organisation, further questioning the legitimacy of the case against Kanu.

Condemning what it called “a repealed anti-terror law” used to prosecute him, MASSOB argued that the absence of a savings clause undermined the legality of the trial. “This injustice is not against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” it said. “It is against Ndigbo,” insisting the ruling reflects the “brutal, lawless, totalitarian nature of a genocidal regime.”