Nigeria: Igbo secessionist fails to appear before court

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) - Nigeria’s Igbo secessionist Nnamdi Kanu failed to appear before the court on Tuesday.

Kanu, chief of the now banned separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), is standing treason trial alongside three others over their violent agitation to carve out an independent country for Nigeria’s ethnic Igbo.

Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Kanu’s lawyer, told the Federal High Court that his client has been missing since government troops raided his home on Sept. 11.

The secessionist was granted bail in April on health grounds on the conditions that he steers clear of granting interviews or attending a meeting of more than 10 people, among other prerequisites for the bail.

But Kanu flouted all the bail conditions, dismissing them as unlawful and discriminatory.

The government’s counsel Shuaibu Labaran asked the court to revoke the bail for the secessionist and order his arrest.

Judge Binta Nyako ordered sureties to produce Kanu to the court at next hearing scheduled on Nov. 20 or lose their $274,000 bond.

He dismissed suggestions that government troops may have taken the activist in the purported raid on his home in southeast Abia state.