MONDAY MUSINGS

Setting the Record Straight

I have long resolved to abstain from the tawdry theatre of social media diatribe and altercation with persons who have bartered integrity, professionalism, and candour for the cheap currency of manipulation and mendacity. Silence, however, has its limits. When falsehood is uttered with sufficient temerity, it presumes the authority of truth. That presumption ends here.

This intervention is necessitated by a most fallacious, defamatory, and deceptive comment recently made by Aloy Ejimakor during a live broadcast, concerning my person and professional conduct. I beg indulgence for its length. Gravity demands thoroughness.

Upon Nnamdi Kanu’s rendition to Nigeria to face trial, permit me to place on record the strategic legal steps we adopted, an architecture in which Mr. Ejimakor was never involved.

1. My team and I resolved to challenge the competence of the charge before the Federal High Court. Anticipating amendments, we elected to shadow the prosecution with circumspection.

2. We first secured the Court’s leave for Nnamdi Kanu’s relatives and friends to visit him in DSS custody, which leave was granted, thereby facilitating visits by all and sundry.

3. Precisely as anticipated, once the charge was amended in October 2021, we filed our Notice of Preliminary Objection. It raised fundamental questions of law and expressly pleaded the irregularity of Kanu’s rendition to Nigeria as forming integral part of the grounds of objection.

4. When Mr. Ejimakor was foisted upon us, I engaged him on strategy. He disclosed his intention to institute a separate suit before the Federal High Court, Abuja, to challenge the rendition, hoping thereby to compel a suspension of the criminal proceedings on the substantive charge , I demurred entirely. I maintained, as any advocate of forensic prudence would, that any objection predicated on procedural irregularity must be ventilated within the same criminal proceedings themselves. That principled disagreement culminated in Mr. Ejimakor travelling to Abia State to initiate fundamental rights actions before the Abia State High Court and the Federal High Court, Umuahia, respectively, all contrived to arrest the hearing before the Federal High Court, Abuja, through whatever judgment he might procure.

In the event, those Umuahia excursions were consigned to the dustbin of legal irrelevance. They bore no impact whatsoever on the criminal matter in Abuja. The entire commotion, as predicted, culminated in nothing more edifying than social media content creation.

5. Our Notice of Preliminary Objection was drafted and filed without any input from Mr. Ejimakor. To my astonishment, under the overbearing influence of Nnamdi Kanu’s siblings, I was requested by Kanu to cede the moving of the application, an application I had prepared, to Mr. Ejimakor, a junior of over a decade’s standing to me at the Bar.

I refused. I suggested, with deference, that if he was so desirous of carriage, he might take over the brief entirely. At that same meeting, Kanu equally insisted that Bruce Fein be afforded access to the Court on the hearing date, notwithstanding that our prior efforts to secure Mr. Fein’s access to the DSS facility had been rebuffed by the Service for reasons already communicated to Kanu.
6. On 10th November, 2021, the date fixed for the hearing , Mr. Bruce Fein was denied access to the court by the security personnel. However, owing to this regrettable circumstances precipitated by the refusal to grant Mr. Bruce Fein access to the courtroom- a development which we, as counsel, vigorously and unequivocally challenged, the proceedings could not proceed as scheduled. The ensuing impasse and exchanges outside the court room ultimately culminated in the abrupt termination of the day’s proceedings, following the closure of the courtroom’s doors against us. Consequently, the hearing of the application was rendered impossible and stood adjourned.

7. The Court adjourned without hearing our application. I would have proceeded with the hearing and moved our application on the day of the aborted proceedings rather than participating in the protest occasioned by the denial of Bruce Fein’s access to the courtroom. However, where one is to be traduced and branded a “saboteur” or “agent of government” for discharging professional duty, even Heaven would be insufficient to exonerate one, both publicly and privately.

8. The Federal High Court, Abuja, is comprehensively fitted with CCTV surveillance. I challenge Mr. Ejimakor to state, with specificity, when and where I purportedly removed his wig and gown to prevent him from moving the application, and for what forensic purpose.
Is it not demeaning to my reputation to suggest that I would descend to such pettiness with a junior counsel merely “incubating” in practice? How, did he then recover the said wig and gown from me if any of such thing ever happened ?

9. When the matter was later adjourned for the hearing of the same application challenging the competence of the charge, Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, had assumed leadership of the defence team.

Mr. Bruce Fein again wrote to Prof. Ozekhome and I, insisting on access and threatening boycott if denied. It became evident that the design was to truncate the defence. I informed him plainly that if security again denied him access, he would have to find his way back to the United States. That marked the beginning of his vituperations against me.

Recall that it was that very application, ultimately moved by our lead counsel, Prof. Ozekhome, SAN on the 19th January 2022, that resulted in the striking out of eight of the fifteen counts against Nnamdi Kanu, leading to a subsequent appeal seeking the striking out of the remaining seven counts. We ultimately succeeded at the Court of Appeal, where he was discharged and acquitted, and perpetually shielded from further prosecution on any offence in Nigeria. The record speaks for itself.

10. I challenge Mr. Ejimakor to substantiate his calumnies with evidence. I shall, in due course, furnish a more devastating account of his underhand dealings to smear me, and perfidy during our stewardship of the brief, conduct born of naked jealousy and envy, which impelled him into a terrain he manifestly did not comprehend, and into that now infamous frenzy of “Show Me the Law”, which ultimately consumed his hubris and exposed the vacuity of his legal erudition.

I am ever ready.

Let them return to the drawing board with their grandmaster, who is busily perfecting the present chaos. You cannot beat me at this game. By honesty, transparency, commitment, and, above all, by the record, I shall diminish them all.

The record of every event remains with me and is indelibly engraved upon my memory.

I have warned you, Mr. Ejimakor, and your coterie of content merchants, for the last time: confine yourselves to the weighty task ahead.

Signed

Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Esq., KSC
Dunu-Ezeugosinachi
1st June, 2026