UK’s  silence in Kanu’s ordeals has transformed into active complicity – AVID

UK’s  silence in Kanu’s ordeals has transformed into active complicity – AVID

By Steve Oko

American Veterans of Igbo Descent, AVID, has knocked the United Kingdom, over her silence concerning the continued detention of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPoB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,

The United Kingdom has been criticised for her alleged silence over the ordeals of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPoB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,

Kanu, a British citizen, has been detained since June 2021 when he was abducted in Kenya and extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria.

Expressing disappointment over the non-challancy of Britian over her citizen’s plights, American Veterans of Igbo Descent, AVID, said such silence has transformed into “active complicity”.

“The United Kingdom, a  country whose citizen is being subjected to this legal monstrosity, is fully aware of what is happening in Nigeria. Yet it has chosen silence, indifference, and diplomatic paralysis. This silence has crossed the line into active complicity.

“This silence is not neutral. It is not passive. It is not merely irresponsible.

It has now become complicity. This is because it was the United Kingdom itself — not Nigeria, not the United States, not the EU — that originated the very rule now being violated daily against its own citizen.”

AVID recalled that:”Over 300 years ago, the UK — through Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington (1765) 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 at 1066 — laid down the foundational principle:’If it is law, it will be found in our books. If it is not to be found there, it is not law.’”

 “Nullum crimen sine lege”, AVID said — no written law, no crime; no valid law, no valid charge”, AVID said.

Continuing, the statement read:”William Blackstone, the most cited legal authority in the English-speaking world, reinforced it in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1769), Vol. I, at p. 44:

“No man is to be punished but for a clear and certain breach of the law.”

“A.V. Dicey — the father of the modern rule of law — made it even more emphatic in The Law of the Constitution (1885), pp. 188–189:

“Where there is no law, there is no offence; where there is no offence, there can be no punishment.”

“And in the 21st century, the UK’s most respected modern jurist, Lord Bingham, reaffirmed the same rule in The Rule of Law (2010), p. 41:

“The criminal law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable.”

AVID further recalled that the European Court of Human Rights — which the UK helped establish — distilled this centuries-old British doctrine in Kokkinakis v. Greece (1993) 17 EHRR 397, holding that:“An offence must be clearly defined in law.”

“This is the exact principle Nigeria is violating”, AVID argued.

“And the UK — the global architect of the principle, the very nation that exported it to its colonies, its Commonwealth, and to international human-rights law — is now looking away while its own citizen is prosecuted on: a non-existent count struck out by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and six counts under a repealed law that has not existed since 12 May 2022.

“The UK knows this.

The UK understands this.

The UK authored this doctrine.Yet the UK says nothing.

“This silence is no longer ignorance.

It is no longer negligence. It is an endorsement — a diplomatic green light for persecution.”

AVID accused UK of enabling the persecution of her own citizen.

“By refusing to speak, intervene, or even acknowledge the absurdity of prosecuting a British citizen on a dead, repealed, and judicially-buried charge, the UK has: Abandoned its own legal heritage; abandoned its own citizen;

abandoned the rule of law it once championed.

“A government that will not defend the most basic legal right of its own national — the right not to be prosecuted under a repealed law — is not merely failing in duty. It is encouraging the persecutor.”

The statement further read:”By silence.

By acquiescence. By tacit consent.

By diplomatic nonchalance.This is the United Kingdom’s shame — and history will record it.

AVID demanded unconditional release of Kanu, arguing that the counts of charge preferred against him, were predicated on a repealed law.

“We, American Veterans of Igbo Descent — men and women who have fought and bled for constitutional democracy — state plainly:

“There is no valid charge before Justice Omotosho. There is therefore no lawful basis for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s continued detention.

“We demand that on 20 November 2025, Justice Omotosho does the only thing the Constitution and the Supreme Court of Nigeria permit:’Strike out the entire charge and order the immediate, unconditional release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

“Anything less is not justice.

It is judicial rebellion against the Constitution. It is contempt of the Supreme Court. And it is persecution aided and abatted by the silence of the United Kingdom.”