USO enterprises

PUBLIC BRIEFING
4th DECEMBER, 2025

THE JUDICIARY CANNOT EAT ITS CAKE AND HAVE IT: SECTION 97 AND SECTION 98 OF THE TERRORISM (PREVENTION AND PROHIBITION) ACT 2022 CANNOT BE READ IN THE SAME BREATH

– Yet Another Season of Judicial Rascality in the Nnamdi Kanu Matter
By Njoku Jude Njoku, Esq.

Fellow Nigerians,

Once again, I must speak directly to the conscience of the nation. Our judiciary survives on public confusion — and those who benefit from lawlessness fear nothing more than an informed citizenry. Today, I expose, in the clearest and most accessible language, the latest intellectual fraud committed by Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in the case of Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Nnamdi Kanu.

In a desperate attempt to sustain an already doomed conviction, the learned trial judge clutched onto Section 98(3) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 as though it were a judicial lifeline. He boldly told Nigerians that this subsection somehow keeps the repealed Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 alive — allowing him to convict Mazi Nnamdi Kanu under offences that National Assembly buried three years ago.

Let me show you, in just a few paragraphs, why this reasoning is not only wrong but fundamentally dishonest.

THE LAW IS NOT CONFUSING — THE COURT ONLY PRETENDED IT WAS
Open the 2022 Terrorism Act. Just look at the section immediately preceding the one the judge waved around.

Section 97 states, in clear, unambiguous, commanding language:

“Any investigation, trial or any other legal proceedings commenced under the repealed Act shall… be continued and completed under the provisions of this Act…”

Read it again.
“Shall” — not “may.”
“Under this Act” — not the dead 2013 Act.

The National Assembly gave a direct order:
Every ongoing terrorism trial must migrate immediately to the 2022 Act.
No discretion. No debate. No judicial acrobatics.

Yet Justice Omotosho ignored this mandate completely. Justice Omotosho ignored the very law he was supposed to uphold.

THE FRAUDULENT MISUSE OF SECTION 98(3)
Now look at the subsection the judge treated as a magic wand:

Section 98(3) simply says that the repeal of the old Act does not invalidate things previously done under it — arrests, filed charges, seized exhibits, etc. This is a standard “savings clause,” nothing more.

What it does not do is resurrect a repealed statute for the purpose of securing a conviction in the year 2025. The reasoning is simple, not even the Supreme Court of Nigeria can legally resurrect a dead law, which is what TPAA 2013 has become.

To put it simply:

Section 97 says: “Move the trial to the new law and finish it there.”
Section 98(3) says: “Don’t worry, the steps you took before the transition remain valid.”
These provisions complement each other.
Justice Omotosho made them fight each other — for the sake of a predetermined political outcome.

That is not interpretation.
It is manipulation.
It is statutory vandalism.

IF THE 2013 LAW STILL “LIVED,” WHY DID NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ORDER MIGRATION TO EXTANT 2022 LAW?
Let every Nigerian ask these three simple questions:

Can a judge obey Section 98(3) while openly disobeying Section 97 of the same Act?
If the 2013 law supposedly remains “extant,” why did the National Assembly mandate that every ongoing case must continue under the 2022 Act?
If National Assembly wanted prosecutors to keep using the old offences, why insert Section 97 at all or why bother making a new law at all?
The answer is painfully obvious:
Because the old law is dead. Finished. Repealed. Buried.

This is why some charges in the 2013 sheet no longer exist under the 2022 framework. Instead of demanding a fresh, legal, properly framed charge as the law requires, the court took the lazy route:

Pretend the dead law never died.
Pretend Section 97 does not exist.
Pretend Nigerians cannot read or be bothered to do basic research.

20TH NOVEMBER 2025 WAS NOT A TRIAL — IT WAS A SCRIPTED PERFORMANCE
What happened in Justice Omotosho’s courtroom was not adjudication.
It was choreography.
It was pre-arranged.
It was a carefully staged performance designed to keep one man in chains — law or no law.

No judge has the authority to tear out a section of an Act because it interferes with a political objective.

THE REAL DANGER: AN IGNORANT PUBLIC IS THE JUDICIARY’S BEST ALLY
Everything depends on whether the Nigerian public shrugs its shoulders or demands accountability. If Nigerians remain silent, then tomorrow:

You can be convicted under a law repealed years ago.
Your son can be tried under a statute that no longer exists.
Your brother can be jailed under an offence Parliament abolished.
Ignorance is fuel for tyranny.
Knowledge is its antidote.

Read Section 97.
Read Section 98(3).
Share them.
Ask lawyers to explain them.
Ask judges why they refuse to obey the laws they swore to uphold.

A judiciary that selectively obeys statutes is not a judiciary.
It is a conspiracy against the people.

WE HAVE APPEALED — AND THE COURT OF APPEAL MUST NOT LET THIS PERVERSION STAND
We are confident that higher courts — and ultimately the Supreme Court — will correct this grave distortion. But no matter what the courts do, history is already recording what was done in broad daylight.

Enough is enough.

Njoku Jude Njoku, Esq.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium
Abuja, FCT
4th December 2025