Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Accusation Against the UK
- Legal Framework and Historical Context
- Call to Action by AVID
- Conclusion
The American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID), an organization comprised of retired and active military personnel from the United States of Igbo heritage, has accused the United Kingdom of facilitating the ‘persecution’ of its citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, by the Nigerian government.
Kanu, who serves as the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), possesses a British passport.
In a statement released on Monday and signed by its President, Dr. Sylvester Onyia, AVID maintained that Kanu cannot be tried or convicted under a law that does not exist.
Kanu and his legal team have contended that the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act of 2013, under which he faces charges, has been repealed by the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition Act) of 2022.
In the statement titled ‘A dead charge cannot kill a living man’, AVID criticized the UK for its silence in the face of the evident injustice inflicted upon Kanu by Nigerian authorities.
Emphasizing that the United Kingdom cannot feign ignorance of the unlawful nature of the trial, AVID stated that the UK government’s silence constitutes active complicity.
The statement remarked, “The United Kingdom cannot pretend not to know. Its silence has crossed the line into active complicity. The United Kingdom, the nation 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 is not neutral. It is not passive. It is not merely irresponsible. It has now become complicity. 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.
“Over 300 years ago, the UK — through Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington (1765) 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 at 1066 — established 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.” This remains the clearest statement of the doctrine: Nullum crimen sine lege — no written law, no crime; no valid law, no valid charge.
“William Blackstone, the most referenced legal authority in the English-speaking world, reinforced this 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.
“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 cautioned that history will not forget the role played by the UK, with its active complicity of silence, in Nnamdi Kanu’s persecution.
The statement further noted that the European Court of Human Rights — which the UK helped establish — distilled the centuries-old British doctrine in Kokkinakis v. Greece (1993) 17 EHRR 397, asserting that: “An offence must be clearly defined in law.”
“This is the exact principle that Nigeria is violating. And the UK — the global architect of this principle, the very nation that exported it to its colonies, its Commonwealth, and to international human rights law — is now turning a blind eye 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 been in effect since 12 May 2022.
The UK is aware of this. The UK understands this. The UK authored this doctrine. Yet the UK remains silent. This silence is no longer ignorance. It is no longer negligence. It is an endorsement — a diplomatic green light for persecution.
“The United Kingdom is enabling the persecution of its own citizen. By refusing to speak, intervene, or even acknowledge the absurdity of prosecuting a British citizen on a dead, repealed, and judicially dismissed charge, the UK has forsaken its own legal heritage, abandoned its own citizen, and neglected the rule of law it once championed.
“A government that does not defend the most fundamental legal rights of its own nationals — the right not to be prosecuted under a repealed law — is not merely failing in its duty. It is encouraging the persecutor. Through silence. Through acquiescence. Through tacit consent. Through diplomatic indifference. This is the United Kingdom’s shame — and history will remember it,” AVID stated.
Justice James Omotosho has scheduled November 20 to deliver a verdict in Kanu’s trial.
However, in anticipation of the verdict, AVID contended that the case has been inactive for years and should not have reached the point of judgment.
The statement continued, “On 20 November 2025, Justice James Omotosho will attempt to deliver a judgment in a criminal case that has been legally dead for years. Count 7 before him mirrors the old Count 15 that the Supreme Court of Nigeria, on 15 December 2023, examined and declared: “The offence as laid does not exist in the body of our laws … Count 15 is incompetent and is hereby struck out.”
“The prosecution never amended it. They never re-framed it under the correct law (CEMA) as the Supreme Court explicitly directed. Justice Omotosho never instructed them to comply with the apex court. Instead, they simply renumbered the corpse and, on 29 March 2025, compelled Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to enter a fresh plea to a count that the highest court in the land had already dismissed.
“The other six counts are based on the Terrorism (Prevention) Act 2011 as amended in 2013 — a statute that the National Assembly repealed and replaced on 12 May 2022, three
