By Barrister Christopher Chidera, Esq.
I fully support the Okwu-Kanu Family’s call for the immediate listing and determination of Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s pending matters before the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.
The question is becoming embarrassingly simple:
Why is the Federal Government running from the courtroom?
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has repeatedly asked that his matters be heard. If the Federal Government believes that his conviction is legally sound, it should come to court and defend it.
There is nowhere to hide.
More importantly, Nigerians must not be misled by the apparent simplicity of a court saying, “Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is hereby convicted,” and then pointing to a savings clause as though that ends the constitutional inquiry.
It does not.
The Nigerian public may understandably not be conversant with the technicalities of criminal law. But public legal illiteracy cannot become a substitute for the Constitution.
Section 36(12) requires a criminal offence and its punishment to be prescribed by written law. The relevant question therefore cannot be avoided:
What was the extant written law governing the offence and punishment at the time Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was convicted on 20 November 2025?
If the law under which he was convicted had already been repealed, then the constitutional question does not disappear simply because a savings provision has been invoked.
A savings clause is not a penal statute.
It does not create the offence.
It does not prescribe the punishment.
It is not, by itself, the written criminal law contemplated by Section 36(12).
Its function is to preserve specified legal consequences—such as proceedings, investigations or liabilities—according to the precise language of the saving provision.
It does not magically transform a repealed criminal statute into an extant penal law.
Any argument that a repealed criminal law can simply become extant and subsisting merely because a savings clause has been invoked would invite an extraordinary question before the courts and, indeed, before the wider common-law world.
That distinction may be lost on the general public.
It cannot be lost on lawyers.
And it certainly cannot be lost on a government prosecuting a criminal case.
THE COURT OF APPEAL MUST NOW EXPOSE THE ISSUE
This is precisely why the appellate proceedings matter.
The Government cannot rely upon the assumption that Nigerians will hear the words “savings clause” and simply conclude that the entire legal problem has disappeared.
It has not.
The Court of Appeal will have to confront the actual statutory framework:
What law was in force when the conviction was entered?
What written law defined the offence?
What written law prescribed the punishment?
What happened to Section 97 of the TPPA 2022, which provides for proceedings commenced under the repealed legislation to be continued and completed under the 2022 Act?
And if the answer is that a savings provision preserved the old proceedings, the next question remains:
Where is the extant written law satisfying Section 36(12) under which the conviction itself was entered?
These are not complicated questions.
They are questions of law.
They are the very questions Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was asking at trial when he demanded:
“SHOW ME THE LAW.”
He now asks the Court of Appeal the same question.
Show him the law.
If the Federal Government believes the answer is favourable to it, let it come to court and give that answer.
Let it explain Section 97 of the TPPA.
Let it explain Section 98(3).
Let it identify the operative, extant and subsisting written law upon which the conviction was entered.
Let the Court decide.
But what Nigeria cannot do is rely upon public ignorance of criminal law—or upon the repeated assertion that a savings clause somehow makes a repealed law the extant criminal law—to make a constitutionally serious question disappear.
The courtroom is not a public-relations exercise.
A conviction is not validated by the number of people who do not understand the law.
A repealed law does not become an extant written law because the public is told that a savings clause “saved” it.
And a savings clause does not become a penal statute merely because the distinction is poorly understood outside the legal profession.
If Nigeria attempts to defend such a proposition before the appellate courts, it will expose itself to intense scrutiny across the entire common-law world.
The issue is now too clear to bury:
A repealed law cannot be made extant by rhetoric.
A savings clause cannot become a penal statute by repetition.
And a conviction cannot escape Section 36(12) because the public does not understand Section 36(12).
The Federal Government should therefore stop running from the courtroom.
Come and defend the conviction.
Identify the law.
Explain the statutory provisions.
And let the Court of Appeal determine the consequences.
Without prejudging the outcome, the whole world is watching.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu asked one simple question.
SHOW HIM THE LAW.
Barrister Christopher Chidera, Esq.
Member, Global Legal Consortium to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu
