The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) has described the life imprisonment sentence handed down to Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as unacceptable, arguing it amounts to a life sentence for the entire Igbo race.
MASSOB leader, Uchenna Madu, said the ruling would not weaken the Biafra struggle. He criticized the judgment, asserting it was driven by personal vendetta rather than justice.
“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has set Nigeria on irredeemable fire,” Madu said.
“The court’s ruling was not justice but vengeance from a man fueled by pathological hatred against Ndigbo, using Nnamdi Kanu as a target.”
He added, “Nnamdi Kanu was sentenced for words spoken from abroad, after being illegally abducted from Kenya, in defiance of a United Nations ruling demanding his release, and prosecuted under a law that no longer exists. Meanwhile, Mamman Nur, responsible for over 2,000 deaths as Boko Haram’s co-founder, received only five years.”
Madu said the sentence illustrates the government’s “lawless and totalitarian nature,” noting that Kanu’s real offense was exposing the threat of radical Islamic jihad in Nigeria and the government’s complicity.
MASSOB highlighted that Kanu’s seizure in Kenya in 2021 was not an extradition but an illegal rendition.
They cited the Kenyan High Court ruling by Justice Anthony Mrima in June 2025, which condemned the abduction as a violation of Kanu’s fundamental rights.
The group also referenced the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s opinions in 2022 and 2025, which deemed Kanu’s detention arbitrary and called for his immediate release.
MASSOB emphasized that the United States has never listed IPOB as a terrorist organization.
They further stressed that Kanu was tried under a repealed anti-terror law with no savings clause, concluding that this injustice is not only against Kanu but against the Igbo people as a whole.
