A public legal brief reviewing proceedings from 4 November 2025 describes a dramatic breakdown in the prosecution’s case during the ongoing trial of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. According to the brief, the prosecution team, led by Chief Awomolo, SAN, failed to respond to foundational legal challenges raised openly in court, leaving critical questions unanswered and undermining the integrity of the trial process.
Court records indicate that Kanu persistently asked a basic but indispensable question: under which law was he being prosecuted? In any criminal proceeding, the identification of a valid enabling statute is essential. Yet, the prosecution reportedly offered no response. There was no reference to a relevant law, no filing of a counter-affidavit, no oral submission, and no effort to establish the court’s jurisdiction over the matter.
Legal commentators reviewing the proceedings characterized this inaction as a form of “complicity by silence.” By declining to engage, the prosecution allowed the court to postpone decisive legal determinations and eventually move past the forum where such issues could have been properly examined. As the brief notes, the prosecution was given ample opportunity to defend its case but chose not to do so.
Kanu’s defense team emphasized that these issues had not emerged suddenly. Prior to the hearing, they had filed a Preliminary Objection supported by sworn affidavits, raising serious constitutional and procedural concerns. These included claims that the law under which Kanu was charged had been repealed, arguments grounded in Section 36(12) of the Nigerian Constitution, and allegations of extraordinary rendition. None of these points, the brief asserts, received any rebuttal from the prosecution, resulting in the defense’s evidence standing uncontested.
The situation became more striking when Justice Omotosho suggested that Section 36(12) might only be relevant at the point of conviction rather than during trial. Even then, the prosecution neither challenged nor endorsed the court’s interpretation. Observers argue that this passivity revealed a trial increasingly reliant on judicial postponement instead of firm legal grounding. Similarly, allegations of extraordinary rendition—previously acknowledged by appellate courts and even the Supreme Court as acts of state illegality—were met with complete silence from the prosecuting authority.
Legal analysts reviewing the transcript describe a troubling pattern: the defense raises legal objections, the prosecution remains mute, the court defers decisive rulings, and the trial proceeds regardless. This sequence, the brief argues, represents a distortion of the adversarial system, where both sides are expected to actively test each other’s claims.
In its conclusion, the legal brief suggests that Kanu’s courtroom strategy went beyond self-defense. By repeatedly insisting on legal clarity, he compelled unresolved constitutional issues into the public domain and exposed what the authors describe as the State’s inability to anchor its case in valid law.
Commenting on the proceedings, legal analyst Dr. Okezie Duruji observed, “On November 4, the prosecution said nothing at all. That silence is now part of the official record—and it speaks more powerfully than any argument they might have made.”
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