Prof Aghaji’s arrest proof Nnamdi Kanu’s ‘persecution’ politically motivated – Lawyer

05 Jul 2026, 11:16 by Daniel Chibuike · Daily Post

A lawyer and public policy analyst, Barrister Christopher Chidera, has described the arrest of a medical expert, Emeritus Professor Martin Aghaji, as proof that the “persecution” of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, is politically motivated rather than a legal issue.

Aghaji had issued an independent report on Kanu’s health condition which countered the official version tendered by the Department of State Services, DSS, in the course of the IPOB leader’s trial before an Abuja Federal High Court.

It was learnt that Aghaji was arrested at his residence in Independence Layout, Enugu, on Friday.

DP
Read this in the Daily Post appFaster, cleaner, breaking-news alerts.
Get the app

Reacting to the development in a statement on Sunday, Chidera, a member of the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Defense Consortium, accused the Nigerian government of waging a war against truth and the rule of law.

Although no official reason has been given for Aghaji’s arrest, it is believed that the development is connected to his independent medical report on Kanu’s health condition which countered the DSS report.

The lawyer said, “The arrest on 3rd July 2026 of Emeritus Professor Martin Aghaji — Distinguished Professor of Cardiac Surgery, former President of the Nigerian Cardiac Society, former Provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Nigeria, and a surgeon of global pedigree with nearly five decades of distinguished service — is not the detention of one man. It is a calculated declaration by the Nigerian state that truth itself is now a crime.

“Professor Aghaji’s only offence is that he did what any ethical physician of his stature would do – he issued an independent medical assessment of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s health that contradicted the self-serving narrative of the Department of State Services (DSS). In a detention regime widely reported to include prolonged solitary confinement and where Kanu’s health has visibly deteriorated, Professor Aghaji chose professional integrity and human life over state convenience. For that, security operatives stormed his residence in Independence Layout, Enugu.

“This is the prize good men and women now pay for standing on the side of truth in Nigeria. The signal could not be clearer: keep Mazi Nnamdi Kanu alive, expose the truth about his condition, and the state will come after you. No world-renowned surgeon of Professor Aghaji’s calibre should be subjected to this crude, extra-judicial intimidation. Yet this is the Nigeria we have today — a country where the government gets whatever it wants through raw power, and where speaking truth about a high-profile detainee invites swift retribution.”

Chidera described Aghaji’s arrest is the ultimate wake-up call to every Igbo son and daughter, and to all Nigerians who still pretend that what is happening to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has anything to do with law.

“It has nothing to do with law. It has everything to do with a state-sponsored determination to keep him jailed — or broken — at all costs, simply because he refuses to abandon the legitimate agitation for Biafran self-determination. When a preeminent medical expert can be dragged from his home for daring to document the physical cost of that detention, the mask has finally fallen,” the statement added.

The lawyer urged the United Kingdom government to intervene in Kanu’s case, insisting that he cannot receive fair hearing in Nigeria. Chidera specifically called on the UK authorities to demand Kanu and Aghaji’s immediate release.

He said, “As a lawyer and public policy analyst who has studied this case in detail — including the jurisdictional nullity that followed the Court of Appeal’s discharge and remittal, the conviction secured on the basis of repealed laws, and the fundamentally flawed process before Justice Omotosho — I state without hesitation: the United Kingdom authorities must by now realise that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu can never receive a fair hearing in this environment. The arrest of Professor Aghaji is further irrefutable evidence that the assurances under which he was brought into Nigerian custody have been comprehensively shattered.

“I therefore call on the Government of the United Kingdom to condemn this outrage in the strongest terms and to take immediate diplomatic steps toward securing the release of both Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and Professor Aghaji. If you are not complicit in this plot to keep him illegally detained because of his Biafra advocacy, then your silence is no longer tenable.”

He also urged all diplomatic missions in Nigeria and international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, “to weigh in forcefully”.

“This is not merely the intimidation of one eminent Igbo professional; it is part of a wholesale assault on the Igbo people and on the very possibility of truth-telling in public life. This is precisely why the agitation for an independent homeland continues — because a system that arrests its finest doctors for keeping a prisoner alive has forfeited any moral claim to keep that prisoner in chains,” he added.

In the same vein, the lawyer called on the Nigerian Medical Association, the Nigerian Bar Association and all civil society organisations to rise in defence of their colleague and of the rule of law. “If they can come for Professor Aghaji today, they can come for any professional tomorrow,” he warned.

According to Chidera, the arrest and intimidation of Aghaji, who he described as a distinguished surgeon, is the classic definition of a state operating without civilized rules.

Chidera added, “It now becomes painfully easy to understand how a judge could deliver a conviction on the foundation of a non-existent or repealed legal regime — perhaps knowing that fidelity to the Constitution and due process would invite the same treatment now being visited on Professor Aghaji.

“Nigeria has chosen this path. But history is clear: no amount of intimidation can arrest the truth forever. The persecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and now of those who tell the truth about his condition only confirms what millions already know — that Biafra is not the cause of Nigeria’s crisis; it is the inevitable and justified response to a system that has declared war on justice, on truth, and on the right of a people to determine their own destiny.”

Prof Aghaji’s arrest proof Nnamdi Kanu’s ‘persecution’ politically motivated – Lawyer

You may like