Uche Amunike
Legal counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has said that his client needs quick and advanced medical attention.
He has called on the Buhari-led government of Nigeria to allow his medical personnel visit his client in the custody of the Department of State Services, where he is currently being detained.
The embattled IPOB leader was alleged to have been tortured and inflicted with heart disease in Kenya where he was allegedly arrested and handed over to Nigerian authorities.
He averred that Kanu’s family members have not seen him since June 18, the day of his arrest by the Nigerian authorities.
According to him, Kanu’s legal team has made a formal application to the court on that premise, adding that whatever treatment is being administered to him at the Department of State Services is not enough.
‘We want an expert that will examine him because he is still not feeling good. We want an expert that will provide him with advanced medical attention – not the type he is given where he is being detained,’ Ejiofor told reporters on Tuesday.
‘The preliminary investigation conducted on his health shows that his heart has enlarged by 13percent. So he needs quick and prompt advanced medical attention. So we have formally applied to the court for that. Let us see what happens in the coming days. So then we can pick it up from there’.
‘Yes, it is correct that his family members have not been able to see him. I am particularly worried. They don’t have access to him. The wife, the brothers, cousins and children have not been allowed to see him’.
‘That is why I classified his detention as Solitary Confinement and also being subjected to regular mental torture’.
‘If you have access to your wife and children and brothers and sisters, you will have some element of relief from your immediate family. But in this case, they are not allowed to see him. They have not been allowed to see him. It is only us, his lawyers, who visit on appointment.’
Meanwhile Mrs Uchechi Okwu-Kanu, wife of the proscribed IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has reacted to the re-arrest and re-arraignment of her husband by the Federal government of Nigeria.
Speaking in an interview with a United Kingdom newspaper, The Sunday Times, wife of the secessionist expressed her devastation upon getting information about her husband’s re-arrest and repatriation to the country.
She confirmed that she has not been in contact with him since the incident took place in the middle of June.
Hear her: ‘It’s hard for me to speak. I’m extremely devastated. He has been beaten and tortured and I am scared for his life’.
‘I was always worried about Nnamdi. When you’re asking for freedom from dictatorship, you are a target. But when I saw what happened in Belarus and how no one did anything, I knew nowhere was safe’.
‘The Nigerian government carrying out this rendition is a crime. We’re not even talking about independence’, she was quoted as saying.
