In a courtroom exchange that legal analysts are calling unprecedented, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu challenged the prosecution to cite the law under which he was being tried, exposing what some describe as a major procedural collapse in his trial. The exchange occurred on 4 November 2025, during a critical jurisdictional discussion.
Court records reveal that Kanu, responding to repeated evasions by the prosecution, directly demanded: “My Lord, I am now asking the prosecution. Let Chief Awomolo stand up and tell this court the law under which I am being tried. Let him read it into the record. Let him show this court the statute.”
Remarkably, Chief Adewola Awomolo, SAN, the lead prosecutor, failed to rise, respond, or cite any statute. He did not object, request time, or deny the challenge. Legal experts note that in an adversarial criminal system, such silence effectively amounts to an admission: the prosecution could not identify a law under which the defendant was being tried.
Immediately following this silence, Justice Binta Nyako Omotosho intervened. Instead of compelling the prosecution to respond or clarifying the statutory basis for the trial, she redirected the discussion, deferred the jurisdictional issue to the “final address,” and cautioned the defendant about potential “waiver.” Observers argue that this action shielded the prosecution from scrutiny and undermined the adversarial nature of the trial.
Criminal procedure experts emphasize that prosecutors have three non-delegable duties: identifying the offence-creating statute, justifying the court’s jurisdiction, and opposing jurisdictional challenges with law. On 4 November, Awomolo did none of these, failing to cite the Terrorism Prevention Act, its amendments, savings clauses, or transitional provisions.
The silence cannot be dismissed as incompetence. As a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Awomolo understood the consequences of remaining mute and relied on the court to carry what the prosecution could not. Analysts describe this as complicity by omission rather than mere oversight.
This single exchange now forms a crucial anchor for multiple grounds of appeal, including: want of jurisdiction, absence of a statutory offence, violation of Section 36(12) of the Constitution, judicial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and abuse of judicial process.
For ordinary citizens, the scenario was straightforward: a man asked, “What law says I committed a crime?” and the prosecution could not respond. The judge intervened to move the trial forward regardless. Legal experts say this moment demonstrates an institutional failure that cannot be explained away.
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