Monday, June 6, 2026 - 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.
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.
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