The Nigerian government says it’s rearrested Nnamdi Kanu, a self acclaimed leader of a group seeking the secession of the southeastern region.
The federal government on Tuesday said the separatist leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra was intercepted by security agencies on Sunday June 27.
Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who made the disclosure in a joint press briefing with heads of the department of security services and the police, said Nnamdi would be taking to court to continue with his trial.
Mr Malami said he’s being arraigned at the Federal High Court in Abuja, but refused to disclose where the separatist leader was arrested.
In 2019 a judge had ordered his arrest over his failure to attend hearings nearly two years after his release on bail.
Secessionist feeling has simmered in the southeast since the Biafra separatist rebellion of 1967-70 that tipped Nigeria into civil war and killed around 1 million people.
Mr Kanu was arrested in October 2015 on charges of criminal conspiracy and belonging to an illegal society.
A military deployment to the region in 2017 to curb IPOB’s campaign stoked tensions, as did Kanu’s arrest.
He was freed on bail on medical grounds in April of that year but has not been seen in Nigeria since an army raid on his house five months later.
“In the absence of any reasonable explanation for his absence, I hereby revoke his bail and order that a bench warrant be issued for his arrest,” Justice Binta Nyako said at the Federal High Court in the capital Abuja.
By Abel Ejikeme