A former lead counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has accused inexperienced legal actors of turning the IPOB leader’s long-running trial into a “judicial ambush,” warning that Thursday’s conviction of the IPOB Leader was the tragic culmination of reckless grandstanding and crippling missteps.
Ejiofor, who handled the case from 2015 until December 2023 before Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, assumed leadership, said he had initially chosen to remain silent out of fatigue and respect for the sensitivity of the judgment. But the intensity of public anxiety and widespread misinformation, he said, made a response unavoidable.
According to him, the legal team had been on the verge of securing another major relief for Kanu after the Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted him in 2022. He said strategic diplomacy, sustained pressure, and airtight legal work had positioned them for a breakthrough before their exit.
Ejiofor alleged that Kanu had inadvertently revealed sensitive details of the strategy to individuals he described as “clueless clowns,” who instead of supporting the ongoing process, manipulated the situation to orchestrate a change that pushed out experienced hands. “We exited gloriously and with our integrity intact,” he said.
He accused the newcomers of reducing an internationally sensitive trial to a social-media circus, more concerned with cameras and online content than research, preparation, or legal precision. “Instead of crafting strategy, they crafted Instagram stories; instead of mastering case law, they mastered camera angles,” he wrote.
Ejiofor stated that these theatrics directly contributed to Thursday’s conviction, arguing that the trial could have been paused—or avoided entirely—if proper legal methodology had been maintained. He said the accused was pushed toward self-representation despite judicial warnings about the dangers, while his new advisers applauded from the sidelines.
He said the group consistently misled the public with exaggerated courtroom updates that later emerged as contradictions used by the prosecution. Each social-media stunt, he added, became a professional setback that chipped away at the defence’s credibility, all while the accused man’s fate “hung by a thread.”
Ejiofor questioned how globally respected Senior Advocates of Nigeria—including Chief Kanu Agabi and Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu—were sidelined at the decisive stage, only for “mediocre adventurers” to hijack a matter of international significance and reduce it to what he called a “TikTok legal carnival.”
He argued that any meaningful intervention from competent legal experts must begin with cleaning up the “monumental damage” inflicted by what he described as self-promoting legal entertainers. This, he said, must be followed by strategic engagement, less publicity, and a return to serious legal and political diplomacy.
Ejiofor insisted that the moment demands sobriety, competence, and genuine advocacy, not ego, theatrics, or social-media-driven legal experiments. His statement was signed on November 22, 2025.
