A charge sheet is not one accusation. It is as many accusations as it contains, and each must survive alone.
Seven counts went to judgment in Abuja on 20 November 2025, citing four terrorism provisions and one customs provision. [Documented] Counts one and two are laid under section 1(2)(b) of the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013. Count three is laid under section 16. Counts four and five are laid under section 1(2)(h). Count six is laid under section 1(2)(f). Count seven stands apart from the rest, charging the importation of a radio transmitter concealed in a container of household goods in 2015, contrary to a section of a statute the charge sheet names incorrectly.
Volume II examined the process by which a judge answers for his conduct and the evidentiary reasoning at the heart of this judgment. What follows moves to the charge itself: what each count alleged, which provision it invoked, what the law required to be proved, and what the court held. Each material statement drawn from the judgment is cited to its page; statutory and external propositions are cited to their own authorities.
Why the Charge Sheet Comes First
Reading a judgment backwards from its conclusion is the commonest error in commentary about criminal trials. Guilt or innocence attaches to counts, and a count is a self-contained accusation naming conduct, a date, a place and a provision. Evidence may be relevant to more than one count, but its relevance to one does not relieve the prosecution of establishing the elements of each other count, and a verdict on seven counts is seven verdicts delivered together. [Inference]
Approaching this record count by count discloses features invisible from a summary. Two counts rest on the same subsection and allege broadcasts in the same year. Two more rest on a different subsection and allege incitement differing only in the class of person targeted. One count is a decade older than the others and belongs to a wholly separate statute, misnamed on the face of the charge. Each of those features raises a question the judgment answers or leaves open, and the answers are not uniform. [Inference]
What the Court Had Before It
Five witnesses testified for the Federal Republic, identified in the judgment only as Mr AAA through Mr EEE. Exhibits ran from PWA through PWM and beyond, taking in discs, a flash drive, statements, gazettes, certified judgments of other courts, and four bags of items recovered in Lagos on 15 October 2015, itemised down to Exhibit E bag B32. No witness was called for the defense. A no-case submission was overruled on 26 September 2025, and the defense was foreclosed on 7 November. [Documented]
PLATE OV-01 The seven counts and the five provisions cited for them.
Both features of that record shape everything in this volume. Six of the seven counts rest on communications rather than on conduct any witness observed, which places authorship at the center of the case. And twice the judgment reaches for material outside the exhibits: a United States Institute of Peace teaching guide at page 87, and Wikipedia at page 124. Whether either was disclosed to the parties is not recorded. [Documented]
PLATE OV-02 A page map of the judgment, fixing each issue to the page that decides it.
Witness protection is itself part of the record. Five men gave evidence behind letters rather than names, and the judgment discloses nothing of their roles beyond what their testimony establishes. Screening witnesses in terrorism prosecutions is provided for and unremarkable, but it carries a consequence for any audit conducted from the published reasons: the reader cannot tell which witness spoke to which exhibit without the record of proceedings. [Inference] Every observation in this volume about attribution of evidence is made subject to that limit.
Where the Reasoning Holds
Two of the defendant’s principal arguments failed for good reasons, and saying so plainly is the price of being believed on anything else. His contention that the prosecution rested on a repealed statute was answered by a savings provision drafted for exactly that situation, and the court quoted it accurately. [Inference] His difficulty over the statute named in count seven had already been resolved by the Supreme Court on a materially similar customs allegation, subject to confirmation that the appellate ruling addressed the charge now under consideration, and a trial judge following that ruling was doing what the hierarchy of courts requires of him.
Difficulties of a different order appear elsewhere. Twice the judgment settles a contested point by reference to material the judgment does not record the parties as having addressed. Once it draws from an accused person’s silence a conclusion that the authority quoted a line earlier does not support. Neither observation depends on any view about whether Nnamdi Kanu committed the acts alleged. [Inference]
Sentencing completes the picture the charge sheet opens. Life imprisonment followed on counts one, two, four, five and six; twenty years on count three; five years on count seven, all running concurrently from the date of judgment. [Documented] Concurrent terms mean the practical effect of the seven convictions is the effect of the gravest, which is one reason appellate scrutiny of individual counts matters less to a prisoner than it does to the record. [Inference] Accuracy about each count nonetheless remains the measure of a judgment, since a conviction quashed on appeal is quashed count by count.
What This Volume Does Not Say
Nothing here asserts that the convictions were wrong. Several of the court’s conclusions are orthodox and are identified as such, the treatment of the repeal argument among them. Where the reasoning is sound this volume says so, and where the strongest authority runs against the criticism advanced, that authority is set out at full strength before any answer is attempted. Findings of fact belong to the trial court and questions of law to the Court of Appeal, where twenty-two grounds are already lodged.
What this volume does is separate the questions. Some belong to the appellate courts and will be resolved there. A smaller number touch the conduct of the trial rather than its outcome, and those are the ones a disciplinary body could reach. Keeping the two apart is the discipline of the series, and the charge sheet is where that work begins.
Sources
Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Nnamdi Kanu, Charge No. FHC/ABJ/CR/383/2015, judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered 20 November 2025, 144pp. All pinpoint references in this volume are to the pagination of that judgment.
Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013, Act No. 3, sections 1(2), 16 and 30.
Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, Act No. 15, section 98.
Customs and Excise Management Act, Cap C45, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, section 47(2)(a).
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), sections 36(1), 36(5), 36(11) and 36(12).
Evidence Act 2011, sections 84, 122, 131, 132 and 135.
