Courts Ordered, Tinubu Withheld — Vol. I Part 6

§The Cheapest Order in the File

Of all the obligations a Nigerian court has imposed on the federal government in Kanu’s case, one would cost almost nothing to perform. On January 19, 2022, Justice Benson Anya ordered the government to publish an apology to Kanu in three national newspapers for the military invasion of his family home (TheCable, 2022a; The Guardian, 2022). [established] Kanu had asked for an official letter of apology, published in three national dailies (ICIR, 2022a). [reported] The court granted the publication, a form that left the government free to choose the newspapers, the wording and the date. As of October 20, 2026, 1,735 days after the order, this file has found no such apology in any national newspaper. [open]

Money can be contested, and governments contest it. A government can argue about budgets, appropriations, the consent of the Attorney General and the timing of payment, and Part 9 of this file will examine every one of those arguments. An apology admits none of them. It requires no appropriation, no garnishee proceedings and no consent under Section 84 of the Sheriffs and Civil Process Act. It requires a statement and three pages of newsprint. [inference]

§What the Constitution Says About Apology

The Constitution names the remedy in plain words. Its text, in Section 35(6), provides that any person who is unlawfully arrested or detained shall be entitled to compensation and public apology from the appropriate authority or person. [established] The drafters did not leave the apology to judicial invention. In Kanu’s case the court identified the appropriate authority by name: the Federal Government of Nigeria, first respondent in the suit (TheCable, 2022a). [established] They placed it in Chapter IV, beside the right to personal liberty, as a remedy owed by the state when its agents take a citizen’s liberty without lawful cause.

Section 46 gives a High Court power to make any order it considers appropriate to enforce a fundamental right (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, s. 46). [established] Justice Anya used that power to order a published apology for an invasion of the home, a violation of Section 37, which guarantees the privacy of citizens and their homes. [established] The apology order and the constitutional text share a single premise: when the state wrongs a citizen in public, the correction must also be public.

§Why the Apology Matters as Much as the Money

A damages award compensates a loss. A public apology corrects a record. When soldiers fire on a man’s compound in front of his neighbors, and when the army calls the reports of that attack fictitious, the injury includes the official denial itself (ThisDay, 2017a). [inference] In September 2017 the 14 Brigade told the country that the invasion never happened and that photographs of the wounded were fabricated (ThisDay, 2017a). [reported] A High Court later found that the invasion did happen and that it was unlawful (TheCable, 2022a). [established] The army’s published denial remains on the record. No printed correction has been found.

Publicity has never troubled the federal government when the subject was Kanu. Its Attorney General announced his capture at a press briefing (Channels Television, 2021). [established] Its Information Minister told reporters, on the day the court granted the proscription order, that the President had approved it (Channels Television, 2017b). [reported] The prosecution asked the trial court to forfeit his media devices and accounts (Daily Trust, 2025). [reported] A government that speaks this readily about a man has no practical difficulty in speaking three paragraphs of apology to him when a court orders it. [inference]

§The Same Demand From Geneva and Nairobi

Geneva made a parallel demand. It asked Nigeria and Kenya to disseminate Opinion No. 25/2022 through all available means and as widely as possible (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2022, para. 110). [established] Dissemination is a public acknowledgment that the detention was found arbitrary. This file has located no Nigerian government publication of the opinion. [open]

Justice Anyadike framed the rendition award in the same terms. She found that Kanu had been exposed to global ridicule requiring global cleansing (ThisDay, 2022b). [established] Two Nigerian judges and a United Nations body have each concluded that the harm done to Kanu was public and that the remedy must be public too. [inference] The federal government has answered all three with silence.

§What an Apology Would Now Say

An apology printed today would concede nothing the Supreme Court has not already said. On December 15, 2023, the Court treated the invasion of Kanu’s home as part of the federal government’s illegality and found his removal from Kenya unlawful (Channels Television, 2023). [established] The government would be repeating, in a paid notice, a finding of the highest court the Constitution provides. [inference] Its refusal cannot rest on any reluctance to admit the facts, because the facts are already settled against it at the top of the judicial hierarchy. [inference]

Two official denials remain uncorrected in the meantime. Army spokesmen at the 14 Brigade called the invasion fictitious (ThisDay, 2017a), and Defence Headquarters, through its Director of Defence Information, John Eneche, said soldiers had not raided the home (ICIR, 2017b). [reported] Both statements went out in the name of federal institutions. Since then, a High Court has found that the invasion happened and that it violated Kanu’s rights (TheCable, 2022a). [established] Without the apology, the only federal account of September 10, 2017, in the national press is one a court has rejected. [inference]

§The Officials Who Hold the Pen

From May 29, 2023, the authority to publish the apology has rested with the administration of President Bola Tinubu. The order binds the Federal Government of Nigeria as the first respondent (TheCable, 2022a). [established] Section 150(1) of the Constitution makes the Attorney General of the Federation the chief law officer of the federation and a minister of the government. [established] The publication would require no new law, no court application and no money beyond the cost of the advertisements. [inference] Three newspaper notices would cost a sliver of the N1 billion the same judgment imposed, and the government could print them while still disputing the money in any forum it chose. [inference] For 1,240 days of the Tinubu administration, the order has stood unperformed. [open]

A second court ordered a second apology. On October 26, 2023, five months into the Tinubu administration, the Enugu State High Court directed the Southeast Governors’ Forum and the federal government, jointly or severally, to issue letters of apology to Kanu and to publish them in three national dailies (Vanguard, 2023; BusinessDay, 2023). [established] That order has run for 1,090 days, and this file has found no such letters in any national newspaper. [open]

Section 287(3) draws no line between expensive orders and cheap ones, and no Nigerian court has ever read such a line into it. [inference] It requires every authority and person in the Federation to enforce the decisions of the High Courts. [established] An apology is the single obligation in this file that the government could satisfy in an afternoon. Its absence removes any claim that cost, procedure or the pending criminal appeal explains the government’s conduct. [inference] The pending appeal concerns the conviction entered in November 2025; the apology was ordered in January 2022, for an event in 2017, in a separate civil proceeding that no court has disturbed. [established]

An apology is the single obligation in this file that the government could satisfy in an afternoon.

§No Prejudice to Any Appeal

The pending criminal appeal gives the government no reason to withhold the apology. The appeal concerns broadcasts and charges tried in Abuja; the apology concerns soldiers at a family compound in Umuahia in September 2017. [established] Publishing it would concede nothing about guilt on the terrorism counts, would not release Kanu and would not touch the record before the Court of Appeal. [inference] An apology ordered by a court acknowledges the court’s finding. Publication would admit no criminal fault by any soldier or official, and the order named none. [inference]

§What the Silence Records

An unpaid debt can be explained, if poorly. An unprinted apology cannot, because nothing stands between the order and its performance except the will of the officials bound by it. [inference] For more than four years, two administrations have chosen not to print it: President Buhari’s for sixteen months and President Tinubu’s for forty-one. After the judgment, Kanu’s lawyer said he had no doubt that the Federal Government would implement it, and he rested that confidence on the President’s own statements that he would respect judicial decisions (The Guardian, 2022). [reported] The September 2017 denial by the 14 Brigade remains in the newspaper archives, uncorrected by any publication of the federal government. [open]

As the court measured it, the apology was the dignity owed to a citizen whose home the state invaded. Withholding it tells every Nigerian that a judgment against the federal government can be left unperformed even when performance would cost the government nothing.

Evidence Docket, Part 6

Every record this installment relies on, by class, with a link to the source wherever one exists.

Class: Established

Class: Reported

Records not retrieved

Sought through online public sources, October 19 and 20, 2026. Registries not yet searched in person. No inference is drawn from any absence below.

Source notes

BusinessDay. (2023, October 27). Court declares IPOB proscription unconstitutional, awards Kanu N8bn. https://businessday.ng/news/article/court-declares-ipob-proscription-unconstitutional-awards-kanu-n8bn/

Channels Television. (2017b, September 20). Federal High Court proscribes IPOB. https://www.channelstv.com/2017/09/20/federal-high-court-proscribes-ipob/

Channels Television. (2021, June 29). Breaking: Nnamdi Kanu rearrested, brought back to Nigeria. https://www.channelstv.com/2021/06/29/breaking-nnamdi-kanu-rearrested-brought-back-to-nigeria/

Channels Television. (2023, December 15). Supreme Court insists Nnamdi Kanu must face trial, overturns A’Court judgement. https://www.channelstv.com/?p=792050

Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), ss. 34(1)(a), 35(1), 35(6), 36(5), 36(9), 37, 46, 150(1), 217(2)(c), 287(3).

Daily Trust. (2025, November 21). Kanu gets life imprisonment after 10-year trial. https://dailytrust.com/kanu-gets-life-imprisonment-after-10-year-trial

The Guardian. (2022, January 20). Court awards N1b to Kanu, orders FG to tender apology. https://guardian.ng/?p=1646798

ICIR. (2017b, October 9). Soldiers raid Nnamdi Kanu’s home again. https://www.icirnigeria.org/soldiers-raid-nnamdi-kanu-home/

ICIR. (2022a, January 19). Court awards N1bn in favour of Nnamdi Kanu against Nigerian government. https://www.icirnigeria.org/court-awards-n1bn-in-favour-of-nnamdi-kanu-against-nigerian-government/

Sheriffs and Civil Process Act, Cap. S6, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (2004), s. 84.

TheCable. (2022a, January 19). Court orders FG to pay Nnamdi Kanu N1bn over rights violation. https://www.thecable.ng/?p=651852

ThisDay. (2017a, September 11). Soldiers invaded my home, Kanu claims, army denies. https://thisdaylive.com/index.php/2017/09/11/soldiers-invaded-my-home-kanu-claims-army-denies

ThisDay. (2022b, October 27). Court orders FG to halt Kanu’s trial, return him to Kenya, pay N500m damages. https://www.thisdaylive.com/2022/10/27/court-orders-fg-to-halt-kanus-trial-return-him-to-kenya-pay-n500m-damages/

United Nations Human Rights Council, Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. (2022). Opinion No. 25/2022 concerning Nwannekaenyi Nnamdi Kenny Okwu-Kanu (Nigeria and Kenya) (A/HRC/WGAD/2022/25). https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g22/462/99/pdf/g2246299.pdf

Vanguard. (2023, October 26). Breaking: Proscription, designation of IPOB as terror organisation unconstitutional, court. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/10/breaking-proscription-designation-of-ipob-as-terror-organisation-unconstitutional-court/