*Report May End Controversy
By Adeyinka Adegboyega, Abuja
The seeming riddle over the actual health status in detention of leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, could be laid to rest when a team from Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) submits its report on the matter.
The report is being awaited.
These came to light today at the Federal High Court, Abuja, where the court ruled on Kanu’s no-case submission bid in Federal Government (FG)’s terrorism case against him.
Kanu has for years now being detained at the Abuja headquarters of Department of State Services (DSS) even as he faced different criminal charges over time.
Presiding judge, Justice James Omotosho rejected the no-case application, holding that government had established a prima facie case of terrorism against the Biafra nation agitator; he then asked Kanu to open his defence.
On the matter of Kanu’s health,which has sparked tension in many quarters recently and led IPOB to issue a strong-worded statement warning of an unprecedented crisis in the country should anything untoward happen to Kanu, FG’s lawyer, Adegboyega Awomolo SAN, informed the court that NMA has constituted a seven-man panel to look into the discrepancy between the report by Kanu’s private physician, Dr. Martin Aghaji, and that of the medical team at the DSS.
Awomolo said that a group of “powerful” medical practitioners from different parts of the country under the umbrella of NMA had visited Kanu in DSS detention to ascertain his health status.
He objected to Dr Aghaji’s report which detailed a degeneration in Kanu’s health and demanded that he be either taken to National Hospital Abuja for treatment or abroad, insisting that the report was not only exaggerated but equally suspicious as it also contained a recommendation for the defendant to be taken to a US hospital.
Awomolo, who is government’s prosecution counsel, said that NMA’s independent report on Kanu’s health condition was being awaited.
Further opposing Dr. Aghaji’s medical report, Awomolo alleged that not even one DSS medical personnel was involved when he (Aghaji) and his team assessed Kanu.
FG claimed that Aghaji single-handedly changed medication for Kanu, totally disregarding the manner the IPOB leader had been treated since his detention in 2021.
Further opposing Dr Aghaji’s request, FG said that a team of DSS medical experts, headed by Dr Mohammed Nasir, had checked Kanu’s health and found out that he could be properly treated at the DSS’ medical clinic.
PHOTO CAPTION: Kanu.
