Nnamdi Kanu, the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, has been granted permission by the Federal High Court in Abuja to apply for an order of mandamus to compel the Department of State Service to grant him unrestricted access to medical care.
Kanu’s legal team, led by Mike Ozekhome and Ifeanyi Ejiofor, claimed in the suit titled FHC/ABJ/CS/ 2341/2022 that he required an independent medical examination to determine his health condition.
Justice Binta Nyako instructed Kanu’s legal team to serve all relevant processes on both the DSS and its Director General, who were cited as First and Second Respondents in the matter, after hearing an ex-parte application filed by the IPOB leader.
The leader of the IPOB stated that he would request from the DSS his admission records, medical and clinical notes, nursing notes, observation charts and documentation during treatment or stay in the hospital, laboratory test results, pharmaceutical records, radiological scans, images, and reports, blood transfusion records, physiotherapy and rehabilitative treatment records, clinical findings, and diagnosis and treatment prescribed records. He would also require these records from the DSS.
He mentioned that Justice Nyako had given him permission to see three people of his choosing, including his doctors, on October 21, 2021.
In particular, he requests permission to “apply for judicial review in the form of an order of Mandamus, compelling the Respondents to allow the Applicant unimpeded access to his medical doctors to enable them to conduct an independent examination of his present deteriorating health condition, as earlier ordered by the Federal High Court, Abuja, Coram, Hon. On October 21, 2021, Justice B.F.M. Nyako; and in accordance with the explicit requirements of Section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act of 2017.
“An order of this Honourable Court granting the Applicant leave to apply for judicial review in the form of a Mandamus, requiring the Respondents to provide the Applicant with all of his medical records from the 29th day of June 2021 to the present,” reads the order.
claiming that a person arrested, detained, or undergoing a custodial investigation is entitled, under section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act of 2017, to an independent and competent doctor of his or her choice for a physical and psychological examination following interrogation that is carried out without the involvement of the police or other security forces.
Contrary to the court’s order of October 21, 2021, “The Respondents have repeatedly denied the Applicant access to medical doctors of his choice to independently examine him;” and specifically the Anti-Torture Act of 2017’s Section 7.”
He also claimed that his health had gotten worse as a result of his ordeal in detention, where he had been tortured, treated badly, and degraded, and that he had a slight heart attack before being “smuggled back into Nigeria.”
Before his arrest and abduction in Kenya and extraordinary rendition back to Nigeria, Kanu told the court in a verifying affidavit that he went to a specialist in cardiology once a week for medical examination and treatment.
“Medical Reports containing the Applicant’s medical history as issued by medical specialists managing the Applicant prior to his abduction in Kenya and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria are hereby attached and variously marked as Exhibits MNK 3, MNK 4, and MNK 5,” the document reads.
“That the Applicant is still being held in solitary confinement in the custody of the Respondents, where he is exposed to daily mental and psychological torture and degradation of his human person, even though the Applicant has been discharged by the appellate court and his further detention is prohibited.
Since that time, the applicant’s health has continued to deteriorate.
That various medical professionals who treated the applicant while he was in custody had repeatedly informed him that they were unable to determine the cause of the potassium depletion in his blood.
“That on multiple occasions, the medical personnel brought by the Respondents took the Applicant’s blood sample and allegedly transported it to South Africa for screening, and that their trial-and-error medicare has not come to an end.”
“That all medical professionals who have dealt with the applicant’s complicated health condition up to this point have failed to medically comprehend the reason for the continued failure of various treatments that have been administered to the applicant; consequently, their inquiries as to whether the applicant may have been injected with a dangerous substance by those who took him in Kenya before forcing him into Nigeria.
“That the medical personnel treating the applicant while he is in the custody of the Respondents are essentially using the applicant as a guinea pig while carrying out a trial-and-error exercise, as they keep changing his drugs and increasing the dosage without any improvement in his health condition. That the medical personnel are oblivious to the cause of the applicant’s health condition. A copy of the Respondents’ medical report for the Applicant is attached and marked as Exhibit MNK 6.
“That the entire medical history of the Applicant as it was contained in his Medical File with the Detaining Authority were deliberately suppressed, as the facts of his rapid potassium depletion were clearly deleted from the medical report that the Respondents issued to the Applicant.”
