The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra(MASSOB) has on Friday condemned the sentence handed to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, on Thursday.
According to the movement in a statement released on Friday by its leader, Comrade Uchenna Madu, the ruling was politically motivated and an attack on the Igbo people.
In the statement, the group said the judgment delivered by Justice James Omotosho reflected open anger and tribalism, alleging that the judge sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to his master’s prison.
“This is not justice but vengeance from a man playing a script loaded with pathological hatred and jealousy against Ndigbo. “Ndigbo have been sentenced to life imprisonment in Nigeria,” MASSOB said.
Madu added that President Bola Tinubu had set Nigeria on irredeemable fire, insisting that the ruling had shot the Nigerian state on her deteriorated foundation.
The statement added, “Nigeria sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to life in prison for words spoken from foreign soil after illegally kidnapping him from Kenya, ignoring a United Nations ruling demanding his release, and prosecuting him under a law that no longer exists.”
In the statement, the government was also accused of applying double standards in terrorism-related cases.
The movement contrasted Kanu’s punishment with that of Boko Haram co-founder Mamman Nur, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison.
Nur according to MASSOB is “a chief Islamic terrorist commander responsible for over 2,000 deaths.”
“In Nigeria today, words from London carry a heavier penalty than mass murder,” the group said. “Mazi’s real crime was his bold exposure of the radical Islamic jihad consuming Nigeria and the government’s symbiotic relationship with the jihadists,” MASSOB stated.
The movement insisted that Kanu was illegally rendered to Nigeria from Kenya in 2021 recounting a June 2025 ruling by Kenyan High Court Justice Anthony Mrima, who reportedly found the rendition to be “a blatant violation” of Kanu’s rights.
MASSOB also cited opinions issued by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2022 and 2025, which described Kanu’s detention as arbitrary and called for his immediate release.
According to the statement, the appropriate remedy is his immediate release.
MASSOB further highlighted that the United States government has publicly stated, since 2017, that it does not consider IPOB a terrorist organisation.
“This injustice is not against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. It is against Ndigbo.”
The organisation insisted the ruling underscored the “brutal, lawless, totalitarian nature of a genocidal regime.”
Madu concluded: “Ndigbo have been sentenced to life imprisonment in Nigeria.”
