The Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, on Tuesday, said the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, has been arrested.
He said Kanu will soon be brought before the Federal High Court where he jumped bail.
Malami stated this at a press briefing at the Ministry of Justice in Abuja on Tuesday.
He stated that Nnamdi Kanu was arrested on Sunday.
The details were still sketchy at the time of writing, with no information of when and where he was arrested.
Emma Powerful, the IPOB spokesman, denied the news of the arrest while Frank Mba, police spokesman, is yet to respond to a media inquiry on whether the police was involved in the development.
Kanu is facing charges bordering on treasonable felony instituted against him at the federal high court in Abuja in response to years of the campaign for the independent Republic of Biafra through IPOB.
He was granted bail in April 2017 for health reasons but skipped bail after flouting some of the conditions given to him by the court.
He has also been on the run since then after soldiers raided his father’s residence in Abia state.
IPOB was later declared a terrorist group by the defence headquarters and court after the southeast governors proscribed it.
Despite the court’s insistence on his appearance, the IPOB leader has remained abroad, and once said he jumped bail to pursue the cause of Biafra.
“Their problem is Nnamdi Kanu and the solution to their problem is a referendum. They gave me conditional bail to cage me and IPOB but I refused,” he had said during a broadcast.
Owing to his absence in court, Binta Nyako, the judge who granted him bail, revoked it and ordered that he should be arrested.
Kanu, however, dismissed the arrest warrant issued against him and vowed to remain abroad to continue agitating for Biafra.
“The bench warrant against me is merely academic. It will surely be ignored by an international legal and diplomatic order that has voiced its disapproval of what is happening to IPOB in Nigeria,” he had said in one of his broadcasts.
In Kanu’s absence, IPOB went underground and mobilized resources to launch a militant named the Eastern Security Network (ESN).
