According to IPOB, the individual failed to answer basic questions about the DSS, including being unable to name the Assistant Director of Investigations, described as a key figure at DSS headquarters.

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has accused the Nigerian government of presenting a fake witness in the ongoing trial of its detained leader, Nnamdi Kanu. 

In a press statement signed by the group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, IPOB alleged that the prosecution’s key witness in court on Wednesday was “a lying mercenary” falsely presented as a Department of State Services (DSS) operative.

“We are compelled once again to alert the international community and lovers of justice everywhere that the Federal Government of Nigeria has reached new depths of shame and desperation in its malicious and politically motivated trial of our leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” Powerful declared in the statement.

The witness, referred to by the prosecution as “PW3-CCC,” reportedly faced intense scrutiny during cross-examination. 

According to IPOB, the individual failed to answer basic questions about the DSS, including being unable to name the Assistant Director of Investigations, described as a key figure at DSS headquarters. 

Powerful stated, “Today in court, the so-called prosecution suffered a devastating blow when its star witness, codenamed PW3-CCC, was thoroughly disgraced, dismantled, and exposed as a lying mercenary masquerading as a member of the DSS. 

“This charade was so pitiful and incompetent that even the government’s usual mouthpieces in the compromised media landscape were forced into total and embarrassing silence.”

IPOB claimed that it is proof that the witness was never truly affiliated with the Nigerian intelligence agency.

“The impostor who took the stand today claimed to be an intelligence operative, yet under cross-examination could not even identify the name of the highest-ranking investigative officer at the DSS headquarters, the Assistant Director of Investigations (AD Investigations),” IPOB said.

“For anyone who claims to have had anything to do with DSS investigations in 2015, that failure alone proves conclusively that this man is a fraud and his testimony a manufactured lie.”

Even more damning, according to the group, was the witness’s inability to identify the location of the DSS’s underground detention facility, allegedly used to detain high-profile individuals like activist Omoyele Sowore.

“His ignorance speaks volumes. No one who truly worked in DSS would not know that,” IPOB said.

Powerful further stated, “This level of confusion and incompetence from a supposed federal witness only reinforces what we have said from day one: the Nigerian government is fabricating evidence, shopping for facts, and using mercenaries to sustain a crumbling case built on political vengeance, not law.”

Kanu, a British-Nigerian citizen and the leader of IPOB, a group pushing for the secession of southeastern Nigeria to form an independent Biafran state, was first arrested in 2015 on charges including treasonable felony. 

After being granted bail in 2017, he fled the country, following an attack on his home by the military. 

He was re-arrested in Kenya in 2021 under controversial circumstances, which IPOB and international observers described as extraordinary rendition, and brought back to Nigeria to face trial.

The legal process has since been fraught with delays, appeals, and allegations of human rights abuses. 

In 2022, the Court of Appeal in Abuja discharged and acquitted Kanu, ruling that his rendition violated local and international laws. 

However, the Nigerian government appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal in December 2023, ordering that the trial continue.

Since then, IPOB has maintained that the proceedings are a “political persecution” rather than a legitimate trial.

IPOB alleged that the government’s legal team suffered a major embarrassment in Wednesday’s court session.

“The courtroom saw the humiliation of the lead prosecutor and his prosecution team in real time, as their witness stumbled, faltered, and contradicted himself into irrelevance,” Powerful said.

He added, “This disgrace is not only theirs, it is Nigeria’s, for choosing to proceed with this charade despite having no case in law or in fact.”

Powerful further stated, “Tomorrow, they may attempt to pivot to a phantom “transmitter”- a matter already decided at the Appeal Court, or some other farce, but the world is watching.

“Every desperate move they make only confirms what we have always known: this is a political persecution, not a prosecution.”

“A prosecution team with integrity would have filed a nolle prosequi today to withdraw this nonsense and save what little face remains,” the statement added.

“But shame is a foreign concept in the corridors of power in Nigeria, so instead, they will dig themselves deeper into the pit they created.”

The group called for international intervention, saying, “The world must act. The international community must speak out. Justice delayed is justice denied, and in this case, justice is being buried beneath a mountain of lies.”

Powerful praised IPOB’s legal team, especially Chief Paul Erokoro (SAN), for what he described as “peeling back the mask of deception and exposing the truth.”