Igbeaku Orji 
A legal practitioner, Barrister Christopher Chidera, has told the trial judge of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Justice James Omotosho, that repealed laws cannot sustain criminal trials or convictions in post-1999 Nigeria.
In his position on the ongoing trial, Chidera noted that Kanu‘s poser to Omotosho in his last court appearance, “My Lord, I put it to you that there is no instance in Nigeria since 1999 where a conviction or criminal trial has proceeded on a repealed law,” has been answered.
“Today, that question is answered — definitively, constitutionally, and jurisprudentially. There is no single instance in Nigeria since 1999 where a criminal trial, conviction, or plea was sustained under a repealed law. None exists. None can exist,” he argued.
The advocate and constitutional purist contended that “A repealed criminal statute dies ab initio. It cannot sustain a trial, conviction, or plea unless explicitly saved by the repealing Act — and even then, only for truly ‘pending’ proceedings.”
Citing General savings clauses Interpretation Act s.6(1)(a), Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 s.98(3)) as mere irritants, he insisted “They cannot override s.36(12) of the 1999 Constitution, which forbids conviction for any offence not “defined and in force” at the time of trial.”
“Under Evidence Act s.122, courts must judicially notice repeals. Failure to do so is not mere error — it is a fraud on the Constitution,” he posited.
“A sweeping search of Nigerian and global legal databases (1999–2025) yields zero instances where a repealed law sustained a criminal trial, conviction, or plea.”
