A Repealed Law Is Not a Written Law in Force — The Simple Truth Omotosho Ignored
THE BRIDGE, THE OLD ROAD, AND THE NEW ROAD
Fellow Nigerians,
Imagine a traveller already halfway on a journey when the government permanently closes the old road. The government does not declare the journey over or order the traveller back to the starting point. Instead, it constructs a bridge to prevent travellers already on the old road from being stranded.
The bridge has one clear purpose: to enable a safe crossing. Once crossed, the traveller must continue on the new road. Section 97 of the new law makes the traffic one-way — there are no U-turns back to the closed old road.
This is precisely what the National Assembly did when it enacted the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022 (TPPA 2022):
The old road (now closed and repealed) was the Terrorism Prevention (Amendment) Act 2013 (TPAA 2013).
The bridge is Section 98(3) — the savings clause preserving pending proceedings.
The new road is the TPPA 2022.
Section 97 expressly directed that pending proceedings “shall be continued and concluded under this Act” — that is, under the new 2022 law. The traffic flows only one way. No return to the repealed old road is permitted.
Justice Omotosho invoked the bridge (Section 98(3)) to keep the case moving and described it as a “smooth transition.” Yet he never crossed the bridge to the new road. He never completed the mandated transition from the repealed old law to the new written law. Instead, he executed an illegal U-turn on the bridge — forbidden by Section 97 — and continued the journey on the closed old road. Despite repeated reminders by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu that the law prohibits going back, Omotosho breached the clear statutory command.
This is the constitutional question at the heart of this case: Did the traveller cross the bridge and continue on the new road, or did he make an unlawful U-turn onto the closed road?
This was not a case where the new road was hidden from the court. The repeal was there. Section 98(3), the bridge, was there. Section 97, the one-way sign commanding continuation “under this Act,” was there. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu repeatedly pointed the court to those signs and demanded: “Show me the law.”
The repeal was brought to the Court’s attention. The Court was repeatedly invited to take judicial notice of it. Judicial notice of written law is mandatory under the Evidence Act. Yet the Court declined to engage with the repeal in the manner requested and instead proceeded to conviction. The troubling question is not what Justice Omotosho intended. The troubling question is what he did. Reasonable people may differ about motive. They cannot differ about the sequence of events.
Any sensible person must ask himself or herself this question: Why did Justice Omotosho decline to follow the new road as ordered by the law of the land? The answer is shockingly simple — the new road says Mazi Nnamdi Kanu did nothing wrong; set him free.
Regrettably, some feign ignorance and pretend not to understand what Justice Omotosho did. But they know. Every legal practitioner in Nigeria is intimately familiar with the elementary principles that govern repealed statutes. Yet the entire judicial establishment has seemingly developed a convenient “hear no evil, see no evil” syndrome — comfortable with this blatant perversion of justice, all because the case involves Biafra. Nigeria appears willing to undermine and destroy her own laws, twisting justice in whatever manner necessary, simply to keep one man in indefinite detention.
At the constitutional checkpoint, the traveller was asked a simple question:
“Which road did you use to get here?”
The ticket in his hand identified the old road — the TPAA 2013 — a road that had already been closed and repealed.
Instead of producing a ticket issued under the new road, Justice Omotosho effectively replied: “Let us assume, without conceding, that the new road exists. We have arrived here anyway, so let us proceed.”
But that answer misses the entire purpose of the checkpoint. The checkpoint exists to determine whether the journey was completed lawfully, not merely whether the traveller managed to arrive. The question was never whether a destination was reached. The question was whether the route taken was the route prescribed by law.
A traveller cannot arrive at a constitutional checkpoint carrying a ticket issued under a closed road and then ask the Constitution to ignore the route by which he travelled.
Section 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) does not ask: “Did you get here?”
Section 36(12) asks: “By what written law in force did you get here?”
The destination is conviction. This is the final constitutional checkpoint before anyone may arrive at that destination.
The old road has been repealed.
The Constitution demands a ticket issued under the road legally open and operating on the day the traveller reaches the checkpoint (20 November 2025).
Yet the judgment never identified — and could not identify — that the journey was completed on the new road. Omotosho failed to show that he obeyed Section 97. There is no specific section of the TPPA 2022 (the new road) that defined the offences or prescribed the punishments for which Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was convicted, because the trial judge arrived at the constitutional checkpoint through the illegal closed old road.
A repealed law is not a “written law in force.”
The savings clause (the bridge) merely keeps the case moving; it does not resurrect the repealed penal law or convert it into a living law capable of grounding a conviction.
The simple question Mazi Nnamdi Kanu repeatedly asked remains unanswered:
“Show me the law.”
That is: Show the specific provisions of the TPPA 2022 — the new road the National Assembly commanded the trial to follow — that defined the offences and prescribed the punishments applied in the conviction.
Not the savings clause (Section 98(3)).
Not legal fictions about when the offence was allegedly committed.
Not the old repealed law.
Show me the written law in force on 20 November 2025.
The Court of Appeal must now answer this question. If no such living law on the new road can be clearly and specifically identified, the conviction lacks constitutional foundation under Section 36(12) and must be set aside.
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Conclusion
This appeal is not about whether the case survived the repeal. Everyone agrees that the savings clause kept it alive.
This appeal is not about whether the bridge existed.
This appeal is about whether the law used to convict survived the repeal — and whether the journey was lawfully completed on the new road as Parliament expressly commanded.
The continued absence of an answer to that simple question creates the appearance that the destination had already been chosen before the route was properly examined.
That is the question Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has asked from the beginning.
That is the question Justice Omotosho never answered.
And that is the question the Court of Appeal must now answer with intellectual honesty.
SHOW ME THE LAW.
