#MNKOct20: People Now Flying Into Nigeria To Join Planned #FreeNnamdiKanuNow Protest At Aso Rock — Sowore

Human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, has declared that the ongoing #FreeNnamdiKanuNow campaign has grown into a “powerfully uniting movement” ahead of the October 20, 2025 mass march to Aso Rock Villa.

Announcing this development via his verified social media handles on Saturday, Sowore mentioned that supporters of the detained IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, were converging on Abuja from within and outside Nigeria to demand his unconditional release.

“The #FreeNnamdiKanuNow struggle has grown into a powerfully uniting movement. People are flying into Nigeria from across the world, while others are journeying from every corner of the country to join the historic march to the Aso Rock Villa on October 20, 2025!” Sowore wrote.

He said the protesters were not mobilising along ethnic or partisan lines, but as citizens united by conscience and justice.

“They are coming not as tribes or parties, but as a people united by conscience, courage, and the unyielding demand for justice. #MNKOct20,” he added.

Meanwhile, counsel to the detained IPOB leader, Aloy Ejimakor, had also urged Nigerians to rise against what he described as the “illegal and unconstitutional” prosecution of his client by the Nigerian government.

In a statement made available to SaharaReporters on Saturday, Ejimakor argued that the continued trial of Kanu is “a direct endorsement of a grave state crime” arising from his extraordinary rendition from Kenya to Nigeria.

“The continued prosecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is supposed to be opposed by all and sundry,” Ejimakor said.

He faulted those who recently announced plans to monitor Kanu’s trial, describing such efforts as misguided.

“While it’s commendable that Kanu has attracted such avalanche of support across the spectrum, it’s important to make it clear that there’s not supposed to be any trial to monitor, not to talk of prosecuting him in the first place,” he stated.

Ejimakor maintained that Nigeria lost the legal authority to try Kanu the moment it engaged in his extraordinary rendition, a process he likened to the botched 1984 kidnapping of Umaru Dikko, a former minister under the Shehu Shagari administration.

He said the comparison was not only apt but necessary to understand the gravity of the state’s misconduct.

“Dikko’s kidnapping was, like this one of Kanu, a brazen act of attempted extraordinary rendition, which is a grave state crime under international law. When it happens, dire consequences must ensue — and one of them is that the complicit state permanently loses its prosecutorial power over the victim of rendition.”

Recalling the aftermath of the Dikko incident, Ejimakor said Britain’s decisive response at the time — which included arrests, convictions, and the severing of diplomatic ties with Nigeria — demonstrated the seriousness with which the international community treats such violations.

“As regards Kanu, Nigeria has, by her own hands, lost its jurisdiction to subject him to trial. No valid prosecutorial action can proceed from such a manifestly criminal conduct by a state,” he insisted.

Ejimakor warned that those calling for a “fair trial” for Kanu were inadvertently legitimizing an unlawful process.

“When you say you will be monitoring Kanu’s trial or that you want a fair trial for him, you are unwittingly buying into a grievous state crime that should shock your conscience,” he said.

He had urged Nigerians, civil society groups, and political leaders to join the call for Kanu’s immediate release and support the #MNKOct20 campaign aimed at securing his freedom.