The court grants Kanu’s request for medical care

The Federal Supreme Court in Abuja has allowed detained Biafran indigenous leader Nnamdi Kanu to apply for a mandamus warrant to compel the State Department to grant him unfettered access to medical care.

In the lawsuit labeled FHC/ABJ/CS/2341/2022, Kanu said through his legal team led by Mike Ozekhome and Ifeanyi Ejiofor that he needed an independent medical examination to determine his health condition.

After hearing an ex-parte application filed by the IPOB leader, Judge Binta Nyako, he directed Kanu’s legal team to serve all relevant processes before both the DSS and the Director General, who were named as 1st and 2nd defendants in the business.

The IPOB chief said he would demand from the DSS his admission records, medical and clinical notes, nursing notes, observation cards and documentation during treatment or hospital stay, laboratory test results, pharmaceutical records, radiological scans, images and reports, blood. transfusion reports, physiotherapy and rehabilitation treatment reports, clinical findings, as well as reports of diagnosis and prescribed treatment.

He pointed out that on October 21, 2021, Justice ordered Nyako to allow him access to three individuals of his choice, including his doctors.

Specifically, he is praying for an order from the court, authorizing him to “apply for judicial review in the form of an order from Mandamus, forcing the defendants to allow the applicant unimpeded access to his physicians to enable them to to conduct an investigation. independent investigation of his current deteriorating health condition, as previously ordered by the Federal Supreme Court, Abuja, Coram, Hon. Justice BFM Nyako, on October 21, 2021; and as required by the express provisions of Section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act, 2017.

“An order of this Honorable Court authorizing the Applicant to apply for judicial review in the form of an Order of Mandamus requiring the Defendants to make available to the Applicant all of its medical records, from June 29, 2021 until date.

Disputing that section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act, 2017 provides that a person arrested, detained or undergoing custodial investigation has the right to demand, after questioning, a physical and psychological examination by an independent and competent physician of his own choice , which are carried out outside the influence of the police or security forces.

“The defendants have repeatedly denied the applicant access to doctors of his choice to examine him independently, in violation of the court order of October 21, 2021; and the express provisions of Section 7 of the Anti-Torture Act, 2017.”

He also claimed his health deteriorated after his ordeal detention, where he was subjected to torture, inhumane treatment and humiliation, and that he suffered a mild cardiac arrest before being “smuggled back to Nigeria”.

In an affidavit, Kanu told the court that before his arrest and kidnapping, in Kenya and extraordinary rendition back to Nigeria, he visited a specialist cardiologist every week for medical examination and treatment.

“Medical reports detailing the applicant’s medical history as issued by medical specialists managing the applicant before his abduction in Kenya and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria are hereby attached and marked as Exhibits MNK 3, MNK 4 and MNK 5.

“Despite the fact that the applicant has been dismissed by the appeals court and his further detention is prohibited, the applicant is still held in solitary confinement in the custody of the defendants, where he is subjected to daily mental and psychological torture and humiliation of his human person.

“Since then, the applicant’s health has gone into a downward spiral.

“That several medical staff who cared for the applicant while he was in custody had repeatedly informed him that they could not identify the reason for the deficiency of potassium in the applicant’s blood.

“That the medical staff brought by the defendants on several occasions took the applicant’s blood sample and allegedly transported it to South Africa for screening and to date there is no end in sight to their trial-and-error medicare.

“That all the medical experts who have so far attended to this complex health condition of the applicant have failed to medically fathom the explanation for the continued failure of various treatments given to the applicant thus far, hence their questioning whether the applicant is possible injected with a dangerous substance by those who kidnapped him in Kenya before being forcibly smuggled into Nigeria.

“That the medical personnel accompanying the applicant in the custody of the defendants are unaware of the cause of the applicant’s health condition and are in fact using the applicant as a guinea pig while conducting a trial-and-error exercise, while they keep changing his medications and increasing the dosage without any improvement in his health condition. Attached and marked Exhibit MNK 6 is a copy of the Petitioner’s medical report, issued by the Respondents.

“That the full medical history of the applicant, as contained in his medical file with the arresting authority, has been deliberately withheld, as the facts of the rapid depletion of his potassium levels have been clearly removed from the medical report provided to the applicant by the defendants ”.