The lawyer representing detained IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has accused the Department of State Services (DSS) of peddling “false propaganda” about his client’s health and exposing him to “quack medical attention.”
Reacting in a strongly worded statement on Thursday, Onyedikachi Ifedi, Esq., faulted reports attributed to DSS sources—particularly one by The Nation—which suggested Kanu’s health concerns had been overstated. He described the claims as a deliberate attempt by the DSS to “malign our client and misinform the public.”
“The facts are simple and indisputable: the DSS has been playing hide-and-seek with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s health,” Ifedi said. “Despite being present during his medical examinations and tests, the DSS suddenly introduced one Dr. Nasiru Mohammed, an individual with questionable credentials and no demonstrable competence in handling life-threatening cardiovascular conditions.”
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According to Ifedi, the said doctor—allegedly from Daura in Katsina State—was “catapulted from obscurity into Mazi Kanu’s medical matter” to serve a political agenda.
“This quack doctor lacks the faintest clue about the grave dangers associated with potassium depletion in the bloodstream, a condition our client faces,” he alleged.
The lawyer questioned why the DSS had flown Kanu’s blood samples to South Africa for analysis if, as it insists, his health was not under threat.
“If indeed the DSS has nothing to hide, why has it refused to release the full and unedited test results for the world to see?” he asked. “Instead, like a petty thief caught in the act, the DSS resorts to desperate lies and media smokescreens.”
Ifedi also accused the DSS of lacking the expertise to handle Kanu’s medical needs.
“A security agency which does not even understand the clinical implications of aortic valve regurgitation or congestive heart failure has no business presuming to oversee the healthcare of a man whose life is already endangered by their reckless detention conditions,” he stated.
Challenging the secret police to make its case publicly, the lawyer called for transparency.
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“We hereby challenge the DSS to convene an open press conference where independent journalists and medical experts can freely interrogate them on the state of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s health. If the DSS is so confident in its position, let it subject itself to the disinfecting sunlight of public scrutiny,” he declared.
He further alleged that the DSS routinely pressured doctors into altering medical reports to support its narrative in court.
“The modus operandi of the DSS has always been to intimidate doctors into watering down their medical reports in order to fit the government’s preferred narrative—deceiving the courts into believing that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is well,” Ifedi said. “The tragedy of Nigeria’s judicial system is that these Abuja-based courts, steeped in bias against the Igbo, often oblige them without question.”
The statement concluded with a warning that the legal team would continue to expose what it called “lies, concealment, and medical quackery” by the DSS.
“The health and life of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu are not pawns in the DSS’s propaganda war. We will continue to expose every falsehood and hold the DSS accountable before Nigerians and the international community,” Ifedi vowed.
