Garba Umar, Vice President of INTERPOL Africa, recently refuted claims of INTERPOL’s participation in the extradition of Nnamdi Kanu, the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), from Kenya in 2021. Umar made this statement during an interview on News Central TV.
The Nigerian government, under former President Muhammadu Buhari, had announced Kanu’s arrest in June 2021, citing assistance from INTERPOL. However, a reliable source disclosed to Press that Kanu was apprehended in Africa, not in London or any part of the United Kingdom.
When questioned about the timeline of Kanu’s arrest in Kenya, Umar expressed ignorance, stating, “Believe you me, I want to tell you I don’t know what you are talking about.
You are bringing an issue that INTERPOL is not aware of.” He emphasized that INTERPOL’s role is to assist law enforcement globally in tracking fugitives, but they were not involved in Kanu’s case.
Umar clarified that INTERPOL has facilitated the extradition of fugitives to Nigeria in the past but reiterated that they were not privy to the specifics of Kanu’s return.
He maintained that INTERPOL had previously stated their lack of involvement in Kanu’s rendition and emphasized that this stance remains unchanged.
Speaking further, Umar said that “There are what we call police to police relationship, international police cooperation, and it does not necessarily bring INTERPOL. If one police and another exchange that a suspect is running from them, they can have an international police cooperation that is out of the scope of INTERPOL.
“However, if a notice is given to an individual like Blue Notices when the inmates in Kuje Prison escaped, we did a biometric capture of those suspects and we shared it with the international community and we shared it with our law enforcement agencies and many of them were re-apprehended because we have their biometrics.
“In the issue of Red Notice, where a Red Notice is issued under the federal court that issued that notice of arrest, that is warrant of arrest for such international, it will go to the INTERPOL and we will process it and look at the charges and then issue a Red Notice. On that Red Notice, we will bring back the suspect to face justice because all the 196 countries will be looking for that individual.”