Indigenes of Bakassi in Cross River State, yesterday, went before the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal to challenge the dismissal of the suit they filed with a view to voiding the controversial Green Tree Agreement, GTA, Nigeria entered into with Cameroon in 2006.
They took their plight to the appellate court after Justice Gabriel Kolawole relied on technicalities and dismissed their legal action.
In a ruling he delivered, yesterday, Kolawole maintained that the plaintiffs failed to attach an affidavit to support the reliefs they sought against the Federal Government, noting that after a careful perusal of the processes before the court, he discovered that Bakassi indigenes only adduced a verifying affidavit.
The presiding judge placed reliance on the decided case-law in Agbakoba Vs SSS, to insist that the inability of the plaintiffs to file the requisite affidavit in line with the rules of the court, rendered their suit incompetent.
The judge said: “A verifying affidavit cannot be substituted for the primary affidavit upon which every other application rests. Verifying affidavit is only meant to support the main affidavit. Therefore, in the absence of the requisite affidavit, this suit is ex-facie incompetent and is doomed to be struck out.”
Besides,Kolawole said the court lacked the jurisdiction to delve into the substantive matters that were raised in the suit, saying the issues were “political and highly volatile.”
He said the court was ill-equipped to dabble into such issues as were raised by the Bakassi indigenes, insisting that the Nigerian constitution did not imbue the high court with powers to intervene or adjudicate on “political arrangements” such as the Green Tree Agreement brokered by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006.
Bakassi indigenes head to Apeal Court
Meanwhile, in a swift reaction to the ruling, counsel to Bakassi indigenes, Mr Festus A. Ogwuche, contended that the judge failed to take full cognizance of the weightiness of the issues raised before him vis-Ã -vis the constitutionality or otherwise of the GTA.According to him, “we are heading straight to the court of appeal. The judge did not hear us on the issue of jurisdiction but went ahead to raise and resolve it without hearing the parties. The Bakassi people will exhaust every known domestic remedy in enforcement of their rights as a pre-requisite to their approaching the International Court of Justice, ICJ, as recognizable parties in international law. It may take time but we will get there.”
It would be recalled that the plaintiffs had in their motion ex-parte, sought an order of mandamus that would compel the Federal Government to by any means available to it, repossess, occupy and take full legal and administrative control of the Bakassi Peninsula.
The motion was filed pursuant to section 1 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights(Enforcement and Ratification Act Cap 10, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990, as well as Order 34 Rules 1(a), 3(1) and (2) of the Federal High Court Civil Procedure Rules, 2007.
The suit was endorsed by nine executives of Free Bakassi Association, Prince Imoh Ukpa Imoh, Mr Godwin Ukpong, Mr Chritian A. Umoh, Mr Anthony Achibong Ukong, Mr Kingsley Edu, Mr Etim Ekpeyong Ndong, Mr Offiong Anying Ekpeyong, Bassey Okon Osua and Bassey Ikoedem Antiga.
They equally sought leave for an order of mandamus, compelling the Federal Government, President Goodluck Jonathan and the Attorney General of the Federation, who were all joined as respondents in the suit, to “unilaterally resile from, withdraw, rescind, repudiate and/or revoke Nigeria’s obligations under the Green Tree Agreement entered into between Nigeria and Cameroun in Green Tree, New York, USA on the 12th day of June, 2006, for its being invalid and in breach of Articles 1, 2, 20, 21, 22 and 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 1(2) of the UN Charter, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of indigenous peoples, and being inconsistent with sections 1-3, 2(1) and (6), 13, 14(1) and (2)(b), 17(1), (2)(b), (c ) and (d), sections 19(a) and 9d0, 21(a) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).”
The applicants, argued that the ICJ gave its judgment on the protracted dispute over ownership of the oil rich Bakassi Peninsula, based “on archaic and anachronistic colonial declarations, and communications between colonial officers.”
Justice Kolawole had on October 5 when the application was moved, adjourned till October 9, saying he needed time to carefully peruse the court processes in view of “weighty national issues raised therein.”
However, on the adjourned date the judge failed to appear in court, an action that resulted to shifting the matter till yesterday.
Specifically, the applicants had argued that the ICJ, “in reaching its decision, relied on: (a) Henderson-Flerichau Exchange of Notes of 1931, (b) The Anglo-German Agreement of 11th March and 12th April, 1913 and (c) The British Order-in-Council of 2 August, 1946.
“The ICJ gave the decision as though the territory is occupied by wild animals without any rights under municipal or international law, and treated the colonial declaration and communication as conferring absolute proprietary rights and obligations to the territory to persons or entities outside the people who foe centuries lived and existed therein and of which the territory is their homeland.
“The treaty, signed years before Nigeria came into existence as a sovereign entity was a “Treaty of protection” conferring limited “protectionist” rights on Britain and cannot by any shade of imagination translate to sovereignty or absolute power of transfer of title, sufficient to extinguish the rights of the kings and chiefs to the traditional over lordship of the territory and/or give Britain an absolute right to alienate their rights and interests unilaterally without the free prior consent and authority of the chiefs and kings.
“The respondents are hereby given notice to produce the said treaty of 10th September 1884 which the applicants put in their possession upon the proceedings in the ICJ.”
More so, the applicants said they were neither consulted nor was their consent sought before former President Obasanjo endorsed the Green Tree Agreement, saying they were totally kept out of the picture of things prior, during and even after the execution of the Agreement.
“The applicants only got notice of the Agreement via media reports and grapevine, and upon contact with their representatives in the state and National Assemblies, were told that nobody was either consulted nor was aware of such agreement.
“ Before the applicants could realize what is happening, they were told that for them to remain as Nigerians, they are required to vacate their ancestral home and move into settlements to be built, constructed and maintained by the respondents, or else, if they opt to remain in their fatherland, they should be prepared to remain as Cameroonians.
“The applicants are scattered in different parts of the country, as in Delta State, Bayelsa, Rivers State, Akwa Ibom, etc, living under the basest form of human degradation embodying all the pains and sufferings that could be experienced by man, existing in makeshift pre-civilization abodes having only trees as cover against rain and shine, and other vagaries of the weather, which are most times inclement.
“The members of the applicant community are dying in their numbers everyday from afflictions of disease, poverty, malnutrition, squalor, etc, and there is no end to their suffering, humiliation, degradation of their human essence and homelessness.
“The Cameroonians changed the names of their communities and altered every existing tradition structure or monument which they could not destroy to suit their whims and purposes and destroyed and obliterated the very essence of their origins.
“The applicants do not have direct access to the ICJ , as by virtue of the statute of the ICJ, only states are recognizable parties before it, and have employed all existing measures to prevail upon the respondents to go back to the ICJ and undo the havoc they have caused in their lives, all to no avail.
“The applicants’ dehumanization is worse than animals, more humiliating than slavery, and degrading to the basest form of inhumanity, and is unpalatable and unacceptable in a 21st century world.
“The applicants are under the direct traditional authority and suzerainty of the Obong of Calabar and are forever subjects to the Royal Office and paraphernalia of the Obong’s stool, which is also their cultural and spiritual guardian and guidance; the applicants cannot in any way be extricated from their historical cultural roots which are tied inextricably to their kiths and kin in Cross Rivers State, Nigeria.
“Furthermore the applicants cannot have their land in one country and be citizens of another country, and the respondents cannot impose their nationality on them as their right to a nationality is guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“By the failure of the ICJ judgment to conform to this basic principle of justice, renders it null and void, and thus, the ceding of the applicants homeland to Cameroon is anchored on nothing and is bound for the ground.
“Under international law, the 1st -3rd respondents do not have any obligation to obey the ICJ judgment, and is not bound by the Green Tree Agreement to take the territory belonging to the applicants to the Republic of Cameroon without their free, prior and informed consent, hence the need for the 1st -3rd applicants to quickly return to the Hague to untie what they have intricably and unlawfully knotted,” they added.
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