Posted by By JOE EFFIONG, Uyo on
Nigeria has been warned of the danger of going into uninformed maritime boundary negotiation with Ghana, as such may cause the nation to lose much of its territory just as it lost to the Cameroon.
Nigeria has been warned of the danger of going into uninformed maritime boundary negotiation with Ghana, as such may cause the nation to lose much of its territory just as it lost to the Cameroon.
An expert in maritime law, Dr. Kinsley Ekwere, who issued the warning while speaking with Daily Sun on Tuesday, explained that while Ghana still has a lot of extended continental shelf potentials, Nigeria does not, because it had depleted such in the joint development zone with Sao Tome and Principe.
Ekwere reasoned that instead of going into blind negotiation or unnecessary litigation, which would eventually hurt the nation, Nigeria should equally opt for joint development zone with Ghana.
He, however, said Nigeria could recover the Bakassi Peninsula ceded to Cameroon because of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgment. To achieve this, Ekwere advised the nation to initiate a review of the judgment, explaining that it has since been discovered that the judgment was a serious legal blunder.
He said he discovered that the judgment was a serious blunder while doing his fellowship at the Hague and at various forums where the Nigeria/Cameroon case have been severally described as a miscarriage of justice by maritime law experts.
He explained that what fundamentally made the judgment faulty was because the court did not establish what is known in the international maritime law as a ‘datum.'
'A datum is a science of precision, geodacy is the ability to locate a point on the earth with precision. The court has the responsibility to establish a common ‘datum' between Nigeria and Cameroon. But that was not done. So, it is impossible to implement the ICJ judgment between Nigeria and Cameroon because there is no ‘datum'."
The maritime law expert, who is based in Germany, stressed that Nigeria, having implemented a large section of the judgment as demanded by international law, could now initiate a review of the judgment, emphasizing that it would sure recover the lost maritime territory.
'One of the conditions for a review is that you must implement the ICJ judgment as you cannot ask for a review without it. Nigeria is qualified for a review, and it is important to, because talking about the Green Tree Agreement, I don't know the basis for which it was entered," he explained.
Ekwere also asked the National Assembly not to ratify the said agreement so as not to give credence to the faulty ICJ judgment but that Nigeria should assemble international maritime law experts and initiate a review of the judgment.