Posted by By CHIDI OBINECHE on
Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mr Mike Aondokaa (SAN) has said that Nigeria will obey the International Court of Justice ruling which ceded the disputed Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroun.
Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mr Mike Aondokaa (SAN) has said that Nigeria will obey the International Court of Justice ruling which ceded the disputed Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroun.
The House of Representatives recently rejected the judgement and urged the Federal Government not to respect it.
But speaking to newsmen in Lagos at the weekend the minister said that it would not augur well for the nation as a member state of the United Nations (UN) to disobey it
He frowned at news reports that tended to suggest a wholesale renouncing of the IJC jurisdiction to which the nation voluntarily submitted herself to.
He said, 'from the point of law, submitting ourselves to the jurisdiction of the IJC was voluntary and having done that, and participated throughout the trials and through to the judgement, it will not augur well for us a member and as part of the United Nations to say we are not obeying the court judgement."
He also discountenanced those who were equating the judgement to a treaty, saying that the two were different and served the opposite ends.
'The issue here is that it is a judgement from the world court and not a treaty per se. So there are two different things and we should not mix them up," he declared.
On the Green Tree agreement, which came as a fallout of the bulky judgement, he reasoned that the agreement could not stand without fully implementing the judgement.
The AGF urged Nigerians to show concern about the uncertainties surrounding the nation's huge oil installations in the area, rather than dissipating energy on a seemingly wild goose chase of spurning the judgement.
As a way out of the logjam, he suggested a prototype of the joint venture agreement on the management of the nation's expensive oil installations in Sao Tome.
'I think what should concern or bother us as a country is what happens to the oil installations we have in that area. I think what will happen is that we cannot move or uproot our oil installations that are on the border, because they are owned by Nigeria and they are really expensive.
'We have some arrangement with Sao Tome for example, where we have a joint venture agreement on the management of our oil installations in that country.
In the case of the ones we have in Cameroun (Bakassi), we can strike the same type of agreement since we are not fighting," he declared.
Continuing, he said, 'those oil installations are ours and some of them fall right on the demarcation area. So what do we do? I think we could have a joint commissions to manage these oil resources. We can convert these equipment to equities and turn that place to a security zone which could be managed under a special arrangement."
The minister further spoke on the Supreme Court judgement on new Lagos local government councils.
He advised the state to obey the judgement to the letter, saying it was wrong for the government to select which sections of the judgement to obey.
He explained, 'Lagos State should follow the law on the issue of 20 local governments. There is a Supreme Court ruling that said that it was wrong for the Federal Government to hold local government's money in Lagos which we obeyed, and the same Supreme Court also recognized only 20 local governments in Lagos. So they should abide by that ruling too.
'The same court ruled that Lagos cannot have additional local governments until they have the required presidential approval to do so. As a good government, I expect them to respect the ruling.
'Are they saying that Lagos State Government will not respect he Supreme Court decision? My advice is that Lagos State should respect the Supreme Court ruling which they initially got benefit from. They got their money. It is the duty of any government to respect the law, and where that fails to happen, it will be very unfortunate.