Obono-Obla to ICC: Don’t lend your forum to Nigerian ethnic jingoists to ventilate their hate for Nigeria, Govt

By BASHIR ADEFAKA

“They gleefully alleged that the federal government and its agents perpetrated genocide or crime against humanity against their people. Certainly, these people have a terrible misconception and miscomprehension of what the ICC is all about. I will try as much as possible to explain lucidly and clearly what ICC is; and whether the complainants have a case worthy of consideration.”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been told that it should not lend its forum to Nigerian ethnic jingoists for use to ventilate their hate Ideology.

Former Chairman, Nigeria’s defunct Special Presidential Investigative Panel, Chief Okoi Obono-Obla, made this call in a statement he issued in Abuja, the nation’s capital and sent to The DEFENDER early Thursday.

Obono-Obla, a lawyer and resilent politician with full commitment to patriotism, was reacting to a complaint reportedly filed before ICC by some separatists against President Muhammadu Buhari and Federal Government officials, over allegations of purported genocide against their regions, a complaint he said was found by him as “great amusement”.

The cross River State-born Nigerian figure found it amazing that people, who appear to well educated and have been beneficiaries of Nigeria’s excellent past, could stoop low today dishing unpardonable falsehoods to international community and the International Criminal Court, to justify their selfish aim of destabilizing the country and its government to please their unexplainable course and sponsors.

He said: “They gleefully alleged that the federal government and its agents perpetrated genocide or crime against humanity against their people. Certainly, these people have a terrible misconception and miscomprehension of what the ICC is all about.

“I will try as much as possible to explain lucidly and clearly what ICC is; and whether the complainants have a case worthy of consideration.

“The ICC is a court established by the Rome Statute. It is vested with jurisdiction to investigate and, where warranted, try individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community, such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

“Nigeria has ratified the Rome Statute, which means that it has accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC. However, the United States of America is not of the countries that have refused to ratify the Rome Statute. When a country doesn’t ratify the Rome Statute, the jurisdiction of the Court does not apply to that country.

“The ICC does not exercise jurisdiction over cases that the national legal system of a Party to the Statute has jurisdiction to handle. In other words, before the ICC can accept to handle a complaint filed by anybody, the claimant must satisfy the Court that it had exhausted the institutions that the national legal system of the country where they come has for addressing such complains.

“The complaints have not been shown that they had exhausted the Nigerian jurisdiction before they filed their complaint. It follows that a condition precedent to activate the jurisdiction of the ICC has not been fulfilled by the complainants.

“The ICC exercises jurisdiction over individuals, not the State. In other words, the ICC does not exercise jurisdiction over the Federal Republic of Nigeria but individuals working for the State.

“I will explain the terms genocide, crimes against humanity which the ICC can try any individual brought before it.

“One limb of allegations against President Buhari and the top officials is that they committed crimes against humanity. However, there is nothing, no shred of evidence to substantiate this allegation.
What is a crime against humanity?

“According to the Rome Statute, Crimes against humanity” include any of the following acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: murder; extermination; enslavement; deportation or forcible transfer of population; imprisonment; torture; rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; persecution against an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds; enforced disappearance of persons; the crime of apartheid; other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily injury.

“The second limb of the complainants’ case is genocide. What is genocide?
According to the Rome Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

“So, the ingredients for the complaints filed by these separatists against President Muhammadu Buhari and some federal government officials are not there. The complaint of these separatists are blustery and demonstrably vexatious and politically motivated. The ICC should not lend a hallowed forum to ethnic jingoists, separatists, and anarchists, and interlopers to disturb the peace and stability of our dear fatherland and operate with impunity and rascality, trampling on the rights of Nigerians with such audacity,” Okoi Obono-Obla said.