Buhari charges Western nations to take ICC serious

…Assures ICC of Nigeria’ support

Mathew Dadiya, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari has appealed to the developed countries to take the International Criminal Court (ICC) more seriously in order to strengthen the rule of law and democracy.

The president gave the assurance on Friday while receiving the Nigerian-born President of the ICC, Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, at the State House, Abuja.

He also assured that Nigeria will continue to support the ICC as much as possible to enable it fulfill its mandate.

According to the Nigerian leader, “The ICC provides a moral strength for victims to receive justice against internal and external injustice.”

President Buhari also commended Judge Eboe-Osuji for the achievements of the ICC under his presidency.

Earlier, the President of the ICC had congratulated President Buhari on his re-election and successful inauguration for a second tenure.

He lauded the Nigerian leader’s “strong and unambiguous statement in support of the rule of law” and for the Court and its principles during his visit to the headquarters of the ICC in The Hague last July.

Judge Eboe-Osuji appealed to President Buhari to continue to support the ICC, and to urge African leaders whose countries have not ratified the Rome Statute which established the Court to do the needful.

Eboe-Osuji-Osuji was on March 11, 2018 elected by the judges of the ICC for a three-year term.

The Daily Times recalls that some African leaders had in different instances criticized the activities of the court.

Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, had repeatedly accused the ICC of open bias against Africa, saying it has failed to mete out justice in any other part of the world.

“The ICC was supposed to address the whole world, but it ended up covering only Africa,” Kagame said at a meeting with British-Sudanese telecoms tycoon and philanthropist, Mo Ibrahim, in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali recently.

“From the time of its inception, I said there was a fraud basis on which it was set up and how it was going to be used. I told people that this would be a court to try Africans, not people from across the world.

“And I don’t believe I have been proven wrong,” he added.

The permanent court in the Netherlands was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court treaty in 1998 in order to prosecute and punish individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

It entered into force in 2012.

But in recent years a number of African countries have threatened or announced plans to withdraw from The Hague-based court over what they call its disproportionate targeting of the continent.

To date, all but one of the ICC’s 10 investigations have been in Africa and its five convicted suspects are from Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Mali.

“There are many people across the world that should be tried by the court,” Kagame said.

“Some leaders from African countries who are being tried by the ICC, whatever they are being tried for, [their crimes] have been committed in partnership with other countries, which the ICC don’t try,” he stated.

Rwanda is not a party of the Rome Statute and Kagame himself has been a consistent and long-standing critic of the ICC, calling it in 2008 a “fraudulent institution”.

Meanwhile, there have been calls from many quarters for Nigeria to exit the ICC based on perceived injustice.