Claimant(s)

And

The Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

Preamble

On 1 January 1914, the government of Great Britain proclaimed the incorporation of the Yoruba Territory into Nigeria, a country that it had newly created.

The Yoruba people have occupied the Yoruba Territory uninterrupted since time immemorial. The Yoruba people speak one language, share a common custom and tradition, and believe in one ancestral origin. The Yoruba are a people entitled under the international law to reclaim their sovereignty that Great Britain arbitrarily and forcibly abrogated on 1 January 1914.

The Claimant(s) seek  an order from the court to enable the Yoruba People  to severe the Yoruba Territory from Nigeria in accordance with the International Law on Self-determination to which Britain and Nigeria are signatories.

The Claimant(s) are indigenes of the Yoruba Territory which gave them the standing to seek self-determination for the Yoruba Territory in which they are domiciled.

The Claimant’s take as their inspiration for this case the breakup of Czechoslovakia, which proved that the breakup of a country did not require disorder or violence.

The relevant law

The Charters of the UN and the AU and the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) provide the relevant law. These Charters and resolutions are enforceable law in Nigeria by virtue of the fact that Nigeria is signatory.

In regard to resolutions, the ICJ, in its Nicaragua decision, confirmed UNGA Resolution 2625 to be customary law, and a new international law. The ICJ in the North Sea Continental Shelf cases determined that a rule enshrined in a treaty also existed as customary law (ICJ Reports 1969 pp39, 41).

UNGA resolution 1514 (XV): ‘All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

African Charter Article 20: 1: ‘All peoples shall have the right to existence. They shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self- determination. They shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen’.

UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Article 1: 1: ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’.  India’s attempt to limit  Article 1.1 of the UN ICESR to peoples under foreign domination was rejected by the UN. France, Germany, Netherlands and Portugal formally objected to the Indian declaration (UN doc. St/LEFG/SER.E/9 pp126).

UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 1: 1: ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’. The Human Rights Committee thus upheld and confirmed that self-determination was a right of all peoples.

UNGA Resolution 2625 (the determinative Self-determination law):  ‘By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.’

‘The establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association or integration with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people constitute modes of implementing the right of self-determination by that people.’

The unification of Germany in 1990 created the modern legal precedent that a state established by an occupying power has no permanence. The German Democratic Republic created by occupying powers was expunged as a result of German unification (Int. Legal Materials 29, 1990 pp1187). The Treaty on the Final Settlement formally acknowledged that unification was the exercise of self-determination by the German people. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia confirmed the rule that a state established by an occupying power had no permanence.

Britain, an occupying power, created Nigeria. The Yoruba did not consent to the incorporation of their territory into Nigeria or to the continuing and ongoing incorporation of Yorubaland into Nigeria. Indeed prior to the 1914 amalgamation, on 23 July 1888, Alaafin Adeyemi, in his capacity as the recognised Head of the Yoruba Territory, signed a non-cession treaty of trade and friendship with Queen Victoria, Head of Great Britain. The 1888 Britain-Yoruba Treaty was valid law in 1914, and it remains valid today under International Law.

Issues for determination

Whether the Yoruba Territory currently incorporated in the country Nigeria has the legal right to severe its relationship with Nigeria in the act of self-determination as per UNGA Resolution 2625.

In particular, whether the Yoruba People are entitled to take advantage of the self-determination provision in Article 20.1 of the African Charter, which Nigeria incorporated into its domestic law in 1983. The Katangese -v- Zaire case is authority that Article 20.1 of the African Charter is justiciable.

Court’s jurisdiction

By virtue of the fact that Nigeria is signatory to the relevant international law, each and every Federal court within the Yoruba Territory of Nigeria has jurisdiction to hear this case.

ICJ Legal opinion (Namibia ICJ Reports 1971 pp16, 31; Western Sahara ICJ Reports 1975 pp12, 31-33) is authority that Self-determination is a fully-fledged right that could be invoked in a court of law to claim separate statehood and sovereign independence.

THIS CASE IS ARGUABLE AND WINNABLE. The factual configurations of Nigeria are easily identifiable. A court determination will be uncomplicated.

LET’S DO IT!