Policy formation, implementation Nigeria - Renowned Nigerian International Law expert Akin Oyebode has urged the country’s decision makers to involve academics and experts in policy formation and implementation to avoid a “repetition of its ugly experience,” such as the Bakassi border dispute with neighbouring Cameroon. “The Nigerian ruling class should immediately jettison its obscurantism and anti-intellectual attitude that currently attend policy formulation and implementation on international matters…,” said Oyebode, professor of International Law and Chair, Office of International Relations, Partnership and Prospects, at Nigeria’s University of Lagos.

The jurist and former Vice Chancellor of Ekiti State University in Nigeria’s South-west state of Ekiti, made the assertion in a 63-page lecture he delivered recently as part of the University of Lagos’s Inaugural Lectures Series 2011.

Nigeria contested the ownership of oil and mineral rich Bakassi peninsula with Cameroon at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and lost on account of what many international relations experts blamed on a host of reasons, including poor brief and inadequate legal preparation.

To avoid this and similar pitfalls in future, Prof. Oyebode, an expert on International Treaties, also recommended that those being nominated by Nigeria for appointment to important international bodies such as the International Law Commission, ICJ, International Criminal Court, African Court of Justice and Human Rights, and the ECOWAS Community Court, should be experts in International Law “instead of the current practice of considering such appointments as ‘jobs for the boys’ or sinecures for political jobbers.”

According to the Kiev, Harvard and York (Toronto) trained jurist and international lawyer, there is also an urgent need for collation and regular publication of Nigeria’s Treaties in Force in order to equip legal practitioners and the public with requisite information concerning the country’s treaty obligations.

“Finally, in view of Nigeria’s rising profile in the world and the leading role of the country in Africa and beyond, the time is now ripe to consider making International Law a compulsory course in the curriculum of Law Faculties in all Nigerian Universities,” he recommended.

He said the University of Lagos should lead this campaign in Nigeria of “putting our graduates (on) a better pedestal and help enhance the quality of legal expertise that would be available to drive the making and execution of the nation’s policies in its forays into the global scene”.

In the lecture, entitled “Of Norms, Values and Attitudes: The Cogency of International Law,” which could pass for a tour de force in the field, Prof. Oyebode, now in his early 60s, delved into personal history - including 38 years in the Ivory Tower, where he has “communed with generations of students,” many of whom have attained great heights in the legal profession.

They include 40 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), 25 law professors, Judges, State Governors, Members of Parliament, Ministers, Commissioners and Diplomats.

Prof. Oyebode used the occasion to pay tribute to his contemporaries, friends and those who influenced or moulded his life, including acclaimed legal authorities such Soviet Academician Igor Ivanovich Lukashuk, a one-time member of the UN International Law Commission; and
the late Professor Richard Reeve Baxter, former President of the American Society of International Law and Judge of the International Court of Justice.

There was also the American Peace Corps teacher, Rod Marriot, who “worked exceedingly hard” to persuade young Oyebode, who had nursed a childhood dream of becoming an engineer, to switch from the Sciences to Arts in his secondary school days.

Author of seven books and over 100 learned papers, Prof. Oyebode was appointed by the African Union (AU) in 2009 to lend his vast knowledge and experience in jurisprudence to the challenging task of helping to draft a Continental Treaty on Trans-border Cooperation, which is now awaiting adoption by African Heads of State and Government.

The inaugural lecture pamphlet, with details of the lecturer’s academic stewardship, is a rich handbook for scholars and practitioners of International Law, Jurisprudence and Treaties.

The lecture was attended by the crème de la crème of the legal profession and well-wishers from all walks of life, including traditional rulers, opinion leaders, academics, students as well as friends and family members.

Pana 15/12/2011