LEGAL CONUNDRUM OF NIGERIANS PROTESTS AT FOREIGN EMBASSIES :ARTICLE 2(7) PROHIBITS UK AND AMERICA FROM OBSTRUDING INTO NIGERIA’S DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
By
Vincent Adedara PhD in Laws
(Solicitor Nigeria, England and Wales)
Foreign embassies are not legally permitted under international law to validate or otherwise the election rightly or wrongly conducted in Nigeria ,in the same way they cannot determine for us the suitability of candidates or otherwise in our elections, they cannot tend to offer undue advantage to any candidate in an election process because of interest, they cannot give us direction on economic policies or the way we run our internal affairs. They can only offer advise or recommendations which we are not bound to follow. We have competent courts assigned to do justice to disputes emanating while running our affairs in our country and embassies are noneof the arbitrators.
It is therefore an error and abberation on the part of fellow Nigerians to demonstrate at the ex-territorial premises of embassies or consulates offices. The embassies lack legal power under international law to intervene or obstrude into our internal affairs. It is like busy protesting to no avail if those embassies will not be helpful in our protests to their territories. It is germain to reiterate that the effective result oriented of the protests cannot be derived from the embassies.
We can be effective with our protest against the erring government with the aid of international press men covering the protests for the international organization like UN to watch or we can report anyone who had committed international crime or infraction through our detailed petitions against the person or group to the International Criminal Court but protesting at the embassies of USA and UK in Nigeria is misplaced and fruitless. What are we protesting to achieve ? For the UK or USA to roll out armoured tanks to Nigeria? It is antithetical to internal Sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction.
It is a Jejune thinking to protest to the America and UK embassies in Nigeria with wrong notion that it will make them to order Nigeria government to do something about the protest and it is also wrong to think we can invite America FBI to arrest someone in Nigeria over matters that are solely and exclusively internal and domestic in nature . It is needless efforts and right energy dispensed at the wrong place without useful and expected result, this ongoing and recurrent practice in Nigeria and outside Nigeria must stop. It has no legal backing in the UN charter and African charter on human and peoples’ rights, l have not seen a clause authorizing protest at the foreign embassies . Our drive to protest at foreign embassies in order to press home our demands or protesting in non-Nigerian embassies abroad is unpatriotic and a national denigration and ploys to embarrass our country without any expected or derived success on the protest. If we are not protesting against the national of another country, we have no business going to the foreign embassies to protest against our government or national over matters within the purview of our domestic jurisdiction.
America had flawed elections several times and they admitted making electoral mistakes but you cannot see Americans protesting to the embassy of Nigeria or any other embassies in the world, they may however choose to protest in their country over electoral flaws because it is solely domestic affairs and not international affair. In 2012 the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) was established as an independent research project based at Harvard and Sydney universities to gather evidence about the quality of elections around the world. The results show that experts rated American elections as the worst among all Western democracies. Without reform, these problems risk damaging the legitimacy of American elections. No country is completely free from electoral flaws and Nigeria is not an exception. Nigerians delight in protesting to the embassies of the USA and the UK is a dangerous digression to the “supremacist theory” and iconography of white supremacists which had culminated gradually into neo-colonialism that we need to burst and dispel as a result of unconscious self submission by Africans to the unpleasant practice.
The United Nations Charter guides inter- states relations which is primarily concern with maintenence of international peace and not “domestic” or “internal ” peace of a country.
Article 2(4). “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”
Article 1 (1 to 4) espoused purposes of the UN and some domestic measures may however enable the UN to take effective collective measure to prevent threat where war or dispute constitutes a threat to international peace, now that the threat to international peace had been expanded by modern practices to ‘spill over’ wars from internal crisis to international crisis (Article 2(3)) We don’t have civil war in Nigeria that constitute threat to international peace, America and UK embassies are not UN office or headquarter. Article 2(1) says ‘the Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members’, no country is more sovereign than the other under international law. America and the United Kingdom cannot leave their internal problems to have serious concern about our internal challenges in Nigeria.
I am aware of international concern principles under international law and Article 55 of the UN Charter on promotion of universal respect and observance of human rights hinging same on multilateral treatises to promote and protect human rights is sacrosanct . In juxtaposition of Article 55 with Article 2(7) on protection of universal respect of human rights , Article 2(7) may not prevent international communities from intervention. The UN is entitled to have concern of complaints of violation of human rights and that is if the protest is about violation of human rights especially against state actors , the complaints if any, can be presented to the UN and not to co-subjects of international law or co member states like UK and USA.
Article 2 (7) of the UN charter forbids UK and the USA from intruding into internal and domestic affairs of Nigeria with impunity just because objects of international law are calling them or protesting to them in their host countries. People have the rights to protest but it is a waste of time doing so at the embassies of foreign countries who are helpless as a result of Article 2(7). Even the UN cannot intrude into Nigeria domestic affairs except in an extreme circumstance and exceptions to Article 2(7) under Chapter VII
Article 2(7) says “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII”
This was almost a replica in Article 15(8) of the Covenant of the League of Nations which prohibit matters which by international law are solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that state and that the Council shall make no recommendations as to their settlements . These countries with embassies and consulate offices in Nigeria should honour our domestic jurisdiction as well as well as our territorial integrity and henceforth place a restricting order against protest in their ex-territorial jurisdictions .
Nigeria cannot solve several internal problems of America for Americans through the embassy of Nigeria in America. If Americans cannot protest to Nigeria embassy in USA why are we making it norms to rush to foreign embassies to protest when the enabling international law had not permitted them to intervene in domestic affairs? The supremacy of international law over municipal laws was well recognized even before the draft of the UN Charter in the case of Greco-Bulgarian case (1930 PCIJ Ser B. No 17 p 321) and Dansig case (1930 PCIJ Ser A/ B. No 44 p 24 ) as regard regulation of state actors and ‘subjects’ of international law as against ‘objects’ of international law.
I am not oblivious of the fact that UN has been passive as far as respect of domestic jurisdiction is concerned especially when it involves super powers like America and UK. We can see the dangerous trends in the unlawful invasion of Iraq in 2003 in breach of UN charter, the long and baseless US wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been alleged to be illegal under international law as well as undeclared wars in violation of the US constitution. The US invasion of Iraq was based on false premises of “weapons of mass destruction”. President Joe Biden’s precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 with no credible peace deal had left Afghanistan in a state of precipice due to the violation of the country’s domestic jurisdiction and just because of the dominance of the super powers over the UN affairs and that is why there is need for UN reform to spread the super powers of the UN to all the continents of the world for equal representation if the “supremacist” dominance theory is to be debunked. Nigerians are busy protesting on nothing once they opt for protest at any of the foreign embassies that are not Nigeria embassies. it is a denigration of territorial integrity of the country and if Nigerians must protest as of right, it must not be done at any of the embassies . The countries are subjects of international law just like Nigeria, they also have their problems ranging from economic issues , dirty slums, corruption, electoral flaws , social and all manners of domestic problems but they will never expose their weaknesses. We must stop showing to them all our problems especially if they cannot solve them.
Embassies by ex-territorial rules are extensions of their countries in the host states, why are we going often to another countries within our territory to protest to their governments when we need to protest to our government? . Protesting in embassies over internal affairs is absurd and obnoxious to international law. I understand the diplomacy and diplomatic necessity of some Ambassadors and consulars sympathy for electoral candidates and interest in the politics of Africa and surreptitiously getting involved actively or by proxy at times is understandable but getting engrossly nvolved to extent of crossing the red line to violate the international principle of domestic jurisdiction and Sovereignty of the host states must also incur the red flag of all nationals. Email:voaadedara@gmail.com
