The plan by members of African Union (AU) to collectively withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) may suffer a setback as Nigeria and some other countries objected the proposal.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Addis Ababa. Onyeama explained that there was a strategy adopted by AU for collective withdrawal from the ICC which Nigeria did not subscribe to.
The minister said that when the issue came up during a meeting, several countries kicked against it. He said Nigeria and others believed that the court had an important role to play in holding leaders accountable, hence Nigeria fully stood by it.
“Nigeria is not the only voice agitating against it, in fact Senegal is very strongly speaking against it, Cape Verde, and other countries are also against it. What they (AU) do was to set up a committee to elaborate a strategy for collective withdrawal. And after, Senegal took the floor, Nigeria took the floor, Cape Verde and some other countries made it clear that they were not going to subscribe to that decision,” he said.
According to him, a number of countries also took the floor to say that they needed time to study it before they acceded to that position. Read full story here.