The ECOWAS Court of Justice has dismissed a suit by four individuals seeking self-determination for the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

The four are Risqat Badmus, Ademola Faleti, Yemisi Fadahunsi-Ogunlana and Adigun Makanjuola, all members of the Coalition of Yoruba Interest Group (CYIG).

In a judgement, a three-member panel of the court held that the four individuals lacked the necessary capacity to sue for themselves and on behalf of the Yoruba nation.

In the lead judgment by Justice Dupe Atoki held that as individuals, the applicants failed to prove their ability to act as bearers of the right to self-determination ascribed to the Yoruba people and relied on the definition of the African Commission of the concept of a people as a group of persons “bound together by their historical, traditional, racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, ideological, geographical, economic identities and affinities.”

Justice Atoki found that the four applicants did not qualify to be the bearers or holders of such rights and declared that they did not have the capacity to sue the Respondent State for themselves.

The judge held that the applicants failed to exhibit their capacity to represent the Yoruba people, for whom the action was instituted, noting that in cases of right to self-determination, “a representative action is the appropriate and indeed the most practicable option in seeking relief for violation of this right.”

She added that for a representative action initiated by an individual to succeed, the presentation of an authority to act from the alleged victim(s) is required, adding that no such evidence of authority given by the Yoruba nation was provided by the applicants and subsequently declared the application inadmissible.

According to a statement by the court’s media unit, the judgment was delivered on March 13 on the suit marked: ECW/CCJ/APP/08/22.

Other members of the panel are Justices Edward Amoako Asante (presiding) and Gberi-Bè Ouattara.

Badmus, Faleti, Fadahunsi-Ogunlana and Makanjuola had sued the Federal Republic of Nigeria, seeking a declaration by the court to activate their rights to self-determination as provided for under Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and Articles 3, 4, 7 and 18 of the United Nations Declaration on the rights of the Indigenous People.

The applicants, who said they also belong to the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance for Self-Determination (NINAS) said they raised a petition titled Constitutional Force Majeure Proclamation and gave the respondent a 90-day ultimatum to respond.

They argued that Nigeria was constituted in 1914 by the British Government without taking into account the social, cultural, religious and ethnic configuration of the country. (The Nation)

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