I’m Best Choice For The International Court Of Justice –Dr Elias

A Nigerian, Dr Olufemi Elias has described himself as the most qualified candidate for the post of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) president.

Dr Elias, a full member of the Institut de Droit International is Nigeria’s candidate for the exalted post, and has said that his profile stood him out from among all the candidates.

“I started as an academic, spent 20 years at the UN and rose to the level of Assistant Secretary-General. Right now, I serve in various judicial capacities, including as Judge Ad Hoc of the ICJ itself”, he said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York.

“My distinguished competitors are professors of international law. So they have that academic heft, but we all have that.

“I’m saying my candidature has that (as an academic) but also a knowledge of the workings of the multilateral system in which the Court operates and the actual judicial experience,” Elias stated

According to him, his competitors have neither the knowledge of the workings of the multilateral system nor the actual judicial experience.

“Those two things are what set my candidature apart. And like I joke, I’ve already made a replacement for that.”

Candidates nominated for the vacant seat include Elias, Charles Jalloh and Pheobe Okowa.

The election will take place simultaneously in the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, with the Nigerian government canvassing delegates’ support for Elias.

The World Court has a panel of 15 judges elected by the UN General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms. An election for a seat at the Court is expected to be held in 2026.

Elias is currently a Judge Ad Hoc at ICJ and a full member of the Institut de Droit International and has extensive experience as a lawyer and leader in various international organisations.

He served as a UN Assistant Secretary-General and as the Legal Adviser and Director at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Hague.

He is the President of the Administrative Tribunal of the OPEC Fund for International Development and Chairman of the Islamic Development Bank Administrative Tribunal, as well as a former President and member of the Appeals’ Committee of OPEC.

He was elected in 2015 as a member of the prestigious Institut de Droit International, a body reserved for elite international legal scholars, and the second of only two Nigerians to have been elected since its establishment in 1873.

His father, Taslim Elias, who helped draft Nigeria’s first constitution, was President and Judge at the ICJ and Chief Justice and Attorney-General of Nigeria, who in 1949 became the first African to earn a PhD in law from the University of London and, in 1982, rose to become the first African to be the President of the ICJ.

If elected, Olufemi Elias, will be the fourth Nigerian to sit at the International Court of Justice, after Charles Onyeama, Bola Ajibola, and Taslim Elias.