By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
When the trial of Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and Co. opens before the Yaoundé Military Court on Friday, March 29, 2019, their defense team is expected to present an Abuja Court verdict for the accused to be returned to Nigeria.
The matter had been adjourned last March 7 to permit the new judge Lt. Col. Jacques Boudoin Misse Njone to constitute a new team that will sit for the trial. On that occasion, the ten accused persons refused to leave the courtroom until they had greeted Ni John Fru Ndi, Chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) party who was attending the trial for the first time.
Ahead of Friday’s trial, Femi Falana, leading Nigerian human rights lawyer, has given the Nigerian government two weeks to bring back Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his aides. The Senior Advocate of Nigeria said “the accused persons deported to Cameroon by the National Security Adviser (NSA) are refugees and asylum seekers.”
In a letter dated March 20, 2019, Falana informed Abubakar Malami, Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Attorney-General of the Federation, of the court judgments against the NSA.
Judgments were given in two suits; FHC/ABJ/CS/147/2018 by Wilfred Tassang and 50 others against the NSA and FHC/ABJ/CS/85/2018 by Mr. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 10 others against the NSA.
Falana stated that refugees and asylum seekers are guaranteed legal protections according to Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, the National Commission for Refugees Act, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Sahara Reporters write.
Falana wrote: “In view of the foregoing, we are compelled to request you to use your good offices to advise the Federal Government to comply with the aforesaid judgments of the Federal High Court without any further delay.
“In particular, you may wish to draw the attention of the relevant authorities to the case of the Minister of Internal Affairs v. Alhaji Shugaba Darman (1982) 3 NCLR 915 where the respondent who had been illegally deported to the Republic of Chad by the Federal Government was brought back to Nigeria in compliance with the orders of the Borno State High Court presided over by the Honourable Justice Oye Adefila of blessed memory.”
Falana promised to institute a legal case of contempt proceeding against the NSA and Nigerian government if they failed to return the deported refugees within the stipulated time.
Falana had on March 1, won a case he instituted against the government when Justice Anwali Chinkere of the Federal High Court ordered that deportation of refugees and asylum seekers “illegal and unconstitutional”.
A key Cameroonian separatist leader, Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, and 46 others were deported from Nigeria after their arrest in Abuja.
Ayuk, President of a self-declared breakaway state made up of the Anglophone regions of majority-Francophone Cameroon, was one of 15 people whom Cameroon issued an international arrest warrant for in November 2017.
Cameroon’s Communication Minister at the time, Issa Tchiroma Bakary approved the January 5, 2018 arrest, saying “a group of 47 terrorists, among them Mr. Ayuk Tabe, has for some hours been in the hands of Cameroonian justice, before which they will answer for their crimes.”
He also praised Nigeria for joining Cameroon in “never tolerating their respective territories serving as a base for activities that destabilise one or the other”.