By TIAMIYU PRUDENCE AROBANI

Nigeria’s candidate for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Dr. Olufemi Elias, says he is the most qualified to contest for the seat.

Elias told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York that his profile stood out from among all the candidates.

According to him, "my profile ticks all the boxes.

The ICJ is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations set up in 1945 after the World War II, to settle disputes within states in line with international law.

NAN reports that the election will fill the vacant seat left by Judge Abulqawi Yusuf for the rest of his term, which will expire in February 2027.

“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.

“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 told NAN.

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’m already made 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.

The Nigerian government has been canvassing delegates support for Elias and several events have been organized to promote his candidature

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 hold in 2026.

Elias is currently 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 organizations.

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

Elias 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.

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

In 2018, He received the honorary life membership award of the American Society of International Law, adjudged the most prominent international law association in the world, for his distinguished contributions and service in the field of international law.

He was a UN Assistant Secretary General and Head of the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.

He previously served as a Judge for Staff Appeals at the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (Hague) and as Executive Secretary of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal in Washington, DC.

He was a Legal Adviser and Director of the Legal Division of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and a one-time Legal Adviser at UN Compensation Commission.

He is an accomplished international legal scholar and also a visiting professor in international law at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Buckingham.

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

If elected, Olufemi Elias, who is also the Secretary-General of the African Association of International Law, will be the fourth Nigerian to sit at the ICJ, after Charles Onyeama, Bola Ajibola,and Taslim Elias, and since 1994 when Nigeria had its last presence at the Court. (NAN)