Ayah Paul Abine who was recently appointed Advocate General of the Supreme Court has criticised the court’s judges over what could likely be described as their double standards.
Ayah, a former parliamentarian made the dress down of his colleagues in a post on his Facebook wall. In a blunt note, Ayah headlines his post: “Are these judges?”
In the elaboration that follows, Ayah makes reference to a case he would not name, brought before the Supreme Court. He states that the judges claimed they did not have competence to hear the matter. But the same judges, Ayah states, later came back to the case to rule that the plaintiff was found as an American citizen.
Ayah does not end there; he goes further to pick issues with a military tribunal in Buea which found itself in a similar situation. Here, he cites the case of Oben Maxwell, an SCNC activist who is currently detained at the Buea Central Prison.
The tribunal like the Supreme Court, Ayah says had earlier declared its incompetence to hear Oben’s case.
“That legal jumble did not go unnoticed! The Buea military tribunal has now declined jurisdiction in the case of an SCNC official (Oben Maxwell) who has been illegally remanded in prison custody by that court for fourteen months for reading a book by a Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara.
Curiously, however, the very tribunal has gone ahead and decreed that the said Oben Maxwell will remain in prison custody all the same,” Ayah writes.
In the preceding paragraph, the Supreme Court advocate frowns at the attitude of the judges, describing it as impunity and ignorance of the law. Surreptitiously ditching out lessons to his colleagues, Ayah writes: “Every quack lawyer knows the general principles of law that once a court declines jurisdiction, the court is functus officio (that is to say that the court in question is immediately precluded from further process relative to the case).
We who are not familiar with Camerounese peculiar laws are at sea that Camerounese judges should depart from those elementary principles of law with impunity and effrontery.I would hate to attribute that to ignorance of the law.”
Contacted by telephone to confirm if he is the actual author of the post, Ayah answered in the affirmative; “of course I wrote it. Is there anything wrong with it?
People think my appointment at the Supreme Court would deter me from speaking. It would not. That is where justice begins, so we have to begin demonstrating the justice there.” He said.
