obligation under this Treaty or has infringed a provision of this Treaty, the Secretary General shall submit his or her findings to the Partner State concerned for that Partner State to submit its observations on the findings.” Article 71(1)(d) of the Treaty provides that “1. The Secretary General shall be responsible for: .... (d) the undertaking either on its own initiative or otherwise, of such investigations, collection of information, or verification of matters relating to any matter affecting the Community that appears to it to merit examination.” 46. Counsel deduced from the foregoing provisions that the 2nd Respondent’s responsibilities are, firstly, to submit his findings to a Partner State that has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaty with a view of soliciting a response thereto; and secondly, to undertake investigations into matters relating or affecting the Community that appear to him, as head of the Secretariat, to merit examination. He then argued that “the two responsibilities cannot be exercised contemporaneously (at the same time), but that they can only be exercised consecutively (one after the other). The import of this is that investigations into a matter will first have to be carried out [Article 71(1)(d)] before the 2nd Respondent can make and submit his findings to the concerned Partner State to respond thereto[Article 29(1)]. Therefore, there cannot be a concurrent infringement of provisions that are supposed to be complied with sequentially. It is not tenable to argue, as the Applicant seeks to do, that the 2nd Respondent ‘infringed Article 29(1) and 71(1)(d) of the Treaty’).” 47. Basing his reasoning on the sequential approach developed above, Counsel argued that an Applicant would be entitled to a finding that the 2nd Respondent infringed Articles 29(1) or 71(1)(d) of the Treaty if it were proved that the latter had not taken the initiative to investigate a REFERENCE NO.1 OF 2014 Page 16