“Access to the Court is open to … individuals on application for relief for
violation of their human rights”.
By virtue of this Article, for every action relating to human rights protection, cases
before the Court must be filed by an individual or a corporate body who fulfills
the requirement of being a victim.
In the case of STARCREST INVESTMENT LTD V. PRESIDENT ECOWAS COMMISSION
(2011) CCJELR 165, ECW/CCJ/APP/01/08 Judgment of 8th July 2011, the Court held
as follows;
“This Court thus held in the case of the Registered Trustees of the SocioEconomic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) v. President of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria and 8 Ors. Suit No. ECW/CCJ/APP/08/09
delivered on 10th December, 2010 unreported that no action could lie
against a corporate body in human rights cases before this Court. By parity
of reasoning, the converse of the decision just cited is equally true and that
is, no corporate body can bring a human rights case before this Court as a
Plaintiff as an alleged victim of human rights abuse. Thus the provisions of
the ACHPR do not avail the Plaintiff in this Court in so far as they complain
about human rights abuse against them as a Company” (Paragraph 17 of
the Judgment of 8th July, 2011) .
The Plaintiff’s reliefs have been carefully evaluated to see whether any of its
complaints has to do with right to fair hearing in order to ground the action under
the exception created by this Court within its inherent jurisdiction. In the OCEAN
KING NIGERIA LIMITED V. REPUBLIC OF SENEGAL (cited supra) the Court held that
it will exercise its inherent jurisdiction to entertain an application by an aggrieved
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