Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, departed Abuja on Monday to represent President Bola Tinubu at the 15th annual BRICS Summit taking place from Tuesday, August 22 to Thursday, August 24 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The summit will be attended by leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as other dignitaries from around the world.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending in person due to an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed in Ukraine.
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The ICC in The Hague accused Putin of responsibility for the war crime of deporting hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia.
A panel of ICC judges had passed a judgment that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, bore responsibility for the “unlawful deportation” of the Ukrainian children.
Russia had quickly dismissed the allegations and the country’s foreign minister had said ICC’s decisions “have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view.”
But ICC’s 123 member states are obliged to arrest, detain and transfer Putin if he sets foot on their territory.
Shettima is expected to join other business and political leaders at the summit to discuss issues such as trade and investment facilitation, sustainable development, innovation, and global governance reform.
The summit will also continue its outreach to leaders from Africa and the global South.
BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. One of its founding values is a shared commitment to restructure the global political, economic and financial architecture to be fair, balanced and representative resting on pillars of multilateralism and international law.
The Nigerian Vice President was accompanied on the trip by some senior government officials and he is expected back in the country at the end of the week.
ICC are clowns. Who doesn’t know where Putin us. Just go to Russia and arrest the man if you have any jurisdiction at all. Why do you have to put other nations in the matter that doesn’t concern them .
So-called ICC could u leave Putin in peace? Why do you not arrest an American leader for the destruction of Iran, Pakistan and Libya?
What is Israel doing to Palestine, killing innocent people and displaying thousands of people? U keep mut because u are under the influence of the US and the allies.
Some time back, there was an investigation u suppose to conduct in America, and their hands are duty what did they do? They refused to grant the ICC team that was supposed to travel to the US a visa. The world is in a mess because of the US
The ICC is partial, and living in fools’ paradise. Why have they not issued the same arrest warrant to Muhammadu Buhari, Tukur Buratai, and Nyesom Wike, president, chief of Army staff and Rivers state governor in Nigeria, who slaughtered the Igbo tribe looking for freedom and self determination from 2015 to 2023?