Fraudulent appointment of AUC Legal Counsel set aside
At long last , the controversial appointment of GuyFleury Ntwari as the Legal Counsel of the African Union Commission has been annulled and set aside. The decision was taken by the African Union Tribunal in a damning judgement delivered on the 1st of September 2023 in Case No. AUAT/ 2022/ 010 AUAT/ 2022/ 012 - that was heard from 21st to 23rd of August 2023. AUC Deputy Chairperson had been accused of biasness and blatantly favouring Fleury Ntwari at the expense of better qualified and experienced candidates. And indeed the Tribunal vindicated the applicants - Mr Eno, and Mr Weldesellasie - in its judgement slamming the respondent’s ( Chairperson of the AUC) conduct as “contemptuous”. The Tribunal said the applicants’ case disclose “a sorry tale of the recruitment and appointment processes” in the African Union Commission. Concerning the challenge of Mr Weldesellasie – who had been ranked first in the selection process – the Tribunal lashed at the respondent’s brazenness and audacity to refuse without a murmur to make available the report of the Ad- Hoc Investigation Panel, commissioned by Respondent and the Audit Report prepared by the Board of External Auditors, when ordered to do so by the Tribunal. “That conduct where the Respondent has become a law unto himself, elevates the AUC to lawlessness – a serious obstruction of justice, a violation of the most fundamental basic principle governing the division of power between the Executive, Legislature and the judicial processes, extra ordinary and contemptuous,” the Tribunal found. The decision closes the protracted sorry chapter in the AUC, and offers a ray of hope that the Commission could eventually operate in the best interests of Africans.