Navy Captain Sunday Daniel Atakpa has emerged as the Best Oralist in the Moot Court Competition during the summer course at the International Tribunal for the Law of Sea (ITLOS) held in Hamburg, Germany last month.
The programme was hosted by the International Foundation for the Law of the Seas (IFLOS). The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Moot Court Competition which climaxed the one month training at the Tribunal had 34 participants from 28 countries of Europe, Americas, Asia and Africa.
It is the first time in the history of the tribunal that a non-lawyer would be winning the award. It was also the first time that an African and a military personnel would win the award.
Judge Doris König of the German constitutional court; Judge Helmut Türk, who is a retired judge of the Tribunal from Austria; Prof Dr Alexander Proel, who is the Chair of Public Law at University of Trier and Dr Dharshini Bandara – a legal practitioner in Germany constituted the panel of judges, which bestowed the award on Atakpa.
The highly elated Nigerian Navy officer was given the opportunity to stretch out the Nigerian flag from the line up of member state flags at the Tribunal.
