President Muhammadu Buhari’s candidate for the International Criminal Court, Ishaq Bello, has lost his bid to be elected as a judge at the war crimes tribunal.

Mr. Bello, head of the High Court of Federal Capital in Abuja fell below the pecking order at the polls after amassing a dismal 12 votes out 117 valid ballots in the first round of voting, and five out of 110 valid ballots in the second round.

The Nigerian candidate scored the second lowest votes out of 18 nominees who participated in the race for the next ICC jurists, results released Thursday by the Netherlands-based court showed.

The candidate of the United Kingdom Korner Joanna, and her Georgian counterpart Lordkipanidze Gocha were elected as next jurists of the ICC after garnering the highest number of votes.

The Nigerian nominee had earlier been rated at the bottom of candidates being considered for the ICC role by a panel that looked into the competence of nominees.

The team of experts had in its assessment of the nominees, described Mr. Bello as having “a very limited knowledge” of the workings of the ICC, hence incapable of making a noteworthy contribution to the work of the court.

Peoples Gazette reported that Mr. Bello, a haunted jurist, has been at the high court in Abuja for more than two decades but shot into national infamy in 2017 following his controversial ruling in the 2005 extra-judicial murder of five auto spare parts traders and their female acquaintance by police officers in the Apo suburbs of the FCT.

The FCT chief judge had sentenced two of the six accused police officers accused in the murder to death, while three others, including police chief Danjuma Ibrahim, who reportedly ordered officers to open fire on the unarmed citizens, were controversially discharged and acquited.