PRESS CONFERENCE BY NIGERIA

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY NIGERIA

There was some reluctance on the part of segments of the international community to give full praise to the efforts of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in ousting the military regime in Sierra Leone and restoring to power the democratically elected Government of President Tejan Kabbah, Nigeria's Permanent Representative, Ibrahim Gambari, told a Headquarters press conference this morning.

Mr. Gambari compared the situation to that of somebody saying at the end of a tremendous performance that they liked the dance but not the dancer. "Well, there will be no dance unless there is the dancer, and it so happens that the military junta would not have been ejected from Sierra Leone unless ECOWAS and ECOMOG were determined -- and this is an effort in which, of course, Nigeria took the lead and the initiative."

It appeared that some countries outside Africa wanted to help the region to enhance its peacekeeping and peace-making capacities, Mr. Gambari said. However, while that was welcome, Africans did not want to be given outside help in a manner that divided them into francophone and anglophone.

Accompanying Mr. Gambari at the press conference were Hassan Adamu, Nigeria's Ambassador to the United States, and General Joseph Garba, former Nigerian Foreign Minister and President of the General Assembly. They addressed the issues of Sierra Leone, ECOMOG, human rights in Nigeria and that country's transition programme to democracy, expected to culminate in democratic elections on 1 October 1998.

Mr. Gambari said that all true lovers of democracy ought to applaud ECOMOG's success in Sierra Leone and give credit where it was due. It was the first time in Africa's recent history that a democratically elected Government, overthrown by a military coup, had been restored to power as a result of a collective action by a subregion of the continent. President Kabbah's restoration on 10 March, had been a matter of great joy to the people of Sierra Leone and enormous pride to West Africans, Africans and the international community. That, and the success of the Nigerian-led ECOMOG in bringing peace to Liberia, gave the West African subregion an effective mechanism with a proud record of achievement.

The ECOWAS approach had by and large been endorsed by the United Nations, which had also imposed a regime of sanctions at the international level, he said. ECOMOG had eventually used force, as a last resort and only in self-defence, and the result was that members of the military junta had fled the capital. The rest was history.

The ECOMOG, set up in 1992 to end the civil war in Liberia, had created a climate which culminated in democratic elections taking place there in July 1997, he went on to say. That conflict, in which more than 150,000 people were killed, had seen 200 Nigerian soldiers killed and 1,000 military personnel wounded, at a cost to the country of $3 billion to finance the operation.

Mr. Gambari said that as a result of ECOMOG's successes, a meeting of ECOWAS Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs, held in Cote d'Ivoire on 11 and 12 March, had directed experts from member States to work with the body's Executive Secretariat to prepare a mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution and for peacekeeping. To that end, the Ministers agreed to continue to be guided by existing protocol on non-aggression and mutual assistance in defence, and to draw on the experiences acquired in the field, notably by ECOMOG, in the preparation of a mechanism for peacekeeping.

On human rights in Nigeria, the Ambassador said that during the fiftieth session of the General Assembly in 1995, some Member-States had tabled a politically motivated resolution on the human rights situation in his country. "Unfortunately, that resolution reflects selectivity instead of universality and therefore failed to obtain consensus in the Assembly." The number of Member States, particularly African countries, that supported the resolution was declining, indicating that the overwhelming majority of Africans disapproved of the actions, largely by Western countries and their allies, aimed at condemning Nigeria for human rights violations.

He said that a National Human Rights Commission had been established in Nigeria and was now fully functional. It was charged with ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights, as agreed in all the relevant international conventions. Nigeria was a party to all the major conventions on human rights. His Government had no intention of pandering to the whims of any State or group of States, however powerful, on the human rights issue. However, it was prepared and committed to respect the wishes of its citizens and to abide by its obligations as a responsible member of the international community.

Mr. Adamu outlined progress to date in Nigeria's transition programme. He highlighted the results of local government elections held on 15 March, as well as efforts to revamp the economy, check criminal activities, and stamp out the drug problem. He also reported on regional peace and security efforts.

The majority of Nigerians wanted peace, security, economic recovery and democracy, Mr. Adamu said. The Government was working hard to achieve those goals, and the transition programme was on course. The economy was responding steadily to initiatives introduced by the Head of State and his team. "What is required from the international community is more understanding and support to facilitate the attainment of the desired objectives of restoring democracy and economic recovery in Nigeria."

Nigeri Briefing - 3 - 19 March 1998

General Garba said he was currently a candidate for the Nigerian Senate and had been involved in Nigerian politics for the past three years as a founding member of one of the parties that would be participating in the forthcoming elections. "For those sceptics who think that the military is pushing this process along in the way it wants", he said he came from an areas which had the largest concentration of military generals in Nigeria. Nevertheless, in the three elections so far, his party had to fight for its life to win. "In my ward, where I live, I won my ward with only 15 votes. So if anybody says that this has been some subterranean influence going on that is a total lie."

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