NIGERIA: ‘Charm Offensive’ Snares U.S. Senator

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Aug 22 1996 (IPS) - The Nigerian government’s campaign to improve its public relations in the United States was given a major boost with the visit this month by the only black U.S. senator.

But what may be good public relations for General Sani Abacha’s military junta has proved to be a fiasco for Senator Carol Moseley- Braun. Her three-day visit a rebuke from the White House this week and spurred her chief of staff to resign.

Human rights groups and some U.S. officials chided Moseley- Braun, an Illinois Democrat who is the first black woman ever to serve in the Senate, for her talk of fostering “constructive engagement” with Abacha’s military regime.

Abacha seized power in June 1993, weeks after the military refused to hand over power to the presumed winner of military-run elections that month, businessman Moshood Abiola. Abiola has since been jailed, along with former President Olusegun Obasanjo and dozens of pro-democracy activists.

State Department spokesman Glyn Davies contended that Moseley- Braun should have consulted with the department on human rights concerns before visiting Nigeria privately on her vacation earlier this month.

“It’s always better if senior people from the government, regardless of branch, speak with one voice,” Davies said of the senator’s trip.

Moseley-Braun is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Nigeria since ties between Washington and Abuja worsened following last year’s execution of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders. The executions last November prompted the United States to ban all military sales to Nigeria.

Some members of Moseley-Braun’s own staff were shocked that she met with Abacha and denounced U.S. policy towards Nigeria during her trip. This week, her chief of staff, Edith Wilson, resigned, saying she had not been informed of the trip. Moseley-Braun countered that Wilson had already been fired.

Speaking from her home in Chicago, Moseley-Braun denied any impropriety to her trip, telling the Associated Press, “I’m doing my job as I see it.”

The senator’s plight has helped to draw attention to Nigeria’s efforts over the past year to garner support from prominent African Americans at a time when Abuja faces growing international isolation.

“There has been a huge public relations campaign being waged by the Nigerian government,” noted Adotei Akwei, Africa programme officer for Amnesty International.

One Nigerian source, who did not wish to be named, estimated that Abuja has already spent several million dollars on public welations in the United States alone.

“The ‘charm offensive’ has included taking out a number of ads in African American publications and local papers,” Akwei said. Many prominent black officials have also been courted, he added, with Moseley-Braun and Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana being the most vocal in opposition to any harsh measures against Abuja.

Jefferson recently wrote President Bill Clinton to call for Washington to re-think its Nigeria policy. Akwei described Jefferson’s letter as a call for “constructive engagement” with the Abacha regime, rather than for its isolation.

That term was routinely disparaged by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), a coalition of African Americans in Congress, a decade ago when then-President Ronald Reagan used it to describe his support for apartheid South Africa. CBC leaders denounced constructive engagement as a cynical excuse to maintain ties with Pretoria under the pretext of fostering democratic ideals there.

But the CBC is not as unified over Nigeria, Akwei noted. Some black leaders, including CBC Chairman Donald Payne, Representative of New Jersey, and Representative Maxine Waters of California, have been vocal on the need to restore democracy in Nigeria. TransAfrica, an influential African lobby, has called for tougher sanctions against the Abacha regime.

But some African-American organisations and media outlets have accepted advertisements from the Nigerian government defending the regime, and denouncing Saro-Wiwa and the executed Ogoni activists as criminals.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the black nationalist Nation of Islam organisation, praised Abacha warmly during a visit to Nigeria last February, and he defended the Saro-Wiwa killing. Farrakhan pointedly noted that more executions are carried out each year in the United States than in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s public relations bid has succeeded, Akwei said, in ensuring that “there has been no more movement in terms of increasing pressure on the regime.”

But Clinton has not been eager to ease up on a country which the United States also accuses of encouraging drug trafficking.

Signs that the administration is now pursuing a middle course, insisting on human rights goals while dealing with the military, increased this week with the announcement that the White House had officially sanctioned a meeting between Abacha and Representative Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

Richardson met Abacha for two hours Monday night, and is expected to report later this week about his trip.