By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 20 1998 (IPS)

Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed an accusing finger this week at the European Union(EU), and blamed Western governments for the “upsurge in dissident activites” in the West African nation.

At a briefing for members of the diplomatic corp held Thursday in Abuja, Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi also accused diplomatic missions in Lagos of supporting pro-democracy activities.

According to Minister Ikimi, some three million ECU earmarked by the EU for poverty alleviation in Nigeria was instead used to finance anti-government activities in the country.

He told the diplomatic corp that the matter was now “being investigated”, and accused the EU of working with Nigerian disidents in exile and pro-democracy groups at home to derail the transition programme.

“The present clamour for the funds by some Nigerians parading themselves as pro-democracy activists, indicate that the funds are dedicated to support and finance, during this last phase of the transition programme, the subversive activities of dissidents and elements interested in fomenting trouble in the country,” Ikimi said.

“I wish to assure the European Union that the latest attempt like others they embarked upon in the past to fund clandestine political organisations and dissidents will also fail,” the Nigerian Foreign Minister added.

Ikimi also took a swipe at the United States. He condemned the statement by Susan Rice, the US Assistant Secretary of State, on Nigeria’s political process.

In a recent statement, Rice said the United States will never accept the election of Abacha or any other military candidate as president in the elections scheduled for October.

“Let me state clearly and unequivocally that an electoral victory by any military candidate in the forthcoming presidential elections (in Nigeria) would be unacceptable,” Rice said last week in a prepared speech on Clinton’s policy toward Africa.

She labelled Abacha as “one of the worst abusers of human rights on the continent,” and declared: “Nigeria needs and deserves a real transition to democracy and civilian rule, not another military regime dressed up in civilian clothes”.

Ikimi said the Nigerian government was surprised and disappointed that a “senior official (US)… should make such sweeping and tendentious remarks”.

“At this stage of our political evolution, Nigerians need no lessons from any one as to how they should be governed and who their leaders shall be,” the Foreign Affairs Minister added.

The Nigerian military government of General Sani Abacha has repeatedly lashed out at foreign governments. When it announced on Dec. 21 that it had uncovered a plot to overthrow Gen. Abacha, it alleged that an unnamed foreign mission had funded the group.

But activists interviewed here said the foreign minister is barking up the wrong tree.

“For the present, neither the EU nor the Nigerian human rights and pro-democracy community is responsible for the flagrant human rights violation in Nigeria, as well as the dishonesty surrounding the transition programme,” said Olawale Faponhunda, Project Head of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO).

Faponhunda told IPS: “Millions of Nigerians have today become refugees in Europe and other countries of the world for reasons not unconnected with the socio-economic and political policies of the present government”.

The solution, he added, does not lie in hard talk and bully diplomacy.

“Foreign Minister Ikimi should be informed that an immediate return to real democracy by the creation of a conducive environment for all interested in politics to freely participate in the transition programme, freedom for all political detainees, among others, will see an end to the current pariah status of Nigeria”.

Britain also recently expressed concern at the continued detention of political prisoners, which activists say number more than 120, while about 1000 people still await trial.

Tony Lloyd, the British Foreign Affairs Junior Minister, said that the country would use its EU presidency to press for a resolution on Nigeria at the United Nation’s Commission for Human Rights meeting in Geneva next month.

Lloyd expressed concern about the continuing detention of Moshood Abiola, presumed winner of the 1993 presidential election, and some trade union leaders who have been detained since 1994 for their involvement in a protracted oil worker’s strike.

The British minister also said his country was worried about the health of prisoners in Nigerian jails, following the death in December of Maj.Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua, former chief of staff under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also in jail for being involved in an alleged coup plot.

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