POLITICS-SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: Nigeria, UN Condemn Military Coup

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Jul 17 2003 (IPS) - Nigeria and the United Nations have condemned the military coup in the tiny West African island state of Sao Tome and Principe, which toppled President Fandique de Menezes this week.

”The government of Nigeria has received with shock and consternation the news of the coup d’etat in the sister state of Sao Tome and Principe. The government condemns unequivocally this violation of the democratic process,” said a statement, made available to IPS, this week.

The statement, signed by Remi Oyo, special assistant to President Olusegun Obasanjo on media and publicity, said: ”Nigeria is further alarmed at the news that its embassy in Sao Tome has been surrounded by armed troops”.

It warned that "any act of terror by the coup makers that threatens the lives and properties of its staff and Nigerian citizens resident in Sao Tome, would be treated seriously and will evoke appropriate response".

Nigeria called for the immediate restoration of the elected government of Sao Tome and Principe.

”Nigeria is consulting with the leadership of the African Union for concerted response to this condemnable act in Sao Tome and Principe, which can only tarnish the image of our continent,” the statement said.

Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, who is also chairperson of the 53-member African Union (AU), is in Nigeria for talks with President Obasanjo. It is not clear whether the two will resort to military intervention.

The coup came just four days after the end of the AU summit in Maputo, Mozambique. The union, which has yet to make a formal statement on the putsch, is against military coups.

The African Union has suspended the membership of the Central African Republic (CAR) when Gen. Francois Bozize toppled President Ange-Felix Patasse in March.

Wednesday’s coup was also condemned by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who called for the "immediate and unconditional restoration of constitutional order" on the island.

The coup leader, Major Fernados Pereira, who is the head of the island’s military school, spoke on national radio Wednesday and ordered legislators and senior government officials to report at the police headquarters.

President Menezes was in Nigeria at the time of the coup.

But his Prime Minister Maria das Neves and several senior government officials have been arrested and taken into custody by the military.

Menezes appealed for help to remove the junta. "Africa cannot attain greatness with bad governance, corruption and coup d’etat," he said from Nigeria.

Residents say calm has returned to Sao Tome after gunshots and exploding rockets and grenades were heard on Wednesday. No casualty has been reported.

Sao Tome and Principe, with a population of about 140,000, is one of Africa’s poorest. In 1975, the country gained its independence from Portugal, but the cocoa industry, the mainstay of the economy, experienced a crash.

Revenue from the industry plummeted as a result of the break-up of the cocoa plantations. However, the island – located off the Gulf of Guinea – is being wooed by rival powers, the United States and Nigeria. It is said that the island country sits on around two billion barrels of crude oil.

The oil production is expected to start in 2006-2007. Sao Tome and Principe prospered from the 16th to 19th centuries as a stopping off point on the Atlantic slave trade from Africa to the Americas.

In 2001, Nigeria signed a draft treaty for the establishment of a Joint Development Zone with the island, with which it shares territorial waters.

Under the treaty, 60 percent of future revenues from joint oil explorations will go to Nigeria and 40 to Sao Tome and Principe.

Sao Tome has an estimated 180,000 square kilometres of territorial waters covering possible oil explorations.

About 270 million U.S. dollars is expected to be generated from the joint oil and gas bidding, which ends in December.

”We are sure of attracting as many investors as possible in the exploration of oil and gas," says Tajudeen Umar, head of the Abuja-based Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone.

President Obasanjo discussed the project with U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit to Nigeria last weekend.

West Africa is becoming a strategic location for the United States which is facing problems in the Middle East, where it gets most of it oil.

The United States imports about 15 percent of all its oil from West Africa, and that figure will rise to 25 percent by 2015, according to a new report by Catholic Relief Services.

Charles Dokubo, a Research Fellow at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, is worried that Nigeria has reacted strongly to the coup in Sao Tome. "African leaders must understand that there are still unsolved political problems on the continent," he says.

”People have not felt the dividends of democracy. What we need is democracy and good governance to impact on people’s lives. When they do, their impacts will check on coups,” he argues.