The last time President Clinton visited Africa, he avoided Nigeria like the plague. The year was 1998, and Nigeria was in its fifteenth year of military rule. Photo ops with the Nigerian dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, were definitely not on the White House itinerary.
What a difference two years make. After elections in late 1998 and early 1999, the military handed over power peacefully to Olusegun Obasanjo, a military man himself, but one who professes a clear goal of returning Nigeria to democracy. Next week, President Clinton will reward Obasanjo with a two-day visit to Nigeria.
President Obasanjo does deserve credit for some improvements in how Nigeria is governed, and he does need U.S. encouragement to do more. But the Clinton administration is moving to re-establish relations with the Nigerian military, whose human rights record has ranged from abysmal to appalling over the last several decades. Given this history, greater caution is surely in order.
President Clinton's immediate problem is the military and political vacuum in Sierra Leone, a West African neighbor wracked by nine years of civil war. Unwilling to commit its own peacekeeping forces to a tiny country in Africa, Washington is seeking to win peace on the cheap, using the military muscle of Nigeria and other developing nations. The United States Special Forces intends to train up to five Nigerian battalions in combat, peacekeeping, and counterinsurgency, to prepare for their duties in Sierra Leone.
Nigerian troops have been deployed in Sierra Leone since 1995, first as part of a West African peacekeeping force known as ECOMOG, now under the United Nations. These Nigerian forces have undoubtedly protected many civilians from Sierra Leone's notoriously abusive rebel force, the Revolutionary United Front. But Nigerian elements of ECOMOG were also responsible for serious abuses, including the summary executions of suspected rebels and their collaborators, extortion, and the excessive use of force.
There's something deeply disturbing about Washington's unwillingness to commit its own military for peacekeeping operations. But if it's going to rely on Nigeria and other countries to do the heavy lifting, at least the Clinton administration has a responsibility to ensure they don't contribute to Sierra Leone's human rights problems. Nigerian peacekeepers should be rigorously screened to ensure that none were responsible for human rights abuses in the past, and they should be intensively trained in human rights and international humanitarian law. Nigeria and the United Nations should also set up some transparent mechanisms for monitoring the conduct of Nigerian troops in the field, and holding accountable any soldiers who are responsible for abuses.
Respect for human rights has improved considerably since President Obasanjo took office in May 1999, but the police and army deployed to maintain law and order still fall back on the old methods of the military regime. At Human Rights Watch, we frequently receive reports of summary executions and arbitrary detentions. Perhaps most important, the crisis in the oil-producing Niger Delta has not abated. Local protests against the multinational oil companies have met with fierce retaliation from soldiers and members of the paramilitary Mobile Police.
Local people in the Niger Delta are frustrated that they don't share equally in the oil profits. Violence and crime in the region are increasing. There's no question that the Nigerian government needs to restore order, but it must not use brute repression to do so. Last November, for example, Nigerian soldiers moved into the village of Odi, in Bayelsa state in the Delta, in response to the killing of twelve policemen. But the soldiers proceeded to demolish virtually every building in the village, and according to testimony collected by Human Rights Watch, they also killed dozens of unarmed civilians. President Clinton should make clear that he will condemn any attempts like this one, to impose central government control through violence.
The Obasanjo government has quickly tried to distance itself from the military regimes of the past. In June 1999, President Obasanjo appointed a commission chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, to investigate "mysterious deaths" and assassinations and other human rights abuses between 1966 and June 1998. However, the commission suffers from a lack of resources, and has had limited impact thus far. The government has also brought charges against a number of individuals accused of involvement in some of the most egregious abuses of the Abacha regime. But these prosecutions have been selective --Abacha supporters associated with the new government have been left untouched.
On his last trip to Africa, President Clinton too hastily embraced a number of "new leaders" on the continent. Most of them – in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea – have since become mired in murderous wars with their neighbors and repression at home. The democratic transition in Nigeria, as Africa's most populous country, has tremendous implications for the whole continent. If he wants to nurture that transition, President Clinton must keep human rights at the top of his agenda.
