Nigeria Feels Wrath of World After Executions

Governments around the world moved dramatically Saturday to suspend or curtail diplomatic ties with Nigeria’s repressive military regime in angry response to the executions of nine minority-rights activists.

The European Union’s 15 nations and several other countries urgently recalled their ambassadors. And the 52-nation Commonwealth group took the unprecedented step of suspending Nigeria as a member until it complies with charter principles of human rights and democracy.

The almost universal condemnation of Gen. Sani Abacha’s government for hanging prominent author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni nationalists Friday despite worldwide pleas for clemency starkly isolated the rulers of Africa’s most populous nation.

Although the country has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent years, the international furor over the executions is arguably the most serious challenge to Nigeria’s government since the devastating 1967-70 civil war over the secessionist state of Biafra.

But analysts said the diplomatic measures were largely symbolic, intended to show angry disapproval and to embarrass the government, rather than attempt to force its ouster. And for now, they said, the ruling generals appear determined and capable of weathering the bitter storm.

“Does all this threaten the regime? No,” said a Western envoy here who has served in Nigeria. “But it underscores Nigeria’s pariah status. . . . In a certain sense, a kind of Rubicon has been crossed.”

In the most drastic action Saturday, the Commonwealth voted to suspend Nigeria from membership and warned that it might be expelled if it does not restore democracy and release political prisoners. The Commonwealth consists of Britain and its former colonies and dominions.

The suspension of a Commonwealth member state is a first. Although the action falls far short of comprehensive sanctions, it will curtail Nigeria’s access to cultural and sporting events, as well as numerous aid and economic exchanges.

Commonwealth leaders said the summary executions were especially shocking because the heads of member governments had issued an urgent plea for clemency Friday as they opened a four-day summit in Auckland, New Zealand. The men were hanged the same day.

“We see it as most unfortunate, unfair and baseless, and it doesn’t seem to approximate events and developments in Nigeria,” an Abacha spokesman told BBC World Service Radio in response to the suspension.

At least 17 countries announced that they would summon home their ambassadors from Nigeria, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and South Africa. And the Clinton Administration said it will ask the United Nations to consider additional steps, including limited economic sanctions.

So far, none of the multilateral organizations appears to have considered demands by major human rights and environmental groups to impose an oil embargo against Nigeria to force democratic change.

Although oil exports are the lifeblood of Nigeria’s economy, diplomats said an embargo would be very difficult to enforce, would be costly to consumers in the United States and could easily backfire by causing greater instability in strife-torn West Africa.

President Clinton did ban the sale as well as their repair of military goods to the regime, and he broadened existing travel restrictions to include all military officers and civilians who “actively formulate, implement or benefit from the policies that impede Nigeria’s transition to democracy.”

The White House added that Nigerian government officials visiting the United Nations or international financial institutions based in the United States will be banned from traveling more than 25 miles from those facilities. Similar restrictions already apply to outlaw states like Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Libya.

Several thousand people gathered in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, on Saturday to protest the executions, Reuters news agency reported. Four people were hurt and five were arrested after police fired guns and tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The protest was unusual since most political opposition leaders are in jail or exile, and the military has killed several hundred people during street protests in the past three years. In any case, most Nigerians are focusing their energies on simply surviving amid grotesque poverty, overcrowding and corruption.

“People here are in almost a constant state of shock,” one Lagos resident explained in a telephone interview. “This place is collapsing around us already.”

Given those conditions, it was unclear why Abacha carried out the executions, an act guaranteed to ignite international outrage.

Diplomats said Abacha may have been under pressure because of divisions in the 26-member Provisional Ruling Council, the shadowy panel that ostensibly runs the country. Military hard-liners reportedly were angry when Abacha commuted the death sentences of a prominent group of alleged coup plotters last month in response to intense international pressure.

The prisoners included Moshood K.O. Abiola, who was jailed after claiming victory in a democratic election that the military annulled; former head of state Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s only military ruler to voluntarily relinquish power to civilians, and about 40 others.

“Abacha didn’t feel he got enough credit for commuting the sentences,” a Western diplomat said. “So it was hard for him to stand down the hard-liners on Saro-Wiwa.”

Saro-Wiwa, 54, an award-winning author and playwright, headed the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, a now-banned organization that demanded self-determination for the 500,000 ethnic Ogonis in the oil-rich Niger Delta of southern Nigeria.

The group also demanded billions of dollars from Royal Dutch/Shell, the multinational oil consortium, as compensation for what it called environmental devastation caused by decades of oil drilling on Ogoni lands.

A special military-appointed court convicted Saro-Wiwa and the eight other activists of murdering four rival Ogoni chiefs at a political rally in May, 1994. The court conceded that Saro-Wiwa was not present but held him responsible for fostering an environment that provoked violence.

Human rights groups complained in vain that the defendants were held for months without charges, were denied the right to meet their lawyers in private and were denied due process.

The court nonetheless convicted the men of murder, and the Provisional Ruling Council unanimously ratified the sentences and on Wednesday ordered the executions to proceed. The men were hanged two days later.