NIGERIA : Without Society-to-Society Ties, Sanctions Won’t Help

When Nigeria’s dictatorship hanged famed author and political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others--after convicting them of murder in a kangaroo court--the cameras and computers of an outraged world focused on the troubled West African giant. It seemed possible that Saro-Wiwa’s execution might boost efforts by TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson, Amnesty International and others to impose new economic sanctions on Nigeria. But less than two weeks later, the Nigeria story is off the nightly news, and most analysts predict the sanctions campaign will fail.

For human-rights activists and a growing number of African Americans, supporting democracy in Nigeria is a logical extension of their successful efforts to mobilize opposition to the apartheid regime in Pretoria and the military dictatorship in Port-au-Prince. But these successes were only partly due to the gross oppression in South Africa and Haiti. Equally important were the extensive society-to-society contacts that linked many Americans to the two countries and the direct ways in which events in them affected American lives.

In the long run, the success or failure of U.S. actions to democratize Nigeria’s government will depend on both the reactions of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha and the ability of the Nigerian sanctions movement to build connections between Americans and Nigerians like those that developed in the cases of South Africa and Haiti. By any standard, the military rulers in Nigeria are as undemocratic, brutal and corrupt as the old regimes in Pretoria and Port-Au-Prince. Except for a brief and flawed democratic interlude in the early 1980s, Nigeria has been ruled by its military for three decades. Nevertheless, throughout most of this period, the country had a remarkably open civil society. In the 1990s, however, Abacha and his predecessor, Ibrahim Babangida, have gone to great lengths to quash political opposition and crush what had been a free press.

A turning point occurred in June, 1993, when Babangida annulled a long-delayed presidential election after it was apparently won by a prominent businessman, Chief Moshood K.O. Abiola. Five months later, Abacha seized power, and Nigeria’s descent into political and civil repression, venality, drug trafficking and economic chaos accelerated.

Despite this ugly picture, it is going to be difficult, at least in short term, to rally Americans behind a campaign to impose oil sanctions--the only economic punishment that would cripple the Abacha regime--on Nigeria. The experiences in Haiti and South Africa show why.

In the case of Haiti, a critical source of pressure on Washington was the flow of Haitian boat people into Florida. Without that, it is doubtful that President Bill Clinton would have taken decisive action. Conditions in Nigeria, however brutalizing, are unlikely to result in a similar flow of refugees to the United States.

The more telling comparison is with South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement succeeded in the mid-1980s for a mix of reasons, most of which do not yet apply in Nigeria.

Ironically, the South African sanctions movement was fueled, in part, by public outrage over the Reagan Administration’s perceived support for white rule. Many members of Congress ultimately went along with sanctions because they felt it was necessary to distance themselves from the President’s policy of constructive engagement. With respect to Nigeria, the Clinton Administration has already put in place a wide range of restrictions on relations with the Abacha regime. In fact, the only governments treated with greater disrespect by Washington are Cuba, Iraq, Iran and Libya.

The sanctions that ultimately hurt South Africa, furthermore, were those imposed by state and local governments, which forced U.S. companies to choose between doing business in South Africa or in California and New York. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of the South African case was that the decisions made by U.S. companies, in the 1960s and early ‘70s, to invest in South Africa, despite the appeals of the then-weak anti-apartheid movement to stay out, created the economic targets necessary to discipline Pretoria in the mid-’80s. By contrast, the only major U.S. businesses in Nigeria are the oil companies, which are effectively insulated from the kinds of punishments that state and local leaders can administer.

In addition, Nigeria has benefited from African Americans’ reluctance to criticize black African governments. True, this is changing, due, in large part, to TransAfrica’s Robinson, who has lambasted racial double standards. But a lot of work has yet to be done before African Americans are as united against Abacha as they were against apartheid.

Human-rights abuses in Nigeria also do not pack the same emotional wallop in non-African American circles as South Africa’s. A major reason is that Nigeria does not play on white guilt in the way that South Africa did. Thus, few white politicians feel compelled to prove that they are against oppression in Nigeria, as many felt they needed to do in the case of apartheid.

Finally, Americans are simply disconnected from Nigeria. Consider: When Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-apartheid Act in 1986, most major U.S. unions were cooperating with their counterparts in South Africa; U.S. colleges and universities had scholarship and other exchange programs in place; American lawyers were directly involved in aiding and funding South African dissidents on trial; high-profile entertainers were working on various projects, and U.S. companies, as a result of political pressure, had established a wide range of programs to benefit black South Africans. Almost no similar activities exist in Nigeria. The exceptions are the environmental movements, including the Sierra Club and the “green” businesses like the Body Shop, that shared Saro-Wiwa’s outrage over the government’s and oil companies’ despoiliation of his homeland.

Given these realities, the challenge for the nascent Nigerian sanctions movement is to find ways to seize immediate opportunities, while seeking to build the kind of longer-term societal clout that could eventually enable Americans to play a more decisive role in supporting democracy in Nigeria. In this regard, it must be recognized that the campaign for oil sanctions is a crucial public-relations lever. It gives supporters of democracy in Nigeria a means to keep the pressure on Washington and the U.S. oil companies, even though such sanctions will probably not be imposed. In short, step up the campaign, but hope it doesn’t succeed, because success would only deepen the country’s misery.

Still, in light of the South African experience, there is reason to believe that a ban on Nigerian participation in international sporting events could be a long-term corrective, especially in a year when the Olympics are scheduled to be held in Atlanta, a city with symbolic ties to both the human-rights movement and Africa, and which serves as the home of CNN.

Over the long run, however, the most important objective must be to find ways to connect more Americans to Nigeria, even as we seek to isolate Nigeria’s dictators.*