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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
General Abubakar and America’s Selective Justice
On September 28, Judge Mathew F. Kennelly of a Chicago district court in America issued a ruling that former Head of State, General Abdussalami Abubakar, was liable to sanctions for refusing to appear before it in a case filed before it several years ago by a three-some of Chief Anthony Enahoro, Dr. Arthur Nwankwo and Hafsat Abiola. The three had accused Abubakar of human rights violations which included the detention and exiling of Enahoro and Nwankwo, the detention and the eventual death in detention of Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election that was nullified by military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, and the extra-judicial killing of Hajiya Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief Abiola and mother of Hafsat during the regime of General Sani Abacha, Abubakar’s predecessor.
In arriving at his decision, the judge talked at length on, among other things, “the history of the Nigerian military regime and Abubakar’s role in it, the regime’s suppression of pro-democracy advocates, its use of arbitrary detention without trial, torture, extra-judicial killing and restrictions of civil liberties to silence opponents.”
Kenelly’s ruling was to be followed by a status hearing on October 11 on the extent of General Abubakar’s liability and what damages to award the plaintiffs, among other things. As at the time of writing this piece I didn’t know if the hearing held and what was its outcome. What is clear, however, is that as far as the American court is concerned, the former head of state stands guilty as charged.
There can be no denying the fact that the judgment has grave implications for the bilateral relationship between Nigeria and America. General Abubakar’s lawyer, Mr. Emeka Egwuonye described it as a “juridical banana peel”. He could not have been more accurate; it is not difficult to imagine how the judgment could easily trip the Nigerian/American relationship down a slippery slope.
Before we examine its implication for Nigerian/American relations, it is interesting to note the big irony that of all the military rulers accused by Enahoro et al of human rights violations during the period in question – i.e. Generals Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar – it is Abubakar that would be singled out for punishment.
As the head of state under whose watch Abiola died, Abubakar was obviously a luckless victim of bad timing. However, no head of state before him, going all the way back to the first military coup in 1966, had done more to enhance human rights.
Among other things, he invited all those who went on exile during General Abacha’s tyrannical rule to return without any conditions. Second, he released all political prisoners, including the most famous of them, General Olusegun Obasanjo, and granted them unconditional state pardon. Third, he organized the shortest, the most voluntary and probably the most credible transition to civilian rule in the country’s history.
To underscore the big irony of the man being tarred with the brush of vile tyranny, Abubakar had concluded virtually every arrangement to release Chief Abiola from detention when he suffered a sudden and mysterious death, literally in the hands of some senior American officials who had come to see him preparatory to his release.
And as Abubakar’s chief press secretary, I can reveal that he arranged for a team of four Afenifere chieftains including its leader, Senator Abraham Adesanya, and the late Chief Bola Ige, to see Abiola in what unfortunately turned out to be his last days on earth. The visit was soon followed with another by two of his wives, Bisi and Doyin. Before then Abubakar had allowed the then United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, to meet with the chief. None of these Very Important Visitors complained about Abiola’s treatment in detention.
Clearly it is a big irony that the same person who had gone to great lengths to restore Abiola’s freedom and end a lengthy and convoluted transition to civilian rule that started in 1985 should be the one left carrying the can of the country’s long military dictatorship.
The central issue here, however, is not the irony of the American court’s decision to punish General Abubakar for the alleged violations of the human rights of the plaintiffs in particular and of Nigerians in general. The central issue is the hypocrisy of the judgment and of the fact that the executive arm of the American government would be the one to implement it.
To begin with the hypocrisy of the American courts, on October 9 the country’s Supreme Court denied without comment a petition brought before it by one, Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, against the former CIA director and current Defense Secretary, Mr. George Tenet, and several other officials of the agency for the violation of his human rights. He had been seized by Macedonian officials in late 2003 while on a vacation in their country, presumably at CIA’s prompting. He was then transferred to the agency in early 2004. The agency beat, sexually abused and “rendered” him to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he was subjected to even more torture and abuse.
The Americans finally dumped him on a deserted road in Albania after they discovered that they were holding the wrong person. Subsequently he sued Tenet and other CIA officials in December 2005. The American government quickly intervened to stop the courts from hearing the case on the grounds that it will compromise national security. The U.S. District Court hearing the case agreed with the government in May 2006. el-Masri then appealed. In March this year the appeal court concurred with the lower court. el-Masri then went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court’s decisions this month not to hear his petition means the appeal court decision now stands.
Against this background of the American apex court sanctioning, albeit by default, the American government decision making torture its official policy under the guise of protecting national security, isn’t it hypocritical that any American court can stand in moral judgment of officials of other countries and purport to punish them for abuse of human rights?
In May 2005, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Ms Irene Khan, while presenting the organization’s 2004 annual report, condemned America for becoming one of the world’s leading violators of human rights. “When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights,” she said, “it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity.”
America’s record of human rights violations which Ms Khan referred to is a long and odious one that has since included the suspension of habeas corpus for its residents, the illegal spying on its own citizens, the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects to countries with records of torturing detainees and prisoners, secret trials by military tribunals, the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba (both symbols of grossest abuses of human rights), secret CIA prisons, the intimidation of other countries into signing immunity agreements shielding potentially culpable American officials from being tried by the International Criminal Court, and so on and so on.
This then is the country whose courts and government have since turned themselves into global policemen. It is the same country which has a law which purports to punish officials of other countries where some people who allege violations of their human rights claim that they can get no remedy.
The Amnesty International 2004 annual report described Guantanamo Bay, the most visible symbol of America’s regime of human rights violations, as “the gulag of our time.” Nothing even the vilest military regime in Nigeria has done begins to compare to Guantanamo Bay – or to Abu Ghraib or to “extra-ordinary rendition” or to spying on it own citizens – as an act of human rights violation.
Obviously the Nigerian government cannot fold its arms and allow its officials, more so one of the country’s most benign former military heads of state, to be punished and humiliated by a country whose leaders do not practice what they preach and who have since violated every principle of the charter of its Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule in 1776. |