Commonwealth leaders arrive, rights groups criticize Obasanjo

Commonwealth leaders began arriving in Nigeria on Tuesday for the bi-ennial heads of states meeting amid allegations by critics of growing misrule from President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government by critics. Heads of government from Botswana, Canada, Mozambique, Namibia, Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Zambia were already in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, for the five-day summit from which Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been excluded. Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, the head of the informal club of former British colonies, was scheduled to begin a state visit to Nigeria on 3 December, during when she would formally open the summit on Friday. However on the eve of the meeting, international and local human rights groups and opposition parties accused Obasanjo’s government of misrule and intolerance. They said it was surprising that Obasanjo was being embraced by the international community at a time Mugabe was being ostracised for similar reasons. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a 40-page report published ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, accused Obasanjo’s government of killing, torturing and harassing its critics in the past two years. It said most of the abuses were perpetrated by the police and the security intelligence outfit known as State Security Services (SSS). Presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo however denied the allegations by HRW, dismissing them as "jaundiced and ill-conceived". She accused the group of publishing the report on the eve of the Commonwealth summit in order "to precipitate discord within the august gathering and cast undeserved aspersions on the integrity of the Nigerian government and people". Obasanjo’s administration, she added, had brought Nigerians unprecedented freedom. According to HRW, some 12-20 people were shot dead by the police in the country’s biggest city of Lagos, the capital Abuja and the southern oil industry centre of Port Harcourt during July protests against a hike in fuel prices. The HRW report detailed testimonies alleging torture from 30 people arrested and detained for two weeks for staging a peaceful protest at the US embassy against the visit of President George Bush in July. The testimonies were among over 50 cases of abuses. "Commonwealth leaders meeting in Abuja should not give Nigeria a free pass on human rights," said Peter Takirambudde of the Africa Division of HRW. "Even though military rule has ended, Nigerians still cannot express themselves freely without fear of grave consequences," he added. HRW also alleged harassment of opposition parties since elections in April and May which were won by Obasanjo’s party. It said the vote was marred by widespread violence and ballot-rigging, especially in southern Nigeria. "Foreign governments remained virtually silent about election violence in Nigeria, yet abuses during the Zimbabwe elections provoked widespread condemnation," Takirambudde said. Commonwealth leaders, he added, would face accusations of double standards if abuses were not condemned wherever they occurred, even "in the very country where they are meeting". Tension have also mounted in Nigeria after a coalition of opposition and pro-democracy groups known as United Action for Democracy (UAD) threatened to carry out protests against the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria. UAD spokesman, Bamidele Aturu, told reporters that leaders of the group have received threatening phone calls from security agents and have also been invited for interrogation by the SSS. "We wish to state that no weight of threat of clampdown or arrest can deter UAD from holding the mass rally," Aturu said. On Monday a discussion forum in Lagos planned by a group describing itself as the Commonwealth Civil Society was aborted after its coordinator, Osita Ike, was arrested by armed men believed to be state security police agents. No security agency had owned up to the arrest of Ike. The Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, grouping several opposition parties that lost the general elections early this year, said in a statement on Tuesday it was drawing the attention of Commonwealth leaders to the "appalling situation" in Nigeria under Obasanjo. According to the group the majority of Nigerians were today suffering "in excruciating" poverty while Obasanjo and his cronies were wallowing in "stupendous wealth, arrogance and immoral behaviour". Every two years leaders of Britain and its 53 former colonies meet to at the Commonwealth conference to discuss initiatives to promote democracy, racial equality, resolve conflicts and manage their cultural diversity. In the past two years the group has been sorely tested by the situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is accused of clamping down on the opposition and remaining in power after rigging an election. Mugabe's supporters however hail his land reform programme which aims at redistributing land held by white farmers to black people. In the Commonwealth, positions on Zimbabwe have often created cleavages, with African leaders seemingly sympathetic to Mugabe while Western leaders have been harshly critical. "Though Mugabe is excluded from this summit, the Zimbabwe question will no doubt still loom large," Ike Onyekwere, a political analyst, told IRIN. "With HRW raising the issue of double standards in the treatment of Zimbabwe and Nigeria, I think the Commonwealth, for the sake of its credibility, will be challenged to find a uniform measure of democracy and good government among member states," he added.