Word: nigerian
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Olatunji Dare, editorial board chair of a Nigerian newspaper, will be awarded the 1995 Louis L. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by Harvard's Nieman Foundation later this month...
...example, the Rev. Jesse Jackson praised the Nigerian despot of the moment, General Ibrahim Babangida, as "one of the great leader-servants of the modern world in our time." This was the same Babangida who had ruthlessly suppressed political opponents, closed down independent newspapers and allowed his country to become a major transshipment point for heroin and other illegal drugs to which millions of U.S. citizens are addicted. Could Jackson's effusion have had anything to do with the help Babangida had given him over the years--for example, by providing a Nigerian Airways jet for a tour of southern...
...rounded up Obasanjo and about 60 other well-known dissidents. In July, the government announced that 40 of the accused had been convicted and sentenced--but it refused to disclose their names, what crimes they had supposedly committed or what their punishment would be. According to sources in the Nigerian exiles' community, Obasanjo has been sentenced to life in prison. Others have been condemned to death. Last week, even as Abacha claimed to be reviewing the harsh sentences, his secret police arrested still more dissidents, including Obasanjo's lawyer and the head of Nigeria's biggest pro-democracy group...
...international community has approached Nigeria in a pleading tone," says Nobel-prizewinning Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, now in exile in the U.S. "What's needed is threats." Those could involve seizing the loot Abacha & Co. are believed to have stashed in the U.S. and Europe, or even boycotting Nigerian oil. But such punitive measures will not work without moral pressure from those who have allowed the dictators' behavior to pass unchallenged. Above all, Nigerians crave the respect of the rest of the world. Freeing Obasanjo and the other political prisoners would be a tiny first step in showing they deserve...
...Nigerians think of themselves as being Africa's potential first superpower," saysTIME's Jack White, "but they behave like a banana republic." The evidence: though the 100-million-strong nation craves acceptance on the world stage, the Lagos regime of General Sani Abacha has in recent weeks killed or jailed a group ofNigeria's foremost proponents of democracy.The most prominent political prisoner is former head of state Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. Today, Nigerian Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi told TIME editors in New York that Abacha "will not be oblivious" to numerous international appeals to spare Obasanjo's behalf, including one from...