canada

19 December 1996

When in November last year, we (that is, Nigeria) hanged
the Ogoni nine, Canada was just one of the several
Commonwealth countries that raised strident voices
against what British Prime Minister, John Major, called
‘Judicial murder’. When an English man says a decision is
judicial, he means that the decision has been critically and
impartially arrived at. When he calls killing ‘murder’, he
means that it has been done intentionally despite
awareness of its being unlawful. Something is unlawful in
western democracies when it does not have the backing of
the Parliament. Decrees are, therefore, unlawful to them,
unlike in Russian democracy and in a host of military
governments. The Ogoni nine were tried under a decree,
that is, under Nigerian law. If they had been tried under
Canadian law, for example, they probably would still be alive
today. We would understand, therefore, why western
democracies were enraged. We had gone and used our laws
despite being fully aware that we were not a democracy.

We would recall that even South Africa (which had felt
morally obliged to pursue a ‘softly softly’ diplomacy with
Nigeria due to our history of selfless service to her in her
years of tribulation) bit our finger, creating a situation that
denied us the historic opportunity of winning the Africa Cup
of Nations two consecutive times. We have since been
compensated with an even more excellent prize, the
(Olympic) championship of the world.

A full year after all these, Canada’s voice alone remains as
strident as it had been in 1995. When in June this year the
Commonwealth hosted Nigeria at the Marlborough House in
London, the decision to suspend the proposal for further
sanctions on Nigeria was near unanimous. Canada’s
insistence on something more punitive has even drawn
reprimand from Baroness Linda Chalker, the British Minister
of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

Back in April, the United Nation’s fact-finding team had also
failed to find anything significantly outrageous about Nigeria’
s human rights. Despite this, the Federal government went
ahead to announce a number of reforms, including the
abolition of the use of military tribunals for civilians.

I wonder how the Secretary-General of the United Nations
must have felt, since he knew that his home country still
regularly arraigned militant civilians before military tribunals.
Maybe not too different from how some members of the
Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group that visited Nigeria
in November must have felt when they were to realize that
human rights abuses were probably even more rife in other
commonwealth countries than in Nigeria. It is not surprising
therefore, that the CMAG had little time for the ghost stories
of human rights activists (I mean our political rights activists)
and went ahead with the visit despite the fact that certain
Canadian delegates were shut-out by Nigeria.

It is against this background that the Canadian government
announcement in, I believe, September, that they would not
shut their High Commission in Lagos despite the Nigerian
decision to shut down ours in Otawa, is laudable. As the
Canadians said, the Nigerian shutdown will make
communication between the two countries more difficult.
However, it follows that the failure of the Canadians to shut
down in response will leave a channel open for continued
communication. Exploring this channel, I would appreciate it
if the High Commissioner could take the following message
back home.

Canada has been championing very many third world
interests. I do not think that there is much doubt that she is
genuinely interested in the welfare of developing countries
like Nigeria. There might be a temptation to see her often
radically anti-Nigeria stance as indicative of deep-seated
unease in the face of the tremendous weight an Africa-
backed Nigerian voice has, whether in the Commonwealth or
outside it. But this is not as yet very certain. Canada remains
a sister in the Commonwealth and could not possibly be
wishing us political relegation and economic strangulation in
a spirit of filial rivalry.

However, while many Commonwealth citizens would tacitly
endorse or, at least, wink at Canada’s rather aggressive pro-
human rights stance, quite a number would feel
embarrassed that this peerless crusader for humanistic
values should have and nurture an utterly dismal abortion
record. ‘The Toronto Star’ put the figure for 1993 at 104,403,
that is, over 25% of all live births in Canada that year.

What has abortion to do with human rights? Every thing!
800 million Catholics forbid it as murder. Nigerian law forbids
it. Canada may allow her citizens to freely terminate their
pregnancies but to us it is criminal. To us, the human fetus
has rights. Any country that dumps one out of every four of
her babies in ‘dust bins’ and has the guts to blame the
human rights records of others would easily be told to
remove the proverbial log from her eye first before seeing
clearly to remove the speck in her brother’s eye.

I must hasten to point out that the scattered incidents of
illegal abortion in Nigerian urban centers need not provide
room for recrimination, since 70% of Nigerians are rural
dwellers who are bound by the revered precepts of African
tradition. All indigenous African civilizations abhor abortions.
Moreover, 70% of all girls above 14years of age in Northern
Nigeria are married and generally, our married women do
not practice abortion.

Need we mention that in addition to the phenomenally high
abortion rate our moral-crusader-sister has the highest
record of bank robberies in the world? Impeccable sources
have it that one out of every seven bank branches in
Canada was robbed in 1994. It is certain that Canada has
significant domestic problems and her ability to swallow
‘panadol’ for our headache, as we say, and weep louder
than the owners of the corpse is very intriguing indeed.

The humbling recognition that none of us is qualified to cast
the first stone is often the key to effective communication
and lasting reconciliation. In other words, a slight change of
attitude by the Canadian government to the present
Nigerian Parturition problems would work wonders in our
relations, rather than insistence on the abortion of our
transition efforts. Happily, this change is already visible in
the horizon.