Nigeria and the commonwealth

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Canada was one of the first countries to call for tough sanctions against Nigeria following the execution of Ogoni dissident Ken Saro‐Wiwa on 10 November 1995. Canada's subsequent attempt, from within the Commonwealth, to force the Nigerian military government to make the transition to democracy illustrates Canada's position within that organization and the debate as to whether sanctions can compel change in a regime's behaviour. Why, in the space of one year (November 1995 to November 1996) did the Canadian government abandon an essentially reactive policy on Nigeria, such as had been in place throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, in favour of an increasingly hard‐line, confrontational approach? Why eventually did Ottawa break ranks with the rest of the Commonwealth membership by calling for severe economic sanctions against the military junta led by General Sani Abacha? The purpose of this paper is to examine the change in Canada's policy approach to Nigeria The first section describes Nigeria's slow decline from a nation of great promise at its independence in 1960. The second section shows how Ottawa's policy evolved from one that emphasized non‐interference to one that had begun to use selective sanctions by the early 1990s. The Liberal Government's approach to Nigeria through the institutions of the Commonwealth, the United Nations, is examined, and also in Ottawa's bilateral relations. The third section looks at the debate surrounding Ottawa's use of unilateral and multilateral sanctions against the military government in Lagos. The discussion highlights the dilemma that Nigeria poses for Canada's strategy of international human rights, namely, the trade‐off between Canada's ever‐increasing need for foreign markets to sustain its economic growth and its interest in encouraging good governance abroad. The paper suggests that Ottawa's selection of Nigeria as a target of coercive diplomacy points to an apparent double‐standard in the Canadian government's application of its human rights policy worldwide. The fourth section asks why Canada's aggressive approach was not shared by its fellow Commonwealth members and Nigeria's main economic partners. The imposition of sanctions against Nigeria also exposes a broader fissure within the Commonwealth between members who are uncomfortable with the institution's meddling in a country's internal affairs and those who want to use the Commonwealth as a more activist instrument for democratic development. The fifth section evaluates the impact of sanctions on Nigeria and speculates whether they will hasten the end of General Sani Abacha's military government or make the lives of Nigerians more difficult. The paper concludes with a number of ‘lessons’ for Canada's future use of sanctions against undemocratic regimes and its use of the Commonwealth for this purpose. The study suggests that Canada's aggressive policy approach to Nigeria occurred, in part, because of the Liberal government's desire to raise the profile of human rights in Canada's foreign policy after the public outcry over its enthusiastic courting of China in 1994. Nigeria, therefore, was a ready‐made and relatively low‐risk target through which to test the Canadian government's human rights credentials: a Commonwealth institutional framework was in place to monitor and to put pressure on the Abacha regime, and Canada had few economic interests at stake.