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U.S. Envoy to Nigeria Is Given Stormy Farewell - NY Times
September 26, 1997
U.S. Envoy to Nigeria Is Given Stormy Farewell
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
[A] BIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- When Walter Carrington, a
lifelong African specialist, became the American
ambassador to Nigeria four years ago, soon after the
military leadership annulled the most most democratic
elections that country had ever held, he knew that his
assignment would not be easy.
From the time of his arrival to his final weeks in the
job, before heading to a Harvard University fellowship
early next month, Carrington has found himself butting
heads with the leaders of Africa's most populous country
on a range of issues that run from democracy and human
rights to international drug trafficking.
But nothing could have prepared Carrington for the
seeming final act in his ambassadorship, when state
security officials undertook a campaign of intimidation
against people who have organized farewell parties for
him.
In what Carrington, a 67-year-old lawyer with a
38-year-long familiarity with Nigeria called "the most
surrealistic experience I have had here yet,"
heavily-armed policemen burst into a well-attended
reception in Carrington's honor in Lagos last week,
threatened to shoot one speaker, and ordered the foreign
guests, including the American ambassador, to leave at
once.
After grabbing the microphone away from an elderly man
who had begun to make introductory remarks in honor of
Carrington, witnesses said, one policeman threatened to
shoot another human rights activist who defiantly
grabbed another microphone and sought to address the
stunned crowd.
Earlier that evening, Carrington said, a police unit
cordoned off the area where the farewell was originally
supposed to take place, and forbade the ambassador and
others entry, forcing the Nigerian human rights and
pro-democracy groups that had organized the reception to
shift it elsewhere.
"The leader of the police unit could be heard saying
loudly on his hand-held radio, 'Sir, we have located the
place, the U.S. ambassador is here, and we are going to
break up the meeting,' " Carrington said. "And when we
were leaving we could hear the same man saying that they
had succeeded, and that the ambassador was leaving."
Washington has since filed what diplomats call a "strong
protest" with the Nigerian Foreign Ministry and the
Nigerian Embassy in Washington, calling the breakup of
the reception "scandalous."
But the protest did not prompt an official apology from
Gen. Sani Abacha's government. Instead, this week the
Nigerian minister for special presidential affairs,
Alhaji Wada Nas, launched into a scathing attack on
Carrington.
Nas was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying "his
stay in Nigeria must be described as four years of waste
during which nothing was accomplished between the two
countries in economic, cultural, or political terms."
Throughout Carrington's tenure in Nigeria, senior
officials of that country have interpreted the deep
chill that permeates ties between Washington and the
Nigerian capital, Abuja, as the reflection of
Carrington's efforts to poison relations.
In interviews with local news organizations, Nigerian
officials have repeatedly said that Carrington's
outspokenness in favor of human rights and democracy in
a country long ruled by the military, did not reflect
Washington's official views of their country.
Instead, in a string of attacks that often have a
poisonous personal quality, Nigerian officials have
depicted Carrington, who is black, as part of a corrupt
African-American elite that publicly criticizes Nigeria
in the secret hope that Abuja will offer to buy their
silence with generous financial donations.
During a wave of bombing incidents in Nigeria last year,
Carrington was summoned by the foreign minister on
Christmas Eve for an official dressing down.
Senior government officials publicly complained about a
safety warning by the American Embassy to American
travelers to Nigeria, and hinted that Carrington, who
has openly maintained close contacts with opposition
groups, had knowledge of the attacks.
In August, the Nigerian police commissioner said
Carrington's diplomatic immunity should be withdrawn so
that he could be brought in for questioning.
For Carrington, there is no mystery why relations
between the United States and Nigeria have been so rocky
during his tenure.
"I came here in November 1993, a few months after the
annulment of the elections of June '93, and I was here
12 days before the military under Abacha staged its
palace coup and took over the government," Carrington
said. "Our government put on sanctions in response to
the annulment. Before that our government had already
banned flights between the United States and Nigeria
because of security concerns.
"And a few months after I arrived, a third set of
sanctions were slapped on because of a finding that
Nigeria was not cooperating in narcotics matters." In
none of these areas, Carrington said, had there been
enough progress in Washington's view to lift sanctions.
Relations between the two countries worsened after the
November 1995 execution of the playwright and minority
rights advocate Ken Saro-Wiwa. Carrington and two dozen
other ambassadors were temporarily recalled in protest.
As he prepares to leave Nigeria for Cambridge, Mass.,
where he will work on African issues at the DuBois
Institute at Harvard, his alma mater, Carrington
responded to the personal attacks against him by voicing
his own of regret over the state of Africa's most
populous and potentially most powerful nation.
"This is a country that I have been coming to since
1959, so I have been able to see the years of boom and
bust here," he said. "This is a country richer in human
resources than almost anyplace I can think of, and it is
rich in natural resources too. And yet Nigeria is a
country ranked by the United Nations as one of the
poorest places in the world, and ranked by some as one
of the most corrupt countries in the world.
"As a black American, this deeply saddens me. This is a
place that should be one of the leading countries in the
world. But until they are able to resolve the problem of
allowing the people to choose their leaders
democratically, I am afraid they are not going to be
able to realize this potential."
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