Nigeria: Sanctions Regime

Kate Osamor Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for her passionate opening speech. I also thank Silas Ojo for creating the petition, which now has more than 220,000 signatures, including from almost 2,000 of my constituents in Edmonton.

I am sure that I am not the only Member to have been inundated with messages from constituents in recent months urging them to do whatever they can to lend their voice to the #EndSARS protests. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Nigeria, I was keen to speak in the debate and highlight the need for the UK to stand with the Nigerian people against an increasingly cruel and brutal regime.

The situation in Nigeria is incredibly serious, with tragedy after tragedy unfolding on the streets in state after state, as the Nigerian Government and their security forces take ever more repressive measures to end a protest movement that has given hope to millions across the globe. The #EndSARS movement is not just about disbanding the Special Anti-Robbery Squad; it is a movement led by the youth of Nigeria who took to the streets peacefully to demand an end to brutality, extortion and extrajudicial executions, and a truly democratic Nigeria. The bravery of the youth-led movement will never be defeated.

Today, we need to consider how the Government should respond to both the movement and the violent actions of the Nigerian regime, but we must also take the opportunity to look beyond sanctions to the way that development funding is spent in Nigeria. Instead of funding corrupt security services and investing in projects that do not benefit ordinary Nigerians, we need a new focus on poverty relief and anti-corruption programmes.

It is vital that we recognise the role of the UK in how these events have unfolded in Nigeria. Despite previously stating the opposite, the Government have now admitted to funding SARS units for the last four years. That funding included not only the provision of training to those units, but the supply of equipment. At the very moment that Amnesty International declared SARS units to have been involved in extrajudicial killings, corruption and torture, the Government were using the aid budget to train and equip those units. In fact, between 2016 and this year, more than £10 million went towards programmes from which SARS units benefited.

That not only is immoral, but makes it harder for the UK to play a positive role in Nigeria during this vital period. How can the Government call for an end to violence against protesters with a straight face, having helped to train and equip the security forces that are carrying out the violence? I hope that the Minister will publicly apologise today for the decision to fund the SARS units, and pledge a full and independent inquiry into the matter.

The day of 20 October 2020 will be remembered for the Lekki tollgate massacre—the day a deliberate and coldly calculated attack on peaceful Nigerian civilians was carried out by the Nigerian army. The Nigerian Government have since taken part in an attempted cover-up of the massacre. Security forces in Nigeria make muted responses to the murder of protesters. While Governments across the world have called on the Nigerian Government and the security forces to stop killing protesters, the UK Government have hedged their bets and issued only weak and timid statements. It is therefore a gift to the Nigerian Government when our Government fail to explicitly condemn them for killing their own citizens. Will the Minister today finally condemn the Nigerian regime for its part in the tollgate massacre and the continued killing of peaceful protestors in Nigeria?

The Nigerian Government say that they have disbanded SARS, but the corruption and brutality of the security forces continues. The Nigerian Government’s violence against their own citizens appears only to be intensifying. The Nigerian Government need to stop freezing the bank accounts of key protestors and illegally detaining them. The Minister for the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture went on record to state that the CNN reporting of the massacre was “fake news”. That is undemocratic conduct that needs to be called out.

I ask the Minister to use this opportunity to end the UK Government’s neutrality on this issue. The UK must never be neutral when it comes to human rights abuses. Are the rights, needs and dreams of young Nigerian people not the same as those of young people here in the UK? The UK should not be safe haven for anyone who denies their own citizens the same freedoms they have come to enjoy in the UK.

All too often, when a repressive regime is targeted with economic sanctions, it is the civilians who pay the price, while the regime itself becomes more entrenched and less open to change. The UK Government can use the sanctions under the global human rights regime that targets individuals involved in human rights violations and abuses. If the UK’s position is as a global force for good, then I ask the UK Government to add the names of the Nigerian Government and the security services to the designated list of those responsible for the worst human rights abuses.

To close, it is time for the UK to change course and stand in solidarity with those fighting for a new Nigeria. Let us stand together and get rid of corruption, extortion, extra-judicial murders and massacres, because it is time for a new Nigeria.