OLA AWONIYI, Abuja | Thursday
A ROW over the extraordinary security precautions of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has caused the cancellation of a visit to Nigeria, straining relations between the self-styled architect of African unity and its most populous nation.
Gaddafi, who often travels Africa surrounded by a large team of heavily armed security agents, had been invited to give a speech on his favourite theme of African unity. But the visit was abruptly cancelled when advance security for the Libyan leader arrived in Abuja bearing high-calibre weaponry.
“Our security officers … were very clear that there are certain categories or grades of guns that cannot be brought to Nigeria by security officers accompanying visiting heads of state,” Information Minister Jerry Gana said.
At the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Togo last year, the Libyan leader’s security team set up mounted machine-gun posts and dug a trench across a beach leading to the hotel where he was staying.
Gana declined to detail the weaponry his advance security team had sought to bring to Nigeria.
Meanwhile, a presidency official said the visit had been cancelled because President Olusegun Obasanjo objected when told Gaddafi also planned to visit the northern state of Zamfara.
Zamfara was the first state in the north to impose Islamic law since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999, and Obasanjo reportedly did not want Gaddafi to go there.
Gana denied that report, but he did say the government had objected to a request by Gaddafi to visit for “four or more days”.
According to an official programme for the visit released last week, the Libyan leader had planned to make a speech and to lay the foundation stone of a building identified only as “Islam in Africa”.
On his previous visit in 1998, Gaddafi visited the northern city of Kano and pledged to build an Islamic university there. The visit by Gaddafi to Nigeria was to have been the first since the Libyan authorities expelled thousands of Nigerians and other black Africans in October following racist attacks by Libyan Arabs on blacks in which many dozens died. – AFP