Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered the arrest of aides to former Liberian president Charles Taylor, fuelling Tuesday’s rumours that Liberia’s former head, now living in exile in Nigeria, has escaped from his residence in the southern town of Calabar.
Remi Oyo, spokesperson to Obasanjo, said in a statement issued on Tuesday that the Nigerian government had ordered the aides’ immediate arrest. Security is to be tightened throughout Nigeria to ensure that Taylor does not leave the country, she added.
Taylor is wanted by the United Nations war-crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone on 17 charges of crimes against humanity committed between 1997 and 2003 while in office as Liberian president.
In Calabar, Nigerian authorities have deployed 50 riot police officers to Taylor’s residence, where he has been living in exile since 2003.
Joseph Oshiejale, chief press secretary to the governor of Cross River state, where Calabar is located, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur: ”There is no way he can leave Calabar without the knowledge of the governor and the government of Cross River state.”
Taylor was reportedly spotted at a mall on Monday night and also at Okoi Arikpo house in the state capital where some of his aides live. Police in Calabar, however, have declined to comment on his whereabouts.
His disappearance has confirmed the worst fears of the UN-backed court in Sierra Leone, which only two days ago urged Nigeria to detain the former Liberian dictator lest he use his considerable wealth to escape.
On Monday state security services in Liberia arrested some of Taylor’s former associates after Senator Prince Yormie Johnson, chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Security, disclosed that a plot to destabilise Liberia was in the making.
Johnson told security services that several of Taylor’s former allies had approached him to join them in preventing Taylor’s extradition to the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone.
In an apparent move to assure the government that they are not against Taylor’s extradition, citizens of north-eastern Nimba County, the province from which Taylor drew the bulk of his fighters, staged a march through the principal streets of Monrovia on Tuesday.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and civic groups have also been drawn into the debate.
Johnson-Sirleaf told officials of the Liberian Council of Churches on Monday that her extradition request to Nigeria came after discovering that Taylor was engaged in acts ”aimed at destabilising the country, and thus abusing the terms of his asylum”.
Obasanjo agreed last Saturday to Johnson-Sirleaf’s request to extradite Taylor.
Sirleaf-Johnson said she would prefer for Taylor to be tried in a neutral country. She added that she considers Sierra Leone a hostile environment, but would prefer for Nigeria to transfer Taylor to Sierra Leone rather than send him to Liberia owing to security concerns.
According to presidential legal adviser, counsellor Peter Amos George Jnr, there is no extradition treaty between Liberia and Nigeria.
Many Liberians feel that international pressure on the Liberian government to hand Taylor over to the UN court in Sierra Leone could rob the war-ravaged country of much-needed support in its reconstruction drive.
”The extradition of Taylor is untimely. We still have many Taylor loyalists in this country,” said university student Alphonso Nyanti.
”With the economic hardship facing the nation, several former combatants will respond favourably to any attempt to recruit them to fight for Taylor,” he added. — Sapa-dpa