Representatives plan public hearings on Taylor

The lower chamber of Nigeria’s national legislature intends to conduct a public hearing on the asylum granted to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, the Chairman of the House of Representatives foreign relations committee said on Thursday. Usman Bugaje said civil society groups as well as officials from the Nigerian ministries of foreign affairs and justice would be invited to discuss the ramifications for Nigeria's foreign policy of hosting an indicted war criminal, as well as its impact on the rule of law. A date is yet to be set for the hearing, he added. Under pressure from the international community, Taylor abdicated office in August and accepted President Olusegun Obasanjo’s offer of asylum in Nigeria as rebels waging a three-year-old war against his regime closed in on the Liberian capital, Monrovia. Since 11 August, he and his entourage have been living in the southeastern city of Calabar. Prior to his departure Taylor was indicted by the United Nations-backed court in Sierra Leone for crimes against humanity, stemming from his support for rebels accused of atrocities against unarmed civilians during that country’s 10 years of civil war. There have been continuing calls on the Nigerian government by local and international human rights groups, foreign governments, the UN court in Sierra Leone and the International Police Organisation (Interpol) for Taylor to be handed over for trial. But the Nigerian government has so far refused to oblige, insisting the asylum granted the former war-lord-turned-president was to end 14 years of bloodletting in Liberia and stop it from spreading in West Africa. Bugaje said neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives was consulted by Obasanjo before he took the decision to accommodate Taylor. "We in the legislature felt it was wrong," he told reporters. "Even the UN refugee charter forbids giving asylum to refugees accused of war crimes." Ignoring the demands of the Sierra Leone court and Interpol for Taylor to be handed over for trial was not only bad for Nigeria’s foreign relations but also had "dangerous implications for the rule of law" even within the country, said Bugaje . He said it would be hard to find a moral basis to ask people to obey Nigerian courts when the government was disobeying international courts and Interpol. According to him, if after the public hearings the opinion that emerged was in favour of surrendering Taylor to the war crimes court, the representatives would pass a motion to that effect and notify Obasanjo, even though he was not bound to obey it.