Abuja condemns Pakistan coup, severs military ties

President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday condemned the coup in Pakistan and severed military cooperation with Islamabad in what Nigerian political analysts said was a bold reassertion of Abuja’s commitment to democratic government. “The message is clear: Nigeria will no longer deal with military regimes,” Nimi Walson-Jack, executive director of the Centre for Responsive Politics in Port Harcourt, told IRIN on Thursday. Cornelius Adebayo, of the National Democratic Coalition of Nigeria Abroad, commented: “Nigeria will not accept the intervention of the military in any nation with which we have dealings, particularly Commonwealth countries. ” Both men said it was imperative for other nations and world bodies to discard diplomatic niceties in dealing with military regimes. “The international community should act like Nigeria and not double talk,” Walson-Jack said. “Nigeria believes that if the rest of the world had been as straightforward with the Nigerian military as Nigeria is with Pakistan, then military rule would not have lasted there,” said Adebayo, who spoke to IRIN from the United States. Nigeria should use its influence in bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States, the Organisation of African Unity and the Commonwealth - of which Pakistan is a member - to pursue the isolation of the Pakistani military, he added. The analysts said Abuja’s stand on the coup was consistent with its uncompromising rejection of an interventionist military: a few months ago, the minister of state in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Duben Onyia, bluntly told his visiting Burmese counterpart that the military there should return to the barracks.