Soccer squad gets round EU embargo

Date: 29/05/1997

By Mark Turner

NIGERIA's national football squad is set to play in the 1998 World Cup, despite an EU sports embargo imposed upon the country two years ago.

The decision, due to be rubber-stamped by Union foreign ministers next week, follows French pleas for the team to be allowed on to its soil next year.

The news will be welcomed by football fans, who recall Nigeria's performance in the US as the highlight of the 1994 World Cup. But it will infuriate human rights organisations, which have already criticised the EU for a weak commitment to democracy in Nigeria.

The Union imposed the sports embargo on the country after General Sani Abacha's government executed Ogoni activist and international celebrity Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other critics of the regime in November 1995.

European states also cancelled development aid worth 200 million ecu, imposed an arms embargo and denied visas to Nigeria's ruling junta. But they shied away from introducing an oil embargo, the only measure likely to topple Abacha according to organisations such as Human Rights Watch.

They claim that other sanctions are ultimately ineffective, hurting millions of ordinary Nigerians while Abacha and his junta remain in control.

Ministers will circumvent the ban through a legal nicety which says that the sports embargo - which was imposed on Nigeria after the date and venue for the World Cup were agreed - cannot have a retroactive effect on events already booked.

Although officials from other Union member states originally questioned the decision, leading to long discussions in the EU's political committee, foreign ministers are likely to adopt it next Monday (2 June) without debate.

Nevertheless, critics such as the UK warn that such exemptions should not be taken as a precedent, and insist that similar judgements in the future should be made on a case-by-case basis.