The chairman of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, Des O'Malley TD, has been refused a visa to enter Nigeria. The former minister was to go to Africa with Trocaire on Monday to view the organisation's activities, examine the conditions of the Ogoni people and their lands, visit the 20 or so Ogoni men in prison in Port Harcourt and to look at Trocaire's work on human rights generally.
O'Malley believes he was refused entry by the embassy in Dublin, after consultation with Lagos, because it appears only those 100 per cent behind the military regime are acceptable and because he and others have spoken out about Shell oil company's development of the Ogoni lands to create oil and gas fields.
The former dictator, Sani Abacha died last month from, it is widely rumoured in Nigeria, an overdose of Viagra. The new man, Gen Abubakar, has already played host to UN general secretary Kofi Annan and there is a vague hope that he may be more liberal, but there has been chaos since the sudden death on Wednesday of Chief Abiola. Abiola was generally believed to have won the last general election and consequently locked up by the military, but the new regime said they might let him out if he abandoned his claim to the presidency and said he'd lost.
With recent developments, maybe O'Malley is lucky to be staying at home. One man who is going to Nigeria though is our new ambassador to Lagos, Joe Lynch. He leaves the political division in Iveagh House in a number of weeks. As with his predecessor, Brendan McMahon, ministerial or parliamentary visits are unlikely to occupy much of his time.