Economic Sanctions Nigeria

The United States embassy in Lagos said Nigeria's World Cup team cannot arrive aboard a Nigeria Airways flight but must use another airline. The United States last year banned the airline from flying to New York and U.S. airlines from flying to Nigeria, claiming safety concerns in Lagos. The move came after military ruler Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled June 12 presidential elections.

The United States will relax its ban on Nigerian flights to allow soccer players and their fans to attend the World Cup, the official news agency said Thursday. The U.S. Embassy in Lagos, which announced Wednesday that Nigeria Airways could not fly to the United States, said it was unable to confirm the Nigerian report. "It's more complicated than that," embassy spokeswoman Arlene Jacquette said. She said she could say no more about the matter until today.

Democracy, albeit fragile, finally has returned to Liberia after almost six years of civil war that killed nearly 6% of the population and ruined the infrastructure of what had been one of Africa's most stable republics. However, the peace that now prevails will last only if old enemies cooperate.

The sudden death of Nigeria's reclusive military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, could prove to be a turning point in Africa's most populous nation's struggle for democracy and its relationship with the world. Abacha had been a central figure in the conduct of several military coups d'etat and other, aborted military insurrections for two decades.

When Nigeria's dictatorship hanged famed author and political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others--after convicting them of murder in a kangaroo court--the cameras and computers of an outraged world focused on the troubled West African giant. It seemed possible that Saro-Wiwa's execution might boost efforts by TransAfrica's Randall Robinson, Amnesty International and others to impose new economic sanctions on Nigeria.

U.S. executives worried about selling earthmovers and airplanes to China, buying oil and gas from Nigeria or assembling cars and televisions along the Mexican border will be looking much closer to home for help on their 1996 wish list. That's because the most outspoken opponents of unfettered U.S. economic expansion are home-grown.

An upsurge of trouble in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta has been testing the new military rulers' tolerance of dissent, forcing them to deal with the aspirations of impoverished ethnic groups and further endangering an already weak economy. In the recent history of the world's sixth-largest oil producer, competing demands for the wealth generated by black gold often have made it seem more of curse than a blessing.