Nigeria, 1996

On behalf of the Nigerian

delegation, I convey to Mr. Razali Ismail our

congratulations on his election as President of the General

Assembly at its fifty-first session. His election is a

recognition of his wide-ranging experience, candour and

diplomatic skills. It is also a tribute to his great country.

We are confident that, under his presidency, the work of

the General Assembly will be highly successful.

May I also convey the appreciation of my delegation

to his predecessor, Mr. Diogo Freitas Do Amaral of

Portugal, for the admirable manner and great sense of

commitment with which he conducted the affairs of the

fiftieth session of the Assembly. Nigeria also commends

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali for the energy, sense of

purpose and direction which he has brought to bear on the

office of the Secretary-General in the meritorious service

of our Organization.

When we met last year to commemorate the fiftieth

anniversary of the United Nations, we observed that a

number of developments on the political and economic

scene had affected relations between States and modified

the configuration of power at the global level. We

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recognized that the United Nations continues to be a viable

instrument for the conduct of relations amongst States. We

rededicated ourselves to the principles and objectives of the

United Nations Charter, including, in particular, the

promotion of social and economic development and the

maintenance of international peace and security. In this

endeavour, the United Nations has a central role to play.

Member States, in line with their obligations under the

Charter, have a duty to assist the United Nations in carrying

out this responsibility. This requires the political

commitment of all Member States and in particular of those

upon which the Charter confers special status.

Some of the developments which have occurred on the

international scene include the globalization of the world

economy, the upsurge in market economies, the rise in

economic growth in a number of countries and the growing

trend towards political pluralism and democratization.

However, new forms of conflict, new nationalisms,

terrorism, an increasing incidence of poverty and global

social decline have cast a sombre shadow on international

peace and security, as well as on economic growth and

development. The growing incidents of conflict, whether in

Europe, in Africa or in the Middle East, and the slow pace

of their resolution, are helping to exacerbate international

tension and undermine confidence among States. The

United Nations has a duty in this regard to redefine its role

and sharpen its peacemaking and peacekeeping tools in

order to effectively address them.

Peace is indivisible. The burden of peace, therefore,

should be shared by all in a mode of global responsibility

and partnership. Let me add also that the maintenance of

international peace and security is not an exclusive

responsibility of the United Nations. Regional and

subregional arrangements have important roles to play and

have demonstrated their commitment.

Although many regions of the world are now

witnessing one form of conflict or another, with varying

degrees of implications for the United Nations system, no

region perhaps is more afflicted by this menace than Africa,

both in the number of conflicts currently raging and in their

unimaginable negative effects on the people. The individual

and collective efforts of African States to achieve socio-

political transformation have been threatened by these

conflicts. In spite of this, the States of Africa have

continued to make concerted efforts at regional and

subregional levels to address this situation. The unique role

being played by the Organization of African Unity (OAU)

Mechanism for Conflict Prevention Management and

Resolution is important and should be supported by the

international community. Nigeria welcomes the

cooperation between the OAU and other regional

organizations and the United Nations in the field of

preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacemaking.

In our own subregion, the Economic Community of

West African States (ECOWAS) undertook an

unprecedented initiative in crisis management by

establishing a peacekeeping force, the ECOWAS

Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), in Liberia six years ago.

In spite of the difficulties we have encountered in the

process, we remain committed in our endeavour to help

the Liberian process reach its logical conclusion. In this

regard, Nigeria shares the view of many observers who

have described the revised Abuja peace agreement of

August 1996 as providing the best legal framework for

the resolution of the Liberian crisis. I am pleased to

report that the implementation of the Agreement revised

at Abuja last August is now on course. A new Council of

State, headed by Mrs. Ruth Perry, has been installed.

Since her installation, Mrs. Perry has enjoyed the

considerable confidence of the other members of the

Liberian National Transitional Government and indeed of

most Liberians. I take this opportunity to appeal to all

Liberians to extend cooperation to the new leadership in

the interest of peace in their country. Let me assure the

Assembly that it is the determination of my Head of

State, General Sani Abacha, Chairman of ECOWAS —

in collaboration with other leaders in our region and with

the support of the international community as a whole —

to ensure the resolution of the Liberian crisis.

It is our expectation that the Liberians themselves

will assume their destiny in favour of peace, national

reconciliation and national reconstruction. We therefore

renew our appeal to the international community to

provide much-needed financial, material and logistic

support to enable ECOMOG and the United Nations

Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) to effectively

discharge their respective mandates. Meanwhile, we

acknowledge with appreciation the renewed cooperation

and assistance with the ECOWAS effort of some of the

members of the international community.

Of great importance to the search for peace in the

various troubled spots of the world is the urgent need to

control the instruments of war. It is a matter of deep

regret that the end of the cold war has not ushered in in

its wake any appreciable reduction in the global arms

build-up. As the arms build-up and the proliferation of

conflicts are mutually reinforcing, there is an urgent need

for the international community to contain the trend. The

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threat posed by existing stockpiles of weapons of mass

destruction and conventional armaments is yet to be

removed.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),

a priority item on the disarmament agenda of the United

Nations, has been adopted. In spite of the imperfections of

this Treaty, the Nigerian Government was able to support

it and will be signing it in due course. Its adoption, which

puts an end to the further qualitative improvement of

nuclear weapons and arsenals, represents a significant first

step towards the goal of nuclear disarmament. It is our

expectation that the Conference on Disarmament, the single

multilateral negotiating body on disarmament, will now take

the next logical step to negotiate such disarmament within

a time-bound framework. The nuclear-weapon States have

a clear responsibility and duty to cooperate with the

Conference on Disarmament to negotiate such a treaty.

The adoption of the Treaty of Pelindaba creating a

nuclear-weapon-free zone in Africa has been an important

contribution to confidence building in Africa, in addition to

being a collateral disarmament measure. In view of the

overwhelming support enjoyed by the Treaty beyond the

African continent, it is recommended that other regions

undertake similar efforts by establishing nuclear-weapon-

free zones or zones of peace. While it is commendable to

observe that the majority of nuclear-weapon States have

since signed the protocol to the Treaty, we take this

opportunity to urge other States that have not yet done so

to do so, in order that the full objectives of the Treaty can

be achieved.

Peace and development are mutually reinforcing. A

just and enduring peace can only be founded on the general

welfare and socio-economic progress of all peoples and all

nations. It is indeed disconcerting to note that while the

countries of the North are becoming more affluent, the

countries of the South, which contain the majority of the

world’s population, are getting more impoverished. We

must collectively recognize and accept the fact that the

deepening crisis of development faced by developing

countries can only undermine the new world order which

we seek to create.

Africa, in particular, has continued to experience the

crippling impacts of external debt, deteriorating terms of

trade, increasing barriers to trade, declining investment and

financial inflows, and capital flight. African countries

recognize that the primary responsibility for finding a

solution to the economic difficulties facing the continent

lies with themselves. Hence they have sought to put in

place sound macro-economic policies and adopted very

painful programmes of economic reform. However, their

best endeavours have continued to be constrained by the

prevailing unfavourable international economic climate.

We believe that development cooperation should engender

genuine interdependence, mutual interest and benefits in

the context of global partnership, rather than the old mode

of a donor-recipient relationship.

We must recognize the central role of the United

Nations in engendering the process of global

development. In this regard, my delegation calls for faster

progress in the ongoing work on the Secretary-General’s

Agenda for Development. In the same spirit, we of the

African continent urge the international community to

deliver on its promises under the United Nations New

Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s (UN-

NADAF). We have just taken part in the mid-term review

of its implementation. We recognize that UN-NADAF has

had a poor record of implementation. None the less, the

United Nations system and the international community

at large must deliver on their various commitments.

Nigeria considers as complementary the Secretary-

General’s United Nations System-wide Special Initiative

for Africa, particularly as it envisages collaboration and

coordination of efforts between the international

community, the Bretton Woods financial institutions and

the United Nations development agencies on the issue of

development. In recognition of its role as the centre for

the harmonization of the actions of nations, the United

Nations successful hosting of major global conferences on

development — from New York in 1990 through Rio in

1992, Vienna in 1993, Cairo in 1994, Copenhagen and

Beijing in 1995, to Istanbul in 1996 — deserves our

special commendation. The faithful implementation of the

decisions and programmes of action of these conferences

would assist in bridging the yawning gap between the

developing and the developed economies and constitute a

substantive benefit to development. Accordingly, we

endorse and will continue to give our unqualified support

to the hosting of a special session of the General

Assembly in 1997 to review the implementation of

Agenda 21.

It is hardly necessary to recall that contemporary

international relations were founded on the basis of

respect for the principles of sovereign equality of States,

non-interference in the internal affairs of other States and

peaceful co-existence. It is therefore a matter of great

concern that these hallowed principles are increasingly

being eroded by some powerful States. The United

Nations should serve as the bulwark against the imposition

of the will of the strong over that of the weak.

Today all countries are engaged in a universal quest

for human dignity. It is no longer sufficient for us to be

content that our nations have been liberated from

oppression and foreign domination. It is now universally

acknowledged that the full meaning of national sovereignty

cannot be realized unless the individual citizen is free to

exercise his true conscience. The rise of this new

international conscience is a legitimate extension of the

earlier emergence of the new international morality which

threw colonialism into disarray.

There ought to be no conflict between national

sovereignty and the fundamental rights of the individual.

We welcome the growing international concern with human

rights, but unless we are careful to strictly define the

parameters of what actions justly constitute human rights

and what are excesses threatening the security of the State

as well as the safety and well-being of the citizens, we

could unwittingly be doing a disservice to the essence of

human freedom and dignity. We must therefore guard

against the use of human rights as a pretext for advancing

the individual or collective interests of one section of the

international community against those of the other.

In today’s world, the collation, delivery and

management of information has become an essential

component of development. Countries which are better

endowed technologically have tended to use that

endowment to the disadvantage of the less endowed. There

is a need therefore to establish a New World Information

Order, which respects the mutual sensitivities of States and

protects the values of their differing cultures.

Most developing countries lack the resources and

technological capacity for the requisite information delivery.

This, in no small measure, constrains their ability to project

news of events in their society promptly and effectively,

avoiding the tendentious reporting of the media in the

developed countries. Nigeria’s desire to be friends with all

nations, our commitment to the maintenance of international

peace and security and our abiding faith in the principles

enshrined in the charters of the United Nations, the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) and our subregional

organization, ECOWAS, are demonstrable and beyond

question. It was therefore a matter of surprise to the

Nigerian Government that this Assembly, in December

1995, adopted resolution 50/199 of 22 December 1995 on

the human-rights situation in our country. We believe that

this action was based largely on media reporting and

without any investigation of the facts of the matter. In

spite of the fact that the Nigerian Government was not

happy with that action, we subsequently took the initiative

to invite the Secretary-General to send a fact-finding

mission to Nigeria to ascertain the realities on the ground.

That mission visited the country from 28 March to 13

April 1996, and conducted its work unfettered. While the

mission’s report identified areas of progress in our

domestic situation, it also made constructive

recommendations. I would like to take this opportunity to

express the appreciation of the Government and the

people of Nigeria to those Governments which took a

principled position of not supporting the resolution against

us. We note with satisfaction that since the United

Nations visit, a growing number of countries have

reconsidered their position on the matter in favour of

Nigeria. We therefore urge the Assembly to take

cognizance of these positive developments.

The present Administration in my country has

continued to make steady progress in the implementation

of its programme of transition to democratic rule. The

fundamental difficulties which faced our nation in its

previous efforts at building a viable democracy are being

progressively addressed, taking into account the objective

realities of our national situation, so as to ensure an

orderly transition and the establishment of durable

democratic structures of governance at all levels in our

country. We are encouraged by the successful outcome of

the elections which were conducted at the local

government level in March this year. The impressive

turnout of voters nationwide and the general atmosphere

of tranquillity prevailing in our country have elicited

goodwill and support from within and outside the country.

Political parties have now been registered and full

political activities have resumed nation-wide. Our

transition to civil rule is now fully on an irreversible

course.

In our resolve to ensure that the evolving democratic

institutions take root in a fertile economic environment,

the Nigerian Government has undertaken economic

reforms aimed at promoting rapid growth and sustainable

development. The overall macroeconomic performance of

the economy has improved with the implementation of

deflationary fiscal and monetary measures. Efforts are

ongoing to establish a conducive environment for the

promotion of investment, both domestic and foreign.

Additionally, in recognition of the vital role of finance in

the attainment of greater economic efficiency, a wholesale

overhaul of the banking and financial services sector has

been undertaken to sanitize this important sector of the

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national economy. It is also worthy of mention that

necessary instruments have been put in place in order to

intensify economic deregulation and create a conducive

environment for domestic and foreign investment.

In the year 2010, Nigeria will be 50 years old as an

independent and sovereign nation. It is envisaged that by

that date, Nigeria will have achieved economic prosperity,

political stability and social harmony. In order to realize

this objective, our Government announced, a few weeks

ago, a new socio-economic campaign, “Vision 2010”, to

provide insights into and articulate the goals and objectives

of our national economy in a macroeconomic format. It is

also intended to focus on the contribution of the private

sector as the engine of growth of our economy. We urge

the international community to give this programme the

necessary support and encouragement.

In order for the United Nations to respond fully to the

purpose for which it was established, there is need to

strengthen the Organization and to reform its principal

organs. Such reform must be system-wide and must be

undertaken not for its own sake but to achieve efficiency

and effectiveness. It should aim to enhance rather than

weaken the capacity of the United Nations to respond

effectively to the legitimate aspirations of all its Members.

A vibrant and responsible United Nations requires an

assured financial base. The failure or unwillingness of

Member States to pay their assessed contributions as and

when due is a dereliction of Charter obligations and a threat

to the survival of the United Nations. For our part, Nigeria

has continued to pay in full and without conditions our

assessed contributions to the regular budget including, in

particular, for the year 1996. We therefore call on all

Member States that have yet to do so to pay their assessed

contributions promptly, in full and without conditions.

For several decades, the Middle East question has

engaged the attention of the international community.

Nigeria has been concerned with the various wars and acts

of terrorism which have brought incalculable loss of life

and property to that region. There can be no question but

that we will continue to support the just struggle of the

Palestinian people for their inalienable right to a homeland.

There is an increasing awareness, even among the countries

of the region, that the right of Israel to live within safe and

secure borders can no longer be denied. We call on all

parties to intensify their efforts to ensure that the peace

process in the Middle East remains on course.

For some time now, the world has been faced with

a new upsurge in terrorist incidents. Nigeria condemns

unreservedly all acts of terrorism in all its manifestations,

as terrorism cannot be a substitute for dialogue and

peaceful negotiations in resolving conflicts and

misunderstandings between nations. We call on the

General Assembly to take additional steps to eradicate the

scourge of this menace, which also constitutes a threat to

international peace and security.

As the principal organ of the United Nations, the

Security Council is in dire need of reform. Its

composition must reflect the principle of equity, balance

and equitable geographical distribution. It must seek to

correct the current anomaly of the non-representation of

Africa in the permanent membership category.

We should, however, be mindful that reform of the

United Nations, particularly in a period of transition, is an

onerous undertaking. My delegation recognizes the vital

role of the office of the Secretary-General in overseeing

this reform process. In spite of the difficulties the United

Nations is passing through and the fluidity of the

international situation, His Excellency Mr. Boutros

Boutros-Ghali has shown uncommon and unrelenting

commitment to meeting the challenges of his office. He

deserves our gratitude and continued support. We

therefore wish to see him complete the laudable changes

he has initiated, some of which are already yielding

useful results. In this connection we reiterate and support

fully the collective African position that Africa should be

given the opportunity to serve two terms in the office of

Secretary-General. For that purpose, Mr. Boutros Boutros-

Ghali is the only candidate recommended by the

Organization of African Unity. Like his predecessors,

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali should be given a second term

to serve our Organization. It is the only credible thing to

do. This is a matter of principle in our country.

My delegation recognizes the enormous tasks facing

the Organization as it seeks to concretely address the

challenges of the twenty-first century, and we wish to

reaffirm Nigeria’s commitment to continue to contribute

effectively to the realization of the Organization’s twin

objectives of global peace and prosperity.