BIDEN TO BEGIN WITH NIGERIA

Adejumo kabir 

November 16, 2020

IPT

08:40GMT

US-based professors urge Biden to sanction Nigerian officials implicated in attack on the peaceful endsars protesters.

The scholars want targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, placed on politicians, officials and other Nigerians implicated in recent human rights abuses.

Eighty-one scholars of African Studies have written a letter to the United States President-elect, Joe Biden, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, urging their incoming administration to impose a travel ban on Nigerian officials culpable in the attack by security personnel on peaceful EndSARS protesters.

The scholars sent the letter to the Biden-Harris Transition Team on November 13.

They said the abuse of protesters’ rights demands unequivocal diplomatic condemnation from the United States.

“Such gross human rights violations require additional action by the United States to eliminate any complicity with official actions blatantly at odds with American foreign policy principles, to advance the work of democratic reform in Nigeria, and to reinforce our shared obligations to international human rights agreements,” the letter reads in part.

Signatories to the letter include Carl LeVan of the American University, Chiedo Nwankwor of Johns Hopkins-SAIS; Patrick Ukata of the Halsik Group, Rita “Kiki” Edozie of University of Massachusetts, Boston; and Olufemi Vaughan of Amherst College.

But even as that investigation is ongoing, the federal government has begun a clampdown on promoters of the protests by seizing their international passports, freezing their bank accounts and arresting some individuals.