Viola Onwuliri, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs – Photo: Channelstv
PANA
Lagos, Nigeria – Angered by the reported killing of three of its nationals in Guinea-Bissau Tuesday over their alleged role in the disappearance of a boy and the attack on the country’s embassy in Bissau, Nigeria has ordered an investigation into the incidents.
President Goodluck Jonathan directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to order the Nigerian Ambassador in Guinea-Bissau to take up the matter with the country’s authorities.
The investigation will continue even though Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Viola Onwuliri said Guinea-Bissau apologised to Nigeria for the killings and the embassy attack.
“The report we have is that aggrieved citizens attacked the Nigerian embassy with clubs, stones and other dangerous objects. We have protested to the government of Guinea-Bissau. Their (Guinea-Bissau) government has apologised,” PANA quoted the Minister as telling the local Punch newspaper Thursday.
“We have also asked for full scale investigation so that the perpetrators will be brought to book. Their foreign minister has visited our embassy to apologise. We believe the investigation will reveal the identity of the perpetrators and their motives,” she said.
The Minister said the suspects who had been arrested in connection with the kidnapping in Guinea-Bissau were non-Nigerians.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly (parliament) has advised the Nigerian government to demand full explanation of the killing.
“Extrajudicial killings must be condemned .This cannot be less so when Nigerians are killed extra-judicially in foreign lands,” said Senate Leader Victor Ndoma-Egba. “In this case, one of the victims was photographed as being in the custody of the Guinea-Bissau Police. How did the mob get him if the police were not complicit?”
For her part, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on the Foreign Affairs, Ms. Linda Ukeje, said the attack on Nigeria’s embassy in Bissau constituted an attack on Nigeria.
”When people come and invade your mission, then it is assumed that they have invaded Nigeria. We are going to look at it very, very, strenuously. It is not going to be glossed over; we are going to open up diplomatic conversation between the Nigerian government and the Guinea-Bissau government,” she said.
