The J.J - Abacha connection

The final settlement on the return of General Sani Abacha’s $1 billion loot to Nigeria, has re-ignited concern about the former Nigerian dictator and Ghana’s former president Jerry John Rawlings.

A report published in “The Nation” a Ghanaian weekly magazine suggests that many Ghanaians are alarmed that the man who was the closest friend and confidant of their former president should be formally unmasked as the biggest looter of public funds in Africa.

Their alarm would be heightened by news from London, where an aide of former British Prime Minister, John Major has made the startling revelation that Rawlings turned an official meeting on Ghana at No. 10 Downing Street into “an astonishing confrontation over the Nigerian dictator.”

“He preferred to defend Abacha than discuss the problems of Ghana for which his official visit had been arranged,” he told The Nation.

The aide worked at No. 10 Downing Street in 1996 when Rawlings paid an official visit to London. In an exclusive interview granted on condition of anonymity, he spoke of the dismay felt in the office of the Prime Minister that Rawlings wasted all the time allowed for discussions on Ghana’s needs in an emotionally charged defence of Abacha.

“As we understood it, Ghana’s economy was already in trouble and Ghanaian officials were doing their best to whip up support in Britain. The foreign and commonwealth office was generally supportive and the official visit of the president was arranged to aid this process.”

In his estimation, Ghanaian officials and the foreign office had put together a good programme, the high point of which was to be the meeting between the president and Prime Minister Major at No. 10 Downing Street.

“The Prime Minister was well briefed and I am sure he was well disposed towards the issues expected to be raised with him. To his utter astonishment Rawlings simply launched into a tirade over Abacha. He accused the Prime Minister of ignorance about Nigeria and defended the policies and human rights record of Abacha. When it was pointed out to him that it was Nigerians themselves who were protesting and calling on the Commonwealth and international community to do something about Abacha, he dismissed them as agents of Western propaganda.

“The meeting turned into an acrimonious exchange over Abacha. There was no way of stopping Rawlings and after a while, the Prime Minister concluded the president did not want to discuss the problems of his country and brought the meeting to a close,” The Nation reports.

According to the magazine, the aide described it as the “most unusual episode in his experience at No. 10 Downing Street. He said Prime Minister Major, usually a calm gentleman, was visibly shaken by the experience.”

“He could not simply comprehend the very emotional defence of a brutal dictator who was killing his own countrymen,” the aide said adding “What baffled us all was that Abacha was more important to him than the problems of Ghana. It was truly astonishing.”

The disclosure, The Nation says is bound to re-ignite concern in Ghana about the financial relations between the two former leaders.

There has been widespread concern in Ghana and Nigeria that Rawlings and his family may have benefited from the Abacha loot. Some Nigeria legislators have raised the issue although the former Nigerian leader military ruler, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar who took over from Abacha has said he had found no evidence of that in his time. But the issue is unlikely to die out easily.