Check Your Facts

THE Political Perspective of Friday, 13 July 2012, ‘It must be said from the outset that I don’t agree with ‘payback’, by Gwen Lister contains factual errors.

It states that “in 2006, at the behest of former President Sam Nujoma, Namibia made a similar ‘gift’ to Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, of some 250 wildlife”. To my knowledge, General Sani Abacha died eight year earlier on 8 June 1998. He could not have been around in 2006 to be promised gifts of wildlife.
The Nigerian President at the time was Olusegun Obasanjo who had only one year left in his second term. Again, former President Sam Nujoma was not in government in 2006 to offer gifts to General Sani Abacha who by then died eight years earlier.

Jerobeam Shaanika
By email
 
Lister agrees with the correction. The column should have said the wildlife was ‘pledged’ to General Sani Abacha when he visited Namibia in the mid-1990s but delivery happened during the time of General Olusegun Obasanjo. - Editor

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