Nigerian legislators voted Thursday to offer asylum to Gambia’s longtime leader, who is refusing to cede power after losing elections.
Legislators confirmed the vote in favour of authorizing Nigeria’s leader to offer safe haven to President Yahya Jammeh.
The offer would “strengthen the hand” of President Muhammadu Buhari in negotiating with Jammeh, said Sani Zoro Mohammed, the legislator who sponsored the motion.
On Friday, Buhari is heading a delegation of the Economic Community of West African States to Gambia to try to negotiate a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, seen as a test of democracy in a region once populated by military dictators.
The West Africa regional bloc also has a military force on standby to intervene if Jammeh does not step down when his mandate expires January 19.
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Jammeh took power in a coup in 1994 and is accused of gross rights violations including arbitrary detentions, torture and the killings of opponents in the tiny country of 1.9 million people.
He initially accepted defeat in the December 1 election and publicly congratulated winner Adama Barrow, the candidate of an opposition coalition.
But then Jammeh changed his mind, ordered troops to take over the electoral commission office and challenged election results at the Supreme Court.
The court, short of judges, has said it might not be able to consider that challenge until May, and Jammeh says Gambia should await its decision.
Jammeh might be wary of a Nigerian promise of safe haven.
Nigeria offered asylum to Liberian warlord Charles Taylor in 2003 to help end the civil war he started in 1989 but was forced by international pressure to hand Taylor over in 2006 for trial for war crimes committed in Sierra Leone.
Taylor was convicted in 2013 and is serving a 50-year sentence in a British prison.
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