Embassy Demolition: Nigeria decides to punish Ghana

In what Nigeria’s House of Reps described as external aggression, a bulldozer charged into Nigeria’s embassy in Ghana, levelled the house under construction, and police later came only to gawk at the destruction.

This eyewitness account has pitted Nigeria against its neighbor Ghana in a diplomatic row that might require invocation of international laws and treaties to settle.

According to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs chairman Yusuff Buba, Ghana must face consequences for that action.

Ghana, he said, “violated many articles in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1949 and, therefore, must be sanctioned”.

The Ghanaian authorities claimed that unknown persons carried out the act on the building sitting on about four hectares of land Nigeria properly acquired from Ghana.

Buba however quoted a witness who narrated how a heavy-duty bulldozer arrived at the diplomatic premises at late hours of the night and broke through the gate.

He noted that efforts were made by members of the Nigeria Mission to report what was ongoing to both the Ghana Police Service and their Foreign Affairs Ministry.

“No reprieve, we were told, came the way of the Nigerian diplomats. We further learnt that, even when the Police finally arrived at the scene, they could not do anything,” he said.

The chairman condemned the act as “trespass”.

“We shall deploy all legislative means, including exploring and invoking all necessary rules, regulations and instruments that guide our common membership in other parliaments, to compel Ghana to answer for this act of gross violation,” he said.