Morocco has recalled its ambassador to Nigeria, in a row over whether
the president of Nigeria is trying to use the king of
Morocco to win
over Muslim voters before Nigeria’s elections this month.
Last
week, the Moroccan royal palace said the king had declined a request for
a telephone conversation with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.
Nigeria’s foreign ministry denied the snub on Monday and said the two
leaders had spoken extensively.
Jonathan, a Christian from
southern Nigeria, will face former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a
Muslim northerner, in elections on March 28. The election is expected to
be the most closely fought since the end of military rule in 1999.
Nigeria’s
population is roughly split between Christians and Muslims. Both
parties, the ruling People’s Democratic Party and the All Progressives
Congress, have been using religion to bolster support.
“Morocco
confirms, in the clearest and strongest terms, that there has never been
a phone conversation between the King Mohammed VI and the president of
this country,” a statement from the Moroccan foreign ministry said.
The
Nigerian foreign ministry said it was “preposterous to suggest that Mr.
President’s telephone call to the Moroccan monarch was intended to
confer any electoral advantage.”
A spokesman for the ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the recall.
Morocco
cited “the hostile, recurrent and unfriendly positions of the Nigerian
government with regard to the Moroccan Sahara issue and the sacred
Arab-Muslim causes” as a reason for declining Jonathan’s call.
Nigeria
is one of the main supporters, along with Algeria and South Africa on
the continent, of the independence movement Polisario Front in the
disputed Western Sahara.
The territory is a tract of desert the
size of Britain that has lucrative phosphate reserves and possibly oil,
is the focus of Africa’s longest-running territorial dispute, between
Morocco and the Polisario guerrillas.
Source:PM News
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