The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said Nigeria has decided to play along with a Chinese “peremptory political scheme,” after the west African country announced that it would no longer recognize Taiwan as a nation and would cease all diplomatic relations in accordance with the “one China” principle.
The ministry in a news release accused Nigeria of seeking to confuse the international community by declaring that it would honor the “one China” principle and sever diplomatic relations with Taipei, as the two nations have never established formal diplomatic ties.
“The ministry strongly protests and deplores the Nigerian government’s cooperation with China to carry out a politically motivated, unreasonable, peremptory and brutal scheme,” it said.
Photo: Reuters
The strongly worded statement followed a joint news conference by Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama and visiting Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) in Abuja on Wednesday, at which they said that Taipei’s office in the capital would be shut down and moved to Lagos, Nigeria.
“Taiwan will not have any diplomatic representation in Nigeria and also they will be moving to Lagos, to the extent that they function as a trade mission with a skeletal staff,” the state-run News Agency of Nigeria quoted Onyeama as saying.
Nigerian officials and organizations have also been banned from having official exchanges with Taiwan.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
At a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning, ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang (王珮玲) urged Nigeria to leave room for follow-up negotiations.
“In an effort to promote a substantial trade relationship, Taiwan and Nigeria inked a memorandum of understanding on mutually establishing trade missions on Nov. 21, 1990,” she said.
In 1991, Taiwan established a trade mission in the then-Nigerian capital, Lagos, before moving it to its new capital, Abuja, after reaching a consensus with the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in August 2001, Eleanor Wang said, adding that since then China has been pressuring Nigeria to relocate Taipei’s office back to Lagos.
Beijing has stepped up efforts to suppress Taipei in the international arena as part of punitive measures over President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) refusal to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus.”
The “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means. Former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted to making up the term in 2000.
Later yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) said that China’s nonsensical tactics were not conducive to improving cross-strait ties and were beneath the great power Beijing claims to be.
The lawmaker went on to ridicule Nigeria’s announcement, saying: “I did not know you could break up with someone without even being in a relationship with them in the first place.”
An internal Nigerian government document detailing the decision had been available since last week, Tsai Shih-ying said, calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to step up its efforts to safeguard Taiwan’s international status.
Separately yesterday, in Guatemala, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺), who is accompanying the president on her ongoing visit to Central America, said China’s pressuring of Taiwan would only raise hackles.
Beijing’s return to its old track — the use of pressure or intimidation — would only antagonize Taiwanese and would not be favorable to the development of cross-strait relations, he added.
“The existence of the Republic of China is an indisputable fact. Applying pressure and intimidation will not change that fact,” Huang said.
Additional reporting by CNA
AIR DEFENSE: The Norwegian missile system has proved highly effective in Ukraine in its war against Russia, and the US has recommended it for Taiwan, an expert said The Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) Taiwan ordered from the US would be installed in strategically important positions in Taipei and New Taipei City to guard the region, the Ministry of National Defense said in statement yesterday. The air defense system would be deployed in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) and New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), the ministry said, adding that the systems could be delivered as soon as the end of this year. The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency has previously said that three NASAMS would be sold to Taiwan. The weapons are part of the 17th US arms sale to
INSURRECTION: The NSB said it found evidence the CCP was seeking snipers in Taiwan to target members of the military and foreign organizations in the event of an invasion The number of Chinese spies prosecuted in Taiwan has grown threefold over a four-year period, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said in a report released yesterday. In 2021 and 2022, 16 and 10 spies were prosecuted respectively, but that number grew to 64 last year, it said, adding that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was working with gangs in Taiwan to develop a network of armed spies. Spies in Taiwan have on behalf of the CCP used a variety of channels and methods to infiltrate all sectors of the country, and recruited Taiwanese to cooperate in developing organizations and obtaining sensitive information
BREAKTHROUGH: The US is making chips on par in yield and quality with Taiwan, despite people saying that it could not happen, the official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has begun producing advanced 4-nanometer (nm) chips for US customers in Arizona, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said, a milestone in the semiconductor efforts of the administration of US President Joe Biden. In November last year, the commerce department finalized a US$6.6 billion grant to TSMC’s US unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona. “For the first time ever in our country’s history, we are making leading edge 4-nanometer chips on American soil, American workers — on par in yield and quality with Taiwan,” Raimondo said, adding that production had begun in recent
Seven hundred and sixty-four foreigners were arrested last year for acting as money mules for criminals, with many entering Taiwan on a tourist visa for all-expenses-paid trips, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Saturday. Although from Jan. 1 to Dec. 26 last year, 26,478 people were arrested for working as money mules, the bureau said it was particularly concerned about those entering the country as tourists or migrant workers who help criminals and scammers pick up or transfer illegally obtained money. In a report, officials divided the money mules into two groups, the first of which are foreigners, mainly from Malaysia