Re: Taiwan’s exclusion from WHA undermines global health

By Charles Onunaiju

 

SIR: The article written by the U.S ambassador to Nigeria, H.E Mary Berth Leonard with the title, “Taiwan’s Exclusion from WHA undermines Global Health” and published in some newspapers is curious, because the distinguished U.S ambassador certainly know why “Taiwan remains excluded from international organizations such as the World Health Organization, WHO…”.

The passionate advocacy of the U.S envoy canvassed in the article with spurious claim that “to prevent Taiwan’s participation in the WHA,” would “leave the world, the World Health Organization, and Nigeria worse off”, does not ring true, especially in the light that over 150 countries, including Nigeria, explicitly supports the one China Policy and the fact that the WHO is an international organization of only sovereign countries and Taiwan is not a sovereign country.

Since the breakout of the Covid-19 pandemic, United States was among few countries to seriously turn down international cooperation to contain the pandemic and even walked out of the main international institution WHO, whose core mandate includes mobilizing global solidarity in response to the pandemic. The U.S was among the first countries to fly out her citizens out of the former epicentre of the disease, Wuhan and slammed border closure against all others. This early poor, hysterical and politically motivated response to the pandemic made the U.S to pay an unnecessarily and obviously unavoidable high price for the rampaging pandemic.

Now playing the Taiwan card is an extension of the U.S politically motivated response to the pandemic but this more insidious and toxic variant, which aims at undermining sovereign and territorial integrity of a key member of the international community is dangerous. Nigeria would certainly not fall for it and this is why.

Despite there is wide room for extending the frontiers of China-Nigeria bilateral cooperation, the relation between the two countries is currently at its historic best. Nigeria took the firm and responsible position to reaffirm its One-China Policy in 2017 when it expressly directed the Taiwan trade office in Abuja, to relocate its office to Nigeria’s commercial hub in Lagos, after it was discovered the trade office was engaging in surreptitious political activities that is both inconsistent with its status  and which also undermined Nigeria’s one-China policy which explicitly recognizes that there is only one China in the world and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that if there is any issue between the central government of the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing and its region of Taiwan, it is the internal affairs of China. Nigeria however, has a trade agreement with Taiwan just as several Nigerian states have subsisting trade agreements with other countries in the world but without an iota of pretense to diplomatic representation.

The 24 million residents of Taiwan are Chinese and if as a result of historic leftovers, there are issues between the central government and the region the Taiwan Island, that does not mean that both people across the straits are of different nationalities.

Nigeria through its well thought out one-China policy recognizes that the 1.4 billion on the mainland and the 24 million on the island are of one Chinese nation under the sovereign state of the Peoples Republic of China with its internationally recognized government in Beijing. However, a clique of extremely ambitious politicians in the Taiwan region of China seek desperately to undermine the broadly shared sentiments among all Chinese people by canvassing for independent Taiwan. And the article of the U,S ambassador to Nigeria seeks to lend support to the creation of two Chinas or one China, One Taiwan which offends not only the Chinese people across the straits but also global consensus on the One China principle, which the United States affirmed in the joint Shanghai communique signed on the 27th of February 1972.

If the United States has decided against the trends of contemporary international system, which is essentially cooperation to engage China in a cold war as the body language of Washington indicate and the article of the U.S ambassador to Nigeria suggest, Nigeria should make it known that the country does not intend to become any such theatre.

To glamourize separatist activities anywhere in the world and even using the Nigeria’s hospitable disposition to advance it, is to demonstrate insensitivity to the country’s current challenges which includes separatists’ agitations.

Nigeria and China pragmatic cooperation for its elaborate practical and tangible outcomes have become part of the crucial fabrics of the respective national life of the two countries and therefore, obviously not available for disruptions.

• Charles Onunaiju, Abuja.

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