AU, ASUU urge Morocco to free Western Sahara

ASUU President, Nasir Fagge

The President, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Dr. Nasir Fagge, and other African Union leaders have intensified calls for the liberation of Western Sahara which has remained under the occupation of the Moroccan government for over 30 years.

Western Sahara is documented as Africa’s last colony still under colonisation by Morocco since 1975.

Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja during a two-day international conference on the decolonisation of Western Sahara, the ASUU President said stakeholders should not relent in mounting pressure on the government of Morocco to ensure that the colonisation of Western Saharawi did not extend beyond 2015.

Fagge said, “We will make sure that Western Sahara is liberated and declared truly independent before 2015 elapses. I’m confident that this approach that we have started today is an approach that will make inputs into deliberations on Western Sahara at the African Union and the United Nations. We will make sure that the colonisation of Western Sahara does not extend beyond 2015.”

Meanwhile, the AU Chairman and President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has said the AU is disappointed at the absence of any new initiative on the part of the UN to give fresh impetus to the demand for the sovereignty of Western Sahara.

The Zimbabwean President, represented at the conference by the country’s Envoy to Nigeria, Lovemore Mazemo, said AU was more disappointed that some big countries that often make the loudest noise regarding peoples’ right were tacitly supporting Morocco’s colonialist’s tendencies.

“They appear to watch with approval whilst the rights of the Sahara people are being trampled upon all these years,” he said.

The keynote speaker and former Nigerian Permanent Representative to the UN, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, while defending the role of Nigeria in the struggle for Sahara, said Nigeria had constitutional right to fight for the liberation of other African countries.

In his presentation entitled, “Nigeria, Africa and the Saharawi Question,” Gambari said the Saharawi people had the right to exercise their inalienable right to self determination.

He challenged the UN Security Council to live up to its expectations by ensuring that a referendum was conducted and passed to guarantee the independence of the Saharawi people.