{"id":31777,"date":"2017-01-13T09:41:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T09:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/nigeria-should-consider-asylum-for-yahya-jammeh\/"},"modified":"2017-01-13T09:41:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T09:41:24","slug":"nigeria-should-consider-asylum-for-yahya-jammeh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/nigeria-should-consider-asylum-for-yahya-jammeh\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria should consider asylum for Yahya Jammeh: MPs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria should consider giving asylum to The Gambia&#8217;s President Yahya Jammeh as a way of ending the political crisis in his country, lawmakers said on Thursday.}<\/p>\n<p>A motion passed in the lower chamber House of Representatives gave members&#8217; backing to regional efforts to resolve the dispute, sparked by Jammeh&#8217;s refusal to accept election results.<\/p>\n<p>The MPs said &#8220;the clock is ticking fast&#8221; for The Gambia and there was a need to step up diplomacy, as the possibility of violence and mass displacement threatened West African stability.<\/p>\n<p>They called on Jammeh to &#8220;respect the will of the people&#8221;, who voted for opposition candidate Adama Barrow in the December 1 election.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria&#8217;s President Muhammadu Buhari, who is leading the regional diplomatic effort, should &#8220;extend Nigeria&#8217;s readiness to offer&#8230; Jammeh safe haven in Nigeria to live securely as a way of ending the political stalemate in The Gambia&#8221;, they added.<br \/>\nRelated Content<\/p>\n<p>The motion is not binding on the government and there was no immediate response from Buhari, who is expected to travel to Banjul on Friday for talks.<\/p>\n<p>Buhari&#8217;s Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, said on Tuesday that &#8220;violence should be avoided but nothing is ruled out&#8221; by regional bloc ECOWAS to ensure The Gambia&#8217;s constitution was upheld.<\/p>\n<p>Jammeh has taken legal action against the election result and said he will not step down until his complaint is heard.<\/p>\n<p>That has raised the prospect of months of political deadlock because The Gambia lacks Supreme Court judges to handle the case.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria has previously given asylum to a number of African political leaders, including the Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17579 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/the_gambia_photo.jpg\" alt=\"Gambian&#039;s President Yahya Jammeh in Banjul on November 29, 2016.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria should consider giving asylum to The Gambia&#8217;s President Yahya Jammeh as a way of ending the political crisis in his country, lawmakers said on Thursday.} A motion passed in the lower chamber House of Representatives gave members&#8217; backing to regional efforts to resolve the dispute, sparked by Jammeh&#8217;s refusal to accept election results. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31777"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31777"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}