Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo is heading to Ethiopia with a view to starting negotiations between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
Confirming the development to newsmen, Kehinde Akinyemi, the spokesperson to the Ex-President of the federal republic of Nigeria said: “He is going there for mediation” but did not give any more details.
Obasanjo’s proposed mediation comes not long after Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni proposed talks and then deleted the tweet of his proposal.
Ethiopia’s government has been very firm that it is not interested in talking to the TPLF, arguing that the party, which is in power in Tigray, has resisted a peaceful resolution of the differences with the federal government over the past two years.
Ethiopia’s state minister of foreign affairs, Redwan Hussein, told journalists in Addis Ababa that “Any mediation effort will stimulate impunity and unruliness,” adding that “Any country would not sit down with part of the country that boldly claims to have rockets and missiles and vows to attack.”