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In a sudden turn, Nigeria announced the capture of former Liberian President Charles Taylor early March 29. Word of Taylor's capture came just hours after Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said Taylor was missing.
Obasanjo's difficult decision to hand Taylor over came after the United States made it clear to the Nigerian leader that he had to produce Taylor, or else suffer irreparable damage to his credibility. This about-face occurred at time when Washington appears to be shifting its affections from Nigeria toward an old darling in West Africa: Liberia.
The official Nigerian story March 28 that Taylor had escaped continues to seem suspicious. Taylor had been in exile in Nigeria under a 2003 deal brokered by the United States inducing him to relinquish power in exchange for asylum.
Turning over Taylor was not previously in Obasanjo's best interest, as Taylor could have, and could still, create major headaches for Obasanjo and the rest of West Africa. That calculus changed, however, when both the White House and the U.S. State Department attacked Nigeria for its mishandling of the situation and threatened that meetings scheduled for Obasanjo's March 29 visit to Washington would be canceled. Suddenly, Nigeria went from recommending the establishment of a panel to investigate Taylor's disappearance to capturing Taylor near the northeastern town of Gamboru-Ngala, on Nigeria's border with Cameroon.
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