I read an interesting article recently in which the
author, objecting to President Muhammadu Buhari’s frequent travels
abroad pointed out that Presidential spokespersons since 1999, including
this writer, have always justified such trips using essentially the
same arguments. The fellow quoted copiously and derisively from my State
House press statements and an article by me titled “The Gains of
Jonathan’s Diplomacy”.
Those who object to Presidential travels abroad do so
for a number of reasons: (a) the cost on the grounds of frequency and
size of estacode-collecting delegation, with multiple officers
performing the same function tagging along on every trip, (b) the need
to make better use of diplomats in foreign missions and Foreign Ministry
officials who can act in delegated capacity; (c) the failure to see the
immediate and long-term gains of Presidential junket, thus creating the
impression of a jamboree or mindless tourism, and (d) the conviction
that the President needs to stay at home to address urgent domestic
challenges, rather than live out of a suitcase, in the air. While these
reasons may seem understandable, arising as they are from anxieties
about reducing wastage and increasing governmental efficiency for the
people’s benefit, I still insist that Presidential trips are important,
and that by travelling abroad, the President is performing a perfectly
normal function.
We may however, complain about abuses and the
reduction of an important function to tourism for after all, in eight
years, President Bill Clinton of the United States travelled only 54
times – only by Nigerian standards, but we must also admit that
the President is the country’s chief diplomat. In our constitutional
democracy, he is the main articulator and implementer of the country’s
foreign policy. He appoints ambassadors who function in their various
posts as his representatives. He also receives other country’s
ambassadors. Emissaries from other countries or multilateral
organizations consider their visits incomplete without an audience with
the President, and it is his message that they take back home.
He visits other Presidents and he also gets visited
by other world leaders; an interaction that provides him an opportunity
to give effect to Section 19 of the 1999 Constitution which defines the
objectives of Nigeria’s Foreign Policy. In doing this, he is expected to
strengthen relationships with other countries, at government to
government and people to people levels in the national interest.
The President is also the country’s chief
spokesperson, and that is why what he says, or what he does when he is
negotiating within the international arena on Nigeria’s behalf is of
great consequence, and this is particularly why on at least two
occasions recently, Nigerians were inconsolably upset when their
President chose a foreign stage to put down his own country, and people.
This clarification of the role of the President as the country’s chief
diplomat may sound didactic, and I apologise if it comes across as
pedantic, but this is necessary for the benefit of those who may be
tempted to assume that the job of a President is to sit in one place at
home and act as a mechanic and ambulance chaser. The concerns that have
been expressed however point to something far more complex, and I seek
to now problematize aspects of it.
One of the concerns often expressed is that the trips
that have been made by our Presidents since 1999 look too much alike.
It is as if every President that shows up, embarks on exactly the same
junket to the same locations, for the same reasons: foreign direct
investment, agriculture, security, co-operation etc. etc. accompanied by
a large retinue that includes many of the same officials who travelled
with the former President and had prepared the same MOUs that will be
signed again, with the new spokespersons telling us the same story all
over again.
Nigerians are therefore not impressed with the
seeming conversion of the country’s foreign policy process into a
money-guzzling ritual. This, I think, is the crux of the matter. Whereas
our foreign policy objective talks about national interest, what
constitutes that national interest has been blurry and chameleonic in
the last 55 years and more so since the return to civilian rule in
1999. National interest has been replaced majorly by personal interest
and it is the worst tragedy that can befall a country’s foreign policy
process. We run a begin-again foreign relations framework because every
new President wants to make his own mark. The second point is that he is
compelled to do so because in any case, we do not have a strong
institution to follow up on existing agreements. The international
community knows this quite well, and more serious nations being more
strategic and determined in the pursuit of their own interests will
bombard a new Nigerian President with invitations to visit. They also
know that a new President in Nigeria is likely to cancel or suspend
existing agreements or contracts being executed by their nationals. The
uncertainty that prevails in Nigeria is so well known, such that the
gains recorded by one administration are not necessarily
institutionalized.
We may have thus reduced foreign policy to individual
heroism, which is sad, but institutions and human capital within this
arena are critical.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, once a glorious institution is a shadow of its old self. The politicization of that Ministry has done great damage. When a President visits a country, and enters into agreements that result in Memoranda of Understanding, it is expected that there will be follow up action to be taken by officials either through Bilateral Commissions (where they exist between Nigeria and the respective country) or the issuance of instruments of ratification, leading to due implementation. Nigeria signs all kinds of documents but so many details and agreements are left unattended to. There is too much politics in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and too much rivalry between career foreign affairs personnel and the politicians who do not allow them to function as professionals. This has to stop, otherwise every new President has to start again and embark on trips that should have been taken care of at the level of bilateral commissions or the ministry.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, once a glorious institution is a shadow of its old self. The politicization of that Ministry has done great damage. When a President visits a country, and enters into agreements that result in Memoranda of Understanding, it is expected that there will be follow up action to be taken by officials either through Bilateral Commissions (where they exist between Nigeria and the respective country) or the issuance of instruments of ratification, leading to due implementation. Nigeria signs all kinds of documents but so many details and agreements are left unattended to. There is too much politics in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and too much rivalry between career foreign affairs personnel and the politicians who do not allow them to function as professionals. This has to stop, otherwise every new President has to start again and embark on trips that should have been taken care of at the level of bilateral commissions or the ministry.
Career foreign affairs personnel are critical to the
shaping of foreign policy. They are the agents through which states
communicate with each other, negotiate, and sustain relationships. The
only thing they complain about in that Ministry is lack of money. It is
the same with the Missions abroad. Give them money, but there is always a
greater need for professionalism, which makes the diplomats of
Nigeria’s golden era so sad. The foreign policy process also works
better when there is Inter-Ministerial and Intra-governmental
collaboration. The tendency in Nigeria is for every department of
government to operate as an independent foreign policy unit. Government
officials get invited to functions by foreign embassies, without
clearance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and they just troop
there to eat free food, but they never keep their mouths shut. Nigerian
officials are probably the most talkative in the world and with
foreigners, they will offer their mother’s life history to make them
appear important. That is not how to run foreign relations. There must
be control, co-ordination, discipline, clarity and sanctions.
Every world leader wants to meet the Nigerian
President. Nigeria is a strategic market and a very cheap one too, a
source of raw materials and a dumping ground for finished products, with
a consumptive population. Our balance sheet in all our relationships is
unbalanced even in Africa, which we once described as the centerpiece
of our foreign policy. We have toyed with many slogans: dynamic
diplomacy, economic diplomacy, concentric circles of medium powers,
citizen diplomacy, transformational diplomacy, what else/- the
Buharideens are yet to come up with their own, but you wait, they will
soon come up with something- really, the truth is that Nigeria’s foreign
policy process is not strategic or competitive enough.
Within Africa, it is driven by too much kindness
rather than enlightened self-interest, or deliberate search for
sustainable advantages. A Donatus mentality has seen Nigeria over the
years looking out for its African neighbours, donating money, supporting
their causes, but Nigeria has gained little from this charity-driven
diplomacy. Many of the countries we have helped to build openly despise
us at international meetings, they struggle for positions with Nigeria,
they humiliate our citizens in diaspora, and when they return later to
beg for vehicles, or money to pay their civil servants or run elections,
we still oblige them. The attempt in recent years to review all of
this, and be more strategic should be sustained.
We must wield the carrot
and the stick more often. American Presidents don’t just visit other
countries, they make statements and often alter the course of history
with their mere presence as Kennedy did with his visit to Berlin in
1963, Nixon in China in 1972, Jimmy Carter going to Iran in 1977, George
Bush, visiting Mexico in 2001, and Obama in Cuba in 2016. In the
international arena, we give the impression that we are ready to jump at
any and every invitation in order to be seen to be friendly, but we
tend to overdo this. Foreign Affairs Ministry officials who want to be
seen to be doing something will always try to convince the President to
embark on all trips. The dream of every Ambassador on foreign posting is
also to have his President visit, even if once during his or her
tenure. The resident Ambassador is happy, the Foreign Affairs folks get
quality eye-time with the President but the hosts look at us and wonder
what is wrong with our country signing the same agreements with the
emergence of every President and not being able to act.
It does not help either that with every new
President, we talk about reviewing Nigeria’s Foreign Policy. We are
probably the only country in the world that is always reviewing Foreign
Policy and informing the whole world. That should be the routine work of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nigeria Institute of
International Affairs, with inputs from the Nigerian Institute of Policy
and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA),
and the Presidential Advisory Committee on Foreign Affairs.
We must never lose sight of a necessary linkage
between domestic policy and foreign policy. What exactly is in it for
the average Nigerian, for the Nigerian economy and for Nigeria? Do we
have the capacity to maximize gains from foreign interactions? Always,
the real challenge lies in getting our acts together and tying up the
loose ends in terms of sustainable policy choices, infrastructure,
culture, leadership, and strategic engagement.
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