I read an
interesting article recently in which the author, objecting to President
Muhammadu Buhari’s frequent travels abroadpointed 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 theconcerns
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.
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 havetoyed 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 challengelies in getting our acts together and tying up the loose ends in
terms of sustainable policy choices, infrastructure, culture, leadership, and
strategic engagement.
DR REUBEN ABATI IS A JOURNALIST AND FORMER MEDIA AIDE TO EX PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN
Tags
Columnists