EDITOR’S
NOTE: Dr Reuben Abati was a
Senior Special Adviser on Media to former President Goodluck Jonathan. Dr Abati,
in this piece, gives an “Insider’s point of view” leadership and management issues
affecting the role of the Nigerian President in foreign policy and on why
Nigeria is considered the “Begin Again” country whereas other countries build
cumulatively toward their strategic objectives. Dr Abati appraises Nigeria’
foreign policy scene and observes “We [Nigerian leaders] 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. . . . 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.”
 |
| President Muhammadu Buhari speaking at an event at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Photo: Philip Ojisua |
By Reuben
Abati (The Guardian, Nigeria)
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 apologize
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.
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.
Originally published in The
Guardian under the "CROSSROADS" Column
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