Anyone who is truly interested in Nigeria’s foreign policy must reflect on our brand new Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Abuja.
Anyone who is truly interested in Nigeria’s foreign policy must reflect on our brand new Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Abuja.
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It was commissioned last March by President Goodluck Jonathan, but I do not really think he knows where it is.
Vice President Namadi Sambo, an architect, must feel he knows the design of the building, but I doubt that. Foreign Minister Olugbenga Ashiru probably feels he knows that the construction of the structure has been completed, but I have proof he does not. None of them speaks about the building because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is something of a ghost.
Some two and a half decades ago, the soldier and poet Mamman Vatsa reigned over Abuja, which was basically a virgin piece of land, diligently implementing the capital city master plan.
For some reason, one Ibrahim Babangida, who called himself President, had Vatsa shot in cold blood by a firing squad. Vatsa was one of his best friends. The allegation was that Vatsa was involved in planning a coup.
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Soon after that, Babangida asked federal Ministries to move from Lagos to Abuja.
Like other ministries, work soon began on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs showpiece as part of the Federal Secretariat. Although the foundation stone was laid in 1990, however, not much happened in the years that followed. In any event, as Nigerians would recall, for much of the early 1990s Babangida was playing his “a-little-to-the-left-and-a-little-to-the-right” game, with all the cards held in his pockets.
By the time Babangida’s full perfidy played out and he was kicked out of office in 1993, many areas of Nigeria’s development had found themselves held hostage either to Babangida’s devious plans, or to his absence of plans.
That included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in Abuja, for which contractors, funds, architectural designs and progress had vanished. It is not clear what happened in the Abacha Years, but in 1998, General Abdussalam Abubakar approved a new budget of N4 billion for the project. That meant revving up new plans, outfitting new contractors, and signing fat new cheques.
Within two years, those new designs had vanished also—along with the funds and contractors involved—because in 2000, President Olusegun Obasanjo did another “review,” and approved another contract for the same project. I do not know exactly how much was voted in those heady months after Obasanjo first took Abuja, but several contractors and reviews later, during Obasanjo’s first term, his re-start of the Foreign Affairs building was again stopped abruptly. By that time, close to N2 billion had again been given away.
It is important to point out that during the “building the building” years, the structure was burned down on three occasions. Evidently, one or two arsonists had found an easy way to the Central Bank. But no investigations were ever undertaken. If they were, they were not completed; if they were ever concluded, those arsonists probably received the only copy, and they knew exactly what to do.
Last March, the building, in its current form, was declared open for business by President Jonathan. He told Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs officers that the edifice would “strengthen the desire of the present administration to re-position Nigeria globally and the defence of the nation's interest as well as the protection of the rights of Nigerians anywhere in the world for which our embassies are our clearing houses.”
Jonathan did not confess that about N13 billion, and probably up to N20 billion, had been spent on an edifice that should not have cost more than N1billion in the early 1990s, or a little more than that only 10 years ago. Instead, “Sound diplomacy,” he preached to the Foreign Service officials, “is a natural complement of our true image which should now be projected relentlessly."
That was a very curious remark to make, for not only does it portend another “Rebrand Nigeria” scheme, it says a lot about the lack of focus in Nigeria’s foreign policy, which is often mistaken by our leaders to be another name for image-laundering.
But even if one were to grant such an error of judgment, it only leads to the truth that the problem with Nigeria’s foreign policy is Nigeria’s domestic policy. Foreign policy has no meaning if domestic policy is in a shambles. And our domestic policy, as exemplified by a thousand stories such as that of the construction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, is the very definition of shambles.
Here is another story, from the same crime scene. Early last year, when Mr. Ojo Maduekwe was leaving office as Foreign Minister, he called for the Ministry to be probed, citing alarming financial recklessness and lack of transparency in the place. He drew the attention of Mr. Jonathan to five of Nigeria’s foreign missions that had been eaten alive by those afflictions, and called for the EFCC to investigate them.
Mr. Jonathan, who seems determined to make a mark as a man who prefers the safety of speeches to the dangers of action, ignored the challenge. At the commissioning speech on March 21, he described the new building as "the masterpiece of great Nigerian architectural design and a monumental diplomatic statement.”
Mr. Jonathan errs. Neither a policy nor a statement does a building make in isolation. Actually, if buildings spoke, our mint-new Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a graveyard crying for one courageous man to rise up and investigate a slaughter it has been compelled to host.
The Ministry’s story is part of a culture in which Nigeria’s foreign policy is not the most important thing in the Ministry, or agriculture in that Ministry, just as governance is obviously not the foremost thing in the government.
While our top government officials make speeches in Abuja, Nigeria’s missions abroad are routinely starved of funds to accomplish anything. Generally keeping a safe distance from Nigerians in the country, fighting for survival becomes the principal business of the ambassador.
But the most scandalous thing in Nigerian diplomacy is that Nigeria’s missions often have no instructions at all. Imagine that: representing a nation abroad with no funds and no instructions from your capital!
But remember, Foreign Affairs is also the Ministry that, a few years ago under Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, sent millions of dollars to pay a debt of a few thousands owed the International Seabed Authority!
As is the usual case, that happened in the full view of the world, the same world that we hope to persuade we have a serious “foreign policy.”
It is the same Ministry that, in 2006, discreetly sold the New York waterfront home of Nigeria’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, valued at about $10million, for $750,000!
The truth is that foreign policy cannot confer what domestic policy denies. I fully expect the Nigerian government to announce that it is seeking “permanent membership” of the United Nations Security Council, despite our loss of place and face not only before the foreign policy community in Abuja, but at the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States that we used to dominate.
We will make grandiose speeches about how important Nigeria is when we cannot protect one Nigerian life in Aba or Jos, let alone Kuala Lumpur or Buenos Aires.
That is ambition punching itself in the face.
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