Meeting with Mr. President

Also published in Daily Trust  

On the last day of President Muhammadu Buhari’s recently concluded three-day official visit to the United Arab Emirates, I was among a group of UAE-based Nigerian professionals, businessmen and students who had an audience with him at the ultra-luxurious Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the UAE.

Though the event ran quite smoothly, however, organizationally speaking, it left a lot to be desired anyway, which was though disappointing, it wasn’t actually surprising after all especially for those familiar with the way Nigerians generally organize events.

Having had to drive through the usual morning rush-hour traffic congestion on Sharjah-Dubai axis on my to Abu Dhabi, I set out early in the morning covering a distance of about 145km, and arrived at the Embassy of Nigeria where the event had been initially scheduled to take place before it was abruptly relocated to the Emirates Palace Hotel a few hours before its commencement, supposedly on the advice of the UAE authorities who were apparently dissatisfied with the Nigerian embassy’s arrangement to host the event in its premises. Apparently also, the UAE offered Nigerian embassy the Emirates Palace Hotel instead at no cost to host the event out of diplomatic magnanimity. 

Incidentally, the embassy had simply erected a canopy in its compound and arranged some chairs under and around it. Though the embassy, being a Nigerian government department, was expected to adhere to government’s austerity policy, the venue it had arranged to host the event was simply too modest to host the President even though he would probably not be bothered about its modesty due his exceptional sense of humility. Yet, in light of the availability of alternative venues that could have been rented at very reasonable cost in the city, the embassy could have rented a more befitting venue for the event to take place. 

Anyway, I proceeded to the new venue at the Emirates Palace Hotel where I joined other UAE-based Nigerians at the hotel’s lobby where everybody would be screened before proceeding to the conference hall. Actually, there were two teams of plain-clothes security personnel; Nigerian security agents who accompanied President Buhari and their UAE counterparts respectively.

While the Nigerian security agents would check and verify the identity of everybody to ensure that his name was indeed included in the list of the people invited to the event before he could proceed further, their UAE counterparts stationed at the security entrance towards the conference hall would search him with electronic devices. Predictably, the process was unfortunately rowdy on the part of Nigerian security agents, which affected the smooth running of the exercise as their UAE counterparts betrayed frustration. 

 

Yet, even before the screening exercise fully began, I noticed an odd incident when the Minister of Power, Housing and Works, Babatunde Fashola arrived. After exchanging greetings with us and when he got to the security check-point manned by the UAE security personnel he was equally subjected to the same security search procedure before he was allowed to pass. He was made to spread out his arms wide as an electronic security search device was being run over his body.

I was sure that the UAE security personnel who searched him never knew that he was a serving minister accompanying the president. Strangely enough also, none of the Nigerian officials out there appeared to have considered the incident odd, let alone draw the attention of the UAE security personnel. Knowing that it could have been easily avoided had the Nigerian officials out there handled the situation professionally, I felt quite embarrassed and quietly voiced my disappointment to some friends.

Yet again, when the minister of state for petroleum resources and the group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu also arrived he was equally subjected to the same embarrassing security screening procedure. Also, though I had already been screened when the other ministers showed up, I was almost certain that they were equally subjected to the same screening procedure.

In standard diplomatic and protocol tradition, top government officials representing their respective countries abroad are considered symbols of their respective countries hence they are accorded befitting treatment accordingly. Also, even when they have to undergo any security screening for instance, the circumstances of the applicable procedure in their cases are exclusively special.

Obviously, Nigerian officials on official missions abroad tend to get unnecessarily excited and overwhelmed at the expense of their own rightful entitlements as provided in relevant international diplomatic protocols. Their attitudes therefore affect their ability to serve, promote and protect the country’s interests abroad. Consequently they consciously or unconsciously expose the county to disdain in the eyes of the international community.

For instance, a fortnight earlier I was at the same embassy in Abu Dhabi to renew my passport where I noticed that even the official portrait of President Buhari that used to be conspicuously hanging on the wall in the consular section of the embassy was missing while, ironically, the official portrait of the UAE’s president was hanging next to the empty space on the wall where President Buhari’s portrait was supposed to, or rather, should be hanging.

Though it was not clear why the portrait was missing, yet in any case even if it accidentally dropped off the wall and got damaged for instance, the UAE president’s official portrait next to it should have also be removed pending the reinstallation of that of Nigeria’s president. One can imagine the impression that that silly omission would leave on the foreigners frequenting the embassy for various consular services e.g. Nigerian visa applicants.

Albeit many particularly home-based Nigerians may consider things like these too trivial to be bothered about in the face of the enormous challenges facing the country, the reality is that, Nigeria simply can’t actually attract appropriate amount of respect globally with the kind of disorderliness and inferiority complex that define the attitudes of most of its officials on official missions aboard.