Ambassadorship for the sake of it

Also published in Daily Trust

Now that another list of Nigerian ambassadorial nominees has been released, a look into the Nigerian diplomacy and the pattern of appointing Nigerian ambassadors and high commissioners reveals how such appointments are, in most cases, made just for the sake of it, instead of pursuing any specific foreign policy.

Obviously, Nigerian ambassadors and high commissioners are either carrier diplomats i.e. civil servants who have built their careers in diplomacy and risen through the ranks to become ambassadors, or non-career diplomats i.e. those appointed from different carrier backgrounds most of whom are either defeated candidates compensated with ambassadorial appointments, or political allies rewarded for their contributions to the election victory of the ruling party. The successive civilian administrations and military regimes in the country have maintained this tradition, which the current administration under President Buhari appears to equally maintain.
 

The performances of both the career diplomats and their non-career colleagues would always reflect the mediocrity that characterizes the process of appointing them, as it would always reflect the country’s apparently unambitious foreign policy as well. This explains why Nigerian diplomacy has failed to earn the country a befitting recognition on the world stage, or generate appropriate economic gains for it, i.e. appropriate amount of wealth-creating direct and indirect foreign investments in the country’s real economic sector, as it has also failed to protect the country’s interests abroad or even change its embarrassingly bad image in the eyes of the international community.

Besides, Nigerian diplomacy has failed on the few occasions the country has attempted to reform its foreign policy supposedly with a view to achieving some specific objectives. For instance, former President Jonathan’s Citizen-Centric Diplomacy, which, as its name implies, was intended to reform the country’s foreign policy with a view to making it citizen-centric, failed and the policy was soon abandoned, even though there was hardly any concrete indication that it had actually been pursued in the first place.

It’s pertinent to note that, the failure of Nigerian diplomacy has nothing to do with the real or perceived incompetence of Nigerian ambassadors and high commissioners who are, after all, either supposedly trained career diplomats or non-career diplomats who are equally trained in their respective fields of study or, at least, well-experienced in other endeavours. Instead, the failure of Nigerian diplomacy has to do with the Nigerian successive governments’ apparent and certainly erroneous assumption that the country can achieve its objectives and defend its interests in its bilateral and multilateral diplomatic commitments through mere official diplomatic engagements. It’s on the bases of this gullible assumption that it appoints its ambassadors and high commissioners who, in turn, conduct the business of diplomacy accordingly.

Whereas, in modern-day business of diplomacy, responsible and ambitious countries don’t count on the usual official diplomatic negotiations to pursue and defend their respective interests in bilateral and multilateral diplomatic platforms, in fact, they apparently regard such official diplomatic activities as mere formalities, and indeed regard the posh diplomatic enclaves where such activities are conducted as mere platforms where painstakingly polished, elegantly dressed and eloquent diplomats seek to outperform one another in sweet-talking skills for media and public consumption. Such responsible and ambitious countries are simply too realistic to be carried away by such things in international relations. They, therefore, adopt appropriate and effective strategies in their respective diplomatic engagements to gain maximum economic, political and other benefits at minimum cost.

Nigeria simply needs to wise up to this fact and come up with appropriate diplomatic strategies smart and robust enough to enable it to efficiently handle the challenges in contemporary international relations.  This is not only necessary as dictated by the circumstances of modern-day interdependent global socio-political and economic interests, but equally indispensable as well, especially as the country is supposedly adopting socio-political and economic reforms the success of which depends, to a large extent, on the amount of regional and global cooperation it can secure and benefit from.

Besides, its ongoing struggle to get out of its current economic recession and develop its economy, its ongoing war on terror and against economic saboteurs in the Niger-Delta as well as other looming security challenges in the country, its efforts to retrieve the stolen public funds stashed in foreign countries and indeed its commitment to change the international community’s perception on it and its citizens, underscore the urgent need for it to leverage its regional and global engagements in order to achieve the maximum strategic benefits achievable in such engagements. 

For it to achieve this, however, it needs to, among other things, reform its pattern of appointing its ambassadors and high commissioners. It needs to realize the need to identify and appoint people with proven and extensive network of influential friends, as ambassadors; each in the country where he maintains the best network of influential connections. This is because personal connection matters a lot, if not more than any other thing, in the business of diplomacy, which is all about lobbying after all. Appointing such Nigerians as ambassadors especially in major world powers and other influential countries is particularly important now.

Meanwhile, serving Nigerian career and non-career ambassadors and diplomats should be encouraged to change their attitudes toward the officials of their respective host countries, because a typical Nigerian ambassador or diplomat aboard behaves like a glorified messenger and as though he owes his appointment to his host country. Nigeria should also adopt an effective policy for engaging influential lobby groups especially in some major western capitals e.g. Washington DC, London, Paris etc, as well as Beijing in China, of course, to push for its interests on its behalf, as many countries do.