P rofessor Bolaji Akinyemi was   Foreign Affairs Minister during the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida administration.
As a foreign policy expert, Sunday Vanguard went after him in the wake of the Wikileaks saga last week and made some startling discoveries about Nigeria’s foreign policy slipshod.

For Professor Akinyemi who had just penultimate weekend delivered a lecture at Nigeria’s National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, near Jos Plateau State, where he made it clear that the political leadership in Nigeria does not have any serious stake in the survival of the nation because there is no commitment on the part of the leadership that Nigeria should, or will survive.

Therefore, Akinyemi declares: “Let me give you another example which I had personally taken up with the people involved.

During the Third Term Tenure Elongation brouhaha, a group of your senators who were opposed to the tenure elongation actually were going from one western embassy to another asking for their support to block the Third term project and I have approached one of the leading senators and I told him

I am ashamed of him because he used to be a leading radical, opposed to neo-colonialism, that he was a comrade but yet, you were a leader of the group of senators and worse still, they were not meeting with ambassadors but they were meeting with third or fourth secretaries in the embassies. What do you expect them to think of the senate, the senate, a concept we borrowed from the Romans, the highest body in the land”.

But that was not all.

On the purported meeting between then Acting President Goodluck Jonathan and American Ambassador Robin Sanders, Akinyemi says:

“In specific terms, you have a man in Aso Rock who felt threatened by forces that were outside his control and who, probably was depending on Americans for information about what was happening around him and his boss because there was nobody whom he felt he could trust, so, you are beholding to the lady sitting in front of you even though you are the Acting President of the most populous black nation on Earth. There are people who know more about what is going on in Aso Rock more than the occupant of that office”.

On the Electoral Reform Committee work and the present perfidy in the polity, Akinyemi sounds a note of warning: “I feel sorry for this country with the way things are going because there are going to be consequences for the bastardization of the Uwais Committee Report. There are going to be consequences”.

Excerpts:
What sense do you maker of the Wikileaks revelations regarding Nigeria, especially as a former foreign affairs minister and a foreign relations expert?

I’ll wear three caps, instead of twom in answering your question.The first is as a scholar, I welcome what Wikileaks has done. I welcome it in the sense that scholars deal with facts. We don’t deal with issues of ‘I believe’, ‘I think’, and all that because those are questions and issues of faith and so people who keep saying ‘well, we’ve always suspected these things therefore, there’s nothing new’, are way off the mark.

Professor Bolaji Akinyemi was Foreign Affairs Minister

They are because Wikileaks has simply made certain what we’ve always suspected. Before Wikileaks we saw dimly, but with Wikileaks, we can now see clearly.I’m not just being pedantic but let me give you personal experience I once had.I wrote a letter to the editor of the Times of London, complaining about the activities of some of the intelligence organizations in the Third World and giving him examples and he placed a telephone call to me 24hours later asking if I had the facts, the documents to prove what I’ve written about but I told him that if I had the documents, MI5 would be knocking on my door in Cambridge right now to ask me how I got the document and if I gave you the document you would not print or publish because of your policy just as it happened with the Pentagon Papers.

So I told him that even if I presented him with the documents he would not publish and he said if that’s the case he would not publish my letter and I said fair enough. But I told him that he knows that what I am saying is the truth.

Was that while you were a minister or after you had served as a minister?

It was after I had served – I think a year after.Now, Wikileaks has simply confirmed what we’ve always known and suspected. So, as a scholar, I welcome it and I wish I were lecturing now there would be volumes of doctoral thesis that you would be working on now in that regard. As a foreign policy scholar, I welcome it.

Okay, as a former foreign minister coming from a developing nation, what would you say of it?

I also welcome it simply because I know as a fact that such is the level of intelligence penetration that I am sure that nothing happened in the ministry of foreign affairs when I was there that the Americans, the British or the Israelis or the French intelligence didn’t know about. We had such a porous system and in any case, such is the level of their technology is that as we are speaking now, all they need to do is park a car outside and focus on the window which is facing the car park.

At the old foreign affairs ministry on Marina, all anybody needs to do so long as he or she has the bugging device, they would just park out side there and listen in from the car park. It is because we are at a technological disadvantage. Even today, with a satellite up there, whatever I tell you from under the table they would hear and pick. So, what Wikileaks has done is to balance the equation: Now, we know what they are thinking, the same way they know what we were thinking.

The effect is that there is nothing we can do with the knowledge that we gather but for them, there is a lot they can do with what they gather.

As a former foreign minister and student of diplomacy, what do you think?

I can not but deprecate what Wikileaks has done. And it is not just in the area of diplomacy alone. In all aspects of human endeavours, there is something called confidence; it has a role to play especially in the course of inter-state relationships. Let’s be clear what I’m trying to say, when a diplomat says to you ‘let’s talk as friends’, it’s a lie. As soon as he gets back to his office, he’s going to transcribe whatever you have said and there is nothing like ‘between us’. This is very common among Third World diplomats, they get easily carried away and they forget that they have no friends.

They only support and promote the interests of their countries and it is against that background that you must understand that there are things you deal with that are not meant to be revealed.

Can we have an example.?

When Murtala Muhammed died, I think (Buka Suka) Dimka had run to the British High Commission to pass on a message to General Yakubu Gowon and then there was uproar, students demonstrating, statements flying up and down regarding Britain’s alleged role in the coup.

Obasanjo, then head of state sent for Allison Ayida, who was then the Secretary to the government and told him that he should go to the British High Commission and explain to them that they should not lose any sleep about what was going on in Nigeria at that time, that all the anti- British sentiments was just to allow for a ventilation of emotions but that Nigeria did not intend to do anything about it but that if it leaks, that ‘you, Ayida went to discuss with them at the high commission, you are on your own’. So, governments and diplomats get involved in pretty dodgy stuff.

In another example on Wikileaks, look at what happened between the Yemenis and the Americans. The government of Yemen invited the Americans to come and bomb the daylight out of AlQeada but that it would take responsibility for it without acknowledging that the Americans were the ones doing it. But with Wikileaks, it has done a disservice because in diplomacy, there are things that government s have to do because the innocence of their public must be secured and preserved so to that extent, I have mixed feelings.

So, where would you come down to?

Well, as a former foreign affairs minister of a developing country, I would come down on the side of Wikileaks because it introduces that balance.On the domestic front, as far as Wikileaks is concerned, I gave a lecture in NIPSS, Kuru and I said there is no head of state of this country – and probably I should say there is no prominent Nigerian of note – who believes that Nigeria will survive.

None! Hey don’t believe that Nigeria will survive and, therefore, what we all seek to protect and advance are sectional interests and personal interests masquerading as national interests.So, Harvard University comes with a plan to allow Nigerian scholars to come over and get some education and be appointed fellows at Harvard but they need the imprimatur of the Education Ministry to do so and the director who is in charge is looking at the proposal and asking himself first, which part of the country would benefit the most from this arrangement?

And that is also why in Malaysia or Indonesia, leaders steal as much money as Nigerian leaders do but they invest their money in Malaysia or Indonesia because they believe in their country but our own leaders do not believe in the survival of Nigerians and, therefore, they do not invest the money they steal in this country. They don’t believe that really, Nigeria will survive as Nigeria.

rofessor Bolaji Akinyemi...Wikileaks confirms what we've always known

The connection with Wikileaks is that Nigerians government officials leak information about their country to their foreign friends in the foreign service of other countries and this is not new.

Don’t you think this has to do with the way we got our independence as a nation?

Yes! It also has to do with the way we got our independence because the Americans had their favourite while the British also had their own favourite and it continues till today. I doubt whether there had ever been any coup in this country that did not have the involvement – I mean involvement and not just knowledge – of foreign governments. I doubt it. So, because of that, when we are protesting about Wikileaks, our own officials distribute government secrets to their foreign friends.

When you have a company like Shell, which is said to be consciously involved in seconding people whose loyalty is to it and now you have a former top staff of such a company sitting atop our oil industry as minister and yet, we move on as if there is no connection or implication with what Wikileaks has published and this is without prejudice to the

Minister’s sense of integrity?

You have people moving from private sector to public and vice versa but the difference in this when compared to Shell is that if an American moves from General Motors and becomes the Defence minister, he excuses himself from contracts that would have to do with General Motors. It’s just a matter of an American moving from one place to the other and the same thing goes for a Supreme Court Justice who may have argued a labour case while being a lawyer and whenever such comes before him in the Supreme Court, he excuses himself from such a case.

In Nigeria, we do not have that culture and it’s a pity. I won’t make any comment on the specific so that one does not personalize matters but from what we know now, I think the Nigerian government, sooner or later, would have to take a decision that anybody who had worked in the private sector, will not be allowed to be seconded to government service because the Shell issue presents two issues because they said they have planted their men in every sensitive department so of government and because nobody believes that Nigeria will survive so why should he be committed. In any case, should Shell sack the person who would pick up the fight for him?

There are examples in a country where the government does not look after its own people. We should really ensure that our civil servants are actually paid very well.

Let us anchor something else on this issue: Why should a professor of nuclear science earn the same thing with a professor of political science or a professor of religious studies? Yet, when you say, let’s use the catch phrase, that Nigeria is pursuing the agenda of 202020, how would you deliver on that with this type of policy? You want to go into space programme, you want technical experts and yet you want to pay your professor of engineering the same thing as your professor of political science, then we’ve got our priorities mixed up and wrong.

We believe in administering Nigeria and not developing Nigeria and so, anybody can be minister of anything even if the person is not qualified by discipline. If we begin from there, then maybe people will not be willing tools.

Something instructive was revealed by Wikileaks regarding our President Goodluck Jonathan. When he was Acting President, he demonstrated a sense of misplaced humility before the American Ambassador and this did not bode well for a nation like Nigeria, going as far as saying that he ‘lacked administrative capacity to govern the country’? What does that say of the caliber of leadership in the country?

Why pick on your Acting President? Let me give you another example which I had personally taken up with the people involved.

During the Third Term Tenure Elongation brouhaha, a group of your senators who were opposed to the tenure elongation actually were going from one western embassy to another asking for their support to block the Third term project and I have approached one of the leading senators and I told him I am ashamed of him because he used to be a leading radical, opposed to neo-colonialism, that he was a comrade but yet, you were a leader of the group of senators and worse still, they were not meeting with ambassadors but they were meeting with third or fourth secretaries in the embassies. What do you expect them to think of the senate, the senate, a concept we borrowed from the Romans, the highest body in the land.

What was his reponse?

He said Obasanjo was using his international connection and they also wanted to do something but I told him that he and his colleagues sold us out.So, leave Jonathan alone, that mentality pervades every aspect of our national leadership.

When I was a minister, I took a memo to IBB. And I said to him that when the Nigerian embassy abroad is having its national day abroad, they invite the host country but you’ll be lucky if a minister attends but they send just a protocol officer and you’re never going to get the top movers of the economy or polity in that country to attend but here in Nigeria, a third secretary would host a reception and half of your cabinet would be there and even the judiciary would be represented.

And I asked what is wrong with our psyche that when it involves a white man, especially the western countries, our leaders would fall over one another to please them. My colleagues in the cabinet did not see it that way because for some of them, it was about a minister of foreign affairs trying to monopolise links with the whites.

My principal at Igbobi College was British just as most of my teachers. I did not gain any psychological upliftment by that. But for the military interregnum of 1966, I doubt whether an Azikiwe, an Awolowo, a Sardauna or an Enahoro would jump up because a card came from the embassy for a reception. They had been dealing with British officials for donkey years but leadership changed and you ended up with a crop of leadership that saw handshakes with foreigners as the height of importance.

Just go and check any time there is a reception in Abuja and check how many ministers are there and how many Supreme Court Justices are there.In specific terms, you have a man in Aso Rock who felt threatened by forces that were outside his control and who, probably was depending on Americans for information about what was happening around him and his boss because there was nobody whom he felt he could trust, so, you are beholding to the lady sitting in front of you even though you are the Acting President of the most populous black nation on Earth. There are people who know more about what is going on in Aso Rock more than the occupant of that office.

Is that how we are?

The only head of state who appeared to be on top of it, was only Sani Abacha; and may be, during the Buhari/Idiagbon administration, too; but all the others? No.

You were a member of the Electoral Reform Committee and Nigerians were hopeful that had the recommendations been accepted, we might be on the march to democratic greatness. Now, with what is happening now in the National Assembly, legislating for self and not country, there is cause for concern?

How does that make you feel?

Well, I don’t know about the other members of the committee but as far as I am concerned, I was never under the illusion that the National Assembly would accept our report and so to that extent, I was able to argue for the best that we could put forward, rather than asking whether they would accept. Because there was no way you would submit a proposal to reform the police for effectiveness to armed robbers and they would accept.

You are sending it to a National Assembly that, from the word go, did not even legitimately win elections to be there in the first place.I’m not disappointed at all about what they are doing in the National Assembly. I feel sorry for this country with the way things are going because there are going to be consequences for the bastardization of the Uwais Committee Report. There are going to be consequences.

How do you mean?

Let us all wait and see. Remember in the early 1960s, Chief Enahoro got up in the federal parliament and warned against the imposition of the Emergency Rule in the Western Region, he said there would be consequences the magnitude of which we may not be able to fathom.  I will not say more than that.

But you have not said anything regarding the consequences of not enforcing the Uwais Report?

Look, I do not know where it will lead us. All I know is that there will be consequences.Just look at the way things are happening in the polity in the last couple of months.

I never imagined that what has been happening in the country since late last year would ever happen.
I never imagined that in the history of this country or in my life time, I would witness what I have witnessed so far.I do not know how it will end but I have the misfortune of always seeing ahead what will happen.

Was that why you suggested that the hand over date should be moved forward from May 29 to October 1?

Yes! But some people do not seem to agree with me and they have been saying all sorts of things.
In fact some have said you do not know what you are saying?

Okay, we shall see!

But what informed that suggestion?

Look at what is happening. Let us imagine that there would be a run off elections after the main elections in April, would we still be able to swear in the President on May 29?

Let us also look at the issue of registration of voters, what guarantees are there that things would not overlap?
For me, I do not know where all these would lead but when you interface all we’ve been saying with the fact that we have just disposed of a governorship election litigation almost four years after the election.

The way our political elites have been behaving is such that their followers may just be waiting in the wings to spit fire.

What I would expect would be that the political elite should continue negotiating and making it clear to their followers and supporters that at the end of the day there would be a resolution of all the issues because when you have leaders speaking in a manner that suggests that there is no room for compromise and then you have their followers saying ‘if we don’t get this we would do this’, and the other party too saying that ‘if they don’t achieve their aim, they would make the country ungovernable’.

That is not the way to go. Even Buhari just said recently that if his votes are stolen he would not go to court but knows what to do. That is why I say I do not know.

You keep saying you do not know but you must know something?

Okay, what I do know is that for the first time, there is not going to be an anointed president for this country for the first time.

Unlike other times when we’ve always known who would emerge as president, this time, we do not know who would emerge as president because the whole thing is in a state of flux. This is the first time in the history of Nigeria that we are not sure who would emerge winner in the presidential contest and for me that is a positive development.

Then this is also the first time that the political leadership is having to confront one another and attempt to talk things over with each making a stake.