IT is perhaps in the vain and futile imagination of the government that such visit would reverse what is a clearly a well thought-out and carefully executed policy of the Saudi regime.

However, the embattled pilgrims were almost all back in the country, such that, the Tambuwal team visit to Saudi Arabia will only add to the notorious profile of Nigerian government officials roaming aimlessly in the world, for the personal leisure it brings and the huge estacode it generates.

The Nigeria government’s feeble and muddling diplomacy in the face of the Saudi offensive again exposed the perennial and durable disconnect between high sounding rhetoric and actual capacity to influence and change the course of action of others.

Sultan of Sokoto, one of the first Nigerian leaders to express outrage at the action of the Saudis noted that the Saudis did not raise the issue of a male guardian or companion for the female pilgrims. Demanding a male companion, when the female pilgrims were already in Saudi Arabia was akin to changing the rules of game in the middle of the game.

However, even though it is fairly well known that Nigerian Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, like their Christian counterparts who go to Jerusalem, are far less ideal in their expected conduct, especially for a trip of such spiritual significance, cannot justify the extreme harsh measures of the Saudi authorities. The Nigerian government response has been a muddle. Issuing ultimatum to the Saudis before deciding on any line of action was unreasonable.

In circumstance of this nature, responses are calibrated at every stage to send a clear message to the other side. Sending a delegation led by the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Saudi Arabian authorities was another muddle.

The Saudis have made clear their intention not to engage in diplomatic talk by ignoring the Nigerian Ambassador in Riyadh and going ahead with the deportation of the pilgrims.

The visit of the Tambuwal team to Saudi Arabia after the Saudis have diligently and duly executed their threat to deport unaccompanied female pilgrims would have further clarified whatever ambiguities they may have had about the disproportionate component of vainglory and shadow-boxing in Nigerian policy frame work. Since the row with the Saudis broke out, the Foreign Minister and his ministry has stayed aloof as if the pilgrims are not Nigerians.

The matter is being handled as if it is a Muslim affair to which the non-Muslims in the government seemed unconcerned.

It is as if only the Muslim members of the government that would deal with it. This attitude may have been informed by the belief that Saudis would have more sympathy for the co-religionists. But this perception is wrong. After all, the Saudi best friends are the Americans and Europeans and even the communist Chinese and Vietnamese.

The Foreign Ministry or the Presidency leading a robust response would have sent an unmistakeable message to the Saudis that such infraction of Nigerian nationals well-being would never be tolerated by the Nigerian state.

In fact, such move would have convinced the Saudis that whatever religious reasons they may have had in taking a decision, would have been tempered by a state-to-state relation and the consequent political fallout of such action. Leaving the matter as if the king of Saudi Arabia have just done to her far-flung subjects as he pleased and with only a consequence of a generous supplication for a change of heart, negate the integrity and essence of the Nigerian state.

But to be fair to the Saudi, the Nigerian state in the past 10 years has been in earnest deconstruction and the government that has run it has fairly existed to repudiate the true essence of the state and its agency of government.

The Nigerian state through the distortion and dis-articulation by the clueless, rudderless and visionless governing elite that runs it, is hugely deficit of the enabling capacity to deliver on the modest services of any government.

For the fact that governing processes and institutions are manipulated to provide and service the leisure and pleasure of the governing elite, the state and its main governing agency is severely constrained and weak. Bankrupt governing elite steeped in the primitive accumulation of wealth and egregious pursuit of vain-glory can engage in the symbolic parody of state craft, while severely constrained to act in any decisive manner.

The Saudi provocations have revealed in a graphic manner, the incremental deconstruction of the Nigeria state by government acting without the modest social conscience of the executives of a social club.

The Nigeria female pilgrims were humiliated by the Saudi authorities because they are Nigerians and not because they are less Islamic than other Muslims.

From all indication, the government is not fazed by the incident and as usual, it will take another government scandal to bury this one, and one thing this government has in abundance is scandals.

Mr.  CHARLES ONUNAIJU, a journalist, wrote from Abuja.