By Habib Aruna
Nigeria’s waning influence in global affairs was again badly hit with the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, currently visiting three African countries, while sidelining the so-called giant of Africa. The US VP came to the continent with a first stop at Ghana. She’s on a weeklong, three-nation African tour, the latest in a series of visits by senior US officials as Washington seeks to counter growing Chinese and Russian influence on the continent.
She will also go to Tanzania and Zambia. The last time a senior American government official visited the country was when Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, made a stopover in Abuja in November 2021. Nigeria has largely been sidelined in the scheme of things by the international community, especially during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
We can still remember the widely publicised
trip to the continent by former President Barack Obama, during a visit to Ghana,
where he made the famous speech on the need for African countries to build
democratic institutions. Accompanied by his wife and two daughters, the visit
opened sesame to a lot of things for the West African country.
With
many African Americans coming back to their roots and even acquiring properties
in Ghana, you only need to visit the country during the Yuletide season to see
the benefits of a stable and vibrant country. Obama said “Africa’s future is up
to Africans”, and he specifically addressed democracy, good governance, public
health, and conflict resolution. He commended Ghana for the example it has set
for Africa, but also called on model countries to do more to promote these
principles across the continent:
Ultimately, according to him: “It will be
vibrant democracies like Botswana and Ghana that roll back the causes of
conflict and advance the frontiers of peace and prosperity”. Obama noted that
while “perpetual war” has become Africa’s “crude caricature”, conflict is a
daily reality for far too many Africans. He acknowledged the role that tribal,
ethnic, national, and religious differences play in inciting and fueling
conflicts, but noted that drawing on this diversity to define people in
opposition to others “has no place in the 21st century”.
Rather, “we should seek to emphasise the
commonalities between people – our “common humanity”. Even so, some experts had
argued that Obama’s visit to a country that is seen as our neighbour, with the
same colonial history and politics, was a slight on the image of Nigeria. Obama
was said to have expressed a lot of reservations about the inability of the
most populous country in Africa to get its act together; he was said to be
annoyed that the country was not playing its rightful role and setting examples
for other smaller countries to follow.
His visit to countries like Kenya, the
birthplace of his father, and Ghana, therefore, was to send a strong message
that the world would not continue to wait for a sleeping giant to wake up from
slumber.
Hence, it is appropriate to use the above
context to take a cursory look at why the country’s growing influence, both in
Africa and internationally, during the second coming of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
suddenly disappeared. In August 2003, after a peace agreement was reached with
the rebels, the world watched on CNN as a Nigerian presidential aircraft waited
on the tarmac in Monrovia for Charles Taylor, who was exiting power for exile
in Calabar, Nigeria. Particular focus was on the aircraft, with Nigeria boldly written
on it. It was unmistakable that the giant of Africa was finally having her time
in the sun, given the consequential role Nigeria played in restoring peace to
the war-ravaged country.
Disturbingly, however, successive governments have not been able to build on the foreign policy successes and gains achieved during Obasanjo’s administration. Rather, Buhari, for example, preferred to build a rail from Kano to Maradi in the Niger Republic. The economic and other benefits of this are still being debated by foreign policy experts. What cannot, however, be debated is that the Buhari government has not had a robust foreign policy, both in action and words.
In terms of influence and respect, we
have literally been a sleeping child for the last eight years. The country has
frequently been sidelined at the global stage, to the extent that we were
always absent at G8 and G20 summits and other influential meetings of world
leaders.
The amount of influence that we have could
easily be deciphered anytime our presidents address the United Nations General
Assembly. The seats are always empty because most nations are not interested in
what our leaders will want to say. Of course, that will not be the case when
the leaders of South Africa, Egypt, and Kenya mount the podium. One now begins
to wonder if the millions of elusive dollars normally spent on such trips by
the president and his large entourage have been justified.
The challenge before the in-coming president,
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, therefore, will be to appoint seasoned professional
diplomats who are conversant with the problems of an ever-changing global
environment. This time, politics should not be a deciding factor. There should
be a deliberate action plan that is geared towards making us reclaim our
rightful place of influence, both in Africa and the world at large.
*Aruna, a journalist, wrote from Ikeja, Lagos
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