By Kingsley Moghalu
Over the weekend I read a news story in The Punch newspaper about how several countries’ authorities have expressed unease about the prospect of receiving new ambassadors from Nigeria virtually 1 year to the end of tenure of our current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If true (and such concern would be logical based on standard diplomatic practice), this should not be a surprise.
To be announcing ambassadorial appointments nearly a year to the end of an elected government’s tenure, when the practice is that receiving countries must issue a formal “agreement”, a formal decision by the receiving country to accept credentials from the individual named as Ambassador – a process that takes several weeks to months at the earliest — does not indicate serious and responsible governance.
Even if not publicly stated, receiving countries will whisper their unease through various channels. For Nigeria to be in such a situation is bad for the image of our country, once regarded as a medium power in world politics and the undisputed numero uno in Africa.
Our political leaders, most of them not famous for deep thinking or particularly knowledgeable about governance and diplomatic practices, and existing as we do in our own parallel universe in Nigeria in which we assume the rest of the world functions the way we do or don’t , are not sensitive enough to these kinds of things.
The result is that our country loses out both on substance (e.g. the diplomatic lacuna in strategic capitals like Washington DC which contributed without question to the US military intervention against terrorists in Nigeria), and brand-wise. If the Nigerian leader did not consider the appointment of Ambassadors in a timely manner important, as obviously was the case, then he should have allowed those appointed by his predecessor to remain at post for his first term of office.
By recalling the ambassadors in 2023, Tinubu left a dangerous lacuna that no leader conversant in statecraft should expose his or her country to. We have all seen that there are limits to the prioritization of political buccaneering over hands-on governance and statecraft.
The question is: have we learnt any lessons? Although the ambassadorial list has some decent people, the calibre and quality of several ambassadorial nominees range from the pedestrian to the ridiculous.
This politicization of governance, in which political considerations are the overriding motive behind most decisions by a government, has led to the death of merit in the governance of Nigeria. We all are the losers.
*Dr. Moghalu, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, is a political economist and the President of the African School of Governance (ASG).
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