Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica, since 1993
Public reaction to the belated release of President Tinubu’s list of ambassadors designate has been uniformly negative. Some people feel insulted by the caliber of nominees. Others feel belittled that minimals are being chosen to represent a country that boasts some of the best and brightest citizens. Yet others find the political payback in most of the nominees rather cheap and opportunistic at the expense of the higher national interest. But, in my view, most of the opposition is wrong headed.
The President has a right to nominate and appoint whoever he thinks can best advance his agenda and showcase whatever he considers his vision and policy perspective. The ambassadorial nominees may be his friends, partisan sympathizers, janitors or mechanic. I do not expect the president to nominate or appoint his enemies to represent his government and the country abroad. not his enemies, to represent his government abroad.
The reservations already expressed by a cross section of the public range from partisan bad blood, plain jealousy to altruistic national value correctness. People
have expressed reservations about the president nominating or appointing his choristers, partisan affiliates and a handful of anonymous and inconsequential elements. Part of the naive argument is that some of these nominees do not represent the best of Nigeria. This argument and its supporting logic is false. Choosing political appointees is not exactly an examination for excellence or the composition of the best footballers in the nation. It is an exercise in a president’s prerogative of choice governed by his personal and partisan interests and preferences. He and his party alone know and can decide what they want to showcase to the world where these nominees will eventually end up.
One reservation is a legitimate entitlement of the public as an electorate. It is worrisome that it has taken the threat and bluster of Mr. Donald Trump to remind Mr. Tinubu that he has spent almost 3 years in office without ambassadors anywhere in the world. When Trump struck, there was no one to make the night calls or diplomatic networking for Nigeria in Washington. There was no one to sniff out Trump’s body language before he pronounced on the ‘ Christian genocide’ matter. We responded only after the event.
There was speculation that the delay was to allow the president time to reduce and restructure Nigeria’s diplomatic footprints abroad. Many thought we had no business having so many embassies even in inconsequential countries. But not quite! The lists of nominees indicates the same multitude as usual. This innocuous crowd will be posted out to places as far flung as Benin and Belarus, Kuwait and Kazakhstan whether or not Nigeria has substantial presence or interests in those places.
The more charitable sympathizers of the administration even said Mr. Tinubu was waiting to save up enough funds to pay the bills of our many foreign missions. And yet the same government has mounted the pulpit many times to announce that it has been awash with cash after the withdrawal of all major subsidies and the imposition of a myriad taxes. Clearly, the only obvious explanation for this scandalous delay is crass incompetence and a basic lack of diplomatic common sense.
Let’s be fair to Tinubu. His right to nominate and appoint as he deems fit is inalienable. Heads of Governments appoint their friends and sympathizers to represent their country at any given moment. We cannot expect a President to appoint his adversaries to represent him and his government abroad.
The image of any country at any given time reflects the personal identity and values of the incumbent leadership. Presidents appoint their like -minds, even look alikes, friends and sympathizers to represent and project their vision and values abroad. To that extent, the list of prospective ambassadors so far released by Tinubu fall into place as politically correct. We can categorize them.
First, Tinubu has rewarded those who enabled his political ascendancy. Primary among these is Prof. Yakubu Mahmoud, the immediate past Chairman of INEC. It was Mahmoud who presided over the engineering of the INEC electoral machinery during the 2023 election that most observers condemned as a sham and a fraud. Prior to the tidying up of most complications and irregularities in the field, he hastily announced Tinubu as winner of the presidential election even as there was still widespread doubt as to the real winner. With less than 35% of votes cast, Tinubu became president of 230 million Nigerians with over 80 million registered voters. The public is therefore right to interpret Prof. Mahmoud’s nomination as plainly and simply a political payback. For those in doubt as to the role of INEC in the emergence of Tinubu as winner of the 2023 election, Mahmoud’s nomination is perhaps enough definitive answer,
Secondly, a select choir of political harlots have spent the better part of two and half years energeticall validating and unconditionally defending the Tinubu administration. The likes of Fani Kayode and Reno Omokri have consistently spewed nauseating validations of Tinubu’s policies and every move. The masses may be dying of hunger; every item of living cost may have been taxed beyond the sky; the machinery of government may have literally ground to a halt with all public systems and services comatose. It does not matter to Omokri and Fanikayode for as long as Akpabio,Wike
and Umahi can cruise around with endless motorcades promoting Tinubu’s “renewed hope” rhetoric. For Fani Kayode, Omokri , Bwala and their like, the adversity of Nigerians is sign that the Tinubu government is working!
Within this shameful choir of cracked vinyl records, Mr. Omokri stands miserably alone in singular notoriety. An unrepentant mendicant, he casually insults his superiors and elders with impunity. He abuses Atiku, Peter Obi, El Rufai and others with senseless abandon. His ethnocentrism knows no bounds especially against the Igbos. Selective bigotry comes naturally to his unschooled empty head. Until they announced him as being from Bayelsa, no one really knew he was from that distinguished state. Before then, very few knew what swampy bush hamlet or dinghy crevice he emanated from. The much that was known of him is that he had served President Jonathan in some servile capacity as a presidential minion and later as a professional mendicant and blackmailer.
Beyond regime choristers and dubious election enablers , Tinubu has also nominated partisan faithfuls. First in this category are the Wike converts. These are the ex- governors of the PDP states- the former G5-people who carry PDP party cards at night but don APC badges in the day. They are converts into the Tinubu praise worship ensemble.
The rest of the partisan nominees are a bunch of anonymous and previously unknown political wannabes. Some are offspring or mistresses of prominent political animals who are being compensated. Some of these may have emanated from the numerous lobbyists or hungry scavengers and hustlers swarming the corridors of the Villa.
Let us give some credit nonetheless. In the batch of ambassadors designate perhaps only a few citizens with commendable service records to their credit. Some of these few have the requisite experience, credibility and stature to represent a country of our stature. These worthy citizens may have been included to confer credibility and respectability to the despicable bunch.
Even if the Tinubu ambassadorial designates were the most credible collection of Nigerians, their collective impact will only reflect the quality of the government at home. Ambassadors are at best sales persons of their nation. As a salesman, an ambassador cannot market what he does not have in his home country. Our new ambassadors will have to market our nation as it presently is. Ambassadors do not invent the nation they represent. Our nation today is a defective product. These nominees are being appointed at a bad time in the history of our country. What they may be going out to defend and market is defective through and through.
Today’s Nigeria is worse than a mixed basket of rotten tomatoes and eggs in one. The state is failing. Our security is precarious and dysfunctional. Our people are in dismay, despair, disarray and thoroughly frightened. Life is very hard. The number of Nigerians who still believe in the future of the country has dwindled to a trickle. Our external image and reputation have further tumbled to an all -time low. Nigerians abroad are now more ashamed of their nationality. More and more of them are regressing to their ethnic identities, hence the increased wave of separatist sentiments.
Sure, the nominees will all likely be confirmed except there are condemned criminals, habitual wife beaters and proven pedophiles among them. Even the Senate that will
Confirm the nominees is no more than a Conclave of Infamy. Some bad guys are called upon to confirm a few bad Nigerians. They are likely to merely tell the nominees to ‘bow and go’! Those who opposes any nominee will simply be told to “Go to court”!
Above all, the ambassadorial nominees tacitly reflect the image of the current leadership of the country they are going to represent. At any given time, a nation reflects the image and perception of its leader. Today’s US is Trump
writ large. “America First” has degenerated to “Trump and Family Alone”. The Trump presidency is now synonymous with intolerance, political vendetta, creeping autocracy, incoherent policies, rabid anti- immigration, camouflaged racism and mostly foolish governance.
Today, only a few Nigerians can confidently say they know Mr. Tinubu well enough. They are left guessing. Some see him as a pragmatist, political godfather with a streak of Machiavellism. Most see him as a political entrepreneur, a hybrid between an astute political animal and a business tycoon. Others see him
more as a Yoruba ethnic bigot in the Villa. Yet others see him as a fake Muslim. Worse still, many ordinary Nigerians ask for his real parentage, educational qualification and source of humongous wealth. The more discerning ask for his general intellectual preparedness for the high political office he is holding. Tinubu is the quintessial question mark president!
The nation and its current leadership are the products that the new ambassadors are going to market. It is therefore best that the choice of new ambassadors reflect this reality. It is therefore best that the new ambassadors are reflective of the government and president that is appointing them. The new ambassadors are going to. Be ambassadors of Nigeria and of Tinubu himself. Like begets like.
Those Nigerians who desire saint-like ambassadors should therefore wait until the people elect a Nigerian Pope or Nigerian philosopher king as president. Then and only then can we place a moral barometer and scale of excellence on the path of nominees for public office.
For now, we need to emplace ambassadors in different world capitals. Our people are many scattered all around the world some with very urgent life- threatening needs. Even as glorified ‘welfare officers’, let us post these ambassadors. But we must fund them in a dignified way to ensure that the ambassadors and High Commissioners do not themselves become objects of pitiful charity at their posts.
At a time like this, no one should envy the ambassador designates. It is an invitation to another two years of anonymity and political castration.
