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One thing is now clear from Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent trip to the United States: Nigeria desperately needs a re-articulation of its foreign policy. In the last few years the news that has more often than not emerged from the Foreign Ministry has had to do with tardy diplomats or gross under funding or a mismanagement of funds.

Speaking earlier in the week at a discussion organised by the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr. Jonathan noted that Africa has always been the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, and hinted of plans to continue to focus Nigeria’s foreign policy on the continent.
“So our main focus now is to see that at least within the continent of Africa, we have true democracies. We want a system where people will elect their leaders.”

Manifestations of independent Nigeria’s foreign policy ambitions date back to the 1960s when the country contributed troops to the United Nations peace keeping forces in the Congo and Tanganyika.

Speaking in Lagos at an event to mark the 2005 Black History Month , former Minister of External Affairs Bolaji Akinyemi noted: “Even before the independence of Nigeria, there had grown up within the domestic political intellectual class and the international foreign policy elite a belief in the manifest
destiny of Nigeria to play a mega role in world
affairs…

The physical size of Nigeria, the state of her economy and the size of her population vis-à-vis other countries in Africa have bred an expectation of a leadership and activist role for Nigeria in the global system, a state with a manifest destiny to become a Black Power.”

Nigeria’s leadership and activist role arguably reached its zenith during the Murtala Mohammed /Olusegun Obasanjo years, when the country played a significant role in the anti-apartheid struggle, and in the support of the Southern African Liberation struggle.

It was also during this time that the country hosted the World Black and African Festival
of Arts and Culture (FESTAC). As Foreign Affairs Minister (during the Babangida years) Mr. Akinyemi famously announced that “some of us dream of Nigeria being to blacks in the Diaspora what Jerusalem is to
Jews in the Diaspora.”

He also advocated the development by Nigeria of a “Black bomb”, arguing, “Nigeria has a sacred responsibility to challenge the racial monopoly of nuclear weapons.”

More than two decades later, that dream of a powerful global player remains unfulfilled, deferred by failures in key sectors. Nigeria remains country unable to produce basic technology – whether for civilian or military use.

In the last few years we have paid the Russians and the Chinese to help us launch satellites. At the moment Nigeria has no nuclear power generating plant (South Africahas two), only one nuclear research centre, and negligible nuclear power capabilities.

Against this backdrop the question might arise: “What exactly was Nigeria’s role at the Nuclear Security Summit? This only goes to confirm one fact: that foreign policy cannot be divorced from domestic policy. Domestic indices – transparency of elections, human rights record, security and good governance, and poverty alleviation – will always speak louder than foreign policy.

A country without a nuclear power plant, and without a serious commitment to exploiting the possibilities of nuclear energy (for peaceful purposes) cannot exert any meaningful influence in
a Nuclear Energy Summit, or in any global platform in the 21st century.

There is however no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria’s foreign standing suffered greatly under President Yar’Adua. The President’s fragile health meant that the bulk of his trips abroad were medical,
and mainly to Saudi Arabia. Nigeria had no serious representation at key international gatherings because of the President’s absence, and his refusal to delegate his deputy to attend.

Prior to Mr. Jonathan’s visit the last time a Nigerian leader visited the United States was well over two years ago. There is no doubt that Mr. Jonathan’s recent trip has done Nigeria’s image a great deal of good. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Odein Ajumogobia acknowledged this when he said, on the Acting President’s return to Abuja, “there is a lot of goodwill, enormous goodwill for Nigeria and I think that we are back to try and take advantage of that goodwill, for the betterment of Nigeria.”

We urge Mr. Jonathan to do everything within his power to avoid frittering away this goodwill. He must as a matter of urgency overhaul Nigeria’s Foreign Service apparatus.

During the Yar’Adua era the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ojo Maduekwe was involved in an embarrassing spat with the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States. Such shameful incidents should never recur.

In the 12 months or so that this administration
has ahead of it, Mr. Jonathan should strive to
articulate a coherent foreign policy objective for Nigeria. His superficial answers to questions about Nigeria’s foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations briefing last week left much to be desired.

We urge him to strive to re-invigorate the Technical Aids Corps Scheme, ensure proper funding of Nigerian foreign missions, and demand rigorous accountability from them
in return.

We also demand an urgent reconsideration of the promise Mr. Jonathan to the Nigerian community in Washington to create a “Diaspora Commission.” That plan should be jettisoned immediately. As we argued in our April 8 editorial (“A Diaspora Commission”) it is a project of doubtful utility, and one that
will only further complicate the Foreign Service bureaucracy. Nigeria has far more pressing diplomatic requirements.