“The President shall hold regular meetings – for the purposes of (a) determining the general direction of domestic and foreign policies of the Government of the Federation”- Section 148(2), Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (As Amended) of 1999
A holistic conceptualisation and implementation of the “4Ds” agenda will require a robust assessment of the capacities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to articulate and advance Nigeria’s national interest in the overall context of pursuing its foreign policy objectives. In 2019, the then President Muhammadu Buhari, directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to conduct a review of Nigeria’s foreign policy in keeping with developments at that time.
Also, in April 2021, a conference was convened at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, to review Nigeria’s foreign policy during which various aspects of diplomacy and the domestic setting and the nexus between the two with particular focus on reforming the policies and administrative aspects of our country’s foreign policy were discussed.
Most of the proposals were aimed at enhancing the capacity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its organs to bring them up to scratch to perform their statutory duties of advancing Nigeria’s national interest in a rapidly changing global environment. Being the statutory organ charged with the administration and implementation of Nigeria’s foreign policy, the Ministry is the critical agency in the articulation of all policies and programmes of Nigeria’s diplomatic engagements. As such, the success or failure of Nigeria’s diplomacy will ultimately rest on the capacity of the Ministry to discharge its functions and mandates. The actualisation of the “4Ds” and the attainment of the foreign policy objectives of the administration would invariably entail the effectiveness, better resourcing and efficient management of the Ministry.
The strengthening of structures in the Ministry and better elaboration of its mandates and functions, would go a long way in sharpening the focus and direction of Nigeria’s foreign policy. Placing the activities of the Ministry around core values and functions and within the operational ambits of regional, continental and global politics will produce the desired results towards making it better equipped to handle the exigencies of diplomacy and the rapidly shifting sands of world politics. The clear demarcation of responsibilities of senior officers of the Ministry under the overall leadership of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, should ensure that there are no overlaps or conflicts in the discharge of their respective mandates or operational prerogatives.
The reorganisation of the Ministry should aim at creating synergy and ensuring continuity while reducing liabilities and inefficiencies that have become endemic in the system. Aligning departments and divisions with identified functions and activities should inform such an exercise. Also, fitting personnel properly into appropriate policy and operational units and departments based on tried and verified expertise and competences will bring about the much-needed reform and restoration of efficiency in the Ministry. While being the overall head of the Ministry, the Minister should be assisted by the Permanent Secretary and other senior officers whose duties and responsibilities should not conflict with the vision of the Minister.
The idea is to create synergy and bring about efficiency in the treatment of vast and diverse subjects that the Ministry is required to attend to, with minimum delays and less obfuscation of purposes and intents. The meeting of commitments and undertakings made or given by the government and more especially by the President, is a task that must be executed with the utmost dispatch and professionalism. The review of the duties of the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, especially, should be undertaken conscientiously and with a view to enhancing the overall administrative, personnel and financial management of the Ministry. The aggregation of various tasks and duties in the Ministry requires that the Permanent Secretary is not new to the terrain but an accomplished civil servant who is conversant with the workings of the Ministry.
The Permanent Secretary should necessarily have a broad perspective about the two pillars of Nigeria’s diplomacy namely in the bilateral and multilateral aspects, especially those that entail a coherent implementation of the outcomes of joint commissions or bi-national commissions and other processes. Follow-up and implementation of agreed outcomes at the two levels, namely bilateral and multilateral, make for a better approach to attaining the national interest and incrementally advancing Nigeria’s diplomatic aspirations. In this regard, the Permanent Secretary should institute a system of debriefing of all returning senior officers from posts, including Ambassadors, to receive a fuller account at personal levels of their conducts and operations in their respective missions.
Also, the phased and systematic training and capacity-building for officers of different cadres and grades should be one of the tasks to be entrusted to the Permanent Secretary as a continuous exercise to be sustained for as long as necessary. This is to remove the backlog of inefficiency that has accumulated in the system owing largely to lack of opportunities for higher and skills-oriented training in the Ministry. The training schedules should be domesticated within the Ministry and should be carried out in-situ to minimise cost and reduce wastage.
However, wherever it is deemed necessary, foreign or offshore training of personnel should be entertained in order to give a qualitative edge to carefully selected officers who will form the core of the Ministry’s reform and future greatness. Specialisation, according to country files or thematic subjects, should be encouraged as the main thrust of the training programme, with diplomatic practice courses at the core of the curriculum. Language training should also be embarked upon, with emphasis on the six international languages of the United Nations. Training of foreign service officers will necessarily require taking into account the rapid and dramatic changes that are taking place in the realm of knowledge, as evidenced by the emergence of artificial intelligence platforms and other instantaneous sources of information.
I remember that between 2011 and 2016 or thereabout, an elaborate programme of training of foreign service officers was instituted by the then visionary Permanent Secretary, Ambassador Martin I. Uhomoibhi, which was called “36+1” project, that entailed sending officers to foreign universities to acquire post-graduate degrees at the sponsorship of foreign governments. If the project had been conscientiously maintained, the Ministry would by now have benefitted immensely by having a large pool of highly trained officers with advanced degrees in many fields of learning.
The post The “Renewed Hope” Agenda and Nigeria’s foreign policy: Some suggestions on the actualisation of the “4Ds” objectives (2), by Usman Sarki appeared first on Vanguard News.
