On diplomacy

Text Of An Address By His Excellency, Alhaji (Dr.) Abdullahi Adamu, Executive Governor Of Nasarawa State At The Induction Course For Newly Appointed Heads Of Nigerian Missions Holding At The Conference Hall, Protea Hotel, Abuja, Tuesday, January 13, 2004.

Sir Henry Wotton, the seventeenth English poet and diplomat, provided what is accepted arguably in some quarters as the classical definition of the ambassador. He defined the ambassador as "an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." He was clearly undiplomatic. His undiplomatic gaffe put him in hot okra soup and ended his diplomatic career. He lost his job as King James I’s envoy to Vienna. If we can learn a lesson from the fate that befell Sir Henry it is this: always be diplomatic.

Your Excellencies, I cannot find it in me to suspect, for one brief moment, that the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, with his characteristic thoroughness, chose you, a shining group of honest and patriotic sons and daughters of Nigeria, for the purpose of sending you abroad to lie for our dear country. On the contrary, he has carefully chosen each and every one of you based, we believe, on your antecedents as honest men and women. He is sending you as true representatives of the presidency, the good people of Nigeria and our dear country in the countries to which you will be accredited, not to lie but to tell it as it is, diplomatically.

We are pleased to have the privilege of addressing this very august gathering of some of the best men and women this country has produced. We share with you the joy and the anxiety of your new assignment. We congratulate you on your new and important appointment as ambassadors. We join your families and friends in rejoicing with you. It is a prestigious appointment but let no one for one moment think that it is an invitation to an owambe party. For some of you, your appointment must be a dream come true while for some others, you are going to very familiar terrain.

You come from different educational, social, economic and political backgrounds. You have varied professional experiences in your various chosen fields of human endeavours in which you made your mark. The president has achieved a careful blend of career diplomats and politicians for the task of telling all the truth there is to tell about Nigeria abroad. With this rainbow coalition, Nigeria is putting its best foot forward in the mines field of international politics and diplomacy. Chief Obasanjo could not have done better than this glittering group of creditable men and women who will carry the nation’s banner abroad.

Representing one’s country abroad is a tough job. You know as much as we do that to whom much is given, much is also expected. We would like to advise you to go to your new assignment with a trowel. You will need it to cement cracks in the relations between the countries to which you are assigned and Nigeria. What you make of your appointment will either make or mar the image of our country. Nigeria expects you to do your duty to your country and its people. If you do less than your best, you will let down your families and friends and more importantly, you will disappoint the president in particular and the country in general. And that would be very sad. It is our sincere hope and prayer that you will be the telling evidence that we are not a nation of advanced fee fraudsters but a nation of decent, honest and hard working people who are committed to the ethos of democracy and the rule of law.

You are taking up your diplomatic assignment at a critical time in the life of our dear country. Although we have put four years and nearly eight months behind us as a democratic nation, it is not yet, as they say, Uhuru. Ours is still a fledgling democracy and we are still grappling with its teething problems. It is our collective responsibility to nurture democracy and ensure that its tap root reaches into the bowels of the earth in our country. This is part of your assignment in the foreign countries to which you are being assigned. On May 29, 1999, when we took our ungainly steps on the road to democracy, there was abundant evidence that the road was paved with the well wishes and the support of the international community. Indeed, as we groped for the light in the dark hours of our political travail, they offered us their moral shoulder to lean on. We successfully conducted general elections that ushered in a new four-year term for elective offices in the executive and the legislative arms of the federal and state governments. But the euphoria of our having proved the Doubting Thomases wrong cannot blind us to the task in hand, and that is to re-assure our foreign friends that democracy has come to stay. As Nigerian diplomats in these countries, you will be the scroll from which our friends glean the information on which they will base their opinions of how well or how poorly we do as gardeners tending the sapling of democracy. It is not your duty to lie; it is your duty to tell the truth diplomatically about our country and its problems as a nascent democracy.

We are happy that we won the war and freed our country from military dictatorship. But we are confronted with the equally critical battle of giving meaning to democracy. As we had occasion to observe in another forum, democracy, despite all its rosy promises, is no more than a form of government. The task of giving meaning to democracy is the burden we bear as political leaders.

Your Excellencies, you are drawn from the various states in the federation, but you are not representatives of your states in the foreign countries to which you are posted. Like the president whose direct representatives you are, the entire country is your constituency. It is for this reason that we speak to you on behalf of the governments and people of the North-Central zone, better known as the Middle-Belt. The primary objective of this address is to acquaint you with the peculiar social and economic problems of this zone. We also wish to let you know something about our ambitions as governments within this zone and solicit your support for our dreams as a people.

It has been said that democracy thrives on a full stomach. We beg to agree. The greatest threat to democracy anywhere in the world is poverty. A democracy founded on the axis of extreme wealth of the few and the extreme poverty of the majority sits but uncomfortably on the powder keg of social discontent. We need not remind you that Nigeria is not classified as a rich country. The best the economists tell us is that ours is a potentially rich country. Yet, given our natural endowments, Nigeria should not find poverty in its national dictionary. Despite our oil wealth, despite our agricultural resources and despite our solid minerals, despite our tourism potentials and enviable human resources, our dear country finds itself inexplicably numbered by the World Bank and IMF among some of the poorest nations in the world. In virtually all the indices of development, Nigeria occupies a position none of us, in all good conscience, should be proud of.

Poverty is gnawing at the root of our democracy. Political hiccups and inter-ethnic unrests in some parts of the country are consequences of poverty of the many exploited by the unscrupulous rich few. Our current situation is as a result past mistakes. We cannot but reap the whirlwind of economic stagnation and social decay from those errors of the head and the heart. A vicious circle of poverty hamstrings our ambition to catch up with the Joneses of the democratic world. More importantly, it confronts us with the unacceptable face of democracy. Our people are increasingly frustrated by the inability of the governments, federal and state, to meet their basic needs because of dwindling fiscal resources. To restore their confidence in government and in democracy, we must seek to improve their economic well-being by expanding the necessary space for employment opportunities and self-actualisation.

Democracy offers us not only the chance to begin again but to begin to do the right thing to free our country and its people from the vice grip of poverty and degradation. This state of affairs has been the lot of our polity for decades. You will therefore agree that the negative effect is very deep rooted and solutions to these problems will take time. President Obasanjo has been tackling the problem of our economic renewal since he took office more than four years ago. He has taken some decidedly painful decisions. But from all indications, he is convinced that if we must turn the tide of our economic and social development, the current pains occasioned by these tough measures are inevitable and must be borne by all of us. For our country’s tomorrow, we must bear the pains of today.

You may wonder, and indeed with some justification, what the foregoing has to do with you as Nigeria’s envoys to developed and developing countries of the world. The English philosopher, Edmund Burke, was once so incensed by the French that he berated them for what he called "double diplomacy." Whatever he meant by that, it is right today to talk of double diplomacy by which is meant political diplomacy and consular diplomacy. Whether we engage in the variant of political diplomacy known as shuttle diplomacy popularised by the former United States secretary of state, Henry Kissinger or in one less glamorous, envoys have become political and economic representatives of their countries. The political and consular functions have so fused that in some cases, the commercial relations between nations have become the foundation on which the political relations are built. The Americans call it dollar diplomacy, a policy expressly and unequivocally aimed at furthering the economic interests of the United States by encouraging the investment of US capital in friendly foreign countries. The world has become a global village in every sense of that popular phrase. Political ties between two countries make sense only in the context of economic ties. It is our contention that gunboat diplomacy is becoming increasingly unpopular. Even at that, gunboat diplomacy was employed by the super powers to protect foreign investments by their nationals. Dollar diplomacy thus remains the moving force in international relations.

As our envoys, Your Excellencies, you are also our representatives on the economic front. Modern diplomacy rests squarely on the pillar of economic activities between and among nations. You must institute a regime of Naira diplomacy as policy aimed at wooing honest and committed foreign investors into our country, particularly the North-Central zone. You will cement the political ties and tie the economic and commercial knots between the countries of your posting and our country. If you help to build the confidence of foreign investors in the stability of our democracy and the rule of law, we have no doubt that foreign investments will pour into this country to stimulate its economy and accelerate its development and thus deny unscrupulous politicians the pool of the poor from which they recruit their thugs.

It is our sincere hope that Your Excellencies will give special attention to the situation in the North-Central geo-political zone. The zone comprises six states, namely, Nasarawa, Benue, Niger, Plateau, Kwara and Kogi states with a combined population of between 25 and 30 million people. Some of you here are from this zone. We know that you will acquit yourselves creditably as ambassadors of our beloved zone. The people of this zone are known as credible performers. You must bear that torch aloft.

The North-Central zone is a unique zone. Because it is central, it plays a central role in the politics of our dear country. When national discourse becomes a shouting match and passions heat up, our zone never loses its head. Its moderating voice cools the heat and helps to return us to jaw-jaw instead of war-war. Through the thick and thin of our political and social upheavals, the people of this zone have helped to hold this nation together. We are immensely proud of the task we have taken and the burden we have borne and still bear, to keep Nigeria one.

Politically, this zone is lucky in two respects. It has had the privilege of producing three military rulers. The federal capital territory, Abuja, is also located in this zone. However, none of these fortunes has given the zone any advantages in the national scheme of things. Thanks to their poverty, the people of this zone are unable to be private sector players in the federal capital territory. They are neither found in the area of estate development nor in the hospitality industry, except as drawers of water and hewers of wood.

The North-Central geo-political zone presents the irony of under development. It is rich, very rich in mineral and agricultural resources, yet we dare say that it is the poorest zone in the country. Its situation is a consequence of historical neglect and wrong-headed policies that short-changed the zone. We must appreciate what this means in real terms. A situation whereby a major and critical zone in this country lags behind other parts of the country is likely to make nonsense of a meaningful development of the country. Nigeria cannot move forward in bits and pieces. It must move forward as a single unit.

We have no major industrial or economic concern in any parts of the North-Central zone. Thanks to President Obasanjo’s administration, the Ajaokuta Steel industry is showing some promise of coming back to life. We make no empty boast when we say that we are the food basket of the nation. We feed the nation. Long before President Obasanjo launching his Operation Feed the Nation in the late seventies, our peasant farmers had taken on this vital task to feed every part of this country with yams, cassava, rice, beans and other agricultural produce. More than seventy-five per cent of the people of this zone are farmers. But they are peasant farmers with small individual holdings. It is amazing that they produce so much from so little with so much sweat. If this situation is to change, we cannot run away from mechanised agriculture in this zone. Our farmers do not have the wherewithal to embark on mechanised farming. Individually, state governments in this zone are doing what they can to stimulate and sustain increased agricultural production. They assist the peasant farmers with tractor hiring facilities and subsidised fertilisers and encourage agro-based cottage industries. Even then, most of these farmers are too poor to avail themselves of these facilities.

We do not need isolated efforts in this regard. We need a revolution. Some third world countries such as India and the Ivory Coast have made this giant leap. A nation that cannot feed itself cannot claim to be truly independent. One notes that the federal government has banned the importation of a good number of food items and agricultural produce. This ban will be sustained only and if only, local production of these produce is stimulated and sustained. Your Excellencies, this country has lost time in this respect. We can no longer afford mouth slogans. We must act. Only private sector investments in agriculture and agro-based industries will do the magic of revolutionising agriculture in this zone and indeed, in the entire country. In Nasarawa State, we have established a Produce Development and Marketing Company to help our farmers during difficult moments and also access them to markets when the need arises. Your Excellencies, we the people of this zone urge you to take with you the invitation of the state governments in the North-Central zone to private sector investors in agriculture to come here and invest in agriculture and agro-based industries. We promise to welcome them with open arms and provide them with the necessary assistance and incentives for their investments. Your Excellencies must be aware that the Federal Government is providing the necessary leadership in this direction for all the zones of the country.

Our zone is also rich, very rich in solid mineral resources. Every state in this zone is richly blessed with a good number of solid minerals such as limestone, salt, bauxite, tin, coal, etc. Our own state, Nasarawa, is the home of solid minerals. During the colonial period and indeed, until oil was discovered in commercial quantities in the Niger delta region, gold, other precious and semi-precious stones, iron ore, marble, limestone, uranium, tin and columbite were mined on the plateau and other parts of the middle belt. These were basically the only non-agricultural export from this country. These minerals earned the country valuable foreign exchange. That activity has become history not because these minerals are no longer there but because our national attention has shifted totally to crude oil. This has been to the detriment of these God-given resources and the economic development of the states in the North-Central zone. Perhaps, if we threaten the federal government with the right to control and exploit our solid mineral resources, we might get the needed attention. It is unfair to let this zone remain poor and yet sit on such a vast deposit of solid minerals.

The precariousness of our mono-cultural economy stares us in the face because oil is a depletable resource, yet we continue to pretend that the inevitable will never happen. Under our laws, the federal government is the custodian of all mineral resources anywhere in this country. Even if we desire to exploit these resources, assuming we have legal authority to do so, we are effectively barred by our lack of financial resources because it is capital intensive. We have, however, engaged in the promotion of these mineral resources. In our state, we have established a parastatal known as Solid Minerals Development and Marketing Company to inventory the mineral resources in the state and provide potential investors with the required information on them.

Your Excellencies, the challenges we face in this zone today are your challenges. You are privileged to be the eyes and the ears of Nigeria and the Nigerians abroad in the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. We are happy to announce that the government and people of the North-Central zone hereby appoint you as our special economic envoys. Your job is to act as the link between our states and potential foreign investors. We seek meaningful partnership between the private sector and the public sector. The days when governments believed they had the capacity and the fiscal resources to meet all the needs of the people are long gone. Contemporary wisdom frowns at governments seeking to play roles they are ill-equipped to play. Economic activities are best under taken and prosecuted by the private sector. Our national policy of privatisation of government-owned companies and parastatals is anchored on that conventional wisdom. However, in a developing economy such as ours and in order to build the confidence of foreign investors, we cannot eliminate some degree of public sector participation in economic and industrial enterprises, even if to serve as facilitators and in some cases build the necessary bridges for the confidence and guarantees that may be needed by investors.

Your Excellencies, God in His wisdom, has thrust upon your shoulders the burden of letting the world see the acceptable face of Nigeria and its democracy. We can see that your shoulders are broad and strong enough to carry and discharge this burden. Our country and its people count on you to help give Nigeria and Nigerians a good image. A good image is the best winning formula for winning the confidence of foreign investors. We pray that Allah in His infinite mercies will ensure your success.

Thank you.