Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari was in the United States for a state visit. During this visit to Washington, the Nigerian president had bilateral meetings with President Barrack Obama of the United States in the White House.
The Nigerian media was full of it – that is, awash with the story of Buhari’s first diplomatic visit to the US. Aso Rock’s press secretary and Buhari’s senior media aide, Femi Adesina, tweeted enthusiastically from the White House. The thing however was that out here in the United States, the universe was indifferent. There was a serious news eclipse on Buhari’s presence in Washington DC. It was insignificant.
No major American news outlet covered it for a US audience; the newspapers, if they talked about it at all, buried it deep beneath everything else, like an afterthought. The Congressional Black caucus did not rollout a carpet. The serious leaders of the black community in America did not pay attention; nor did it seem to them like a great African head of state was in town.
The Nigerian community felt but a rustle. In the large scheme of things, the vast range of Nigeria’s Intellectual, professional and business community here in the US, which the president and his mission ought to have tapped into, were hardly involved, nor a serious outreach planned to get the president to meet with them. In a badly organized town-hall affair, some Nigerians who wanted a chance to meet with the president were locked out from the grounds of the Nigerian Embassy in Washington DC. Two things felt immediately clear with Buhari’s visit to the US.
The reception was ordinary. It is clear that Nigeria no longer has sex appeal, or any more weight to pull, in this relationship with the United States. It is also an indication of the general sense of Africa, and the general treatment of Africa in the US media, that the head of state of Africa’s so-called “power-house” visits the United States, and it is as if nothing happened. It was all silent. Compare this with what would have happened had the US President visited Nigeria. All lights would be ablaze.
On the diplomatic level, it is also quite clear that Nigeria does not register on the great scale of countries the United States regards as important. We may be friends, but in this relationship Nigeria is the dog that wags its tail before America and is to be patronized. It brings to mind the statement by Nigeria’s former Consul-General to the United States, and former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Joe Keshi, that Nigeria’s relationship with the United States must be based on “mutual respect.”
That is as it should be, and one of the ways in which countries demonstrate their regard for other nations is in the diplomatic protocol, and in the gestures of fanfare. Buhari was received at the Andrews Airport, not even by the Vice-President of the United States, but by the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Entwistle. It was shabby reception, compared to what would have been done to say, the Prime Minister of Israel, or France, or the German Chancellor, or the UK premier, or the PM of India, or even Pakistan. Compare it even to America’s reception of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in 1961, and I have here uploaded a visual link on Youtube for the readers of the “Orbit” WATCH HERE, and it should be quite clear that Nigeria has stepped down significantly on the American diplomatic totem pole.
To be fair, President Obama did say, “Nigeria is obviously one of the most important countries in the world, and one of the most important countries in the African continent.” But we worry that US foreign policy is taking Africa and African countries for granted, and treating Africa like the world’s footmat, and this in the long run is not an image, we Africans want to have of a US-Africa relationship. It must be based, as Ambassador Keshi said, on mutual respect; not on presumption.
Buhari’s US visit, I’m not quite certain accomplished much except as a public relations ploy. If anything it felt like a caretaker reporting to his absentee landlord. Buhari wants president Obama to help Nigeria track and repatriate its stolen money.
“The fact that I now seek Obama’s assistance in locating and returning $150 billion in funds stolen in the past decade and held in foreign bank accounts on behalf of former, corrupt officials is testament to how badly Nigeria has been run,” President Buhari wrote in a Washington Post article of July 21. The question Nigerians however must ask is: does Nigeria not have its own National Intelligence Agency?
If there is none, perhaps Buhari now has a chance to build a strong and efficient National Intelligence Services from the ground floor. When the US had its own problem, it created its Secret Service managed under the Treasury Department. Buhari wants the US to provide Nigeria with the arms and training to fight Boko Haram. Does Nigeria not have its own Engineers and Designers? Why does this president want to continue and perpetuate Nigeria’s culture of dependency? Why is Nigeria not producing its own arms for its own national defence and national security? Zimbabwe produces its own arms.
South Africa has a vast National Defence Production infrastructure. Nations that depend absolutely on other nations for the tools required for their own self-defence and national security become slave nations. Buhari’s National Security policy must now move towards a doctrine of autonomy and self-sufficiency. It must link itself to the epicenters of Nigeria’s knowledge production and awaken its technical capacity. But this president must stop quibbling if he wants to truly make a clean cut with the past, and with how “badly Nigeria has been run.”
And he did say that he prefers to be “slow and steady.” Steady is good. But it must be anchored on two important premises: that there is something to be steady about; and that there is an end to it. Right now, Buhari’s pace, raises many concerns. It is not so much that is slow as that it is threading waters. But let me place this on record: I personally like this president to succeed.
The enormity of the work does not escape one. However, Buhari’s statement in the Washington Post, that he wants to “first put new rules of conduct and good governance in place,” before appointing his minister in September is a lot of presidential hogwash. Rules of conduct and good governance are already inherent in Nigeria’s regulatory systems. What is absent is sanction and solid oversight. Besides, the president can walk and chew gum at the same time.
The executive council is sine qua non to the convening of executive authority; and for a president who talks up the storm about law, order, and the rules of conduct, the president has breached the constitution by authorizing the release of federation funds to states for bail out without the consent and authority of the National Assembly. The president does not have the power to do so.
It is a fact which would have been made clear to him had he in place, a Finance Minister and the Attorney-General. If the bail-out money as authorized by the president is released, and it is not going to be released, the issue is bound to crop up with devastating consequences for the presidency in the 8th National Assembly when it finally convenes.
President Buhari needs to step off his high-horse and understand both the range and the limits of presidential power. He no longer is a military head of state. There are new rules of conduct pertaining to his office. Better still, this president must stop campaigning and begin to govern.
