Nigeria and Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi’s Calls for a New World Order: Beyond the Deaf and Dumb Saga
Bola A. Akinterinwa
The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), considered by its founders in 1961 as an International Institute in Africa, an African Institute in Nigeria, and a Nigerian Institute in Lagos, played host to Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi’s lecture, entitled ‘Towards A New World Order,’ on Thursday, 20th October, 2022. The lecture was delivered within the framework of the NIIA’s Distinguished Lecture Series and was delivered to a very distinguished audience. At the lecture, virtually and physically attended, were seasoned diplomatists, military professionals and accomplished scholars, and more importantly, students from the University of Lagos, as well as from Babcock and Covenant Universities.
Academics like Professors Akinjide Osuntokun, Adele Jinadu, Kayode Soremekun, Adekeye Adebajo, and Toyin Falola were graciously there. FOC Nnaemeka Ignatius Ilo, the Chief of staff of Logistics, who stood in for the Air Officer Command, and CSP Aladegoroye, and Commodore J.D. Rashid were there. It was also a forum for former Foreign Ministers: Major General Ike Nwachukwu, Professor Akinwande Akinyemi, the guest lecturer, and Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, a SAN and Chairman of the event. In fact, diplomatic presence at the lecture was quite noteworthy as the Indian Consulate and Rwandan Embassy were represented. Ambassador Segun Akinsanya, Ambassador Tafawa Balewa, Sports Ambassador Segun Odegbami and Cultural Ambassador, Erelu Abiola Dosunmu were all there. Several professional politicians, including the former Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, also took active part during the question-and-answer session.
The importance of the distinguished audience is best explained by the rationale for the lecture. The NIIA’s Director General, Professor Eghosa Osaghae, said it has become necessary to stop taking Africa to the world. We should bring the world to Africa. At the level of Professor Akinyemi, the situational reality of global power and sustained quest to have a New World Order (NWO) demand that the Nigerian elite should henceforth be more actively engaged in the discussion of the modalities and criteria for the NWO. Thus, the invitation extended to members of various strata of society therefore appears to be a foundation-laying for the making of a NWO beginning at the domestic level. And true enough, the lecture generated much interest and the NIIA appears to be returning to normalcy, especially that Professor Akinyemi also recognised the NIIA as one of the potent determinants considered in qualifying to be given a National Honour, Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR), eleven years ago. With the lecture, Professor Akinyemi wanted to ensure that Nigeria is relevant in any given NWO.
Akinyemi and a New World Order
Without doubt, Professor Akinyemi has been talking about the need for a NWO for some time. In 1992, he authored a lecture on the platform of the Nigerian Society of International Affairs (NSIL). In March 2022, he again discussed the need for a NWO in which Nigeria should be an active participant. As he put it, ‘Nigeria should join in the search for a New World Order by becoming an active participant. Medium-income States are scrambling to create a New World Order. No one wants to make the mistakes of leaving the jigsaw puzzle to the two superpowers of USA and China plus a few handpicked European-medium powers and their allies.’ As further observed by Professor Akinyemi, Nigeria was not an active participant on the global scene because of a lack of domestic consensus among domestic foreign policy elite (Vide “Planning for a New World Order,” thisdaylive.com, March 2022).
His lecture last Thursday at the NIIA was the latest effort to sensitise the Nigerian elite and the NIIA, indeed was the best platform for the lecture for two major reasons. First, Professor Akinyemi was a former Director General of the Institute. He was therefore very conversant with the terrain. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the cardinal and first mandate of the NIIA is ‘to encourage and facilitate the understanding of international affairs and of the circumstances, conditions and attitudes of foreign countries and their peoples.’
In this regard, any discussion of a NWO is necessarily about international attitudes and cooperation. It is about international struggles. In fact, the question of a NWO has always generated considerable discussions. On 11 July 1992, the NIIA held a one-day National Seminar on ‘Africa and the New World Order.’ One pertinent observation made by Professor Bassey E, Ate at the seminar was that under the Cold War order, ‘development and security interests of the Third World were skewed in favour of priorities determined in Moscow, Washington, London and Paris. Third World countries, except for their ruling elites, had little autonomous interests to project, talk less of a capacity to defend such interests in the old order.’ It is precisely because of these observations that Professor Akinyemi has been calling for a New World Order.
When he called on African leaders, and particularly on Nigeria, to have a black Bomb, the objective is to provide a stronger foundation for a better appreciated Africa and black dignity in international relations. Considering that Nigeria ought to lead the struggle for a better and respected black people, Professor Akinyemi came up with what has been described as the Akinyemi Consultation Doctrine. This was when Libyan Muammar Gaddafi sought the understanding and support of Nigeria when Libya had problems with the United States. Professor Akinyemi simply argued that the spirit of mutual respect required mutual consultation before acting.
Perhaps most importantly, Professor Akinyemi’s idea of a Concert of Medium Powers is undoubtedly another way of complaining about the existing order and demanding a NWO. And interestingly too, not only were some medium-power countries invited to Nigeria, countries like Switzerland, internationally recognised as one of the neutralist states, was represented at the meeting, which was, for avoidance of not giving the impression of directly confronting the big powers, changed its name to Lagos Forum. Thus, the recent NIIA lecture was therefore a fresh call on the Nigerian foreign policy elite to begin to reflect on current international developments with the ultimate objective of helping to also shape international attitudes.
Nigeria’s military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, asked two questions in his address to the NIIA National Seminar on 11th July, 1992: ‘What should African countries do to stem this bleeding of its developmental surpluses? What can we learn that is based upon the truth of our circumstances and that promises reversal of a condition that is structurally unviable?’ There is nothing to suggest that any meaningful answers have been found since then. The idea of the Concert of Medium Powers that was rejected in Nigeria is what is currently informing the establishment of new concerts, like the BRIC and the BRICS. Efforts are being made in different nooks and crannies of the world to find alternative ways of ensuring self-protection and advancement in the current World Order.
And true, every quest for a NWO is always an acknowledgment of the observation that the world is complex and contradictory, integral and indivisible. In the words of Vladimir F. Petrovsky, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR, ‘this basic idea is a departure from the old and erroneous view, which saw the opposition of one socio-economic system to the other outside the context of an interdependent and interconnected world’ (NIIA Lecture Series, No.57. 1989).
Put differently, if we admit of the indivisibility and interconnectedness of the world, a conflict between different socio-economic systems cannot but be an issue, especially in the quest for a NWO, which essentially is a manifestation of international cooperation. Whenever there is a change of World Order, international cooperation necessarily changes in character as it is the new order that defines the pattern and orientation of international cooperation. This partly explains why Professor Akinyemi has from time to time advocated a NWO.
Deaf and Dumb Saga: The Issues
Several issues were raised in Professor Akinyemi’s NIIA lecture: attitudinal disposition of the foreign policy elite, Colonial Pact and Charter of Imperialism, COVID-19 Pandemic and international policy attitudes, dynamics of the NWO in comparison with the current order, reform of the United Nations and Permanent Seat for Africa, setting an agenda for the NWO, the Nigerian factor in the NWO. Let us look at some of these questions.
The first is how to explain and understand why there is hardly agreement among the Nigerian foreign policy elite, especially in terms of articulating the foreign policy leeway, and also particularly on what Nigeria’s roles should be continentally and regionally in the conduct and management of Africa’s international relations? One obvious possible reason for lack of elite consensus is the psychology of human differences which allows for holding of different perceptions. This is natural. Another possible factor is the lack of coordination between and among foreign policy institutions. There are the NIIA, the NIPSS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the forefront but all of which act along parallel lines in terms of common approach to foreign policy making and implementation.
What is ideal is to have all the foreign policy institutions directed to investigate the place of Nigeria in the strategic foreign policy calculations of all the Member States of the international community. In this regard, since Professor Akinyemi is positing that Nigeria has to be actively engaged in the making of the NWO, such participation can only be meaningful if the extent of how Nigeria is perceived internationally is first understood. This is a first responsibility that should be given to the NIIA and to spearhead because it falls within its core mandate.
More concernedly, there is no Ministry, Department or Agency of government that does not have one thing or the other to do internationally. More often than not, government ministries operate internationally without necessarily carrying the Foreign Ministry along. Nigerian diplomatic missions are frequently cut unawares when home-based government officials travel abroad and expect to be well received. In fact, the foreign policy elite, largely comprising retired and serving diplomatists, diplomatic scholars, are not related with on the basis of professional competency, but on the basis of religious solidarity, ethnic jingoism and personal friendship. By so doing, the national interest is often relegated to the background. This is why Professor Akinyemi cannot be more correct in submitting that ‘Nigeria needs to clean up her act. She needs to become a less corrupt country. She needs to practice an inclusive form of governance and not a patently form of governance that emphasizes incompetence, square pegs in round holes, and turns Nigeria into the exclusive property of one nationality thus breeding secessionist agitation. This state will not help Nigeria achieve its manifest destiny in the world.’
On Colonial Pact and Charter of Imperialism, the question to ask is when shall they operationally be brought to an end? The Colonial Pact, as espoused by France appears to be one major dynamic of the turmoil and coups d’état in Francophone Africa. Professor Akinyemi reminded us the noisome aspects of the pact: political and not economic independence for colonial territories. Political independence was subjected in 1958 to conditionality: acceptance by the colonies of a French tax on what France had spent in developing the colonies; prohibition of an independent national currency. They were to accept the CFA franc whose rate is exclusively determinate by France and which was directly linked to the French franc; obligation to set up an army to be made up of soldiers who had fought on the side of the French during World War II and who were still in the French army; any award of economic contract must give priority to French companies; in the same vein, when and where mineral resources are found, the first right of exploitation must be given to the French; and more interestingly, 85% of the foreign exchange reserves must be kept in the Central Bank of France.
The coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea Conakry and Chad in recent times are partly influenced by the impact of this Colonial Impact. In fact, following Professor Akinyemi’s lecture, the French-supported Chadian government used maximum force to disperse peacefully protesting Chadians. More than fifty people have been killed as a result. This is why an increasing number of Francophone Africans are currently asking for withdrawal of French troops from their territory. Africans, grosso modo, are asking for total decolonisation as at today.
Professor Akinyemi made a cursory mention of the Charter of Imperialism in his lecture, which he said was ‘recently discovered at the royal Museum for Central African in Tervuren, Belgium.’ The Charter was drawn up in Washington during the Slave Trade, discreetly negotiated in 1885 and aimed at governing ‘the world and control the wealth of the planet.’ As provided in Article 1 of the Charter, the ‘policy is to divide and conquer, dominate, exploit and plunder to fill our banks and make them the most powerful in the world.’
More disturbingly, not only does Article 2 say ‘no Third World country is a sovereign and independent state’ and Article 3 says ‘all power in the Third World countries emanates from us, and we exercise it by putting pressure on the dealers who are merely our puppets and no organ of the Third World can lay claim to exercise it,’ Article 4 of the Charter of Imperialism is most obnoxious because it says ‘all Third World countries are divisible and their borders can be moved according to our will. Respect for territorial integrity does not exist for the Third World.’
Professor Akinyemi’s quest for a NWO is most justified by many provisions of the Charter which clearly made a nonsense of the personality and integrity of the people of the Third World. While Article 8 says there is no negotiated agreements and contracts with Third World countries and that they ‘impose on them what we want and they are subject to our will,’ Article 10 compounds the problem by saying that ‘where our interests are at stake, Third World countries have no rights in the countries of the South, our interests come before the law and international law.’ Article 13 says ‘the countries of the Third World have neither culture nor civilisation without referring to western civilisation.’ And perhaps most shockingly, Article 15 stipulates that in Third World countries, no one has the right to put in their banks an amount above the ceiling of money set by us. When the fortune exceeds the ceiling, it is deposited in one of our banks so that the profits return in the form of loans or economic development assistance in cash or in kind.’
Based on the foregoing, can it be argued that the spirit and mentality of the Charter has been jettisoned in international relations? Is the Charter not a dynamic and a pillar of the current NWO? If it is, why should the current order be further sustained? This factor largely explains the importance of Professor Akinyemi’s call on Africa’s foreign policy elite, and particularly those in Nigeria, to find time to reflect and come together to save their people from obnoxious policies of the developed world.
On the critical issue of reform of the United Nations, and particularly the expansion of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Odein Ajumogobia, SAN, agreed with Professor Akinyemi that better days are still coming in terms of reform of the UNSC. They both gave very convincing arguments for their hope, but which appear not to be in consonance with the de facto politics of the United States. In other words, we believe strongly that there are limitations to their patriotism.
Prior to the Ezulwini Consensus, the African Union wanted five Permanent Seats for Africa, in the hope that there would be one seat for each region of Africa. However, the P-5 and other big powers settled for only two seats for the whole of Africa. In this regard, the United States specifically wanted and still wants the Arab countries to be represented on the UNSC but the Arab countries do not constitute a region by UN definition, hence not qualified to be considered for any Permanent Seat. Because of this, the United States diplomacy opted to work for Egypt to be one of the two occupiers in the belief that Egypt is geo-politically an African country, as well as an Arabophone by propinquity. The implication is that Nigeria, which is legitimately qualified to occupy a Permanent Seat on merit and not necessarily on behalf of Africa, is left to contest with South Africa for the remaining one seat. This is one major reason for our own pessimism.
In fact, more disturbingly, while Nigeria, under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as Chairman of the AU Assembly of Heads of State argued that it would be better to first secure the membership of the UNSC and then begin to struggle within for the right of veto, many of the Arabophones, especially, Libya, said there was no need accepting permanent seats without veto power. Thus, African leaders created the first obstacle to expansion of membership at the continental level. Besides, Articles 108 and 109 of the UN Charter require the consent of the P-5, which further complicates because acting in unanimity is not forthcoming. Thus, amendment of the UN Charter cannot be possible without the consensus of the P-5.
However, Nigeria’s diplomatic machinery did well. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and his Foreign Minister, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, clearly warned the AU leaders about the implications of insisting on the right of veto. Today, the expansion of the permanent membership of the UNSC has become a political lull and a case of the deaf and dumb leading the blind. The challenge of Professor Akinyemi’s sustained calls for a NWO is basically how to avoid a situation of the deaf and dumb being led by the blind. Who is listening to what? Professor Akinyemi’s lecture and search for a NWO is most welcome a development and should be understood in light of the need to revisit the idea of the Concert of Medium Powers.
