Diplomatic Protection of Stranded Nigerians Abroad: The Problematic Issue of Emergency Evacuation
INTERNATIoNAL
Bola A. Akinterinwa
The Government of Nigeria cannot be rightly said to have any policy of diplomatic protection beyond the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Section 19 (d) on foreign policy objectives in the 1999 Constitution as amended stipulates two of Nigeria’s foreign policy objectives to be ‘respect for international law and treaty obligations, as well as the seeking of settlement of international disputes by negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration and adjudication.’ Even though it is difficult to understand how a foreign policy objective will simply be to respect international law, the respect is necessarily restrained by Section 12(1) of the same 1999 Constitution. It provides that ‘no treaty between the Federation and any other country shall have the force of law except to the extent to which any such treaty has been enacted into law by the National Assembly.’
This provision is a recap of Article 12(1) of Nigeria’s 1979 Constitution. However, unlike Section 19 of the 1999 Constitution on foreign policy objectives, the 1979 Constitution did not provide for the respect of international law as a foreign policy objective. It simply provides that ‘the State shall promote African Unity, as well as total political, economic, social, and cultural liberation of Africa and all other forms of international cooperation conducive to the consolidation of universal peace and mutual respect and friendship among all peoples and States, and shall combat racial discrimination in all its manifestations.’ Thus, it is mutual respect that was provided for, not respecting international law.
Respect for any international law and treaty obligations can only be obligatory after domestication of the treaty. Two conceptual issues are raised here: ‘ratification’ and ‘domestication.’ When agreements are negotiated by plenipotentiaries, the agreements may first be initialled and then be signed after conclusion of negotiations. The agreement is only valid at the level of the negotiators. When the agreement is thereafter referred to the home government for endorsement, the government is normally required to send its instrument of ratification to the depository provided for in the agreement. Ratification at this level is an intention to be obligated by the agreement pending National Assembly approval.
The requirement of domestication raises the issue of Monist and Dualist States. Countries that do not need any further domestication processes before the international agreement is enforceable are Monists. Nigeria is dualist, requiring domestication of all international agreements before enforcement. Nigeria signed the 1961 Diplomatic Convention and also ratified it as required in Article 49 of the Vienna Convention.
Diplomatic Protection and Stranded Nigerians
The 1961 Vienna Convention is already part of Nigeria’s municipal law. How do we explain the question of diplomatic protection of Nigerians that are stranded abroad? True, the 1961 Vienna Convention applies directly to official diplomatic agents and not to ambassadors with small letter (a) to borrow from a former Ambassador of Nigeria to Ireland and former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nkemjinka Wadibia-Anyanwu’s expression. The Vienna Convention does not, stricto sensu, apply to private Nigerians. This is one major reason there is a distinction between Public International Law and Private International Law.
Public International Law, generally referred to as International Law, is simply the Law of Nations, the law of nation-states. It has official character. In terms of diplomatic protection, only diplomatic agents of sovereign states and international functionaries of international organisations are protected. On the contrary, Private International Law generally refers to the aspect of municipal laws dealing with foreigners in a country, the activities of nationals abroad, etc. In this regard, an accredited diplomatic mission can have cause to seek protection of its citizens when there is a case of denial of justice in a host country. This type of protection is still referred to as diplomatic protection and should therefore not be confused with official diplomatic protection which is largely justified by the provisions of immunity and inviolability clauses in various diplomatic agreements.
With the foregoing, the Government of Nigeria has not always been able to protect its citizens decently and promptly, especially in terms of emergency evacuation from very violent theatres, when they are caught in situations for which they are not responsible. An emergency evacuation has been described as an ‘urgent egress or escape of people away from an area that contains an imminent threat, an on-going threat or a hazard to lives and property.’ There can be many types of evacuation, such as the vertical or horizontal evacuation, full evacuation, and simultaneous evacuation. Our concern here is about diplomatic evacuation and we shall briefly look at the cases of stranded Nigerians in China, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Sudan which is the most recent.
In the context of the People’s Republic of China, Nigerians were victims of COVID-19 pandemic discrimination and had to be evacuated, thanks to the coordination by the Air Peace airline and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As noted by the airline, ‘today, May 30, 2020, Air Peace airlifted 268 Nigerians from China. The flight arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja at exactly 14.30hrs (1300 GMT) (sic). All evacuees will be proceeding on the mandatory 14 days quarantine as directed by the Federal Government.’ The evacuation took place against the background of reported maltreatment and discrimination against Nigerians and Africans who were denied access to hospitals, shopping malls, hotel rooms, etc. Nigerians were forced out of their homes. The letter written by the All African Association of Guangzhou community called for an end to ‘the inhumane treatment, hatred, and outright discrimination of Africans that is currently going on in Guanghzou.’
The situation compelled Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, to seek explanations from the Chinese government from the country’s ambassador to Nigeria in April 2020. How long did it take to ensure evacuation? First, Channelstv.com reported that ‘lawmakers in the House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a motion to evacuate Nigerians in China following the outbreak of the corona virus.’ The motion was moved by Benjamin Kalu Okezie, the spokesperson of the House. As told by Benjamin Kalu, a citizen of Abia State in Nigeria, ‘under the pretext of curbing the spread of COVID-19, which ironically originated in Wuhan, China, several kinds of maltreatment of Nigerian citizens in Guangzhou have been perpetrated by Chinese people and authorities, including wrongful confiscation of Nigerian international passports, prolonged and illegal detention of Nigerians in the name of mandatory quarantine despite having certificates of clean health and no recent travel history, outright refusal to test or release the test results, and the eviction of Nigerians from their homes and hotel accommodations.’
The rejection of the motion was based on the consideration that China has better facilities to handle the situation than Nigeria. The motion became another drama in the House. Some Representatives accused the Chinese of xenophobic attacks and want the Nigerian government to consider the maltreatment of Nigerians as xenophobic (vide Daily Post Nigeria, April 28, 2020). As much as this allegation of xenophobia may be true, it still justifies the aspects of discrimination to which the Nigerians were subjected. And true enough, the Embassy of Nigeria had a serious confrontation with the Chinese authorities in Beijing. The discrimination eventually turned out to be uncalled for because the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Zhou Pingjian, explained during a news briefing that there were 60 Nigerians living in Wuhan city where the first COVID-19 was first recorded and that ‘no Nigerian citizen residing in Wuhan city has contracted the Coronavirus.’
What is particularly noteworthy, on the one hand, is the resolution of the National Assembly that: necessary financial and other assistance should be provided to the stranded Nigerians by all the relevant government agencies, and, on the other, is the observation by one Nigerian student, ‘our blood is very strong. My message for the Nigerian government is that when this kind of situation comes up in any part of the world and it happens that Nigerian citizens could be caught in the web, the Government should always learn how to be fast in action like other countries did by evacuating their people home. We are hoping to be evacuated, but it is late already’ (The Guardian, Nigeria, 14 February, 2020). It is this factor of delayed evacuation that is the root problem. Government has not learnt any lesson from previous emergency evacuation efforts. One reason for the unnecessary delay in evacuation was the fact that the Foreign Minister never believed in the various videos on the mistreatment of Nigerian that went viral. It was when the acting ambassador of Nigeria in Beijing re-confirmed the situation that the delayed evacuation efforts began. This was most unfortunate.
Again, The Premium Times Nigeria titled its report on May 5, 2020, ‘265 Nigerians to be evacuated from Dubai,’ United Arab Emirates. As explained by Fernando Judel, the Director of NIDO-UAE, there were 301 Nigerians working legitimately in the UAE, but lost their jobs in July when the Ministry of Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE) blocked the work permit application portal for Nigerian nationals. UAE authorities denied any discrimination but the truth remains that the Emirati government made life difficult for the Nigerians. 542 stranded Nigerians were evacuated from Dubai, UAE on 23 October, 2022 in difficult circumstances. This was a follow-up to the 256 Nigerians deported on 6 May, 2020 to Nigeria.
Problematic Emergency Evacuation
The explication of the problematic of emergency evacuation is illustrated by the xenophobic cases in South Africa and the discriminatory evacuation in Sudan. As regards South Africa, there have been many cases of xenophobic attacks, one of which prompted serious reciprocal treatment in Nigeria. The 2019 incidents were serious, Nigeria evacuated 640 citizens from Johannesburg, following a spate of xenophobic attacks which the South African government did not accept as xenophobic. As told by Honourable Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Chief Executive of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, ‘we have 640 Nigerians that want to come back from South Africa, and that will require two planes. There may be more people who want to leave, but we will know when we get to South Africa on Wednesday’ (September 11, 2019).
Immigrants and their businesses, especially those of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zambia and Kenya, were always the targets of the xenophobic attacks. Ten people, including two foreigners, were killed in the 2019 attacks. Nigeria recalled its ambassador to South Africa. Madagascar and Zambia opted out of the football match against South Africa’s Bafana Bafana. Without doubt, the Government of South Africa recognised the enormity of the implication of the xenophobic attacks when he stated that ‘Government will not allow sporadic lawlessness and violence to disrupt the safety and livelihoods of millions of South Africans and the majority of foreign nationals in our country who are law-abiding and have the right to conduct their lives and businesses in peace.’
In the eyes of the Nigerian leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, he is ‘worried that the recurring issue of xenophobia could negatively affect the image and standing of South Africa as one of the leading countries on the continent, if nothing is done to stop it,’ Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, said on behalf of PMB. The recurring character of the xenophobic attacks particularly on Nigerians can be explained at two levels: PEW research findings and bilaterally at the Nigeria-South African relations.
First, the 2018 survey carried out in summer by the Pew Research Center, revealed that 62% of South Africans consider immigrants as a burden on the country especially in terms of taking over their jobs, social benefits, while another 61% of South Africans believe that immigrants are more responsible for South Africa’s crimes than other groups. Secondly, at the bilateral level of Nigeria-South African ties, most younger generations of South Africa know very little about Nigeria’s roles in the dismantlement of apartheid. When they see Nigerians living like kings in their country and not knowing that Nigerians are truly darling friends of South Africans, they easily, but wrongly, attack Nigerians and the problematic issue of evacuation always recurs.
As for Sudan, the war in the country is largely a resultant from the shift in character of the crisis: from crisis of leadership to conflict of interest which generated public distrust, economic problems and reckless violence that openly threaten the security of foreigners in the country. In August 2019, the military consented to share political power with the civilians ahead of elections. However, the agreement was interrupted by the October 2021 coup d’état which led to pro-democracy mass protests across the whole country. This also dovetailed into emergence of conflicting interests. The military want to renew the transition agenda while the civilians insisting on overseeing the transition agenda of the military.
They also ask for integration of their General Mohammed Dagalo-led Rapid Support Force, a strong paramilitary group, and powerful as the General Abdel al-Burhan-led Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), into the regular army. The SAF are opposed. In fact, the civilians are unhappy about the inaction of government over alleged war crimes by the military since 2013 and particularly the killing of pro-democracy protesters. They insist on the need for the SAF to hand over the lucrative military holdings in agriculture, trade, and industries. The military refused because the holdings are precisely the source of their riches and strength. The civilians want justice for the killing of pro-democracy protesters on June 3, 2019.
These were not only pointers to the deepening of the crisis that should have informed the Government of Nigeria to begin to anticipate and prepare quietly for an imminent evacuation, but also the dynamics of economic crisis in the country. Life is fraught with shortages of bread and fuel. International support worth billions of dollar, was attached following the 2021 coup. As a result, development projects had to be stopped. The more critical issue is lack of access to food and water and alleged killing of foreigners all of which make evacuation a desideratum.
At first, the Government of Nigeria explained the difficulty in evacuating Nigerians from Sudan: placement of curfew, closure of the air space, etc. In spite of this, other nationals were, and are, still being evacuated through the Port Sudan and otherwise. For instance, Saudi Arabia and Jordan had already evacuated their citizens through Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Besides, the Sudanese Army said it would facilitate the evacuation of American, British, Chinese and French citizens and diplomats from Sudan, but was silent over the evacuation of other foreigners.
Eventually, Nigeria sought the support of Egypt in evacuating the 5,500 stranded Nigerians by road to Egypt, from where there could be airlifting. The points of reflection here are two-fold: how to reconcile the reason for delayed evacuation because of the war situation and the understanding reached with Egypt that led to the eventual evacuation by bus of the first batch of evacuees. Reportedly, the Government of Nigeria released N150m for hiring 40 buses for the conveyance of stranded Nigerians from Sudan to Cairo, Egypt. The money was paid to a company at 12.37pm by the Central Bank of Nigeria through the National Emergency Management Agency.
As reported by several dailies on Saturday, 29th April, 2023, the evacuation of 2,400 students and other Nigerians trapped in Sudan ‘took off on a slow start on Wednesday (26th April) as only 15 out of the 40 buses required for the exercise were provided. Despite the end of the ceasefire by the warring Sudanese forces, stranded Nigerians, especially students, said the Embassy had not provided any buses for evacuation as of Thursday’ (27th April). The NEMA has given a reason for the delay in evacuation: Egypt’s border control. If the reasons for airlifting are traceable to the need to ensure the correct profiling of every stranded Nigerian in Egypt, how do we explain the fact of only 15 available buses? Where were the unavailable 25 buses paid for? Were they unavailable as a result of logistic problems or because of dishonesty of purpose? Indeed, the evacuation exercise in Sudan is one too many. Why is there no lesson learnt from the emergency evacuation experiences in South Africa, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, China, and now Sudan, etc.?
The problematic issue of emergency evacuation can be prevented if an agreement on emergency evacuation is done with countries playing host to more than a hundred of Nigerians, and if a Permanent Preventive Emergency Evacuation Centre (PPEEC) comprising professionals in security and diplomatic protection and maritime security is established to oversee such agreements. The personnel should include representatives of the NEMA, Diaspora Commission, and the Nigeria Armed Forces. It should be coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The PPEEC may not be limited in scope in terms of coverage of who is to be evacuated. It can have a continental scope and organised as a rapid deployment and rescue centre, especially in light of Africa being the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. The PPEEC should be seen as a foreign policy instrument. Another approach is to have a new Africa of Black Africans. Africa should be geo-politically re-conceptualised to reflect the exclusiveness of black dignity and pride. Africa, as it is referred to today, carries a stigma and jots of disrespect. Nigeria should respond by providing leadership in the making of this new Africa in an ICT globalising world. Nigeria’s foreign policy must be simultaneously reactive and programmatic in the quest to protect Nigerians in whatever situational crisis they may find themselves abroad.
