Tinubu, Akinyemi and The Jeering Boers

Kayode Soremekun

It is very surprising that  till date, no serious analysis  has  featured on  Professor Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi’s return to the  portal  of Nigeria’s Policy corridor.It is important to appreciate here that Bolaji Akinyemi has since  been  named as the Chairman of the  Governing Council of  the Nigeria Institute of International  Affairs,(NIIA) by President  Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

 For those in the know, the NIIA is a familiar turf for this Scholar-Diplomat. Such indeed was his dominance of this aspect of our national  life that, for much of the seventies and eighties, Professor  Bolaji Akinyemi was a prominent member  of  Nigeria’s  foreign  policy elite.Some pundits even likened him to Washington’s Henry Kissinger , Super K, who virtually towered over successive American Presidents as his country’s  Secretary  of State.Possibly out of  a desire to emulate Kissinger, Akinyemi’s corporate  outfit was titled:Akinyemi  and  Associates,while Kissinger’s own also bore the  appellation of  Kissinger  and  Associates.

However, one of  the  ‘Associates’ has since fizzled out. There is no prize for guessing  the one which has been  afflicted with the throes of mortality.

After all, Nigeria  is  a decidedly different social formation from the United States of America.Still, and while his tenure lasted, few will deny that our own Super K was something of  a huge human variable in  the Nigerian  Foreign Policy community.

It  was so huge  that at a point in  time,the inimitable, Stanley Macebuh wrote a memorable  newspaper  article on the Akinyemi  years at the Nigerian  Institute of  International  Affairs. This piece was titled :Of Men and  Institutions.Indeed,few will deny that during his tenure as the Director General  of NIIA, the Institute assumed a kind of  visibility  which lacked precedence in our national life.At that point in time,  the Ministry of Foreign  Affairs was virtually  side-lined in the formulation and implementation  of  Nigeria’s Foreign Policy.The variables were however in his favour in the period under reference.There was a Murtala Mohammed at the helm of affairs  who  was probably  aversed to the stodgy  and cautious profile of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. He, Murtala found in Akinyemi a go-getter whose spirit  was in consonance with those frenetic  times.Resource politics also appeared to be in his favour.For those who can remember, this was the era of  the  heady oil boom when rightly or  wrongly Nigeria thought that  she could move the earth.Again for those who could remember,  the  seductive  and heady feelings ably egged on by the media was   that,  there was a new and dynamic dimension to Nigeria’s  foreign  policy.In a way,  Akinyemi  was the star performer, almost an embodiment of this dynamic foreign policy that was Nigeria’s.To be sure,  there were indeed some high points of this era.For instance there was the famous  speech by Murtala Mohammed at the fateful OAU Summit where Nigeria told off Washington  in certain times that Africa had  come of age and as such would brook no interference  in her internal affairs.

 Ali Mazrui also  weighed  in on the issue by asserting that Nigeria  was beginning to emerge as a credible interlocutor between and among   the status-quo  forces in world affairs.

While the euphoria lasted, we all lapped up and indulged in this heady stuff about Nigeria’s place in global politics.Not to be outdone, Akinyemi ‘s colleague and  possibly friend, Professor  Ibrahim  Agboola Gambari also  wrote a   largely adulatory piece   on Nigeria’s  new and dynamic foreign policy in the Columbian Journal of International  Affairs .

The piece was titled:Nigeria:A Growing Internal Stability, Wealth and Influence.

Predictably, since unanimity is not one of the hall marks of academia, there were voices of  dissent on this new and dynamic foreign policy of Nigeria.Scholars like Dr  Segun Osoba, the historian and Professor Olajide Aluko argued that there there was nothing novel  about  Nigeria’s  foreign policy since the economy was not industrialized and   was still hooked on the export of primary  products.The interesting thing here was that Osoba and  Aluko embodied antithetical  strains  in terms of  ideological  profiles;yet they came to the same conclusions  about Nigeria’s  foreign policy-that it was far from being dynamic even in those seemingly exciting times.Here one can easily understand a Segun Osoba on this issue, after all he was of the radical bent, while Aluko was something of a liberal scholar like an Akinyemi.This interesting  position could well be explained by the fact that Aluko  like a Gambari was also a colleague of  Akinyemi and possibly his friend!!

Still and despite the  dissent offered by the likes of Aluko and Osoba, Akinyemi, the scholar-cum policymaker forged ahead at the Institute.Under his watch the place became a mecca of sorts for scholars  and policy makers.The Institute’s library  was rich, and very much the same thing could be said for its newspaper holdings. Students  of foreign policy flocked to the place, diplomats also jostled for the attention  of the Instittute.

I recall here that there was the famous Bulletin on Foreign  Affairs-a monthly publication which encapsulated all the worthy features and news on Nigeria’s Foreign policy.Those indeed were the days of the Institute under Bolaji Akinyemi.

Invariably and inevitably, since  only God lives for ever, Akinyemi had to move on.Rather than return to his old base, Ibadan, he moved on to the University  of  Lagos  where he was appointed a Professor  of  Political  Science. At this point in time, he wrote a memorable piece titled-Farewell To Policy. But he spoke too soon for shortly after, he was again  drafted  into  Nigeria’ s Foreign policy orbit as Foreign  Minister.Not one to take things passively, he proceeded to stamp his identity  once again  on our Foreign Policy landscape.

Two instances will readily bear out  this activist stance of Bolaji  Akinyemi. There was the idea of the Concert of Medium  Powers which he floated  and is possibly moribund  by  now.There was also the idea and consequent establishment  of the  Technical  Aid Corps Scheme, (TACS) which exists  till date.TACS happens  to be a phenomenon  which speaks  to Nigeria’s amphibian  status in International  Relations.

This amphibian  profile derives from the fact that , on one hand Nigeria projects herself as something of a power  on the platform of an organ like TACS.But on the other hand,the self-same  Nigeria is virtually  beholden  to the international  system in  various areas.A few instances will suffice here.

One,  we are a debtor nation, a far cry from  when we huffed and puffed on the international  arena in the seventies of the Murtala-Akinyemi era.Such indeed is our current prostate  condition that during  the  last presidential  election, almost  every  presidential candidate of note, made the trip to Chatam  House.It was clearly  an implicit endorsement  of how low we had sunk in  the comity of nations.It is instructive to recall here that at  an earlier point in time, this same  country railed against the  Boers,  that apartheid must end.We stood at the  barricades  and proudly too against this inhuman  system in   South Africa.But despite our evangelical zeal on this issue, the Boers probably knew something that we did not.Amidst  our fervent showing in the anti-aparthied movement,  the Boers took care to remind us that once apartheid  was over, the next phase of the struggle will be North of the Limpopo.Indeed as hated as apartheid  was,  the Boers put in   place something of  a haven  in that country.It is for instance no surprise  that,as I write,  there is at least one Nigerian Professor  on every University campus in South Africa. Whereas the converse does not hold. Shame!

Similarly ESKOM the country’s power outfit under the Boers had,  enough power at its disposal  to  feed the whole  of Africa.Meanwhile,in a recent  listing of  best Universities in  Africa, South African Universities feature prominently. Our own Universities  were trailing and shamelessly so. Again in the high noon of  COVID,  South Africa through its internal  resilience and facilities was able to generate its own anti-Covid vaccine. On our part, Nigeria waited helplessly  on the international  system.In the light of  the foregoing and more, the Boers must be laughing and even jeering especially  when memories of Nigeria in the seventies come to mind.Clearly something has gone wrong.To appropriate  the Biblical  depositions, we have done those things that we should not have  done and we have not done those things that we should have  done.Succesive waves of leadership have driven this country to the ground such that we are currently and virtually gasping for the  oxygen of relevance in world affairs. Something  has clearly  gone wrong.So wrong that the earlier and grandiloquent  assertions of an Akinyemi and Mandela  that, if the Black man does not make it in Nigeria  then he can never make it anywhere else in the  world have turned out to be ephemeral-a grim and unrealized prophecy. In elastic terms, it appears that  Akinyemi  himself is well aware of our current straits.

This is because in  a recent appearance  on the tube, he, Akinyemi  had cause to lament about our diminished  status in world affairs.According to him,  a country  which lacks the capacity  to industrialize has not started. The consequence is that  our productive base stands in sharp contrast to our consumption profile.Luckily for   Professor  Akinyemi,he currently  has a second chance to  help Nigeria in terms  of  charting the right course at this point in time.It is indeed redemption time for him.It is important  to remember  here that, he, Akinyemi was the high priest of an early era who urged Nigeria to dream big dreams.Unfortunately for him and the rest of us,  the dreams have been replaced by nightmares.Therefore as the protagonist of an earlier  era when we all gazed ambitiously at the stars, Akinyemi on this current return of his to policy,  is well placed in terms  of access to tell President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that, for Nigeria  to regain her groove in world affairs,  a number of features must obtain at the domestic level.These include a viable  oil industry  in which refineries  and petrochemicals  will come on stream  such that our manufacturing  industries will  be humming with life.Two, a viable power sector and three,  a functional  steel  industry. The common and  denominator  in much of  the immediate foregoing  is  that, successive Nigerian  leaders virtually ate up all these critical components of our national life  to the detriment  of  our Nigeria.

 In a piece like this, the final words must necessarily go directly to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi  our own Super K. You are in  your  eighties and as such, like any other human being,the intimations of  mortality are hovering over you.Therefore and even in this injury time; given your new official position and enhanced access to President Tinubu, you may want to urge our country  along viable paths  that will give coherence and muscle to our domestic profile.This is perhaps the  only way that this  this country will be able to re-assert herself  in the comity of  nations.At the risk of  putting the Igbobian cum Oxonian overtly  on the spot, it is worth stressing that  Professor  Bolaji Akinyemi was an integral part of the variable which dressed Nigeria with  the garb of magniloquence in an earlier  era. So the time for a reversal  is now.Otherwise the Boers  will continue to  jeer.Over to you Sir.History beckons!!

•Professor  Kayode Soremekun, a former Vice Chancellor of Federal University Oye Ekiti, is currently  based in  the  Department  of  Political Science, Lagos State University