Bolaji Akinyemi at 70
By Mohammed Haruna  Newsdiaryonline  Wed Jan 4,2011

Prof Akinyemi 

Regular readers of this column would have noticed I was absent last week without notice. Three week before I had written an unusually long piece about why I believed some dark forces were - and still are - playing dangerous games with Boko Haram. Among other things, I quoted extensively from an article by one, Gordon Duff, an American war veteran and Senior Editor at Veterans Daily who claimed he was well-connected with the Goodluck Jonathan presidency.

In that article he made apparently credible allegations that some foreign interest groups in cahoots with their well-connected local collaborators were manipulating the country’s insecurity situation for fat filthy lucre and, in the process, targeting Nigeria for destruction.

Perhaps his most frightening allegation was, in his own words, that “Christian Nigeria is being set up, not just to fight a ‘terror group’ in the North, but to take on all of Islamic Africa to draw them into a war that will bring more players, Americans for one, into another endless cesspool” similar to Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The horrendous Christmas day apparent suicide bombing allegedly by Boko Haram, the extreme Islamic sect,  of a Catholic Church in Madalla, a suburb of Abuja, the Federal capital, but located in Niger State, aroused my worst fears that Duff’s doomsday prophesy might well come true sooner than later.

Obviously it was the subject to write about that week. I tried to do so but staying in Bida, my hometown in Niger State, where I was spending the long Christmas holiday away from my study in Kaduna, I did not have sufficient material to write sensibly about the subject.

Ten days on and with enough material to do so I still don’t know what to say about the bombing beyond condemning it in the strongest language which, obviously, is not enough; beyond the condemnations, one should offer solutions to what seems to have become an intractable problem. And this is where words have failed me.

I mean, how do you offer a possible solution to a problem that those in authority who have the duty to tackle seem to have an interest in prolonging? As if to compound my confusion even more, President Jonathan decided to do the unthinkable; pour petrol on New Year’s eve on the insecurity that has been hanging fire in the country by completely removing the subsidy on oil, and thus more than doubling its price, something which no leader of this country has ever contemplated mainly because of its capacity to push inflation beyond unbearable limit.

For a pundit like me obviously the last thing to write about this week would be the celebration of anyone’s birthday. The times are simply too bleak for any celebration. But then the subject of the column today is not just anybody, certainly not when he is someone who, for better or worse, has arguably had the greatest impact on our foreign policy since Independence in 1960.

So if celebrating Professor Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi’s 70th birthday today looks like “going to Afghanistan,” i.e. writing about an issue remote from most peoples’ mind, it is not. Certainly not when there are foreign dimensions to the insecurity problems confronting the nation and not when foreign policy is the strong forte of the man whose birthday we are celebrating today.

So today we shall leave the subject of Boko Haram and the president’s incredulous and unprecedented removal of oil subsidy – others before him have only reduced it even if sometimes drastically - for another day and talk about the man who has left the most visible legacy on our foreign affairs.

Back in 1978, on January 31, to be precise, I wrote a piece in the New Nigerian under my column “Political Diary,” entitled “Academic Prostitution.” In it I criticised the foreign policy of General Olusegun Obasanjo which I said was a betrayal of the radical foreign policy pursued by the assassinated General Murtala Mohammed whom he had succeeded.

“It seems,” I said in the piece, “we are more concerned with being in the good books of the West than in our own good.”

As evidence I mentioned the raising of the status of our mission in Tehran, Iran, then under the stranglehold of the late Shah, Reza Pahlevi, then perhaps the “blue-eyed boy” of the West. I also mentioned the gratuitous taking of our first jumbo foreign loan under the pretext that there was no alternative to doing so.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not pleased in the least with my comment and sent in a harsh rejoinder which the officer who signed it for the Permanent Secretary said I was at liberty to publish “if you so wish.” Working for a newspaper owned by the Federal Government, I knew it would not be a wise thing not to publish the rejoinder. So I did.

“Your superficial analysis and ill-conceived criticisms of the present administration’s economic and foreign policies,” the half-page rejoinder said, “can only be regarded as unfortunate since you are supposed to know better in order to be able to inform the general public who read your column.”

The rejoinder then went on to educate me on why it was necessary to raise the status of our bilateral relations with Iran and why we needed to a take our first foreign jumbo loan.

Relevant as it is, it is not really necessary to go into the details of our exchange for today’s subject matter. Suffice it to reveal that even though I did not name names I had Professor Akinyemi in mind when I talked about academic prostitution.

For, at that time the professor had become the Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs and, through his academic prowess, had succeeded in making it truly the think-tank of our foreign policy formulation, something which no DG before him had succeeded in doing.

Akinyemi came to the attention of those in authority through his well-informed and articulate interventions in policy debates in newspapers, especially the New Nigerian, then the most literate and influential newspaper in the country, as a young lecturer in the Political Science Department of University of Ibadan.

It came as no surprise then when in 1975, following the coup against General Yakubu Gowon in August, then Colonel Joe Garba who had played a critical role in the coup as the Commander of Gowon’s Brigade of Guards and had become the Foreign Minister, picked Akinyemi to head the NIIA. It was to Akinyemi’s eternal credit that he made the institution a household name akin to how Professor Dora Akunyili made NAFDAC a household word, with the big difference that in Akinyemi’s case it was more substance than image.

It was his personal influence and that of the NIIA on foreign policy under General Obasanjo which prompted my article on academic prostitution. At that time it had become apparent that there was a not-so-subtle pro-Western shift in our foreign policy, away from the radical one that General Murtala Mohammed had pursued especially on the issues of Apartheid and the liberation wars in Lusophone Africa; Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.

If it was no surprise that Akinyemi became the DG of NIIA at the time he did, it was even less surprising that he became General Ibrahim Babangida’s Foreign Minister in August 1985 following the general’s palace coup against General Muhammadu Buhari. By then Akinyemi had grown in stature as a man of ideas and Babangida liked to surround himself with men of ideas. Akinyemi held the job for a little over two years.

For those two odd years he proved himself arguably the most effective foreign minister, what with the initiatives he took in several areas, above all the establishment of the Technical Aide Corps (TAC), Nigeria’s answer to the famous American Peace Corps, with the difference that its members served only in African and Caribbean countries.  Today the TAC remains the Foreign Affairs most visible and enduring legacy.

From his newspaper interviews ahead of his birthday today, the man himself obviously believes his greatest initiative was his attempt to establish a “Concert of Medium Powers” which was to serve as a forum of medium-status counties across the world, including small Western countries like Sweden. The idea was laughed out of court by most foreign policy pundits most of who believed the forum could only further undermine the Non-Aligned Movement, ineffectual as it seemed.

Whatever its merits, the idea never took root.

Since Independence in 1960 we have had some 23 odd ministers of Foreign Affairs. Of the lot most Nigerians would, I am sure, agree that the four most outstanding have been the perpendicular Jaja Wachuku, the second Foreign Minister – the first was Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, our first and only Prime Minister who held the portfolio briefly for a year from April 1961, and after whom the impressive headquarters of the ministry next to Eagle Square, Abuja, has been named – Dr Okoi Arikpo, the longest serving (1967 to 1975), General Joe Garba, under the dynamic leadership of General Murtala Mohammed, and our celebrant. Of the four it is a toss-up between Garba and Akinyemi who has had the widest name recognition.

My own bet would go to Akinyemi if only because the general has since departed this world but the Good Lord has spared our celebrant to be 70 today, and, no matter what anyone may think of his academic integrity - and there are many who do not think much of it, as opposed to his academic brilliance which no one can question - he has arguably been the most influential voice in our foreign policy formulation since Independence.

Here’s wishing the man many more years of service to his country.         

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Obasanjo and his credibility By Mohammed Haruna