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President
Umaru Yar’Adua has appro-ved the immediate recall of
Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States, retired
Brigadier-General Oluwole Rotimi, for “gross
insubordination.”
Sources at the Nigerian embassy in Washington DC
said the decision to recall Rotimi followed his
running disagreement with the Foreign Affairs
Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, over issues bordering on
activities of the mission, policy, protocol and
hierarchy.
The disagreement that was said to have started last
year resulted in a series of correspondence between
Maduekwe and Rotimi, culminating in a letter written
by the latter in which he called the minister a
tribalist and boasted, “I have dealt with people
like you in the past. I was the Adjutant General of
the Nigerian army that thoroughly defeated your
ragtag Biafran army.”
Maduekwe who was piqued by the contents of the
letter, particularly the reference to the Biafran
war, formally complained to the President in a memo,
attaching Rotimi’s letter.
Maduekwe in his letter to the President stated:
“This man (Rotimi) has no temperament to be an
ambassador of Nigeria in our most important mission.
“This is a strategic assessment of the situation.
Anyone who has such a disposition may not be able to
handle the Nigerian embassy in Washington, which is
deemed in Nigerian diplomatic circles as a strategic
and sensitive mission.
“The recommendation that he be recalled has to do
with his capacity to run the place. It is not
personal.”
It was on this basis that the President immediately
approved his recall from the mission. In the
interim, Ambassador Wakil, the Deputy Ambassador has
been asked to oversee the mission pending the
appointment of a replacement.
All efforts to reach the Ambassador last night on
his mobile phone proved unsuccessful as it kept
entering voice mail. Voice messages were not
returned as at press time either.
A Nigerian embassy official in Washington disclosed
that the root cause of the friction between both
officials started sometime last year when Maduekwe
wrote two letters inviting the Ambassador and his
deputy, Ambassador Wakil to a meeting in Abuja to
discuss the emergence of Barack Obama as the 44th US
President and what it would mean for Nigeria-US
relations.
Rotimi was said to have felt slighted that the
minister wrote a separate letter to his deputy whom
he regarded as his subordinate.
He subsequently wrote two protest letters - one to
Maduekwe and a second one to the Secretary to the
Govern-ment of the Federation, Yayale Ahmed. He also
asked that the trip be rescheduled to enable him
sort out one or two things.
Not satisfied, Rotimi further wrote to Senator
Jubril Aminu, Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign
Affairs, on the same issue.
Rotimi then proceeded to Abuja when he did not
receive an official reply from the minister.
Maduekwe on the other hand was reportedly irked that
the Ambassador proceeded on the trip without the
necessary approval.
Rotimi’s action, an embassy official divulged, was
seen as an infringement of an important regulation
regarding the movement of public officers.
Insiders familiar with the Nigerian civil service
set up said his trip was arbitrary given his protest
letter and request for a postponement of the
meeting, and that since he had not received
feedback, it was seen as gross insubordination
within foreign service regulations.
According to an official: “when you write, you wait
for a reply. Movement must be sanctioned by your
boss.”
Similarly, Maduekwe’s effort to streamline the
operations of the foreign affairs ministry,
particularly the embassies, was said to have been
resisted by Rotimi in Washington.
The minister’s brusque style of leadership has
reportedly ruffled feathers in the foreign service
where most officials are used to “business as usual”
bosses.
As such, the little or lack of cordial relations
between both men compounded matters, making it
almost impossible to mend fences.
In addition, other occurrences pointed to strained
relations between the public officers. The usual
practice is that an Ambassador receives the foreign
minister at the airport when he arrives a country,
and sees him off at the end of his official trip.
This was not the case when the minister visited
Washington sometime last year to give a talk at a
think-tank in the capital city.
However, by January this year, Rotimi tried to seek
a rapprochement when he led a delegation to receive
Maduekwe who flew into Washington as the head of the
Nigerian delegation to President Obama’s
inauguration.
But the short-lived détente came under strain again
when Rotimi, during the swearing-in ceremony,
introduced Emeka Anyaoku, the president’s special
envoy, as the leader of delegation in the presence
of the minister.
THISDAY learnt that there was actually a
disagreement before the trip as to who should lead
the delegation to the event.
Eventually, Anyaoku was mandated to head the Federal
Government team, while Maduekwe led the foreign
ministry team.
But this presented an image problem for Nigeria,
because it gave the impression that the home base
was in disarray.
Another official of the Nigerian embassy in
Washington alleged that Rotimi only appeared for
work at the embassy thrice a week and retired to
Florida where he has a home, for the rest of the
week. “How can he effectively run a key embassy like
this,” the official queried.
Before the latest incident that led to Rotimi’s
recall, Anyaoku it was gathered, tried to reconcile
the two men shortly after Obama’s inauguration, but
failed.
Rotimi was a former military governor of the old
Western State from 1971 to 1975. He arrived
Washington DC on 31st March 2008, and presented his
Letters of Credence to the then President, George
Bush at the White House, on April 9, 2008.
His sudden recall means that Nigeria will have to
deal with the signals the incident would send to the
international community, explained a diplomatic
source.
One way to save face is to show that Nigeria is
ready to revamp its foreign relations machinery and
sharpen is focus on improving the effectiveness of
the country’s foreign missions overseas, he said.
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