NIGERIA SACKS ITS DC AMBASSADOR by TONY KABENA

But then, the controversial online blog, Saharareporters.com, decided to inject ethnicity into the issue, painting the Ambassador as an saint and aggrieved party.  The site is a big thorn on the Nigerian government, especially the Yar’Adua administration, as it has published many unflattering exposes on the members of that government, and its greatest followers are the Igbo.  What irked most of its readers was quoting somebody the Igbo have come to regard as “Igbo-hater,” and an Yoruba tribalist, Prof. Bolaji Aluko, an prominent prominent political activist himself.

Saharareporters.com wrote, “Also a US-based Professor, Mobolaji Aluko, told Saharareporters that the minister, while he campaigned for former dictator Sanni Abacha to transmute into a civilian president in 1998, told him that they will have to solve the “Yoruba problem”

“Aluko said he still has Maduekwe’s “final solution to the Yoruba problem in Nigeria” ringing in his ears since 1998. “Tell him that I said so, and ask him whether I did not confront him with it right there in New York at the Council of Foreign Relations”. Abacha died soon after those events and Maduekwe moved to the new power brokers.  His search for strong authority brought him to the top of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007.”

Washington, DC - Nigeria has sacked its Ambassador to the United States, based in Washington, DC, Brigadier-General Oluwole Rotimi (retired), for acts unbecoming of an Ambassador, for playing ethnic jingoism and especially for dredging up open-gaping wounds of the Biafra-Nigeria war.  Ambassador Rotimi has been given until March 31, 2009, to pack his bag and baggage and return to Nigeria.

A Nigerian foreign ministry statement said, “President Umaru Yar’Adua has approved the definite recall of Gen. Oluwole Rotimi as Nigeria’s Ambassador to the United States.

“Accordingly, Ambassador Rotimi has been advised to wind up his affairs and formally take leave of his hosts in keeping with diplomaic practice,’’ according to the News Agency of Nigeria.  “He is to return home not later than 31st March 2009.’’

“Mr President is appreciative of the services and contributions of Rotimi to the progress and stability of Nigeria and wishes him well in his future endeavours,’’ the statement added.

The firing of Ambassador Rotimi is a culmination, since he presented his credentials and undertook his post on April 9, 2008, of the bitter feud that had developed between him and the foreign minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe.  Both of these individuals have played major roles in Nigeria’s military and political spheres, more so Maduekwe on the political and Rotimi on the military.  Brigadier-General Rotimi was a Quarter-Master General of the Nigerian, during the Nigeria-Biafra war, before being appointed Governor of the old Western Region of Nigeria, which now comprises of six states of Nigeria’s 36 states.  Maduekwe has held all kinds of political positions in Nigeria, including special assistant to presidential candidate Kingibe, Minister of Tourism, Minister of Transportation, and before his appointment as Foreign Minister was the National Secretary of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

The feud between the two men became an open warfare during the days of the President Obama inauguration.  As was customary during presidential inaugurations, Ambassadors had been warned in a letter that their respective heads of state were not invited to the inauguration due to security logistics and secret service concerns, especially given the huge number anticipated at the Obama inauguration.  However, the warning had nothing to do with the Obama inauguration, it was standard practice in all inaugurations.

But despite this, many African countries decided to send meaningless and uninvited delegations, who decided to invite themselves to Washington, DC, for one reason or the other during the inauguration.  In fact, a former Kenyan minister of state had protested the large Kenyan “official” delegation, had bought a television set and tried to present it to the foreign ministry, arguing that the delegation would have a better view of the inauguration proceedings watching it on CNN from Kenya than their hotel rooms in Washington, DC. 

So it was with Nigeria, that appointed a official delegation led by the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, including one led by the foreign minister.  A high-powered conference, as a ruse, had been arranged at the Nigerian embassy, entitled “New Terms of Engagement with Africa for the Obama Administration.” Those in attendance included Obama’s chief adviser on African Affairs, Witney W. Schneidman, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, former Nigerian Ambassador to the U.S., Prof. George Obiozor, former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Nigeria and now a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the council on Foreign Relations Princeton N. Lyman as well as former U.S. Ambassador to Botswana and Nigeria Howard Jeter.

An awkward situation developed, when it came time to introduce the Nigerian delegation, and Ambassador Rotimi, towing the government’s line, introduced Chief Anyaoku as the leader of the delegation, though the event was organized under the foreign ministry and the foreign minister was present. 

To make matters worse, someone at the Embassy with detailed information about the delegation and particularly the foreign minister’s, then provided intimate information to a writer who detailed the foreign minister’s movement and the frosty relationship that developed and how Ambassador Rotimi must have been forced to host a reception in honor of the delegation.  The information was published on ChatAfrik.com, one of Africa’s largest groups on the internet.

Then on Saturday, the 14th of February, one of Nigeria’s largest circulating newspapers, ThisDay, blasted out an incendiary letter that the Ambassador had written to the foreign minister.  With two reporters, one in Washington, DC, and the other in Nigeria, the paper quoted sources at the Embassy as saying, “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.”

It would be recalled that the eastern part of Nigeria seceded from the country in 1970, after thousands of them were killed in the North, resulting in the war that broke out after Biafra was declared in May, 1967.  The Igbo lost more than 2 million lives during the war that lasted from July, 1967 to January, 1970, and for most Igbo a reference to the war is a very sensitive issue, especially for an Ambassador who is sent to represent the whole country boasts about having dealt with the “rag-tag Biafran army.”

In the letter, the Ambassador stated as follows, “I consider your remarks unwarranted, malicious and untruthful by portraying me as an inept Head of Mission. In all my years of service to Nigeria, I have never been so comprehensively condemned, assaulted and disgraced as demonstrated in your letter. During the Nigeria/Civil war, I served as Quartermaster-General of the Nigerian Army under General Yakubu Gowon and organized the logistic support leading to the comprehensive defeat and surrender of ‘Biafran Army’ - a ragtag Army of rebels!”

In complaining to the Nigerian president and asking him to recall Brigadier-General Rotimi, Chief Maduekwe wrote, “The correspondences between me, as your Minister, and Ambassador Oluwole Rotimi, as your envoy, speak for themselves. The background, Mr. President, is that following the Ambassador’s persistent lack of communication with the Ministry, the capacity of my office to provide the necessary leadership in the conduct of our foreign policy in the world’s most powerful capital was being undermined.

“That led to the correspondences in question. His response, even as documented in his own hand, exceeds mere insubordination. His memos to me drip with a fundamental contempt for my person and office. The innuendoes and direct insults are so clear that I refrain from dignifying them with contempt.”

But then, the controversial online blog, Saharareporters.com, decided to inject ethnicity into the issue, painting the Ambassador as an saint and aggrieved party.  The site is a big thorn on the Nigerian government, especially the Yar’Adua administration, as it has published many unflattering exposes on the members of that government, and its greatest followers are the Igbo.  What irked most of its readers was quoting somebody the Igbo have come to regard as “Igbo-hater,” and an Yoruba tribalist, Prof. Bolaji Aluko, an prominent prominent political activist himself.

Saharareporters.com wrote, “Also a US-based Professor, Mobolaji Aluko, told Saharareporters that the minister, while he campaigned for former dictator Sanni Abacha to transmute into a civilian president in 1998, told him that they will have to solve the “Yoruba problem”

“Aluko said he still has Maduekwe’s “final solution to the Yoruba problem in Nigeria” ringing in his ears since 1998. “Tell him that I said so, and ask him whether I did not confront him with it right there in New York at the Council of Foreign Relations”. Abacha died soon after those events and Maduekwe moved to the new power brokers.  His search for strong authority brought him to the top of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007.”

Most of the Igbo I spoke with were particularly contemptuous and derisive of Prof. Aluko’s comment, as the Igbo have come to hate Chief Maduekwe with a passion.  They feel his prominent positions in Nigeria’s political establishment have come at the expense of the Igbo interests.  They recall that he was one of the most prominent players in promoting the former and late dictator of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha, in turning himself into a civilian.  He was particularly accused of promoting Abacha as God’s incarnate.

Then again, during the former Nigerian president Obasanjo’s attempt to change the constitution and run for a third-term, they also recall that Chief Maduekwe was the leader of those prominent citizens who also championed Obasanjo as the best thing that happened to Nigeria, and how Nigeria was going to fall apart without Obasanjo.  Though Nigeria is hardly moving forward now, however total disrespect of the rule of law under Obasanjo has gone.

For anyone to suggest Ojo Maduekwe as a “tribalist” is the highest form of subterfuge and ignorance, bordering on mischievous attempt at xenophobia. 

One of the fall-outs of the imbroglio between the Ambassador (a Yoruba) and the foreign minister (an Igbo), is how the highly admired pristine online blog, Saharareporters.com, has permanently damaged its reputation, especially among its many Igbo followers and became merely an ethnic jingoist for the Yorubas of which the founder is a member. 

Ojo Maduekwe has in the past been accused of haughtiness and arrogance, but in his position as the foreign minister of Nigeria, he is yet to rise to the height of such luminaries like Prof. Ibrahim Gambari, Gen. Joe Garba, Gen. Ike Nwachukwu.  He is yet to tower and be acknowledged in the international arena, his only exception being the disastrous Washington, DC, first outing of the current president, regarding Nigeria’s position on AFRICOM.  Nigeria harvested an egg on its face.

There is hardly any doubt that a lot of the Igbo would be gleeful at Ojo Maduekwe’s downfall, but at this time, he has again survived.

On his part, Maduekwe has said it is not personal, and Nigerians who “Matters like this should be treated with utmost dignity and forgive me if my not being as forthcoming as you wish might give the impression that the solidarity of information I do enjoy with the media is being down played here”.

``Two things are involved here, one, the national interest, two, the dignity of people’s office whether it’s the office of an ambassador anywhere in the world, not just Washington.

``It’s a very important office which we should treat with a lot of respect as indeed the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs who is the president’s man to conduct foreign policies in 104 missions,’’ Maduekwe said.

(Full disclosure: The publisher/editor-in-chief of this paper, Chika Onyeani, is from the same Ohafia as Ojo Maduekwe.  In fact, Ojo’s son lived with the Onyeanis before proceeding to a medical school.  But they are hardly on speaking terms since Chief Maduekwe became “somebody"). 

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