By Owei Lakemfa
Thirty months after recalling all Nigerian ambassadors, and 15 months before the end of its four-year tenure, the Tinubu administration on March 6, 2026, unveiled ambassadors for Nigeria.
In the first place, the recall of the ambassadors in September 2023 was myopic. It resulted in the country having no ambassadors at a time the world was on the boil, and our West African region was falling apart.
It was also embarrassing that for over two years, the government was unable or incapable of appointing new ambassadors.
But as the administration rolled out the names of the new ambassadors and their supposed countries of posting, I sensed the absence of professionalism in the process.
After ambassadors are named and screened, the next basic step in international relations is that the name of each nominee is sent to the designated receiving country for what is called agrément (agreement). This is the formal consent of the receiving country accepting the nominated ambassador. This process is necessary to ensure that the proposed ambassador is acceptable to the receiving country. Also, this prevents embarrassment in case the receiving country rejects the nominee. If a receiving country withholds agreement, the sending country has to send a new nominee. There has to be an agrément before a country announces the appointment of its ambassador to a designated country.
This is also covered under the April 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which states in Article 4 (1): “The sending State must make certain that the agrément of the receiving State has been given for the person it proposes to accredit as head of the mission to that State.”
However, the Tinubu government did not carry out this basic step in the case of 62 of the 65 new ambassadors announced. Rather, the Presidency announced that the Foreign Ministry had “… conveyed the nominations of the other 62 designated envoys to all the countries concerned, including a request for their agréments in line with standard diplomatic practice.”
This breach of a basic diplomatic requirement is shameful for a country with over 65 years of diplomatic experience, and one that has produced some of the most outstanding diplomats in African history like Simeon Adebo, Emeka Anyaoku, Leslie Harriman, Oluyemi Adeniji, Olusola Sanu, and Ibrahim Gambari.
This is also a country whose government once viewed this type of action as a serious security breach. In 1984, two journalists, Tunde Thompson, the Diplomatic Correspondent of the Guardian Newspapers, and Nduka Irabor, the newspaper’s Assistant News Editor, were jailed for one year each, partly for reporting that General Halidu Hananiya had been named High Commissioner to the United Kingdom when there was no agrément. Hananiya’s initial posting was to the United States, US, but the latter declined to give an agrément because it “would not accept a serving General as an ambassador.” So, when the Guardian published Hananiya’s posting to the UK without an agrément, the Buhari regime claimed the newspaper acted “in a manner detrimental to national interest.” Although I have no doubt that jailing the journalists was a political move to cow the press, the regime found some justification in the non-approval of the General’s name before it was published.
It is hoped that despite this diplomatic faux pas, none of the 62 nominees will be rejected by the host countries. We may never know why President Bola Tinubu made a sweep of our ambassadors in 2023, but the reappointment of Ambassador Sola Iji, who was then ambassador to Togo, gives an indication that not all the ambassadors were found unworthy. Iji, a lawyer and noted labour leader, did his Master’s at Southeastern University, Washington, DC, and was the Secretary General of the Senior Staff Consultative Association of Nigeria, SESCAN, now known as the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC. The quiet and thoughtful Iji fits properly as ambassador-designate to Russia, a posting that requires a lot of wits.
However, there are a number of questions about some of the nominees. For instance, I do not think Senator Jimoh Ibrahim, a lawyer and businessman, fits properly as the Permanent Representative to the United Nations. This is because the UN is a multilateral institution that requires a person with tact. So, a career diplomat with multilateral experience, or an intellectual like Mahmood Yakubu, ambassador-designate to Qatar who is a professor of Political History and International Studies, would have been more suitable. On the other hand, Senator Jimoh, who is an expert in business deals, would have been quite fit for the US, where he can complement President Donald Trump.
I also noticed that no Permanent Representative was named to the UN Office and other international organisations in Geneva, which hosts over 40 international organisations, critical UN agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and about 200 international organisations and NGOs, including the Red Cross and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In fact, our last Representative in Geneva, Ambassador Abiodun Richards Adejola, served as the 2023–2024 Chairperson of the ILO Governing Body.
However, if this were not an omission but a conscious decision to merge this very important position with that of the Ambassador to Berne, Switzerland, which has Ambassador Akande Wahab Adekola as designate, it will be a costly mistake. This is because the hub of international diplomacy is Geneva and, to even be minimally effective, the ambassador has to relocate to Geneva, leaving consular affairs to some officers. I make this assertion because I represented African workers on the ILO Governing Body for three years; so I have knowledge of the workings in Geneva.
As I write, timelines flash through my mind. The Tinubu administration, having snored on diplomatic matters for two and a half years, now has just 15 months to go and must leave office on May 29, 2027, unless it wins a second term. So technically, given the fact that agrément, depending on individual countries, can take two to six months, these new ambassadors might not serve for more than one year in office.
For me, the more painful aspect is that the career ambassadors have had their period shortened; they are required to retire from service after 35 years of service or upon reaching 60 years of age.
Also, why the disproportionate posting of politician-ambassadors outside Africa while career diplomats are mainly posted to African countries? Out of the 31 non-career ambassadors, only four are posted to African countries, while the remaining 27 are posted outside the continent. In contrast, of the 34 career ambassadors, 24 are posted to African countries and ten outside. Is it that the government is concentrating on Africa as the centrepiece of its foreign policy, or are the politicians just being indulged?
