By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Nigeria’s foreign missions are a distressing reflection of the crippling dysfunc...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Twitter:
@farooqkperogi
Nigeria’s foreign missions are a distressing reflection of
the crippling dysfunction at home, a fact Senator Shehu Sani has helped to push
to the forefront of public awareness during a recent Senate hearing. Every
Nigerian who lives outside Nigeria can relate to this reality. Our foreign
missions are denuded of basic conveniences and are worse than the jailhouses of
their host countries.
Workers are owed backlogs of salaries and allowances and are,
for the most part, unmotivated to work. Even when they are not owed salaries
and allowances, several of them have internalized the Nigerian public service
work ethic that has ensured that we’re stuck in perpetual infancy as a country:
mindless slothfulness and awful customer service.
Last week Friday, I accompanied my wife to the Nigerian
Consulate here in Atlanta to get an Emergency Travel Certificate for her
brother, which was necessitated by the inability of the consulate to produce his
passport a month after he applied for it. It took us seven hours to get the
certificate, which anyone can effortlessly produce on their home computer.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t the inordinate number of hours spent
to get such a basic document that was the scandal. It was the fact that the
consulate had no heating system in this frigid winter. My 9-month-old baby and I
got sick from continuous exposure to extreme cold in the waiting area. (During
summers, the consulate is also usually an oven because the air-conditioning is
dysfunctional. I’ve experienced this twice.)
And at several times during our wait, machines malfunctioned
and the consulate ran out of ink to print documents. Of course, the workers
were blithely unconcerned at best and outright discourteous at worst when we
asked questions. It took the intervention of a good-natured acquaintance of my
wife’s to get the emergency travel certificate—that is, after waiting seven
mind-numbing hours.
What I’ve described
about the Nigerian Consulate in Atlanta is true of most Nigerian foreign
missions elsewhere. That’s why Nigerians outside Nigeria dread the prospect of renewing
their passports—or having any dealings of any kind with our foreign missions.
It’s pure physical and emotional torture, especially for some of us who have
become habituated to excellent service delivery and courtesy to customers.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, talked about the
extreme distress of our foreign missions during his defense of his ministry’s
budget before the Senate Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora on
December 19. He said both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its foreign
missions “are still heavily indebted,” among other troubling things he said.
Yet, the minister, in characteristic sycophantic fashion,
said, “I commend the Federal Government…Of course we are not sitting down with
our arms folded. We are doing the best we can to improve this situation. We
have raised some issues at the Federal Executive Council meeting.” The Foreign
Affairs Minister even found time to commend the Minister of Finance “who has
really been doing her best and trying to come up with ways to address some
issues.”
So, basically, the minister of foreign affairs commended the
very people and institutions that are responsible for the poor state of affairs
of the ministry he heads. I get that
it’s bad politics to be openly critical of the people you need help from, but
do you have to commend them and lull them into complacency and a false sense of
self-satisfaction?
Senator Shehu Sani couldn’t take the thoughtless sycophantic
hypocrisy lying down. He let the minister have it. His riposte is worth
reproducing in detail:
“From 2015 that I got to this place, we talked and talked.
2016, we talked. Now again, we are talking. They are releasing money to you
people as if you’re beggars. Every day people call me on the phone from
different parts of the world and we are here on the same ritual again.
“The presidency of Nigeria is not serious about our foreign
missions. People are afraid to say it. You’ll say there is a problem: this one
is bad, that one is bad, and then you’ll end it with commendations. Who are you
commending?
“This problem is man-made. We are deliberately refusing to
release money even for simple things that don’t require money. To even put
foreign ambassadors of Nigeria on a schedule to see the president takes four to
six months, sitting down in Abuja doing nothing.
“Niger Republic, Benin Republic, Malawi, Burundi, Rwanda,
Seychelles, Cape Verde can all take care of their embassies. What type of
giants are we?” he said, according to the Premium Times of December 19.
This forceful, fearless forthrightness made my day in ways I
can’t possibly express. If more people in positions of power can be this bold
and frank, maybe things might change. If more people in decision-making
capacities are as invulnerable to fear, intimidation, or blackmail as Senator
Sani has demonstrated, maybe we would be able to confront our problems and find
solutions to them.
Unfortunately, brave voices like Senator Sani’s are drowned
out by a cacophony of fawning obsequiousness.
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