Inauguration of Academy of International Affairs

March 28, 2024

After months of existence the Academy of International Affairs (Nigeria) was inaugurated in the Rotunda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja on the morning of Monday, March 25 in a ceremony chaired by the amiable General Yakubu Gowon, former head of state of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The academy is the brain child of Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi, professor of political science, former Director-General of the Institute of International Relations and better known as former foreign minister under the military president of General Ibrahim Babangida in the 1980s.

Professor Akinyemi is most remembered for his innovation in the foreign ministry especially for his policy of sending young Nigerian professionals under the Technical Aid Corps Scheme (TACS) to assist needy countries in Africa and the developing world, a rather ambitious scheme which the country in these days of scarce resources is finding difficult to fund. He also tried to suggest Nigeria’s membership in a new organisation of what was called “Concert of Medium Powers” more or less some watered down replacement of the then moribund Non-Aligned Movement. This suggestion was laughed out of court by people who felt Nigeria because of its apparent successes in championing the liberation cause in Southern Africa was beginning to punch above its weight internationally.

Even from this short preamble in this piece, my readers can imagine the debate we have in the academy on issues that are already settled! That’s the nature of academia. Professor Akinyemi boiled in the argumentative tradition of academia and the executive tradition of political headship of a bureaucratic department is well suited to his role as president. Some of our originating membership have left; new members have been invited to join while some of our nominees did not receive approval. Whatever the case may be the academy has evolved from our collective efforts. The academy as presently constituted is made up of academics in the fields of international relations, politics, diplomatic history, international law and diplomacy, economics and retired ambassadors with advanced degrees and service in international institutions and posting to international missions, some former ministers and military generals with peace-keeping experience. Membership will definitely grow in the future as the academy settles down in its work of clinically looking at the operations of Nigerian foreign policy and how it can be improved. This academy is strictly speaking, an academy, independent of government and it will as it goes on, criticise the government, applaud it and make solicited or unsolicited suggestions when the occasion arises.

I say this to clear the fog of some people thinking it is another government institution since it was launched in the rotunda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It will also through lectures and symposiums raise issues that may be relevant to the overall development of our country. This will not be restricted to issues of foreign policy alone, but to the overall economic development of the country knowing very well the interconnected nature of foreign policy with domestic political and economic development.

As if to signal its future direction, it invited a distinguished Nigerian professor,  Okechukwu (Okey ) Oramah, CON, the managing director and  chairman of the Board of Directors, African  Import-Export Bank  (Afreximbank) to give a lecture  titled –  The “AfCFTA Natural Resources And Development Capital Formation In  Africa”. The lecture had a serious impression on the audience which included representatives of the presidency and a statement from the vice president’s office said that the lecture will be subjected to clinical analysis for its possible inclusion in the various ingredients going into government economic policies.

The cursory impression on me even before close reading is that the professor is suggesting that the failure of Africa’s development is due to scarce capital and over dependence on foreign capital and that the solution is to rapidly build up capital using our natural resources both agricultural and mineral which can then be deployed for the various development projects particularly building of physical infrastructure without which we cannot develop. This suggestion is not totally new but there is a counter political suggestion of using all available resources and other peoples’ resources such as loans to build up enough capital for investment.

I agree with Professor Oramah’s suggestion because our political and economic leaders in the past were not totally committed to national development. When in 1983, I suggested in a public lecture by our then vice president, Dr Alex Ekwueme that Nigeria should borrow a leaf from the book of the government of the oil-producing Canadian province of Alberta by setting apart a portion of its oil proceeds as Sovereign Investment Funds  for future on the basis that no one generation should expend all the resources of the country, our vice president angrily retorted that the policy being suggested  by me had no practical application in Nigeria that was in a hurry to develop. There is now a sovereign investment funds which came too little too late in 2011 or thereabouts when Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was finance minister.

The inauguration of the Academy of International Affairs Nigeria will be remembered for the personal comments and remembrances of General Gowon and his clerical Protestant Anglican root and how this connected him and Professor Akinyemi and his family and how religion has been a cement binding people of different ethnicity and region in Nigeria. Thank God for modern technology because those of us who were not in Abuja but are members were surprisingly asked to say a few words. Since I was not told beforehand, I mumbled a few words of gratitude to Professor Akinyemi, General Gowon who as Head of State ordered all university teachers who were on strike to pack out of university houses and rented accommodation. I was a lecturer in the University of Lagos then. This led to senior university staff’s decision to build their own homes outside the universities.

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My brother Kayode of blessed memory was one of them. If I was told before, I would have told him how others and myself carried the torch of higher education to Plateau State when we were part of the staff of the University of Ibadan, Jos Campus thus opening up the minority areas of Nigeria to higher education with no personal benefit but the reward of being pioneers.

Let me end this piece by saying serving in the Ministry of Foreign affairs at least in the past when we were engaged in helping in the liberation of Southern Africa was not a piece of cake. It came with considerable danger of possible assassination, sabotaged aircrafts by agents of South Africa, Portugal and Rhodesia and their Western sponsors. Some of us have personal stories to tell.

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