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President Jonathan’s Attempted Conversation With Moroccan King: The Buhari Connection By Abdulbasit Mukhtar
The back and forth between Nigeria and Morocco over whether a telephone conversation actually took place between President Goodluck Jonathan and HM King Mohammed VI has led the Kingdom of Morocco to recall its ambassador in Abuja back to Rabat for consultation. The Moroccans have accused Nigeria of unethical practices because of the latter’s claim that President Jonathan was not snubbed and that he, in fact, held a long conversation with the Moroccan King on issues of mutual concern. One of the most important issues on Morocco’s foreign policy agenda is Western Sahara, a territory south of Morocco to which the Kingdom lays sovereign claim. On this issue Nigeria is not in agreement with Morocco. In fact, Nigeria and several countries within and outside Africa recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as an independent territory. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1984 recognized and admitted SADR as an independent African country, prompting Morocco to withdraw from the OAU in protest. Morocco has stayed away from the African Union for the same reason. So what mutual interest can there possibly link our two countries? Nigeria’s recognition of SADR happened on 12 November 1984 when General Muhammadu Buhari was military head of state. That move was based on a firm underlying principle of one of our foreign policy objectives: supporting decolonization in Africa and self-determination of oppressed peoples. This principle informed Nigeria’s support for the Palestinian people when we joined in the establishment of the United Nations Committee on Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in 1975. Our position on the Palestinian – Israeli conflict remained the same until last year December when, apparently after the Israeli prime minister phoned President Jonathan, Nigeria changed its voting pattern on the Palestinian issue at the United Nations, thereby undoing an established and principled diplomatic position. It is also because of this principle that we opposed apartheid in South Africa and supported the anti-apartheid struggle of the African National Congress. Fast forward to March 2015, General Muhammadu Buhari is contesting against President Goodluck Jonathan in a crucial presidential election on 28 March 2015. Could the Moroccans have been right when they linked Dr Jonathan’s request for telephone conversation with the Moroccan monarch to the upcoming elections in Nigeria? It is not unlikely that, judging from the desperation of the Jonathan campaign and knowing how important the Western Sahara issue is to Morocco, the president could have intended to court the Moroccans by telling them that his opponent in the upcoming elections is the same person who engineered OAU and Nigeria’s recognition of SADR. What impact speaking to the Moroccan King could have had on election outcomes in Nigeria is yet unclear. What is certain is that Nigeria’s immediate past ambassador to Morocco, Senator Abdallah Wali, is the PDP governorship candidate for Sokoto State. No wonder the Moroccans made a connection between Jonathan's request and Nigeria's election. Analysis of diplomatic issues is done by making necessary connections between events and statements in history. This undertaken can be easy or difficult depending on the information available to an analyst. The Nigerian foreign ministry, for instance, never issued any statement that President Jonathan held a telephone conversation with King Mohammed VI. The websites of Nigeria’s foreign ministry and even that of the State House are so outdated that they do not contain current information about the president’s official engagements. This is not so with many countries. By contrast, the release of information on official engagements of the Moroccan monarch and on government’s activities in general, led the world to know that President Jonathan attempted to have a phone conversation with the King. We know from information made available by the Moroccans that the chargé d’affaires at the Nigerian embassy in Rabat, Mr M.B.B. Hammam, was received at the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation on Saturday 7 March 2015 and informed officially why the requested phone conversation cannot take place. However, the unfortunate and undiplomatic response from Nigeria that the conversation happened did not take into account that there are diplomatic systems in other climes which take their jobs seriously and release timely information. By claiming that both leaders spoke at length, in France rather than in Morocco, the president and his information handlers have shown Nigerians and the world the kind of transformation that has happened to our foreign affairs and diplomacy in the Jonathan era. |