Still, in democratising the country’s foreign policy, Maduekwe has stated that the Yar’ Adua administration “wishes to take Nigeria’s foreign policy to the grassroots, so as to speak the minds of Nigerians at the international arena,” and that “Nigeria is not a beggarly nation, but a nation that has a lot of good things to offer, hence we will not accept undignified visa policy from foreign nations.” In the first place, there is a ‘tinge’ of a flashback to Addis Ababa, in 1976, when the late General Murtala Mohammed sent a clear message, at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit, that “Africa has come of age,” and that Lagos was bent on using her resources in siding with the liberation movements in Central and Southern Africa, in effectuating the decolonisation of the continent. Secondly, there is a conscious and persuasive desire, on Maduekwe’s part, to infuse, in the dynamics of the country’s foreign relations, some elements of popular representation, by which the real interests of the country’s honest tax-payers – who are, perhaps, far removed from the buzz of national grid – would be satisfied. The one interesting aspect of Maduekwe’s foreign policy drive is that it is unique. Besides, propelled in both spirit and practice, to yield the expected results, truth is that it promises to be time consuming and astronomically costly. But what such a foreign policy initiative may have going for it is this: an admission by the Yar’Adua administration that government, as an agent of the state, cannot, in practice, genuinely arrogate to itself the status of the omniscience. It may well be another avenue through which President Umaru Yar’ Adua would like to relate to the Nigerian voter and tax-payer, in tune with his promise to offer leadership by example. That, too, may post him in a clear distinction from ex-president Obasanjo, who, understandably, had the ringing feature of just one man personifying the country’s foreign policy. Obasanjo loomed so large on the foreign policy turf the way he did: winging himself, in an historical manner, to nearly all the major capitals of the world, especially in the European Union, Russia, North America and the Indian sub-continent; because he was the same person they had known – since the days of the final phase of the decolonisation of the continent, some two decades past. It was he, as a military head of state – and a decorated war hero – who countered the overweening arrogance of the Tories, under Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, in their bid to thwart Nigeria’s foreign policy goals, in what was then Rhodesia, by nationalising British Petroleum and Barclays Bank.

The present foreign policy bent is an applauding desire to give the nation’s image renewed refulgence, especially in the manner foreign broadcast and print media would, in the short run, perceive the activities of the Nigerian government. A repeat of a recent unhelpful feature report on the crisis in the Niger Delta, beamed world-wide by Cable News Network (CNN), should be guarded against. It was a report that was faulty in that it was far from a fair and balanced risk assessment of country’s oil industry. There is, therefore, a need for some deft information management, which polishes the country’s image in the eyes of the international community, especially her development and trading partners; that Nigeria is a place where foreign tourists and investors could come and feel safe. That may not, necessarily, entail a brazen attempt, a la Decree No. 4 of 1984 (!), to dam an orderly flow of information – in a democratic era of the internet. Still, there may be a need for some ‘constructive dialogue’ with the operators of satellite broadcast stations, on the imperative of caution on their part, especially when the image or security of the country is at stake on account of their activity. But, if the American experience – the Peace Corps scheme, for instance – is any guide, it may not be enough to have a fairly representative input into the foreign policy basket from less urbanised or less literate individuals, whose foreign policy expertise is never exercised as an empowered tribe of Nigerians, and who go on occasional, state-assisted foreign trips to advertise the bounteous investment potentials that the country has to the rest of the world. That would only be speaking a dialect of a genuinely foreign policy initiative, like the Technical Aid Corps programme, which, put literally, is a rugged and reliable bicycle in selling the Afro-centricity of the country’s foreign policy.

In an era where the architecture, content and dynamics of international relations are undergoing a rather rapid morphological twist, especially since the bombings of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, most of the world’s major players are placing emphasis on regional politics and relations, while safe-guarding their geo-strategic interests. It’s no longer a unipolar world apparently dominated by the United States. There is China to contend with, not only as a towering power in the Far East, but, also, as a global economic giant. After being subjected to some well-timed, occasional short-shrift by both the United States and some of her North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies, Russia is beginning to re-invent herself as an “energy-based empire” that would be hugely influential in shaping the energy policy of the EU. Notice her recent ambitious trip to the oil- and gas-rich base of the Arctic ice – and, in responding to the U.S. acts in the moon, planted her flag there. And, as if laying the foundation of a future policy of Containment, in the classical Cold War sense, both Beijing and Moscow, worried by the strategic expansion of the EU and NATO, into what was formerly Eastern Europe – an expansion that may extend to the oil-rich Caucasus – have come together under the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (CSO) and carrying out seasonal military exercise in East China Sea. Although Beijing, Moscow, Washington and Brussels are united in the fight against global terror, it’s widely held in China and Russia that, yes, the Soviet Union may have disintegrated, every effort should be made to bounce back any attempt by the United States to fill some perceived power slack in Central Asia and the Far East. If anything, Beijing and Moscow would feel a lot at ease with Washington and her EU-NATO allies coming to the region as development partners.

Maduekwe admits that, in almost the same fashion, Nigeria’s highly visible relevance and enormous importance in the South Atlantic geo-strategic calculations, would not, in the foreseeable future, compel her into some race for territorial supremacy in that of the continent. What is very likely, in Maduekewe’s estimation, is that that Nigeria would have to stress the imperative of South-South co-operation with such countries as Brazil and Argentina, and other African states – from Mauritania to South Africa – with maritime borders with the South Atlantic. The intent should be to ensure the security of the South Atlantic sea lanes to international commerce, especially the trade in crude oil. Presently, the picture of naval affairs in the South Atlantic is beginning to look disturbingly rough – and a growing foreign policy challenge for Nigeria: since the past three years, an armada of some foreign naval ships have been found there on missions which are still far from clear. Some commentators have tried to explain the ugly trend – a trend in which some of the foreign warships have strayed into Nigeria’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – by saying that there has long been a long-yawing absence of Nigeria’s naval presence in the South Atlantic, which is being plugged by such warships, some of them from the Americas. But notice that the latest discovery of rich oil wells, said to contain as much as at two billion barrels, off the coast of Ghana, by Tullow Oil, of the United Kingdom, has tended, further, to sharpen the profile of the South Atlantic as a veritable source of the international energy source. Thus, for Maduekwe, Nigeria would not only have to play an internationalist role, by leading the armies and navies of the African states bordering the South Atlantic in a joint patrol of the high seas – it’s an enterprise that would call a peaking and fulfilling defence budget – in order to secure the oil wells and flow of petroleum to the North American, EU and Far Eastern markets; China, for instance, which has – in her ambition to boost her image, as a fast soaring global economic star, and advance the cause of South-South co-operation – invested four billion dollars in the Nigerian oil industry. With Maduekwe, as Foreign Affairs Minister, there may be a compelling need, with a refined legal candour, erudite oration and moral touch, that African leaders who have acceded to the Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), should conduct themselves decently; that they should run the affairs of their countries, Zimbabwe, say, in the spirit of good governance: respect for human rights, tolerance of loyal dissent and free speech, zero-tolerance of corruption et al. Those who have not should be preached to the same gospel. With good governance, there would be good leadership and followership, security and peace, and an orderly progress of sustainable human development. These fundamental issues have been decidedly lacking in Darfur, and, in fairness to the autochthonous black population in that part of the Sudan, the Yar’ Adua administration should re-define Abuja’s relations with Khartoum. The Darfur crisis should be seen for what it is: genocide by the pro-Arab, El-Bashir administration in Khartoum. Like the Bush administration that, in 2005, pronounced the tragedy in Darfur as yet another case of genocide – almost so soon after Rwanda, in part, in recognition of the leading place of the Black factor in Washington’s foreign policy – the Yar’ Adua administration should not only be an active player in the deployment of the proposed United Nations–AU hybrid peace-keeping force of about 26,000 to Darfur, it should also make it – with the unswerving resolve with which Obasanjo, during his first coming, saw to it that Rhodesia was uprooted, even if at the Lancaster round table, and apartheid demolished – a cardinal point of Nigeria’s foreign policy that all the parties to the war crimes and crimes against humanity in that part of the Sudan are fished out and, like ex-Liberian president – Charles Taylor – sent to The Hague for trial.