School: Department of History and International Studies, Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos.
Programme: History and Diplomacy
Book Title: Diplomatic Soldiering: The Conduct of Nigerian Foreign Policy, 1975-1979
Author: Major-General Joe Garba
Publisher: Spectrum Books Limited
Year of publication: 1987
Revised: 1991
Reprinted: 2015
Reviewer: Esogbue Emeka Jerry
It is a 268-page book divided into 12 chapters that are titled. It touches on diplomacy and Nigerian foreign policy within the African continent but more importantly, the personal experiences of the author who incidentally, served under General Yakubu Gowon (Retd), General Murtala Muhammed (Retd), and General Olusegun Obasanjo (Retd), three Heads of State of the Nigerian nation sequentially. The book opens with a preface and also contains a prologue. It is enriched with an epilogue while closing also with several appendices.
In chapter one, which is titled, “Learning on the Job”, the author, the Commander of the Brigade of Guards relieves his experience as the newly appointed Head of the Ministry of External Affairs. His experience hints at his visit to the Ministry which he described as his second ever. He soon took over from Joe Iyalla who was the Permanent Secretary at the time. He soon received his first briefing from General Yakubu Gowon (Retd), the Head of State who directed him to hold an urgent consultation with the His Excellency Oumarou G Youssofu, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Niger Republic whom the author further described as his old friend, with whom he grew up. The issues for discussion bothered cows and a broken bridge and the 1973 drought that had killed over 50% of Niger’s cattle, causing the country to place an embargo on cattle export to Nigeria within this period.
In this chapter of the book, the author condemned Gowon’s style of leadership which he described as ‘personalization of Nigeria’s Diplomacy’. According to him, this style nearly resulted in Gowon’s sending of Nigerian troops to Niger to forestall a coup due to his friendship with President Hamani Diori of that country. This chapter also touches on the diplomatic argument between Nigeria and Togo over which of these two countries should enjoy the situation of the ECOWAS headquarters. This was somewhat odd considering Nigeria’s population and status as the chief financier of ECOWAS, paying one-third of the regional body's budget.
Finally, it was during Gowon’s visit to Togo to attend the OAU summit that the news of his removal reached him. He was offered asylum and having spent two weeks in that country but he would prefer to relocate to London, the country of his inclination to begin his asylum. General Murtala Muhammed would eventually emerge as Nigeria’s new Head of State following the coup, to head the most populous black nation as captured in the book by the author.
By the time chapter two of this book opened, the author had settled on his new job. He related Murtala’s preference to the demand of an activist. It is his thought that being a matter of foreign policy because Nigeria must be visible to the world and not be seen as obscure. This made the author to engage in frequent travels to actualize some of the policies before the international nation. Here, Obasanjo who would later in history succeed Murtala as the nation’s Head of State, comes into the diplomatic picture for the first time. He is described as one with strong anti-colonial credentials who had written a thesis at the Royal College of Defence Studies, ably contrasting the paucity of British economic assistance to Nigeria in comparison with what that country was gaining from Nigeria economically.
The change of Nigeria’s foreign policy towards other African countries which characterized the shift from Gowon to Murtala made the author remark that “foreign policy does not wait for a report”. At this stage of the introduction of Obasanjo's anti-colonial stance, the author optimistically alerted his readers hoping and believing that “it was clear from the beginning that Nigeria’s foreign policy would be characterized by a new sense of direction especially in Africa” soon.
President Eyadema arrived in Nigeria where he received a chilly welcome as his executive plane touched a nearly deserted airport. Another African Head of State to visit the nation at this time was Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada who was in the country in 1976 on his way to Liberia. It was within this period that Murtala lobbied Dr. Elia into the International Court of Justice at The Hague despite the closure of nominations. This was also against Justice “Daddy” Onyema, the incumbent who was also seeking re-election and in fact, had also secured support from the majority of Western countries. However, when Murtala died in 1976, Nigeria’s foreign policy did not lose its dynamism. Obasanjo was to take over as the Head of State.
Chapter three explains Angola’s crisis and Nigeria’s reasons for supporting MPLA. Chapter four explains good neighbourliness among the West African countries with the author not surprised that there was tension in the West African region. According to him, this was expected within the region so politically and economically diverse. He identified the colonial creation of these countries as a source of major problems that the continent would have to battle with. Colonial heritage, according to him invited differences in ideological outlook, and added to this are the different European languages that these countries speak English, French, and Portuguese. One of the sad episodes conveyed was the fight that nearly broke out between Eyadema and Kerekou in the presence of Obasanjo.
Chapter five discusses the challenge posed by Rhodesia which the author claimed was Nigeria’s most important preoccupation during his tenure. By the end of the period of search for peace, Garba was no longer Foreign Minister so there was little he could do to help the situation especially as he had claimed that with Obasanjo being a stickler for procedure, he could not walk to him to offer any help in this regard. He therefore returned to the Army. However, it was unfortunate that the Nigerian delegation was insulted by Nyerere who at the time had assumed full command. There was the struggle against apartheid in chapter six of the book.
Apartheid is expressed as one issue on which African countries consistently united in condemning. The author claimed that African countries never wavered as least verbally. The author recalls that the issue of apartheid was first raised in the United Nations by the Republic of India in 1948 and since then no other issue has occupied the time and energies of that world body except, perhaps, the Middle East and Korean crises. At the conference later held in Nigeria, several recommendations were issued against the apartheid regime of South Africa. This was the testimony of Africans towards sacrificing to right the wrong in southern Africa.
In chapter seven, the author reports the 1976 OAU Foreign Ministers and Budgetary meeting, the second ever that he would attend, and the attendant crisis. He recalled that the meeting came to a standstill for two days following the verbal warfare between the Foreign Minister of Ethiopia, Kifle Wadajo, and the leader of the Somali delegation, Ahmed Mohammed over the independence of Afas and Isas, otherwise known as Djibouti. While both persons supported the independence of the country, they differed violently on how the independence should be achieved and traded insults. This chapter also presented the Kenyan crisis. However, the most disturbing was the Kenya-Uganda border which threw up the Israeli ’90 Minutes at Entebbe’.The author would travel to Uganda and later reported that worried Idi Amin knelt on his knees pleading with him mainly over the closure of the Kenya-Uganda border which was doing economic damage to Uganda. Eventually, Amin’s downfall would come through at the exit of the Author as Foreign Minister.
Chapter eight opens with the Author’s remark that African politics would regrettably continue to be buffeted by the global confrontation between the United States of America and the Soviets. He reached this conclusion from his experience as Nigeria’s Foreign Minister who had attended bilateral and multilateral meetings. Similarly, in chapter nine, readers are given the idea that no independent African country can escape from the web of relationships spun with Europe since the fifteenth century. “Independence may have come but economic inter-dependence persists what the situation”, he emphasizes.
The Author went ahead to explain that when Nigeria achieved her independence in October 1960 from the British, it was through peaceful constitutional conferences rather than an armed liberation struggle. This according to the Author is responsible for the warm, even sentimental feeling among Nigerians toward Britain. He buttressed this argument with the Anglo-Nigeria Defence Pact to which the students of the University of Ibadan protested. In furtherance, he recalled that the Nigerian-Britain relationship was cordial until 1967 when the Nigerian Civil War broke out. At that time, the Nigerian government expected Britain to support her however, what the country got was sustained propaganda mounted against it both in the British Parliament and the British society at large. There was also the case of the initial refusal of Britain to sell arms to Nigeria. It is noteworthy that after the war, relations improved as did with all countries.
Chapter ten discusses Nigeria's international organizations. The Author sees the United Nations to which Nigeria was admitted on October 7, 1960, as an impressive world theatre. He describes the theatre of the global body as a pure theatre with a collection of several thousand professional actors otherwise called diplomats with other professionals who play the role of directors and producers over which presides the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Chapter eleven describes the relations between Black Africa and the Arabs. The Author explains that it was the Arab-Israeli confrontation that compelled Nasser of Egypt to seek relations in the sub-Saharan region. However, he would regret that the matter of the Middle East crisis began to dominate the OAU sessions with the Palestine Liberation Organization succeeding in attending one of the OAU meetings as observers. Nonetheless, the Author did not appreciate the Palestine problem dominating African meetings especially when Africans were not directly concerned.
Chapter twelve which serves as a conclusion bears the view that a country of Nigeria’s size and potential cannot formulate and execute a credible foreign policy for the future without first laying a solid political and economic foundation at home. This assertion seems to be infinitely valuable to the Nigerian foreign policy formulators beyond the period of publication of the book.
This is followed by an interesting epilogue and appendices, some of which submit reports and exchanges from the diplomatic front.