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Tit-for-tat’ With Who? - Politics - Nairaland

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Tit-for-tat’ With Who? by danielarem(m): 1:53pm On Mar 18, 2012
It is now obvious that South Africa over- reached itself when it decided on the first day of March 2012, to deport 125 Nigerians on account of what is generally regarded as a rather flimsy reason that they possessed fake yellow fever inoculation certificates. Of course, South Africa was being smart by half with her enemy action because if yellow fever was her real fear, she would have quarantined the travelers, inoculated and observed them for a few hours and allowed them to go about their business. What makes the South African decision more untenable is the fact that Nigeria by the certification of the World Health Organization (WHO) is not a yellow fever epidemic nation. Thus, the panic by South Africa was untenable and obviously premeditated.
The decision by Nigeria to retaliate a few days later by deporting 131 South African travellers with fake documents is therefore expedient on the basis of reciprocity which is a cardinal principle in foreign relations.
Our Foreign Affairs Ministry has been hailed by all particularly the National Assembly and the pro-active Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora Affairs, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa. In earnest, many Nigerians were impressed with how the federal government acted in line with public opinion suggesting clearly that Nigerians deprecate the past attitude of their government which often overlooked the ill treatment of their kith and kin in other countries. It is therefore quite reassuring that both the government and the people are now on the same page that in foreign relations “tit-for-tat” another word for reciprocity is allowed. Our main foreign affairs minister (we have three) underscored this a week ago at the induction of 88 newly appointed Nigerian ambassadors that “as a government, we will not hesitate to apply strict reciprocity as a cardinal principle in our relations with all countries. In fairness to the present administration, that was not a new point considering that our Aviatio
n minister had earlier put a halt to the refusal by Britain to grant adequate landing slots to Arik air at London Heathrow airport which British airways exploits in Nigeria.
Oh yes, we need to now and again reciprocate the actions of other nations to us and put away our toga of subservience. One issue which immediately comes up here is the way Nigeria virtually hero-worships the ambassadors of some countries. In highbrow Victoria Island in Lagos for instance, there is a street named after Walter Carrington- a one-time American ambassador to Nigeria. Whatever extra-ordinary thing he did to warrant such eternal recognition is not the issue. What matters here is that no Nigerian ambassador to the USA has been so honoured. If the gesture of honouring ambassadors is a unilateral initiative by Nigeria which is not likely to be reciprocated, with whom then do we really want to prosecute this new found love for reciprocity?
The location of embassies is another point of relevance. In Nigeria, some embassies operate as if they own both their buildings (even when rented) and the streets where they are located. Sometimes, an entire street is made impassible to the discomfort of inhabitants only because one embassy is in the area. But a visit to Nigerian embassies abroad will show a scenario that is a far cry from what happens here. How best then should reciprocity be handled? ,
One obvious objective of an embassy is to protect citizens of a nation in a foreign country. For that reason, some embassies are usually quite pro-active in making information available for the safety of their nationals especially in troubled spots. For some embassies, Nigeria is a place about which their citizens must be warned permanently of an impending danger. Sometimes, it could be about some health hazards while at other times it could just be one crisis or the other. It could be quite occasionally disheartening where European embassies exaggerate certain infractions into national disasters when the so called problems also occur in their own countries. For example, being in London in the first week of August last year was quite a risk.
The shooting of a man by the police in Tottenham had led to widespread riots. Three days later, the riots were still on with several shops looted while many buildings and vehicles were set on fire and over 200 rioters arrested by the police. Painfully, the Nigerian embassy in London did not warn those of us travelling to the UK at the time that the place had become ungovernable! A smaller riot than that in Nigeria would have been treated differently. Why do our own embassies not propagate the problems of other nations for the safety of our citizens leaving abroad or are they unaware of “reciprocity? More often than not, an embassy issues a statement about a purely national event like the conduct of elections which is not her business. Interestingly, in the so-called developed nations the conduct of election is occasionally also poorly handled but the Nigerian embassies in such places keep mute. May be we need to bring back such envoys for proper induction on reciprocity.
They also need to be properly trained on how to ‘play big’ and avoid inferiority complex so that citizens of their host nations can once awhile also seek protection from our own embassies. As the dreaded wikileaks has shown, many well placed Nigerians often went for dinner in some embassies only to reveal state matters to officials of a foreign country to the detriment of their fatherland.
There is doubt if we can achieve such considering what it takes to be an ambassador in Nigeria. As alluded in this column many months back, no mediocre is saddled, in the developed world, with diplomatic assignments on the basis of prescriptive criteria like state of origin or religious denomination.
Indeed, they do not use ambassadorial postings to placate members of the ruling political party who could not win elections in their constituencies. Rather, an ambassador is a fit and proper character whose charisma and articulation can consummate his nation’s vision. It is only such appointees that can handle reciprocity with ample discretion while those with little or no initiative would deal with the subject like robots watching out for only what others do so that they can reciprocate. If no one does anything, they may remain docile.
In reality however, reciprocity is not all that Nigeria needs. We should not only deport travellers with fake certificates; we should also initiate sound decisions which for instance requires South Africans to produce Tuberculosis free certificates because that is a contagious disease for which they have very high prevalence rate.
In addition, the wise counsel in 2009 of Ambassador George Obiozor, a former Nigerian ambassador to the USA that a nation‘s capacity to employ reciprocity is dependent on her “self improvement and dynamic development of her political, economic and social institutions” is instructive because it points at the need to improve Nigeria so as to reduce both the number of citizens checking out of the country as well as the instances of their being maltreated

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