Ademola Araoye
The appointment of Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, the towering and unassailable octogenarian Mount Olympus of foreign and security policy, at the head of the Board of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs elicits certain thoughts. The enthusiastic welcome to the Professor in his well-deserved return is against the background of the embarrassing denudation of the potency of Nigeria to its current prostrate levels of ineffectuality in foreign policy formulation and practical actuation. The foregoing thoughts revolve around only one critical element in the gamut of factors that interact to effectively advance foreign policy goals of any nation. A few of other important elements such the state of affairs of the country itself or the aptitude and competences of the human agencies directly engaged in policy articulation, are beyond the limited scope of this intervention. They are however recognized as critical variables in the praxis and actualization of foreign policy. More importantly, those factors also relate to the quotient of receptivity to those policies as it impacts interlocutors with competing agendas and converging or divergent strategic interests. Meanwhile, at the bottom of it all is that ideas motorize action. Sound ideas produce profound impact. Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, in his constant exertions and in exuding the power of ideas, personalizes that dictum. His is a proven powerful intellect.
That said, the focal thrust of this intervention is the sad state of the internal culture of intellectual fixations and regurgitations associated with the intellectualism at the domestic level in Nigeria. It is truly depressing that the few commentaries about the return of Bolaji Akinyemi have been perfunctorily characterized at the conceptual level to the concept of Afrocentricity and Concentricity that are associated with the founding and leading intellectuals in foreign policy circuits. At the practical level, the institution of the Concert of Medium Powers and the Technical Aid Corps (TAC) are indelible expression of the irrepressible Nigerian geist of past eons. That was Nigeria in a bold and assertive stand living up to its potential historic mandate as the voice of black humanity. Indeed, the concept of the concert was visionary in envisioning a global platform of medium powers to counteract the overwhelming influence of hegemonic forces. As Femi Aribisala, a front line actor in Akinyemi’s kitchen caucus describes it, the Concert was an informal and flexible consultative organ that comprised a regionally representative number of sixteen countries, considered regional powers or which exercised significant amount of regional influence. The focus was on collective action to mediate in pressing global conflict situations. As well as act as a bridge between competing interests in the international system. It was thus conceived to fill a critical vacuum in the interaction of middle powers in balancing interests outside the framework of domineering interest and influence of dominant hegemonic circles. The Concert of Medium Powers, I dare say, was not well appreciated in certain conservative circles of the Foreign Ministry of its time. Cynicism pervaded. Now, with the rise of the BRICS, although more focused on the economy, but based essentially on the same philosophy and principles of Akinyemi’s Concert, the jury is undoubtedly out. It is thus rather unfortunate that through a speculated series of miscalculations by Nigeria and in the context of radical transformations in the strategic template of the continent, Nigeria, the most populous country and arguably Africa’s largest economy, was offered a partnership on a global platform where the likes of Ethiopia and Indonesia have full membership. The question may thus be posed: Had Nigeria’s feeble attempt to join in a competing mechanism to counter the influence of the emerging BRICS through association with MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) to do with its relegation to mere and insignificant partnership? Indonesia as a member of the BRICS however would undercut that perspective. Or, Is it the result of strategic power plays in Africa? A country with a sturdy research culture that is canvassed by this piece would fathom out the reasons for future policy making.
In a role as a pioneer staff of the Directorate of TACS, I experienced the immense impact of the program that was palpably manifest across the black world, either as we observed in field visitations or through reports received from the various recipient governments. In some cases the directorate heard directly from impacted communities. It is matter of pride to recall that our TACorpers were welcome even in the discreet bush camps of the African National Congress cadres in Tanzania. Notwithstanding these successes, the traumatic setbacks in Nigeria’s profile and unbelievable stream of policy failures in the last two to three decades, the worst since the beginning of Nigeria’s national life, emphasizes a need to regenerate a culture of idea-driven policy making and the development astute intellectual engagement with unfolding realities at all levels of interactions. This is a decisive challenge that Nigeria faces in this era. At the forefront of bridging this lacuna is the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). The institute is at the head of a multitude of other institutes and departments across the over one hundred universities in Nigeria with specializations focusing on international relations, even if we seem not to recognize the inextricable linkage of the discipline with strategic studies. Although, the monopoly of the NIIA in this realm can only be a beginning, as political developments and a further maturation of the intellectual firmament should lead to the emergence of a number of foundations and institutes mobilized along specific ideo-philosophical beliefs that may not always converge. The attempts of all these anticipated interests to seek to influence the direction of policy would enhance the balance and quality of foreign policy. They would naturally foster publications that illuminate preferred policy against the background of the trajectories that they advocate for society and the world at large.
Yet, the more problematic in this projected scenario is the domestic culture of intellectual regurgitation and associated deficits in the constructive development of conflicting intellectual camps, sects and schools in the various disciplines, including international relations. That is a major constraint in our intellectual culture that translates into an incapacity to generate new knowledge relative to the evolution of new facts and emerged contexts. The tendency to hang on to old concepts or analytic frameworks even if clearly antiquated given significant transformations in the specified universe would seem pervasive. Empirically informed clashes of diverse theoretical and conceptual frameworks on the evolving dynamics within the continent and the globe and the place of Nigeria, in its dynamic contextual state, are important. How does Nigeria manage its challenging existential realities in the vastly transformed strategic template of Africa defined by seemingly ascendant divergent ideo-philosophical convictions and political orientations within the continent? The moral consensus around the abhorrent regime of Apartheid in South Africa that we exploited as low hanging policy fruits in the 1970s and 1980s has dissipated. Even the substantive elements of afrocentricity, like ill-fated deflections of the core tenets of pan-Africanism, would seem to call for greater elucidation in an Africa that upturns the authentic meanings of pivotal concepts to suit political conveniences and in tune with the odious temperaments of dubious continental leadership. In that connection, I read a statement by the Equatorial Guinean President Teodora Obiang Nguema Mbasogo claiming to be a pan-African. His policy, like those of Sassou Nguesso, Omar Bongo, Emperor Bedl Bokassa and Yorewi Museveni he said was afro-centric. Good lord!!! Mbasogo even titled his autobiography as My Life for My People. Africa only forces a chuckle. Hoe relevant is concentricity under current circumstances. Does Nigeria possess the broad capacity to credibly sustain concentricity in an age where other continental states can project force into the immediate sub region? What lessons can be adduced from the horrible policy failures of the last two decades? Meanwhile, the absence of camps, sects and schools in Nigeria across the diverse specializations in the social sciences expresses sluggishness or dormancy in research or even a lack of rigor in the national academy. Theoretical catholicism may in fact reflect intellectual indolence and or even sycophancy that sounds the death knell of any intellectual culture. Admittedly, in our clime sycophancy pays as a strategy for career advancement. Who cares about theories?? But this is not feasible for a country desiring to play a significant role in global affairs. The solution is found in a vibrant national academy.
There is a cost to a thriving intellectual culture. It is in the tradition of dynamic disciplines in intellectually stimulating environments to kill their great grand ancestors. The death of the forefathers is the insignia of vitality that is welcomed as the new generations and scions of the intellectual lords of the realm extend, modify, and even seek to repudiate the legacies of the eternal masters. In these climes there are no immutable laws beyond empirically derived positivistic contestations and the outcomes of the permanent welcome confrontations. That is until the next time around. The intellectual patricide is undertaken through incremental consolidations and at the same time modifications to original seminal and foundational theories or analytical frameworks that hitherto defined the specialized areas of human interest. In time, on the anvil of empirically driven unceasing and robust interrogations of foundational ideas, those theories or frameworks evolve into new insightful approaches in the understandings the phenomenon. The tradition impels an intellectual culture and environment of constant growth through revolutionary transformation of ideas. In a process of paradigm shifts originally explicated by Thomas Kuhn, the rise of new methods, new conceptualizations and new research questions, are all defining elements of the birth process of new paradigms. They emerge in situations that Jacob Ningen registers as when open research questions remain recalcitrant to any analysis. Such impasse call for revolutionary paths of inquiry. The rigorous jousting between old and new paradigms is a constant mill. This is premised on Thomas Kuhn’s fundamental skeptism of the “classical limit”. Every limit can thus be shattered through further empirical interrogations.
Revolutionary turns of processes and analytical frameworks are mostly associated with the physical sciences. However, they are not immunized to application to social phenomena. After all, Francis Bacon is reputed for specifically advancing the idea that knowledge comes from the senses in a philosophy regarding the nature of science and epistemology. John Locke, renowned as one of the founders of British Empiricism, is insistent that all ideas are rooted in experience and thus implacably committed to the imperative of empirical evidence as the basis of the development of knowledge. Changes in the physical and human environment impact the senses and help in our navigations of realities as they evolve. In the evolved circumstances of Nigeria and in the context of the turbulence in the global order, the NIIA would do well to begin to unravel the many given unknowns in world class research outcomes in publications that should help policy formulation. A first suggested simple step is to help Nigeria get over such atomistic deconstructions of essentially holistic foreign policy frameworks in atrocious conceptual absurdities such as in so-called citizen diplomacy, economic diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and the institutionalization of ridiculous structures and mechanisms unknown to the universe of serious diplomacy that have become the vogue in idea challenged era of Nigerian diplomacy. With Professor Bolaji Akinyemi at the head of the board of NIIA, hope for a turn-around is now unbounded.
*Professor Ademola Araoye is a retired official of the United Nations and former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership at the University of Abuja. He is author of Sources of Conflict in the Post- Colonial African State (AWP, 2012).