A former Minister of External Affairs, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, says it will be a bad policy for Nigeria not to take a warning from the United States, United Kingdom, and other countries on terrorist security alert. In an interview on Arise TV programme monitored by David Lawani, the octogenarian retired diplomat said the US government has enormous information around the world, calling on the Nigerian government to recruit more security personnel to properly police and secure the nation

How would you react to the directive by the Minister of Information that we should not believe the security alert raised by the US?

As I said earlier in my presentation, Americans have information from all over the world, and those who follow the system know. That information about what is going to happen in Nigeria could have been picked up in Afghanistan. It could have been picked up in Syria. It could have been picked up anywhere. Maybe one of the terrorists might say he is going on a trip to the Sahel. We are about to launch an operation in Nigeria. That could have been picked up anywhere in the world not necessarily in Nigeria. I will believe the Americans and what the Nigeria Police later corroborated. They are experts and they do a lot of assessment of reactions to intelligence covered. That is why I said I would like to see helicopter movements all over. To show the terrorist cells that they are being monitored or to assure Nigerians that at least they are up to the task. But I am saying also let this be a warning signal to so many of them. When I said that I served on the Uwais committee, I am talking about when the late Umaru Yar’Adua came into power and they set up that committee and that was when we called the attention of the government to what needed to be done. That report was ignored. I didn’t see any massive recruitments. I am not talking about token recruitment. I like to see massive recruitment into the Nigerian police. I welcome the setting up of different divisions. There has been an increase in the number of divisions, but I am not into that area of equipping the division. I know that it is a wrong decision not to do that but driven by this power struggle all over to refuse to arm the JTF, and state security forces, refusal to arm Amotekun, they kept saying no AK 47. Even the Nigerian police don’t have enough AK47s. When you read what happens in the South East, the DPO says when the people came, he had only 10 guns and the people who attacked them had more than 10 guns. Excuse me, what do you say? And the police are well-armed and well-aligned with the state governors. Who is prepared for ammunition importation for Amotekun for state police? Those are the things we need to do.

You had recently said that political rallies of one million or two million man-march constitute soft targets for terrorists. Won’t the politicians say the attempt to stop them from gathering, associating, and expressing themselves will abridge their rights?

We should be talking about right when there is an existential danger to the public. And, that is why I said the national security adviser should ask for clearance from the president to be back on the seat. He should be directed to call in the politicians and read the riot act to them. I am not interested in your right to assembly. If you are preventing soft targets, the Americans have warned you about what is about to happen and you are insisting it is your right to have million-man marches. It is a question of balancing rights with responsibilities. You don’t have enough policemen to provide you with protection because if anything happens, the next thing they are going to say is that the police didn’t protect us. Don’t create a situation that even now, stretches beyond all reasonable possibilities. The ability of the security forces to container any issue at the right time is key. Help the security forces to handle the immediate threat to the nation.

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Is it not for us to boost security, should we allow the rallies to hold while the terrorists hold sway in the attacks?

But we have to pay the price. This is a difficult time for us. Some of these issues are due to government policies regarding terrorists within our country. This is a difficult time calling for difficult decisions. If you ban the million-man transition, fortunately, we have had in the past years a multiplication of radio stations, and television stations, to switch the tactics around. Start addressing the people through TV adverts, radio adverts, and addresses. Change your strategy to confront the threat you are faced with. I’m prepared to give up some of my freedom if it is going to make me save. But the fact that you want to do things as usual, when you are in an unusual situation, it doesn’t make any sense. Even a few Supreme Court judgments in the USA have said when you can limit freedom. You cannot shout fire in a crowded cinema. You cannot. So, how do you now say we can continue to have rallies here because it will be an infringement of my freedom as a gubernatorial candidate? When lives are going to be at risk? You have been forewarned. These are dangerous times for the country. Dangerous time for Nigeria. It is going to be a hard time for us. Let us repackage our security strategy and our political strategy accordingly. But the government must stop this demonising anybody who brings uncomfortable facts to their attention. The embassies are doing their jobs for their people. Our government agencies should calm down and try to assure us but not at the risk of asking them to sleep when there is about to be a fire on the roof.

The Federal government is planning to prune down the number of foreign missions. What are your thoughts on that?

Old solutions which never worked. The Nigerian government has to make up its mind. Do they want to be an active player in global politics? Which have consequences. You want to be a permanent member either with or without veto in the UN Security Council. I have been saying for the past two years even before COVID-19 came that we are transiting from an old world order which is controlled by the Americans to a new one that is multipolar probably hanging around China in addition to Russia, and India. These people are called bricks since the war between Russia and Ukraine, organizations have been multiplying. And what used to be happening is that countries are positioning themselves so that they will be players at the table when they are going to design a new world order. They are not going to have the United Kingdom representing them say the commonwealth. They are going to be there in their own right and on their merit. If you start cutting down on the number of your embassies, diplomacy is the art of negotiations. Or show a preference where they match. Nigeria is not an inconsequential country in the world. You can make yourself an inconsequential country if you want. But there are consequences. There are prices to be paid for that. If you are going to campaign to be a member of the security council of the UN, where the votes take place is the General Assembly. The Kingdom of Bhutan has one vote, just as the USA has one vote. Do you think because you have an Embassy in the US you now close down your Embassy in Britain, the US will pick up the phone and speak to the King of Bhutan? Please vote for Nigeria. It will never make sense. Closing down the mission is not the way out because, by that time, it may be too late. Don’t tell me we don’t have the resources. When you allow people to fret millions of barrels of your crudes when you have senators who are the highest paid in the world, you have an Accountant-General of the Federation who just emptied your treasury. I am just responding to the one that was brought to our notice. There are others. If you can structure your system such that there is only 10 per cent leakage, or even if it is three per cent, I will be happy. But when the leakages are 90 per cent or more, then who do we now skin alive? And you have ambassadors and embassies that are not being funded enough to do their jobs? We are a laughingstock in the world. Let us be serious. It pains me so much as a scholar in this field when I see other countries barking above their scale and we are barking below our capability. It makes me sad that this is not the diplomacy of Murtala Muhammed and not the diplomacy of General Yakubu Gowon. What are we doing, we are going backward. We are not going forward. I don’t agree. I have looked at the membership committee of this group, civil servants. What we should have been doing. 90 percent of them are civil servants. Representing head of the service. They represent all manner of things. We have argued and we got it approved at the 2014 national conference that in fact, the ministry of foreign affairs should be a separate foreign service. We are always talking about best international practices. This is what happens in the rest of the world. But when it gets to Nigeria, oh no. The whole Ministry is so jealous of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because they are paid in dollars. You are called your Excellency and we are not called like that. Therefore, we will put you under the rug. We have been on it for the Ministry to be made Foreign Service then you will understand. There are African countries whose financial allocation like Senegal, to their foreign service is more than what we do and yet we will say we want to compete. Even with other African countries on the world scene. But we don’t want to give them the capability we want to tight one hand behind them. You cannot clap with one hand when we want to perform miracles in this country, and that is what brought us to where we are in this country.

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What do you make of this uprising with this insecurity alert, are they real? If yes, what is the way out for the nation?

Take your mind back to a little clip we saw in time on Burkinabe where one of the soldiers was interviewed as to what has led to the new coup and he said they sold us out with five sachets of weapons after maybe two hours of battle with the jihadists. We ran out of weapons. The jihadists still had a lot of weapons and they overpower us. The answer has been there for 60 years. Why did he never come up with a plan to make sure that the Burkinabe troops are better with weapons? It is because he was there for a purpose. I had two best friends who were heads of state, although it was a breach of protocols. Because it was just a flipping Foreign Minister. But Thomas Sankara and Jerry Rawlings shared confidence with me because they were expecting Nigeria, will play up its role. We didn’t play up to our role. And finally, Blaise Compaoré got rid of and assassinated Thomas Sankara. The conclusion is that security forces in Mali, CAR, and now in Burkinafaso have concluded that we have been friends and a threat to their survival. Because the French is there to further their purposes. Let me remind you, of Macron when he made the mistake of attacking the Italians because they have just voted in the right wing of the Prime Minister and she gave it back to Macron. This is the same thing the French have been doing in West Africa. You have got children, mining, uranium to provide electricity, in France were 90 per cent. If we say nobody believes us, but she now has access to intelligence reports of Italy and she was not exposing what the French were doing in Africa. So, if those people now conclude. The only people they think still have access and clean hands are the Russians. Let us call them in. Well, JF Kennedy used to say that the only way to jail is for a man from the back of the tiger to end up inside the tiger. I don’t know whether that will help but it is letting the West know that there are alternatives to this security agreement. The West is not going to allow that to happen with a prize being paid for by this young boy. I hope and I know that part of it is the US agreeing to allow what is going on now in Ukraine added to its state and non-state actors to cry to overthrow this boy so that they can bring in another set that will be more attuned to Western interests. The question you have raised this to quote Chinese phrases, it is going to be an interesting time in the Sahel and West Africa. Nigeria is the most powerful country in West Africa, we have to wake up to our responsibilities. We have not done that in the past 18 years. Presidents who have been so concerned about their own pockets and their over-bloated role in global affairs that they have forgotten to build up their country. You have presidents who are not interested in foreign affairs at all, and you have had presidents whose definition of national interest is frankly treason. They don’t know what a felony is. We had one in America in Trump and they have not been able to do anything about him. So, maybe I should not be talking about Nigeria not being able to do something about its version of Trump. We need to wake up. There is an existential threat to Nigeria. And, we know where this threat is coming from. And we are being warned so that we don’t wake up one morning and said nobody told us. And, this is the role of people like me. I have nothing to gain. I am so patriotic. I am so loyal to Nigeria. Loyalty should not be defined as a form of support to the government of the day or a political party. I have gone beyond that. I am over 80 years old. I will be 81 in three months. What do I have to get by running down my country? But to go silently to deny scream and scream. I must thank Arise TV. I wish you will invite me back. I watch people on your programme speaking the truth to power. That is your job and my role in it. We should not be afraid. If not the Americans will not have the courage to warn us about what they have seen. It is for us to package our activities. That we are not afraid.

Even the Nigerian police don’t have enough AK47s. When you read what happens in the South East, the DPO says when the people came, he had only 10 guns and the people who attacked them had more than 10 guns