By Umaru Fofana
Nigeria is the power engine and big brother in Africa in more ways than one and has pumped more money into Sierra Leone – both as aid and as investment – than any other country has done in the northern hemisphere.
Ghana is the beacon of stability and democracy in the sub-region and one Sierra Leone has a lot to learn from. It is fast becoming – if not already – the poster boy for things on the up in Africa.
Ask many Africans which country they would like to visit on the continent – and I have asked a lot in my extensive travels across west, east and southern Africa – they will tell you Ghana. So I cannot understand why Sierra Leone can afford to not have an ambassador in Lagos and Accra – designate or substantive – for so long.
Sierra Leone’s diplomatic postings are not done in any way suggesting strategic national considerations. For example, after Nigeria had spent millions of dollars helping end the war here the country appointed a professional banker as its high commissioner who goaded the process of Nigerian banks coming into Sierra Leone. Once that was accomplished he was reassigned. It is known as strategic thinking.
It was not by mistake that the United States not long ago appointed as ambassador a former Peace Corps volunteer in the country, or an Arab American as ambassador to Iraq. Strategic Thinking, my friend! In Sierra Leone, how and why are people appointed as ambassador – or as anything for that matter? You know the answer.
A former Nigerian high commissioner to Sierra Leone, Alhaji Abubakarr once told me that Sierra Leone was among the top five countries in the world his country shared so much with especially culturally, and emphasised on the importance it attached to those ties. Obviously Benin and Brazil have huge populations whose ancestry is traced back to Nigeria hence not surprising that they are probably the top two. But you need look no further to understand how the transatlantic slave trade and the issue of the Recaptives conjoined our two countries. The history of the Creoles – perhaps the most and best educated of the country’s ethnic group (per capita) – is an ever-present reminder of Nigeria’s influence on and cultural deep-rootedness in Sierra Leone.
Nigeria’s Technical Aid Cooperation, modelled on the US Peace Corps, helped save our health and education sectors more than anyone can imagine especially during and immediately following the carnage and destruction of our rebel war which not only killed teachers and health workers but also destroyed school and health infrastructures. This is south-south cooperation more than this country has ever experienced it. So why do we treat Nigeria like a diplomatic pariah.
And for a bit of reciprocity, a good many Nigerians came to school here. And the country’s first president Nnamdi Azikiwe sojourned here. But for a country that has so much influence over all of its neighbours and is a colossus in global diplomacy to boast of such close ties with a country that does not wield that much clout internationally is a feat in itself for Sierra Leone and one we should run away with.
In more recent times no one needs reminding that Nigeria has played an extraordinary role in keeping the peace and stability in Sierra Leone. It did not have to make all those sacrifices – financial and human – to do that. We do not share borders. Its strategic interest here at the time did not necessarily border on the survival of its people to have warranted the ultimate sacrifice which even a child born just a few years ago knows all too well about. The continued existence of our country as is, and the fact that our basic democratic credentials are still intact are due mainly to the end of our war and carnage visited upon us in the 1990s and the return of democracy in 1998. And that was largely due to Nigeria’s involvement and investment which was even before any other country or even the United Nations thought of coming to the rescue.
After that war, Nigeria became the biggest single African donor towards the UN-backed war crimes court to try those behind it. When the rest of the world was dithering to respond to the ongoing Ebola outbreak, Nigeria and Gambia were the first to send in financial assistance.
Nigeria’s intervention to restore our elected government was, and remains, legendary in the eyes of any serious-minded Sierra Leonean and believer in democracy. And if you consider the complexities of Sierra Leonean politics and how the country’s two main political parties have used the military – to instigate or piggyback on – then you understand how come Sierra Leone treats its relations with Nigeria with the cavalier attitude it seems to be doing lately.
To begin to imagine that we do not have a High Commissioner in Nigeria since the last one was appointed a minister – and he spent a lot of his time in Freetown even when he was supposed to be in post – is bound to raise questions as to what is happening to our relations with a country we share so much in common with. And to imagine our parliamentary committee on foreign relations has not expressed concern over this worrisome development also sends jitters.
I do not have figures handy but I am willing to risk it to say that hundreds of Sierra Leoneans are attending one tertiary institution or another in Ghana. Not to mention those children whose parents can afford it and decided to send them to school there while we incomprehensibly closed our learning institutions and forfeited an academic year while some of the kids clustered even more closely to hawk on the streets of main towns and cities across the country. Incomprehensible!
Often we have tied our diplomatic interests around the personal friendship and interests between the leaders. That’s a key reason why the Mano River Union failed so abysmally. The formation of the organisation was knotted in personal affinity between presidents Siaka Stevens, Sekou Toure and William Tolbert instead of between the peoples of the three countries. So when the three leaders passed on it put a kibosh on relations between the peoples of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Agreed the leaders determine diplomatic relations but establishing a new such with a country like Fiji is nowhere near strengthening ties with Nigeria and Ghana; with all respect to the south pacific archipelago nation.
Ghana and Nigeria should be priority diplomatic postings or locations and as far as we know the two gentlemen who held those posts no longer serve there. Or does the ruling All People’s Congress party lack the human resource to represent the country in those countries since appointments are drenched in partisanship? I bet my life not! If those who were there deserved to be there then there are a lot more at hand to replace them. Many Americans were incensed when their Congress took hundreds of days to approve their ambassador to Sierra Leone – and that was not because President Obama did not appoint one or that Sierra Leone is far more important to the United States than Nigeria should be to Sierra Leone. So I wonder why Sierra Leoneans, not least our foreign relations pundits, are so reticent about this which to my mind amounts to a diplomatic snub of two countries that have defined and defended us so much for so long in so many ways.
© Politico 12/02/15
