Beyond a World of Words
When President Muhammadu Buhari is called to the microphone in New York at the general debate of the 74th United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, he will stride to it like a hero. Afterall, the man who would have just introduced him is a Nigerian: an official he appointed to head the Permanent Mission […]
When President Muhammadu Buhari is called to the microphone in New York at the general debate of the 74th United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, he will stride to it like a hero.
Afterall, the man who would have just introduced him is a Nigerian: an official he appointed to head the Permanent Mission of Nigeria two and a half years ago. He isTijjani Muhammad Bande.
The bounce in Buhari’s step will also be boosted by the possibility that the UN Deputy Secretary-General is Amina Mohammed, who was one of his Ministers before assuming her current position.
There is no doubt that each of those three offices is momentous. A President. The President of the General Assembly. The Deputy Secretary-General.
But suppose you were a freshly-matriculated student in a Malaysian, Colombian or American university. You are just beginning to develop interest in world affairs, and you want to know something about the work of Bande, Mohammed and Buhari.
Suppose, as a bright student, you chose to begin at the website of the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations. Every Member State of the United Nations has one of those, where anyone the world over may learn of its work and sometimes find links to aligned offices and issues. Recognizing the power and strategic importance of such a mechanism, Member States diligently and studiously maintain those sites every day of the year.
There are 193 such sites. That is not completely correct: there are 193 Member States, but not 193 sites, as a few of them do not have functional websites.
And Nigeria, that research student discovers, is one such nation, as the link above demonstrates. However, as is the practice and province of sycophancy, the Nigeria website does feature a couple of speeches made by President Buhari during his first term, but there is little else of contemporary interest to demonstrate what, if any, Professor Bande and his team have been doing in the past three years.
In other words, there is nothing by which to show how the Permanent Mission, which has nearly 30 diplomats and related staff, participates in the work of the UN, if it does. But what does that matter? Given Nigerian political storytelling, our official celebration over the next one year will be about how much of an achievement it is that a Nigerian is the President of the General Assembly.
In his enquiry, that Argentine, Irish or Australian student will find it to be of the utmost fascination that Deputy Secretary-General Mohammed not only previously served in the Buhari government but had before that been a key figure in previous governments when she served as the Senior Special Adviser to the President of Nigeria on the Nigeria Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
He will find that in that chapter of hers and Nigeria’s life, she was responsible for a budget of $1 billion per annum for about five years. The money was coming by way of Nigeria’s savings in her debt relief deal with the Paris Club in 2006, and the country committed to spending it on poverty-reduction and education..
That Madagascar, Canadian or Chinese student would be excited that someone who became Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations would be excited at the opportunity to demonstrate practical and accountable implementation of a multilateral commitment rather than preachment.
But that student will find that there is considerable disquiet over what was done—or not—with those funds during the six-year, six-billion-dollar tenure of Ms. Mohammed.He might even find a couple of articles with my name on them. In one, written after Buhari committed to the MDGs at the General Assembly in 2015 and while she was still Nigeria’s Minister for Environment, I begged her to help Nigeria establish what had happened to the funds. I also wrote“Image-laundering at the UN,” (September 17, 2017);“The forest fire won’t wait,” (August 19, 2018); and “Hypocrisy in High Places,” (September 16, 2018).
In one of those interventions, I drew attention to the relationship between the MDGs and the SDGS, if the latter is to succeed: “Nigerians would like to see the evidence—projects and documents—demonstrating that between 2005 and 2015, someone spent $10bn in rural Nigeria. If not, the epitaph of the SDGs in Nigeria in 2030 has already been penned.”
The point is that when it comes to words, Nigeria is a big spender. We are voluble and voluminous. Boastful and boisterous. We are never outspent.
It is when it comes to performance and accountability that things change. Decibel levels diminish. Tenses change, as people who ought to speak in the past find that to be impossible.
Hopefully, as Buhari takes that microphone on Tuesday and is monitored by that student—indeed by students of history everywhere—he recognizes that just as he comes into New York at the end of summer, the time for perpetual promises has ended. Now is the time to account and to review. It is the time to report on promises fulfilled. It is time for accountability to Nigerians to the UN on promises he has made for a decade and a half, particularly in the past six as presidential candidate and president.
Buhari has spoken a lot about corruption and accountability. Now is the time to speak as an example of what he preaches, because nothing speaks louder than example.
He returns to New York as Nigeria grows increasingly more insecure and more politically volatile, with security operatives attacking journalists, humanitarian workers, political opponents and human rights advocates.
And hopefully, Buhari understands that his blanket “anti-corruption” rhetoric no longer works. In 2016, he told the Assembly he continued to “fight corruption, and that his efforts were “yielding positive results, including significant recoveries of stolen assets.” As he sought to make the case for “the speedy and unconditional return of stolen public assets,” he said he was“strengthening the capacity of Government entities to institutionalize reforms to ensure transparency and good governance.”
Sadly, he was far more credible at that time than he is now, as his party and government [including the legislature] are internationally-known to be riddled by Nigeria’s most ethically derelict.
Last year, Buhari told the world, “It is in our collective interest to…investigate and prosecute corrupt individuals and entities…” When it is evident that the people so described are increasingly among those who make and implement policy, it is clear why members of the international community giggle among themselves.
Should Nigerian officials take the trouble to read the current report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, they will find the UN’s concern about the [continued] diversion of public resources away from the common good. And he is specific about whom the organization seeks to help, saying, “…we have strengthened our partnerships…to provide a more comprehensive support “to Governments that are committed to tackling corruption.”
But all is not lost. On Tuesday, Buhari will tell the world his latest plan: to liberate 100 million Nigerians from poverty. Or perhaps not. You can tell the UN anything.
After all, only one student, not History, will notice.
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