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Ambassador Eineje Onobu’s Fragments of
Time: Quo Vadis Concert of Medium Powers?
Bola A.. Akinterinwa
“Fragment of Time: My Foreign Service Years,” is the title of the diplomatic memoir of Ambassador Eineje Onobu, presented to the public at the Tafawa Balewa House on Tuesday, 5th May, 2026 in Abuja. Tafawa Balewa House is like Quai d’Orsai in Paris or Department of State in Washington. Amb. Onobu is a diplomatic agent and a diplomatist per excellence. In Nigeria, there are many diplomatic agents as conceived in some pre-1961 diplomatic agreements. For example, there was the 1815 Congress of Vienna, which standardised diplomacy and ranked diplomats in Europe. The Institut de Droit International, founded in 1873 in Belgium, introduced the Règlement de Cambridge in 1895. The Havana Convention, a Latin American regional treaty done on 20 February, 1928, established the rules for granting political asylum in diplomatic settings. It defined who a diplomatic staff was and the conditions for their entitlement to immunity. In fact, there was also the 1932 Harvard Law School Draft Convention on “Research in International Law” project which attempted to codify privileges and immunities as customarily done between 1868 and 1928. Above all is the almighty 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations which summarises all the various rules.
Without whiff of doubt, a diplomat or diplomatic agent is one that has ‘diplomatic rank’ or is a member of the ‘diplomatic staff’ in an embassy (vide Article 1 (d) of the 1961 Convention). He performs the duties provided for in Article 3: representation of the sending State, protection of the national interests, negotiation with the receiving State, monitoring developments in the host country, and promoting friendly ties in the host country.
Unlike a diplomat who is defined by ranking and functional duties, a diplomatist is not simply a diplomat representing his or her country, but someone who combines great skills in the management of delicate issues and great capacity for intellection. In the context of the conduct and management of Nigeria’s diplomacy, we reserve the use of diplomatist, even if it is controversially of old usage, for any diplomat that has added ‘intelligere’ to the basic functional duties of diplomats. As we have been talking about academic journalists, so should we be also talking about academic diplomat. Ambassador Eineje Onobu, without any iota of doubt, is an academic diplomat or diplomatist. It is against this background of reasoning that his book, Fragments of Time should be understood.
Fragments of Time
“Fragments of Time” is quite interesting a title because of its many possible meanings. It can refer to a song in which Todd spent time in Los Angeles where he was having the time of his life. As a song, it was about how to put feelings in a song, about his feeling of nostalgia, about his present and thinking, how he now feels so good and feel nostalgic about this moment in the future. Poetically and artistically, “Fragments of Time” also refers to captured moments in time, as it is the case with music, photographs, notes, etc. It is synonymous with segments of time, bits of time, snippets of time, and fleeting instances. This is precisely what Ambassador Onobu’s memoirs is all about.
The public launch of the book took place, not only in a serene environment, but also at a time when U.S. foreign policy is being conducted by manu militari and several issues in Nigeria’s foreign policy are being raised. U.S. leadership of the world is being challenged by the Chinese. The Nuclear Weapons States, particularly led by the U.S, probably all want death for Iranians who are insisting on self-survival. Iranians want the status of the Strait of Hormuz to be changed. International law currently provides for the principle of ‘transit passage,’ considering that the Strait is international waters, while Iran sees the Strait as its territorial waters, and therefore, arguing that it is the principle of ‘innocent passage’ as espoused under pre-UNCLOS (United Nations Convention On the Law of the Sea) that should apply. This is why there has been a political lull in the Irano-U.S relations following the Israelo-U.S aggression on Iran on 28 February.
Besides, Iran is not simply an international question, but also a major problematic for Nigeria, in light of the suggestion of the Israeli ambassador to Nigeria, Michael Freeman, who has publicly told Nigerians that Iran was sponsoring terrorism in Nigeria. Why did he say this? Did he not want to cut Nigeria’s favour and make Iran an enemy of Nigeria? Whatever is the case, the public launch of Ambassador Onobu’s book has provided different opportunities to reflect on Nigeria’s foreign policy in different ramifications.
First, the environmental conditionings of the reflections were quite conducive, very friendly. Ambassadors worth their salt were there. Ambassador Nkemjinka Wadibia-Anyanwu, former Permanent Secretary, sat to the left hand side of Ambassador Jibrin Dada Chinade (also a former Permanent Secretary) in the front row. Three former Foreign Ministers were also there: General Ike Nwachukwu, who chaired the occasion, Alhaji Sule Lamido, and Suberu Dada (former Minister of State). Veteran diplomats, like Ambassadors Brownson Dede, Amb Aderemi Olagoke Esan, a former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Core diplomatists, like Ambassador Joe Keshi, also a former Permanent Secretary, Akin Fayomi, former Ambassador to France, Shina Fatai Alege, a former Ambassador to Ukraine, Ambassadors M.K. Ibrahim and Kayode Garrick were there. The current Permanent Secretary of the MFA, Dunoma Umar Ahmed who was cross-posted from the Home Service (Ministry of Youth Development,s former Nigeria’s Ambassador to Mozambique, Ozo Nwobu, and Ambassador Godknows Igali, who is the current Vice President of the Academy of International Affairs, as well as Ambassadors Adamu Abbas, Ridhwan A. Mustapha, Okey Emuchay, and A.R. Salahdeen, were all there. Thus, the event was more of a gliterrati of diplomats and diplomatists. It was an event of many thought-provoking speeches.
The speech of General Ike Nwachukwu regarding the need for the establishment of a Foreign Service Commission was particularly noteworthy from two perspectives. Research has shown that when the idea of the need for an independent Foreign Service Commission was not new when General Nwachukwu was Foreign Minister. It was during the time of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida who opted to be addressed as President, a concept normally reserved for elected leaders only. Regardless of whatever might have been done to promote the activities of the Foreign Ministry when General Nwachukwu was Foreign Minister, there is no disputing the fact that the request for a separate Foreign Service Commission to specifically deal with the Foreign Service, was killed ab initio under the Babangida regime.
General Nwachukwu can still be commended for renewing the request for a Foreign Service Commission. In Nigeria, it is after leaving service that people often see more clearly after the rain, in the mania of Johnny Nash. When still in office, the problem is always about policy myopia and remissness. For example, FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, can always afford the luxury of threatening to withdraw land or Certificates of Occupancy for non-payment or delayed payments of ground rent, but he never has the luxury of promptly signing Certificates of Occupancy on his table since 2023. The political system in Nigeria unnecessarily makes life very difficult in order to allow for the promotion of indiscipline and corruption.
Whenever I remember how General Ike Nwachukwu-led Governing Council of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs protected fraudulent members of staff and bastardised the processes of professorial evaluation and appointment, I personally refuse to take whatever he says seriously. Imagine his Governing Council dictating at a Council meeting the content of the letter I should send to assessors of professorial candidates. It is the same Chairman of Council, General Nwachukwu, coming into the open space to indict, deductively the President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of not acting well in the conduct and management of Nigeria’s foreign policy. This is most unfortunate. This is not to say that General Nwachukwu’s call for the establishment of a Foreign Service Commission does not have merit. His idea is sagacious and logical. However, the problem in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is more complex and is consciously created.
When a President of a country has little or no interest in foreign policy, there cannot but be little respect for the MFA. Foreign policy was most active under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo because he has interest in it and he took active part in the activities of different international relations associations. There is nothing to suggest that PBAT is much interested in the Foreign Ministry. He only shows much interest in economic diplomacy but which cannot be well conducted without having accredited ambassadors in place. This means that PBAT is not strategically calculating well. This problem is not peculiar to PBAT and the memoir of Ambassador Onobu clearly attests to this. Let us review the main points of the handsomely beautiful and soft spoken General Nwachukwu in the context of the Concert of Medium Powers proposed by another former Foreign Minister, Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi.
Onobu and Concert of Medium Powers
In understanding Ambassador Onobu’s point about the segment of time on the Concert of Medium Powers, it is useful to recall what the reviewer of the book, Osita Chidoka, said about the memoir: ‘what emerges from these pages is not a failure of individuals, but a misalignment between the professional depth a specialised service demands and the structures we have built to lead it. A system in which administrative authority is not consistently matched by substantive domain expertise risks producing order without direction. Files move. Meetings hold. Memos circulate. But direction is often thin.’
Perhaps more importantly, Osita Chidoka also had it that ‘a foreign policy agenda carefully prepared but not adopted. A coordination mechanism that worked briefly and then dissolved. Institutional ideas that flickered and disappeared. These are not isolated incidents. They are patterns. The lesson is not that we lack ideas. It is that we lack the structures that sustain them. We do not have a consistent culture of translating professional knowledge into enduring institutional action. And the consequence of that gap is not just administrative – it is strategic. It means that each generation of capable officers, like Onobu, must improvise the coherence that the system should have provided automatically.’ It is against this background that the remarks made by General Nwachukwu in his capacity as the chairman of the occasion and Ambassador Onobu’s fragment of time on the Concert of Medium Powers should also be explicated and understood.
As noted and advised by General Nwachukwu, ‘Government’s preference for political appointees has made it almost impossible for young men and women who put their lives into training to become career ambassadors on their retirement. This is not right.’ He rightly recalled that when he was Foreign Minister, it was a ratio of 70% for diplomatic careerists and 30% for non-careerists. He pleaded with Government to return to the 70-30 ratio if not possibly adopt a 80-20 ratio. As he put it, ‘we must go back to that. It is frustrating for young men and women to enter service aiming to become an ambassador, but failing to do so because there are no available slots.’
More important, General Nwachukwu said ‘we must establish a foreign Service Commission to institutionalise best practices, protect the integrity of the service, and ensure that career diplomats are given a fair opportunity to grow.’ Put differently, ‘there has to be a deliberate effort to restore balance – retain institutional memory, reward professionalism, and ensure continuity in policy execution’ as Nigerian diplomats ‘represent Nigeria in difficult environments. They deserve adequate support, not constraints that limit their effectiveness.’ His suggestion is very patriotic and necessary in light of the deepening complexity of threats to the maintenance of international peace and security, at the external level, and over-politicisation of ambassadorial appointments, at the internal level.
For instance, it is not in dispute that a Foreign Service Commission is normally charged with the responsibility of managing the recruitment, training, promotion, and discipline of career diplomats. It is equally true that many countries do not have such Commissions.
However, many countries have bodies with different names to assume responsibilities for their Foreign Service. The United States has the Board of the Foreign Service which manages the functions of a Commission, with the 1980 Foreign Service Act clearly defining the career structure of U.S. Foreign Service Officers. Canada has its Global Affairs Canada.
The operational domestic environment of any Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot but be different from that of all other Ministries. The conduct and management of diplomacy outside of Nigeria is dollarized. When it is question of budgeting, appropriation committee of the National Assembly often questions why it is so exorbitant. They easily forget that all bills must be settled abroad at the prevailing exchange rates. In Nigeria, a very junior public officer can be transferred from the home office, if not from the State Public Service to the Foreign Ministry to occupy positions far above his or her educational background and experience. Nothing can be more disturbing than when the Foreign Ministry has a Minister who is a politician, a Permanent Secretary who is not a careerist, and who may not even have any stint in diplomacy, etc.
It is only in Nigeria that a mechanic is called an engineer. The title of an ambassador is reserved for extraordinary and plenipotentiaries in post. If they are not career ambassadors, when they leave office, they lose the right to use the title. Only career ambassadors can use the title after retirement. Many people even qualify the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, calling it Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not like a Federal Ministry of Agriculture, or Federal Ministry of Finance, or the Federal Ministry of Transport, etc., which have their counterparts at the level of the constitutive States of Nigeria. There is, and there can only be one Ministry of Foreign Affairs in any country as it is in Nigeria. Consequently, it is not correct to talk about a Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs as there is no any other one in Nigeria. In Nigeria, people observe all protocols or stand on existing protocols without having established any peculiar one. Protocol is often ordinarily confused with order of precedence. All these problems largely explain why General Nwachukwu’s appeal to PBAT to see reason and establish a Foreign Service Commission to guide and manage Nigeria’s diplomacy, has become a desideratum.
Several public officials, and particularly the politicians, in the Home Service travel abroad to participate in international meetings. They are not always where they are supposed to be when abroad. Yet, they are increasingly given priority to the detriment of the careerists. This is one major reason for the need for a Foreign Service Commission. Nigeria cannot have 76 Embassies, 22 High Commissions, and 11 Consulates, all totalling 109 missions abroad, and the general Public Service will be expected to be efficient enough to manage them.
Ambassador Onobu raised the issue of Concert of Medium Powers, as initiated by Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi. And true enough, the Concert was given birth to but it died. Why? The raison d’être for the Concert is quite relevant for analysis here to show the recklessness and don’t care attitude with which Nigeria’s foreign policy is at time conducted. As told by Ambassador Onobu, when Professor Akinyemi came in as Foreign Minister, ‘he did not disparage these (existing foreign policy) core values nor the innate abilities and capacities of the craftsmen at the Ministry, [A]ll he wanted was for the Ministry staff, especially its diplomatic cadre, not to rest on its oars but to put their head down to the urgent work to be done on behalf of the country that the times demanded.’
And perhaps more significantly, Ambassador Onobu said, as Minister, Professor Akinyemi’s goal and task ‘was not to upturn and re-invent foreign policy. All he wanted was to breath energy and creativity to it so that it could respond more appropriately and pro-actively to old, as well as new challenges…’ Above all, Professor Akinyemi believed that Nigeria’s foreign policy ‘should not be allowed to stagnate in the cocoon of old dogmas and approaches.’ This reasoning informed the organisation of the 6-13 April, 1986 All-Nigeria Conference on Foreign Policy, simply referred to as the Kuru Conference and which had ‘Nigeria and the World: Foreign Policy Options Up Till the Year 2000’ as theme. As good as the spirit of the Kuru Conference might have been, the problem was that ‘the Kuru Conference outcomes were never quite fully implemented, in no way, detracted from the visionary thinking that went into it. If anything, it was the failure of governance at other critical levels,’ to borrow the words of Ambassador Onobu.
Apart from the Akinyemi Doctrine that evolved from the Kuru Conference, Professor Akinyemi was bent on articulating the principles that ought to guide Nigeria’s foreign policy. Ambassador Onobu identified Professor Akinyemi’s famous outing of 17 September, 1986 when he spoke on ‘Balance and credibility in Nigeria’s Foreign Policy’ which underscored the need for ‘pragmatism, reciprocity, respect for the country, abiding fidelity to the national interests and an ability not to be stereotyped and defined by a single issue, as the key elements of a new age diplomacy for Nigeria.’
On the specific issue of Concert of Medium Powers, Ambassador Onobu provides an interesting analysis on the background to it, the organisation of the first meeting, which was adjudged very successful, and the organisation of the second meeting which the Chief of General Staff directed Professor Akinyemi to cancel when it was only three days to its holding. The cancellation was purportedly informed by no prior approval. Invited guests to the meeting had been arriving by the time of the directive to cancel the second meeting.
In the words of Ambassador Onobu, ‘to be honest, it seemed that the politico-military leadership neither appreciated nor cared about what was at stake and, therefore, did nothing to prop it up. Nothing underscored this point more than the directive that the Chief of Staff and officially number two in the Military Government, gave to the External Affairs Minister to cancel the first meeting of High Level Officials on the Concert of Medium Powers. The instruction came only three days to its holding in Lagos when the delegates had already started arriving in Nigeria.’ Professor Akinyemi managed to get the meeting held, but subsequent meetings could not hold. According to Ambassador Onobu, ‘this development, truth be told, was the death knell to the Lagos Forum. It did not take long thereafter before all action to see the initiative through ceased.’ But beautifully enough, the Concert of Medium Powers, conceived to mediate international misunderstandings at a time of Cold war in 1987 was myopically jettisoned. Today, it is being sought internationally to respond to the challenges of President Donald Trump’s ‘America First policy.’ Besides, the need to appreciate time in our life has also become necessary. Time appears to be increasingly becoming an issue in the management of Nigeria’s diplomacy. Why did it take much time before PBAT could see the need to appoint ambassadors-designate? Is time no longer the soul of business? Ambassador Onobu has given us his idea of fragments of time. By end of this month, May 30, 2026, another diplomatist, Ambassador Jaiyeola J. Lewu, may also be presenting his own memoirs, entitled “Time and Space in Diplomacy: The Memoirs of a diplomatist’ at the Tafawa Balewa House. But as Jimmy Cliff said, ‘time will tell.’
