The effectiveness of Nigeria’s diplomatic engagements came under scrutiny during the week as two prominent diplomats lamented the state of Nigeria’s diplomatic engagements in the international arena with employees at various diplomatic missions abroad owed up to six months’ salaries. They called on the Federal Government to rework the current underperforming architecture.

According to those who spoke with Saturday Telegraph, the country’s diplomatic architecture is currently in comatose hence the limited impact the country has been making in the international arena.

This is coming just as a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, on Friday waded into the issue of visa restrictions on Nigerians by some countries with a call on the government to turn the searchlight on ourselves as Nigerians.

Apart from Professor Akinyemi, the others who spoke with our correspondent on the issue of the nation’s underperforming diplomatic architecture during the week include, Nigeria’s former Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Oladapo Fafowora and a retired Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Joe Keshi.

While Fafowora was the pioneer President of the Association of Retired Career Ambassadors of Nigeria (ARCAN), Keshi is the current president of the umbrella union of former diplomats in the country.

Commenting on the decisions of some countries to restrict the stay of travelling Nigerian nationals within their country, Professor Akinyemi who regretted the actions urged the need for the country to turn searchlight on the activities of Nigerians in foreign countries.

According to the former minister, “The actions of these countries with regards to these visa restrictions are regrettable but in all honesty, there is the need for us as a country to reflect and beam the searchlight on ourselves.

“It is very regrettable to say that we, Nigerians, don’t conduct ourselves so well in foreign land. For instance, citizens of countries like Ghana and South Africa don’t get the kind of negative attention that Nigerians get in these countries.

“Nigerians are fond of overstaying when granted tourist visas and when they stay, they get to overcrowded jail cells prompting many of these countries to spend fortunes managing them in jails.”

Fielding questions from our correspondent, Fafowora was very emphatic in his response, saying “We have foreign policy in shambles. The Ministry itself is there. We don’t have ambassadors in the real sense of it manning our diplomatic missions at all.

“Our Association of Retired Nigerian Ambassadors, of which I was the first president, is deeply concerned about this situation. The situation is pretty bad,” Fafowora said.

Fafowora lamented the gross neglect of the sector, which he described as key to how the country relates and interacts with others in the comity of nations.

He lamented gross underfunding of the various missions, maintaining that the official excuse for paucity of funds cannot be tenable if successive governments had paid a premium on the nation’s diplomatic sector.

“Even though the government is saying that there are financial constraints, I don’t believe that. I can’t understand why the government is not releasing funds for the missions as staff members of many of the missions have not been paid for months.

“So, as I speak to you now, Nigeria’s foreign policies are in a shambles right. It will have to be rebuilt completely from scratch, starting from the Ministry itself.”

On his part, Keshi listed many factors militating against Nigeria’s aspiration to become a major player in the international arena with a call for a change in attitude by government officials.

The issues he listed include continued appointment of non-career diplomats to the missions at the expense of trained diplomats, underfunding as well huge debts to various host nations. He noted that these are huge militating factors.

“The Nigerian diplomatic architecture has been weakened by a lot of factors over the years and it has become very imperative for the government to take urgent and serious measures to redress the situation.

“We are parading ourselves as the big brother of Africa while at the same time our diplomatic bureaucracy is very weak and non-functional. How do you think that Nigeria can be taken seriously in the international arena while our diplomatic missions across the world are not functioning?” he said.

Keshi carpeted the government for refusing to appoint ambassadors to the various countries of the world two years after the coming on board of Bola Tinubu-led government, saying it is reflective of the importance that government attaches to diplomacy.

“How can a serious nation not appoint ambassadors to our various missions two years after it came to power? Even as we speak, many of these missions are grossly understaffed.

Commenting on the morale in the nation’s diplomatic circle in the light of the current situation, Keshi stated that “Since the advent of the current Fourth Republic, successive governments have been appointing more politicians and non-career ambassadors to our foreign missions.

“This has not been good enough because many of our trained diplomats who had hoped to retire at the peak of their careers usually have such dreams aborted when the government appoints non-career officers to man the missions.

“These have left many of our best diplomats so frustrated that they hardly return to the country to contribute to our diplomacy. What they usually do is stay back overseas,” he said.

On Nigeria’s aspirations to become a member of the emerging global economic bloc, BRICS, Keshi advised that Nigeria would need to put its house in order for it to be admitted.

He stated that a country that consumes rather than produces goods and services as Nigeria does is usually not seen as serious in the global arena.

“As we speak, Nigeria is struggling to become a member of BRICS out of sheer ego and not based on what it would bring to the table.

“If one can recollect, discussions about membership of BRICS began sometime in 2006 or 2009 or thereabout in New York when diplomats from the various countries were exploring how to start the bloc. Can you figure out why Nigeria was overlooked despite being the largest economy in Africa and South Africa was picked?

“It is because South Africa is a manufacturing hub and Nigeria is not. We are basically a consuming nation hence the need to pick South Africa,” he said.

He however counselled that government at all levels must reactivate the nation’s productive capacity and put in place measures that would stimulate real investment into the country to be taken seriously.

“Those we have come into the country to invest are portfolio investors, not real investors like what we have in South Africa where there are over 6,000 U. S. investments there,” he said.