Professor Ibrahim Gambari was Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during General Muhammadu Buhari’s first coming as Head of State in 1984. He moved on to serve at the United Nations as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative and was the Chairman of the National Anti-Apartheid Committee for over 20 years. He served as the first black Political Secretary of the United Nations under Dr. Kofi Annan and was UN envoy to Myammar and Dafur, Sudan before he retired in 2012 to set up the Savannah Centre.
In this interview, Prof. Gambari speaks on global terrorism, and why the concept of amnesty and Boko Haram may not synch.
What has life been like since your retirement?
I thought that it will be relaxed, but it hasn’t and I should have anticipated it because no sooner did I retire from the UN than the School of Advanced International Studies in Singapore, the second largest university in Singapore, offered me Distinguished Visiting Scholar for a year. It was supposed to have started on the first of January, but I felt that Singapore was too far from home; my family was still in the U.S. So I did only seven months. I went back and took visiting professoring in a small college where they called me resident scholar, scholar in residence.
That was where?
In Valey University, Liberal Arts College, which was the venue for the third U.S. presidential debate between Mr. Mitt Romney and President Barak Obama in 2014, the year I got a call to become a delegate to the National Conference which took almost five months of discussions. Meanwhile, I had taken more practical steps to make operational the Savannah Centre which I had been dreaming about while I was still in service. It combines the functions of an NGO advocacy group with a think tank. We look at the nexus between conflict resolution, peace, democracy and development. I was inspired to establish this centre by the two Secretary Generals of UN that I worked with, both of them Africans.
The first was Boutros Ghali, from Egypt, who was the first post- Cold War Secretary General. He was asked to by the Security Council to produce a blueprint or a major report on what should be the emphasis of the UN after the end of the Cold War. You will remember that at the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of excitement that there was going to be a new World Order. Even former U.S. President George Bush Snr. alluded to this.
Francis Fukuyama, the famous American scholar, even talked about the end of history. He said the contest between totalitarian government, command economy, liberal economic system and democracy was over and that what we may be witnessing was not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history. That was the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
Of course, seeing that this was far too optimistic, Fukuyama has back tracked from that position anyway. Ghali produced a report called, An Agenda for Peace, in which he argued that there can be no development without peace as the foundation. Some of us who were ambassadors at the UN and those from the Non Aligned Movement, the Group of 77, said no, “it is not enough to emphasise peace and security but that there should be emphasis on development by itself”. Then there was pressure to produce another report which we did, and it was called, Agenda for Development, which argued “that there can be no durable peace without sustainable development.” Then Koffi Annan came up in his seminal report called, Agenda for Freedom, in which he argued that “there can neither be peace nor development without democratisation and the right of people to choose their own government.”
That was the nexus between peace, development and democracy. This inspired me to start the Savannah Centre which I am very happy that, within just one year of its existence, we have hit the ground running; we have done three major conferences.
The first one was in partnership with the Economic Commission for Africa, which was on the impact of terrorism and violent extremism on social and economic development in the Sahel.
The think- tank is based in Abuja but we focus on Nigeria, West Africa and Africa. The Economic Commission for Africa requested us to organise this workshop which we did successfully. The second major activity was on the 2015 general elections in Nigeria and we did two things.
First, we established a Council of the Wise, made up of very eminent Nigerians, headed by a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammed Uwais, who did a lot of work on electoral reform. Our goal was to promote peaceful and credible elections in Nigeria. We had a lot of consultations with different groups in the country. Then we had a major conference on how to promote violence-free election which we conducted in the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
They hardly ever do joint programming, but they did with us. So, I have been extremely busy since the retirement which I did not foresee. The impact we are making in Nigeria and the neighbouring countries is rewarding especially on the issues that touch on peace, democracy and development.
How do you describe the world after the Cold War?
When the Cold War ended, we thought a new era of peace would be inaugurated, but that did not happen. During the Cold War, there were inter-state conflicts where you had regular armies, you had boundaries, you had ceasefires, but after the Cold War, you have more intra-state conflicts. This are conflicts within countries. You have groups that are armed, proliferation of small arms and light weapons; they have no respect for rules of engagement or borders; that has dominated the post-Cold War era.
Then after the 9/11 bombings in the US, we entered a third era characterised by violent extremism and terrorism; therefore, our view is that there are three levels at which you have to deal with the situation in which we have found ourselves. It is not limited to Nigeria, but let us use Nigeria and Africa as an example. You have terrorism spreading from Mali all the way to Mogadishu. You have these groups that are violent and respect no borders and not easy to locate, so how do you deal with such threat?
The first thing to do is to look at the root cause of their grievances. What is it that encourages people to lose all values for themselves and others? For example, the suicide bombers, what makes it so easy to recruit people for this type of activity, which is about the way in which the state is governed such that there is alienation, massive youth unemployment, breakdown of social services, breakdown of ethical values; all these things need to be carefully studied.
Nothing justifies terrorism itself, but at the same time, if you want to drain the swamp and narrow the pool from which young people are recruited to do bad things, then you have to address some of these issues; you have to reform the school system, we have to return to those ethical values. They teach things in Madrasas and the mosques. The teachings in our educational systems have to be looked at, but above all, you have to have a government that really respects the social contract. Why do we have government? We put people in charge of our lives in return for which we expect them to do certain things.
Give us security; arbitrate among competing interests in a fair and impartial manner. In other words, it is about fairness, about equity and equal opportunity. It is about zero tolerance for corruption. These are the things we should get from government. That is why this centre is concerned about the issues of good governance and security and how to isolate the forces that promote terrorism and violent extremism in our society.
At your last conference, some northern elders were advocating for amnesty for Boko Haram.
What is your take on this?

*Gambari … Nigeria should be at the centre of our foreign policy
First of all, Savannah Centre is not Northern Elders Forum (NEF), and we really take exception to the report that we were canvassing for amnesty for Boko Haram. The conference we organised had 135 delegates made up of retired ambassadors, retired civil servants, soldiers, active and retired, academicians, development experts; if you like, call it a crème de la crème in Nigeria. We had scholars from some African countries who came to participate. It was not an NEF gathering.
Secondly, at no point was the issue for amnesty for Boko Haram was discussed. The nearest was the idea of what to do about the amnesty programme in the Niger Delta and the consensus of the conference, which was put in both the report of the conference and the communiqué, was the fact that the amnesty programme should not be rudely stopped but that they should be carefully examined and the good elements of it should be continued in the Niger Delta. On Boko Haram, especially from the perspective of someone who has been in the UN system for 23 years, I know that throughout my experience in peace making and conflict resolution, whether in Angola, Sudan or Iraq, the UN has always stressed that there are certain crimes that cannot be amnestied, and there are three of them: War crimes, crimes against humanity and violation of international humanitarian law. These are just to rule out any kind of amnesty where even these crimes have been committed and we knew what Boko Haram has been doing in respect of all these. So there is nothing in our communiqué, nothing in our discussion that suggested amnesty for Boko Haram. There was nothing to show that the conference remotely recommended amnesty for Boko Haram. So government can never be persuaded to grant amnesty to Boko Haram.
For these heinous crimes that the International community forbids amnesty, what we discussed was how do you address the issue of the victims of the violence? And you recall that the National Conference, which I was honoured to have been a member, recommended unanimously that special funds be created and a percentage of FG revenue, not the Federation Account revenue, should be set aside for rebuilding, reconstruction, rehabilitation and recovery of the areas affected by Boko Haram and violent extremism, and recognised the North-East in the first instance. It was to be a national fund. What was not agreed was the exact percentage. This was thrown to the government to determine.
The FG was to set up a technical committee to look into the issue of derivation development of solid mineral resources and this intervention in fund to address and rebuild the areas that were badly affected by terrorism, but at no point did this conference talk about amnesty for Boko Haram.
With a new administration which party objected to the National Conference in place, what is likely to be the fate of the report of the conference under the Buhari government?
Well I will advise the government to take a critical look at the report that this is a National Conference, regardless of what the motivation may be. There was the suspicion that there was a particular hidden or not so hidden agenda by the government to elongate its stay in office, but the fact is that public fund was spent in billions of naira to organise the conference
There were 492 delegates from different backgrounds; labour, civil society, employers, retired civil servants, the military, emirs and chiefs, students and youth groups, women groups, diplomats, elder statesmen, everybody was there and, at the end, they produced 20 reports on several areas of our national life. I was privileged to chair the Committee on Foreign Policy and the Diaspora, after which we made far-reaching recommendations. We have the reports and a final summary of the recommendations in three categories.
First were those things that the Executive can implement without legislative approval because it is within its own competencies, second were some of the recommendations that require changing of our laws to implement, so they require legislative approval from the National Assembly and a few recommendations that require constitutional amendments, not only by the National Assembly but also the state assemblies.
I think there was nothing preventing the government that left from implementing some of the reports of the National Conference for which they had full authority under the law. But it set up a committee with the former Attorney General as chairman and nothing came out of it. It is curious that it was during the electioneering campaign that the ruling party then tried to resuscitate the National Conference Report. It was only its final act that former President Jonathan gave a copy of the National Conference Report to the National Assembly and to the then president-elect, General Buhari.
This is a report that took five months to produce and all the recommendations were by consensus. It deserves a careful look by President Buhari and the new administration and those aspects that are consistent with their own party manifesto and that of the president, should be very carefully looked at and see what they can do with the recommendations of this National Conference. It will be a terrible waste if the new administration dumps the recommendations of the National Conference.
What do you think should be the foreign policy thrust of this new administration?
The last time Buhari was in power in 1984, there was the Cold War; he was also the head of a military government. The Soviet Union was under threat, but it had not collapsed; five years later it did. The Berlin Wall was still there. The challenge to totalitarianism, and rejection of command economy was on; then the Cold War ended, and we had the challenge of the 9/11 attacks. We are in a new era.
Nigeria itself has changed. Africans and the world have changed, so it is very important that the new administration recognises these changes in its foreign policy. But there are some things that are still relevant in the old polices of Gen Buhari’s government and that is the need to put the well-being of Nigeria and the security of Nigerians at the centre of our foreign policy interest and activities. Nigeria, not Africa, should be at the centre of our foreign policy and government should work very closely with our neighbouring countries.

Gambari
You will recall that in December 1984, Nigeria signed an unprecedented tripartite security agreement with three African countries, Benin, Togo and Niger. At that time, the challenges were drugs and psychotropic substances, smuggling in small arms, human trafficking, currency trafficking but with security implications. You can imagine if that idea was sustained with our neighbours to address common interests and adjusted to meet with the new challenges, we would not have been in the situation Boko Haram has put us. We would have explained this to our neighbours. I am happy that the first foreign trip that our President has made is to Niger, Chad which shows how important working with our neighbours to tackle the issue of security is.
The second area is the economy. We have to look beyond our continent in our search for investment partners. We have to look at East Asia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, for massive investment in social and physical infrastructure. Within Africa itself, we have to rebuild our institutions like ECOWAS and African Union for co-operation. ECOWAS and African Union have to be revitalised. So the agenda is going to be vast but the focus is the national interest of Nigeria.
This will be security as well as how to provide welfare for our people, then now to work closely with our neighbours on how to make ECOWAS and AU work for us and also be a major player in the African Union and ultimately to be a major player in the world because we still have aspirations to be a member a reformed and expanded Security Council of the United Nations.
There are many conspiracy theories but I like to deal with realities and I like to take the Western powers on their words because they have a lot of opportunities which they recognise, to deal with Boko Haram, Al Shaaba, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb which do not respect borders and threaten every body’s interest and nobody is secured until everybody is secured and this scourge of terrorism is defeated.
So, it is in their interest, just as it is in our interest of everybody, to work together with a common interest. The second dimension is the migration crisis in Europe and the Mediterranean. It is very clear that unless European countries significantly invest and partner with Africa in addressing the issues of poverty, unemployment, they will continue to feel the pinch of migration from people looking for better life outside their troubled regions. Right now, Italy is unable to handle the influx of migrants coming at a time when Europe is under economic threat. Britain right now is debating whether it will remain in Europe, Greece is in crisis. All these are existential threats to everybody. Therefore let us sit together and work for the common interests, expand the areas of co-operation: terrorism, despair, hopelessness and massive youth unemployment.
No comments:
Post a Comment