There is grave concern among diplomatic careerists in the foreign service sector that successive Nigerian Governments are shutting the pyramid apex of their service against them. This comes by way of Government showing preference in appointments for politicians into the position of Ambassadors, high Commissioners, Attaches, to professional careerists in the diplomatic.
Discipline. Indeed, the concern among career diplomats may have catapulted to the level of despair due to apex career truncation. The aspiration and anticipation of every civil servant in career diplomacy is to attain the professional climax of an Ambassador before retiring or quitting service. What they fear may have become the norm is that political appointees have become more preponderantly appointed to the positions of Ambassadors to the detriment of career diplomats whose progress is by that token being.
terminated or determined for apparent political expediency.
The recent celebration, by President Musa Yar’ Adua,via a dinner party held in honour of twenty out of the sixty one appointed and cleared Ambassadors, aggravated the anguish of the nation’s career diplomats who consider the possibility of their rise to the apex of the pyramid of their career being terminally whittled. Many dissenting career diplomats find their disillusion being aggravated by the expressed fact that the civilian dispensation, including the Yar’ Adua Administration, as fairing worse than the Military in the disproportionate favour in Ambassadorial appointments in the direction of politicians rather than career diplomats.
They cite the fact that during the military aegis, about fifty percent ratio for politicians and
professional diplomats receive Ambassadorial appointments. Today, they alleged, the ratio has crashed to about thirty percent in favour of political
appointees.
What is more aggravating, according to the career diplomats, is that vertical, promotional progression of diplomatic careerists is being consciously retarded in order to further frustrate the attainment of their peak in professional rise, to the frightening extent that many of them may never hit the roof of their career before they retire.
The Ambassadorial position is, strictly speaking, a representational position held for the President of the nation. In the country where they serve, they hold certificates of credence which implicates the entirety of the nation. The profile, identity and the global image of the country rest wholly on their diplomatic shoulder. This perception anticipates a professional and a political perceptiveness on the part of the envoys.. The careerists in the diplomatic discipline possess the requisite wherewithal’s to meet the policy, technocratic and routine essentials to serve the nation at the peak of diplomacy—national and global. Their agitation to rise to occupy the Ambassadorial position is therefore not only legitimate but aptly in order.
The fact that summits and retreats are being organized for new Ambassadors is an open admission of the fact that the challenges of diplomatic service at the apex is not purely a matter of political brinkmanship and expediency, but a factor of knowledge, experience and practical skill. Issues of national profile, image, global integration of the country with economic globalization, security council and so on are better understood and perceptively conceived by career diplomats.
Yet there are non-technocratic matters that only the politicians can and should expediently handle. For instance, the fact that only twenty out of over sixty appointed and Senate-screened Ambassadors have received their certificates of credence, appreciably for the political reasons of the reluctance shown by foreign countries’ displeasure with the 2007 polls , reveal that the matter is more political than legal or even technical. Politicians are therefore needed as envoys in certain nations where it is politically expedient to launder the nation’s political image and make those nations more receptive to our political realities.
It is our view that the Government may need to draw an equitable balance in appointing career diplomats and politicians as Ambassadors to foreign countries in a way that will douse the present fear of side-lining that career diplomats express. National interest should determine Ambassadorial appointments rather than political patronage.
