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When the second list of Nigeria’s ambassadorial nominees came out recently, what immediately came to my mind was a recent caricature I saw of one of the nominees. It is the picture of Reno Omokri with a plate in hand and the caption: “I am where belle face.” It is a jibe at the former presidential aide’s unstable character and penchant to swing opinion or support from one politician to another. His nomination by President Bola Tinubu depicts Nigeria as very unserious and a veritable ground for the theatre of the absurd.
Omokri had made it a pastime to denigrate Tinubu and whatever he represented. He once labeled him a drug lord and vowed never to work with him. In December 2022, he wrote: “Electing a man like Tinubu, who obviously shows signs of either drug or old age induced dementia, will have a negative effect on our economy. He will not be able to supervise his own government. At Federal Executive Council meetings, he would be shouting bulaba!”
Omokri turned around completely to support Tinubu after he won the presidential election. I read his disgusting social media post where he said the President had taught him the meaning of forgiveness through the ambassadorial nomination. “In short, Christlikeness is demonstrated in him. He is the right man, at the right time, for the right job, and deserves the right hand of fellowship from all Nigerians,” he vomited. Nonsense!
Omokri knows that his nomination has nothing to do with forgiveness. Tinubu probably sees him as a useful irritant who can succumb to the lure of filthy lucre. His current pastime is to denigrate the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Mr. Peter Obi. Obviously, Obi is Tinubu’s major opponent and anything that can smear his reputation appears welcome to the President and deserves to be rewarded.
Another ambassadorial nominee worthy of mention here is Femi Fani-Kayode. He is a former Minister of Aviation. To that extent, he is eminently qualified. But, nominating him to be Nigeria’s ambassador is, to say the least, disappointing.
Like Omokri, he speaks from both sides of his mouth. In 2015, he described Tinubu as a man with bad health and always on drugs. In 2019 when he was still in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he vowed never to join the APC, saying he would oppose the party and those in their ranks for the rest of his life.
A diplomat is supposed to be cool and calm. Even when everyone is mad over something, he comes in with tact and uses his skills at dealing with people in difficult situations to calm frayed nerves. So, how will Fani-Kayode, who had spewed out hate speech capable of engendering ethnic and religious divisions, represent all Nigerians abroad? Will he not discriminate against the Igbo ethnic group in his country of assignment? Does this appointment and others like that not show that the President endorses the hate speech of some of his followers?
The appointment of Bayo Onanuga as his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy comes to mind here. Onanuga denigrated the Igbo during the 2023 presidential election campaign. He pronounced the ethnic group as posing existential threat to the Yoruba and warned them to stay clear of politics in Yorubaland. As he put it in March 2023, “Let 2023 be the last time of Igbo interference in Lagos politics. Let there be no repeat in 2027. Lagos is like Anambra, Imo, any Nigerian state. It is not No Man’s Land, not Federal Capital Territory. It is Yoruba land. Mind your business.” This is callous and disturbing!
More disturbing is the nomination of the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Mahmood Yakubu, to be one of the ambassadors. This has raised eyebrows. Yakubu supervised the controversial 2023 elections which a great number of people are still angry about. He stepped down recently as INEC Chairman. Tinubu should have allowed time to heal the wounds of that election before rushing to nominate him for this important position. The interpretation of many citizens now is that his nomination is a reward for a rigging job well done!
Among the prominent names in the latest list released last Thursday is Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd), the Sole Administrator of Rivers State under the infamous emergency rule that ended last September. The verdict is not fully out on the way Ibas mismanaged Rivers State during that emergency rule. But he is now being rewarded with another big appointment.
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I suspect the influence of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, in some of these appointments. Or how else does one rationalize the inclusion of some of his loyalists and lapdogs – former governors Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State on the ambassadorial list? These former governors failed woefully in superintending over the affairs of their states. Their major achievement was following Wike around as if they were his errand boys. Ikpeazu, in particular, stands indicted by KPMG International Nigeria Limited for allegedly diverting N1.9 trillion from his state’s treasury when he was governor. How can we now reward such failures with juicy ambassadorial appointments?
The President first named three ambassadorial nominees. He later submitted 65 more nominees – 34 career ambassadors and High Commissioners and 31 non-career ambassadors. This brought the total number to 68. Tinubu has asked the Senate to consider the nominations swiftly.
This directive for a swift screening amounts to the fable about a tortoise that has been inside a pit latrine for days. Just as it is about to be brought out, it shouted that the rescuers should be fast about it; that the faeces smell badly. Tinubu recalled ambassadors since September 2023. He turned a deaf ear to several calls on him to appoint new ones. Now that he just submitted names of nominees after over two years, he is demanding swift action.
The Senate must be thorough in screening these nominees. Already, the very first list of three nominees, screened by the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, drew a lot of flak from many Nigerians. One of the people on that list, Ayodele Oke, is a former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). There were some controversies surrounding the discovery of some $43million, £27,800, and N23.8m cash in an apartment at Osborne Road in Ikoyi, Lagos, in April 2017. Oke was linked to that money. The late President Muhammadu Buhari later removed him from office. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) declared him and his wife wanted in connection with the money in March 2019. The Commission had filed money laundering charges against him and his wife. Curiously, that story has disappeared from the EFCC website.
I must confess that I am ignorant of how Oke was cleared of that scandal. It was from Onanuga I read that he had been cleared of all charges. According to him, Oke was a victim of an orchestrated media trial and investigations had exonerated him. If this is true, the man deserves an unreserved public apology from the EFCC and the Federal Government.
One wonders if Tinubu ever makes wide consultations before going public with some of his pronouncements. The ambassadorial nominees list is reminiscent of the list of 175 convicts who received presidential pardon in October 2025. Among them were 41 illegal miners, 28 drug traffickers, 22 murderers, kidnappers and some corrupt politicians. The list drew a lot of criticisms, forcing him to withdraw it to make corrections.
It is obvious that what Tinubu did in the recent appointments is to reward political acolytes and loyalists. There is nothing wrong with that. But rewarding political allegiance should come with putting round pegs in round holes. Nothing stops the President from giving board appointments to some of these ambassadorial nominees.
A Nigerian ambassador is the number one citizen of Nigeria in his country of abode. He represents the President and the entire citizens. He should be level-headed and possess qualities that stand him out as a person of great integrity.
Recall that, in 2011, a Nigerian High Commissioner to Kenya and Seychelles, Dr. Chijioke Wigwe, was recalled for allegedly physically assaulting his wife, Tess Wigwe. This action was taken to save the country from the embarrassment that trailed the unfortunate incident.
The joke in town now is that Tinubu should have also nominated one of his ardent supporters, Musiliu Akinsanya, also known as MC Oluomo. Oluomo, the controversial national president of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), is the one who allegedly threatened the Igbo in Lagos not to come out to vote, if they would not vote for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2023. Rightly or wrongly, he is perceived to be in control of many thugs in Lagos.
The Senate is supposed to scrutinize the 68 nominees very well and reject those with questionable character. The Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has up to one week to give a report of its screening. But knowing how the country’s lawmakers operate, the list is as good as confirmed. Let the senators disprove this negative perception of Nigerians about their oversight functions by screening out those who are not eligible.
