Showing Ribadu The Door

By Shuaib I. Shuaib

Hassan Tukur, a native of Adamawa was Principal Secretary to President Goodluck Jonathan. But he served the president in ways far beyond what his title suggested. He was first of all an administrator and a political operative. He was also an intelligence officer in the heart of the presidency. Because of that security background, he was able to serve the president as a special emissary outside the country to secure security agreements with regional leaders. The results of the shuttle diplomacy, the spy games he played were felt on the streets and homes in the northeast and across the country.

And the multiple roles only increased the likelihood of a locally inspired political miscalculation. That error came in the form of a political clash with Murtala Nyako, who was governor of Adamawa state. Both Jonathan and Nyako paid the price. When the chaos settled, nobody remembered Tukur or Nyako. Jonathan was left to carry the burden. In international politics, in local politics, nothing really changes. Only the players.

Nuhu Ribadu’s star has been rising. So has the traditional functions of the Office of the National Security Adviser, at least in Nigeria. The shuttle diplomacy he is engaged in, is between Abuja and Washington. Ribadu is operating on a much bigger stage than Hassan Tukur needed to. The stakes for him, for his principal, President Bola Tinubu and for Nigeria are also much higher. Just as Ribadu has been learning the ropes of high stakes geopolitics on the global stage, the office he heads has been evolving. The real turning point was late last year when US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Nigeria because of what he described as a genocide against Christians. Added to that, the US president has little regard of Africa and its leaders. Even after making the threat against Nigeria, he showed no interest in sitting down with President Tinubu.

It was left to the president’s security team led by Ribadu to meet with an impossible US administration and find a way out of the impasse. And in the end, both countries put on a show of bombing terrorists in Sokoto. Then some months later, hundreds of US troops were deployed on Nigerian soil in circumstances and under an arrangement that has yet to be made public. It is a matter of debate and speculation whether Ribadu sold out the country by encouraging the president to agree to the presence of foreign troops in Nigeria. Other than preventing a hostile military action against the country, Nigeria gained nothing from the concessions it made. Yes, a plan load of arms and outdated equipment landed in Abuja. Nothing more

A large part of the population still believes US troops are here to fight bandits. The reality is that they are in Nigeria to project US power, to keep the Russians and the Chinese out and to spy on Russian and Chinese operations in the West Africa subregion. And Ribadu is now their man in Aso Rock. More recently however, Ribadu met with US Vice President James Vance in the highest official engagement to take place between the two countries since Trump came to office. In the role Ribadu is carving out for himself, he is not only NSA. He is Minister of Foreign and Minister of Defense all rolled one. That is hugely significant, more so because Tinubu and Trump are yet to meet one on one. Though it was less pronounced, the Tinubu government struggled to meaningfully engage with the previous US government led by Joe Biden. In spite of the channel of communication that has opened up with the White House, the question now is whether Ribadu has failed the president in ways that are not apparent to the public? Or has the Office of the National Security Adviser grown to big for one man to manage?

When President Tinubu reportedly stripped Wale Edun, his longtime associate and until recently Minister of Finance, of key responsibilities in the ministry, it was unofficial. But the reports were not denied by the presidency. And when he named Taiwo Oyedele Minister of State for Finance, those in the corridors of power knew it was the final signal that Wale Edun’s days as minister were numbered. Now there are whispers that the same process is playing out with the appointment of Adeyinka Famadewa, a retired Army general as Special Adviser to the President on Homeland Security.

To the general public and interested observers, a parallel and maybe competing centre of power has just been created within the presidency. That is because the president already has a NSA in the person of Nuhu Ribadu, who he has repeatedly praised for doing a good job. The argument can be made that this is the first step to ease out Nuhu Ribadu, or at the very least, whittle down the powers of his office. Support for this view is the experience of Famadewa which was highlighted by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, when making the announcement of the appointment. The former military officer, the SGF said, was the Principle Staff Officer in the NSA’s office when Babagana Monguno headed it. This sends mixed signals, both about the role Famadewa is supposed to play and  the  intention behind the appointment. Another argument is simply that this his Tinubu’s modus operandi.

The most obvious example is the competing roles of the president’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabimila and his Principal Secretary, Hakeem Muri-Okunola. Both are still working beside the president but not necessarily with the same level of influence. The president made a similar arrangement within his economic team creating a Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform even though that was really the exclusive preserve of the Ministry of Finance and Federal Inland Revenue Service, now Nigeria Revenue Service.

Ultimately though, all executive powers lie in the hands of the president. In the presidential system of government, designations don’t really matter. The structure of the government doesn’t really matter. The president can choose to carve out special roles for specific individuals outside the normal structures of government and delegate more power in the hands of such individuals while hollowing out officially recognized structures of exercising executive powers. So much of how the Nigerian government is structured is a direct replica of the structure and functions of government in the United States of America. That is where the country copied the presidential system of government from.

But there are huge differences. Policing and securing Nigeria is a challenge. Nigeria is less sophisticated and has even less capabilities and resources to project power outside of its borders. Nowhere is this more apparent than the functions of the National Security Adviser and the National Security Council in both the United States and in Nigeria. In both countries, the office of the NSA is an extension of the presidency. The office speaks for the president. But in the US, the Secretary of State is not only the number cabinet position, it is also the most important security position in the cabinet. Both the State Department and the Department of Defense serve as foreign policy tools to project US power across the world. It is why there has to be a state of emergency before the Army and armed forces under the Defense Department can be deployed on US soil.

But the State and Defense departments don’t always see eye to eye. The world saw that play out in real time during the invasion of Iraq when Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld espoused two different visions of the goals and objectives in Iraq. It was Powell, who Secretary of State who got relegated to the background even though he held the more prominent office. Marco Rubio presently serves as the US Secretary of State and also the NSA. He rarely visits his office at the State Department. How the NSA’s office operates differently from its counterpart in Nigeria is in determining US foreign policy. The US National Security Council  is where US foreign and national security policy is developed ensuring coordination between the Departments of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense and Justice. While the presidents chairs the Council, his NSA sets the agenda. The heads of the military are not full voting members. Under Trump though, the NSC has become dysfunctional, which became glaring in the wake of the decision to wage war on Iran without  weighing the consequences.

The structure of the NSC is different in Nigeria. It has nothing to do with policy or guidance from political leadership. So is the role of the NSA. The Nigerian Armed Forces do not project power abroad. The military is more like an extension of the Nigeria Police Force. The NSA doesn’t coordinate foreign and national security policy.  The office operates more like an interior ministry. The NSC is constitutionally structured differently from the one in the US and is not an engine room for foreign and security policy coordination. It is more like an operations and logistics centre with the president in attendance. Necessity and the brutal reality of geopolitics thrust Ribadu into a different role and onto the international stage. And whether the president is showing him the door or not, the appointment of Famadewa is not enough of the change Nigeria needs; structural or otherwise. The presidency needs to show more creativity than simply splitting the office of the NSA.

Shuaib I. Shuaib, writes from Abuja