Buhari’s Foreign Policy Is Weak – Dele Momodu No One Dares To Treat Nigerians This Way Under Obasanjo.

 

Ace journalist and publisher of the Ovation Media Group, Chief Dele Momodu in a recent interview with Tunde Ajaja shares his thoughts about the recently frosty relationship between Nigeria and its ECOWAS neighbour Ghana, where shops belonging to Nigerian traders in Ghana were shut down straining the diplomatic relations between both countries.

Chief Dele Momodu in his interview called out President Muhammadu Buhari over his Foreign Policies saying it is the weakest of any Nigerian President he has ever seen. He said foreign policy isn’t President Buhari’s forte and he doesn’t understand that foreign Policy deals a lot with reciprocity.

Dele Momodu went further to even compare the foreign policy of the former head of state President Olusegun Obasanjo’s foreign policy to that of Buhari, saying no country would have dared to do such during his administration.

Read Dele Momodu’s statement from the interview in part below;

Don’t forget that a lot of our presidents, especially in Nigeria, are largely ceremonial. They are not properly briefed, not because they can’t be briefed, but because their aides are even sometimes afraid to talk to them. They have nothing to discuss. A lot of people have complained that a lot of the ministers don’t see President Buhari and he himself actually gave a hint when he said during the time of Mallam Abba Kyari, his late Chief of Staff, that they should go through his Chief of Staff. That is part of the problem. If you have a president that is accessible, who they can explain these things to and he would understand them, that would have helped.

Also, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, would not have gone to Ghana if he had not got a tacit approval from the presidency. If the President had told him that Ghana was maltreating our people and that we couldn’t go there now until the issues were resolved, he wouldn’t have gone. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo would not have allowed such. He is so respected in Ghana that the longest street in Accra is named after him – Olusegun Obasanjo Way. So, nobody would try such with Obasanjo; it’s not possible, because he understands foreign policy. But, perhaps, if any president in Africa calls him (President Buhari) and massages his ego and tells him, ‘Baba, the issue is not like that,’ he would believe them because foreign policy is not his forte. If this interview gets to his desk, I’m hoping that as someone who supported him in the past, he would allow his officials or knowledgeable people to help him. He has a lot of bright minds in his cabinet.

You have a vice-president who would have handled all these things for you perfectly, but if you don’t give him that task, he can’t go there on his own. People like (Babatunde) Fashola, who used to go to Ghana to play football as the Chief of Staff to former governor Tinubu, are there too. So Baba (Buhari) desperately needs to wake up in terms of foreign policy. His foreign policy is the weakest that I know. Diplomacy is not about nice words; it’s about reciprocity. I studied it a bit and I read reports internationally. If I wanted to be the president of Nigeria, definitely, I must know a bit about everything. We are not pursuing diplomacy of reciprocity, and if you don’t pursue it, it means people would take advantage of us all the time. What people are doing is to take advantage of Nigeria’s weakness. For example, the day Buhari threatens to pull out of ECOWAS, you would see that everybody would catch a cold, because Nigeria substantially runs some of those organisations. We are the biggest investor.

 

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