A Broken Mission: Nigeria’S Failed Diplomacy in the Philippines and the Fight for Justice and Embassy Reform

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

Epilogue

About The Author

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To my late father, Chief Gabriel Igbokwe, who advised me to seek the truth always and to not let go of it, once I’ve found it…

To Mama, Joy Iruaku Igbokwe, who sacrificed so much for us in a competitive family milieu, while always reminding us to seek the good of others before our own…

To Lumen, my dearest wife and soulmate, for her great love and devotion and her unwavering, unbreakable support which helped me to beat the associated challenges of speaking truth to power…; and

To my kids, Sophia Joy Uchechukwu, Jack Amalachukwu and Rachel Hope Chimbuniemenu, for whom I seek to speak the truth in the hope they will grow up to do likewise.

Your Excellency, could you please tell us what you think your responsibilities as representatives of our country are here in Manila? What do you think are the reasons for having a Nigerian embassy in the Philippines? Three of our people have been murdered in cold blood in less than six months with the embassy doing absolutely nothing! How many more Nigerians must be killed before you sit up and ask questions?

John Igbokwe

Friday, November 16, 1995

To Charge d’ Affaires a. i. Mr. Samuel Ajewole during a meeting on the murder

of Nigerian citizens; inside the Chancery of the Embassy of Nigeria, Manila

Foreword

By

Benjamin U. Okafor, M. Arch.

It is an honor and a privilege that I have been asked to write the foreword to A Broken Mission, a book on the history of the relationship between the Embassy of Nigeria, Philippines and the Nigerian Community in the Philippines. The Republic of the Philippines and the Federal Republic of Nigeria have had cultural and economic exchanges, albeit informally, ever since Nigerian citizens began to travel to the Philippines in the 1960s for university studies. The presence of Nigerian students in the Philippines had led to representations by the students to the Nigerian government for the establishment of a diplomatic presence to cover the interests of their country in the Philippines. In A Broken Mission, John has attempted to chronicle how the purpose of Nigeria in opening an embassy in Manila has been thwarted by successive dysfunctional regimes of Nigerian representatives to the Philippines.

I first met John Igbokwe in May 1983, on the very day he had arrived in the Philippines to study. He had called my apartment mate, Mr. Greg Nwafor from the Manila International Airport to inform him that Mr. MacGoddins Chinwuko, the then incumbent president of the Nigerian Students Union, Philippines Inc., whom he had met in Nigeria had given him our telephone number with the advice to call when he reached Manila. At that time of Igbokwe’s arrival in Manila, the Nigerian Mission had been open for about two years. Igbokwe had come to Manila at a time the unity that existed in the Nigerian community had been on the wane following the opening of the new embassy. A few years earlier when I had myself arrived in Manila as a fresh student, I had met a different and comparatively more united and dynamic community.

Fresh out of secondary school, I had arrived in the Philippines on a Saturday night. Not knowing anybody in the Nigerian community, I had checked myself into a hotel. The following Monday when I went to the Philippine Bureau of Immigration to file my papers as was required by law of new students, I had run into a Nigerian named Gabby Okafor (PhD), who gave me a telephone number and the advice to call Mr. Jonathan Ekedum (MD), president of the Nigerian Students Union at the time. When I finally got hold of Jonathan later that night, he advised that I check out of the hotel and proceed to his residence in a taxi. Mr. Ekedum, without asking to know much about my background, arranged for a temporary place of residence for me. This was how the community of Nigerians in the Philippines was managed by the officers of the student union who functioned as de-facto consular officers to the community. Upon arrival to the Philippines, a new student typically registered with the union’s Secretary General and his papers were dispatched to the Nigerian High Commissioner to HongKong so a consular file would be opened for the student. Mr. Afolabi, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to HongKong and the student union leaders had great rapport which worked perfectly to the benefit and welfare of the students.

The opening of the Embassy of Nigeria in the Philippines in 1981 was a proud event for every Nigerian citizen in the country. When I visited the new Mission’s offices at the Legaspi Towers in Makati City for the first time, I had the company of two friends—Innocent Nzeamalu and Samuel Okagbue. I had gone to submit my school estimate for transmittal to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Like many students, I had felt so much pride that Nigeria finally had this important presence in the country. More than twenty six years later as I write the foreword to this book, I still cannot find the words to describe the surge of pride and patriotism that welled inside me as I sat amongst other Nigerian visitors who had come to either read Nigerian newspapers or borrow books by African authors. The new Charge d’Affaires, Mr. Akang was a rare breed from the Old School of Nigerian public servants. Beyond his consular duties, Mr. Akang was everywhere in the Nigerian community, attending social functions and when he could not personally attend, would send his representative. The Embassy of Nigeria started to lose sight of its mission with the arrival of its first ambassador, Alhaji Kyari Mohammed, who promptly built a wall of division between the Mission and the Community. The aloof and reclusive Mohammed, who always barricaded himself inside his office like the head of a secret cult, refused to give audience and attention to members of the Nigerian community. The political appointment of a lady Deputy Ambassador from Bendel State exacerbated the then emerging conditions of dysfunction as the two top envoys combatted and bickered against each other, leading many disappointed citizens to criticize and write petitions against the embassy. Successor ambassadors to Mohammed brought individual flair to the office. One ambassador (Dr. Beita Yusuf) tried and succeeded in using Nigerians to spy and inform on one another; the other (Amb. Aisha Jimeta) attempted to promote cultural ties between Manila and Abuja with very limited success.

Overall, the presence of the Embassy of Nigeria in Manila has been marked by abject neglect of the welfare of Nigerian citizens in the country, and the larger interests of Nigeria. This neglect runs the gamut of late provision of ordinary consular services, to discrimination, to promoting divisiveness in the community, on to casting blame on Nigerian citizens who had been victims of summary executions by Philippine criminals. The lowest points came under Yusuf during the 1986 Philippine People Power Revolution and under Charge d’Affaires a. i., Mr. Samuel Ajewole, whose preferred style of governance was to study problems in order to find reasons why the embassy should not solve them. The response to the embassy’s abandonment of duty came in different forms, including a popular student-led takeover of the Mission and in the campaign to refocus its attention to its role, now recounted in great detail by Igbokwe in A Broken Mission.

Preface

In June 2010, an email from the Nigerian community here in the City of Regina hit my inbox. The mail carried the good news of an upcoming visit to the City by a team from Nigeria’s National Immigration Service (NIS). As a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Nigeria was transitioning its international passport system to conform to ECOWAS protocols on the free movement of peoples across borderlines of member states. To that end, it was sending teams from Headquarters to Nigerian diplomatic posts worldwide to provide opportunity to citizens of Nigeria who wish to obtain the new ECOWAS e-passports to do so. A not-so-complicated system had been set up whereby citizens paid for these e-passports at an online portal. They would then print off payment confirmation receipts with which they would later apply for the new e-passports with the visiting teams. The email from the coordinators of the exercise, all respected community members, spelled out what it would financially cost each citizen in Regina to qualify to make an application with the NIS team: in addition to the US$65.00 in e-passport fee (prepaid via web portal) and $30.00 (for courier shipment of e-passport back to applicant) in Money Order made payable to the High Commissioner, $10.00 per application was required of each applicant to cover accommodation, meals, local transportation, etc. for the three-member team from Ottawa—two members from the NIS and one from the High Commissioner- during their 1.50 days stay in the city. A family of five which needed passports for all members would therefore, pay an additional fifty dollars.

The emails on the e-passport exercise assaulted my sensibilities. Not so much because of the additional cost tacked on top of the legitimate fees, but by the corruption of the entire exercise. At an individual level, the additional cost of $10.00 seemed insignificant, but in that ‘smallness’ resides the dangers inherent in corruption. The most destructive form of corruption steals from the people in small bits lulling victims into the false sense that no harm was meant or was being perpetrated. Although my family of five needed the e-passports and although I considered the dubious additional costs insignificant, I decided to reject the opportunity to obtain the e-passports on grounds of repugnance and detestation. For one, anybody who understands how government works would recognize that diplomats are never dispatched overseas to work and deliver service at the mercy of the local population. Government amply provides for the upkeep of the envoys for the duration of their assignment. Even small businesses provide for travel costs on company assignment. What I found very offensive about the entire exercise was that Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Canada sanctioned such shady behavior and rip-off. Equally offensive was the attitude of Nigerians in this city, some of who have lived in Canada for decades, are Canadian citizens and understood how these things work and should work and yet thought nothing about their approval of such a sleazy squeeze of the people. Nigeria has an interest to provide these e-passports to citizens at the most affordable cost possible. Teams like the ones which visited Canada were also sent to other countries. In the Philippines, for instance, the NIS team served the people at no cost above the official fees. And this was the same story at many posts around the world!

This e-passport experience was not the first time I was confronted by sleaze in Nigeria’s Foreign Service. I had fought the same beast decades ago when I ran into a bunch of envoys who thought nothing about not only stealing from their country but also from the most vulnerable members of their community—as you will read in this book. Nigeria is a naturally endowed and wealthy country, but corruption at all levels of government has rendered it prostrate and one of the poorest countries on earth. In 2010, Nigeria ranked 33rd out of 223 countries in Gross Domestic Product, an impressive enough number. Life expectancy at 47.56 years for the general population was, however, ranked 221, better only than war-torn Afghanistan and Angola. Seventy percent (70%) of Nigerians or 109 million people out of an estimated population of 155 million live below the threshold of acceptable poverty. With GDP as high as it is, Nigerians live in abject poverty and die young not for lack of resources or productivity but due to deprivation by corruption that continues to fatten offshore bank accounts. Every Nigerian citizen should be outraged by how, through either our participation or acquiescence, we have impoverished the nation and ourselves.

The writing of this book has been undertaken to record for posterity the bad representation overseas that Nigeria suffers at the hands of those paid well to protect her foreign interests. It has also been written to remind Nigerian citizens overseas that they do have responsibility to take their country’s envoys to task when they misbehave or lose sight of their oath of office. I hope that this book further draws attention to the emergency that confronts all of us from the prevalence of corruption in our national life. This book has been written to challenge us to shake off our complacency and fight corruption whether it personally victimizes us or not! Corruption is killing Nigeria and robbing our kids of their future. When we turn a blind eye to sleaze - big or small - and turn the other way when people in powerful positions rape and pillage our resources, we not only aid the crime but lose our right to complain about how terrible our lot has become. At every level, Nigerians can make a difference in reclaiming their patrimony from crooks that pretend to serve their interests. In this book, I have told the story of the small effort we made to try, in one small corner of the globe, to take power to account. This is a thankless, arduous and risky endeavor. It is a dangerous life we must live in order to turn the tide against corruption. It is an ongoing crusade that we cannot stop until our travel through this plane of existence is done.

Acknowledgements

A work of this nature is a product of the collaborative efforts of many people. While there are so many people to thank, there are those who have requested anonymity for reasons that, shortly, would be clear to the reader.

To Lumen, my wife and confidante, I say ‘thank you’! When this journey started, attempts were made to scare and intimidate you. Your steadfastness and commitment lifted and held me through the great difficulties that many times threatened to weaken my resolve. My gratitude to you for your immeasurable love and support would never be fully captured in words. You are a dream woman to have as a wife! I love you beyond measure! Thank you so very much!

To my kids, Uchechukwu, Jack Amalachukwu and Chimbuniemenu, I thank you for your support and your inquisitive minds. I am very grateful to you for providing me the space so crucial to successfully putting this book together. You are the greatest kids any parent could ever have! Uche, thank you for the author’s photo at the back cover of this book. What a shot that turned out to be!

To my father, the late Chief Gabriel Igbokwe, I say the lessons you taught were not lost on me. Your deep sense of justice and fairness is as alive today as it was that first time you imparted the creed. I am nobody without you and I owe you everything! Thank you, Papa!

To my mother, Joy, I love you with all my life—for the sacrifices you suffered for me and my siblings. We are alive today because you worked so hard to protect and shelter us. You are the best mother any son could ever wish to have! Thank you so much, mama!

To my younger brother, Gabriel Chukwudolue, I say ‘thank you’ for fighting great odds to see that support got to me during my peak of Buhari-inspired financial challenges in the Philippines. Without the pivotal effort you made, I may not have been able to make it through, to be able today to write this book. Thank you, my dearest brother!

My first cousin, Professor (Dr.) Samuel Chukwuemeka Obi proved that good can result from a life of faith and dedicated sacrifice. Emeka, you gave me the future-defining first novel I read, by an African author. You played the key role in the love I developed for reading and writing. You are the greatest big brother I can ever ask for! Thank you so much for your love and the many sacrifices you have made for me and my nuclear family.

Chief (Dr.) Benson U. C. Aghazu, the Kpakpando Nnewi, I thank you for being the big wind that got this plane airborne. Without the weight you threw behind my quest for higher education, I would’ve been telling a different story today. I remember and thank my dearest auntie, the late Madam Mary Udu Aghazu, who first loved me and made the connection that would change my life for good, forever!

My gratitude also goes to Arch. Benjamin U. Okafor, the friend who has become, in every real sense, a brother! Thank you Benjie for that fantastic gift you have that is called memory. Without your insights and impeccable gift of recall, some parts of this book would not have been completed. You are a compendium on two legs and I am grateful to have had unrestricted access to your databank. Thank you so much more Benjie, for doing the Foreword to this book.

Engr. Peter Ikeokwu, I owe you a lot. I am grateful that you will be patient in calling in your IOUs. Thank you my friend for being there for me at a time and in a role nobody else could’ve played. Thank you, friend! And thank you for being a real man!

To Dr. Pius D. Odigie, I doff my hat for the opportunity to bounce off some thoughts and to check out some facts. In a quiet, self-effacing kind of way, you filled a bunch of gaps for me for which I would eternally be grateful.

To Dr. Akinleye Famoyegun, I say thanks for your generosity and the opportunity to interview you for background insight to one of the stories in the book.

To Jems Elizon, my brother in-law, the shot would not have hit the mark without your brave support. Nobody would have a brother in-law as great as you are. I love you with all my heart! Amor, you are the finest sister in-law ever! Thanks for your love and great support over the past 23 years.

I salute Engr. John Paul Jideofor Ajaelu for making himself generously available for the interviews that have added perspective to the account on the 1986 embassy siege.

My thanks go to all my supporters and resources who have chosen to remain anonymous. I appreciate your preference as I recognize no good happens to society without such patriots as you are. You have served and continue to serve the cause of good governance in Nigeria, in a way many would be grateful for, if they knew what you have contributed. The reward is never in the public recognition but in the positive change you have helped to make possible. Thank you so very much!

Finally, I thank the Lord for the strength He gives which enables me to stand up for people who could not have done it alone—or will never be able to do it at all, for they’ve lost the life that would have made their fight possible. It is through your grace Lord that I hope my search for the truth in furtherance of justice and fairness will never fall weak.

John Madukaejiaka Oforjebeogu Igbokwe, MSC

September 21, 2011

Introduction

When I first shipped out of Nigeria in 1983 for higher studies in the Philippines, in addition to my suitcase, I had two other possessions. One was a letter of introduction to a Nigerian diplomat serving in Manila; the other was the name of Mr. MacGoddins Chinwuko, the president of the Nigerian Students Union, Philippines. Mr. Onyirimba, the diplomat, was serving at the Manila post in a role I do not quite remember today. When I took the letter from my uncle, Dr. Benson Aghazu to him, Mr. Onyirimba welcomed me very warmly. He advised me to feel free to come back to him anytime I had any problems I thought he could help me out with. My first and only meeting with him left me with an impression that Nigerian envoys understood their roles as representatives of the interests of their country and people. I never returned to see Mr. Onyirimba for the remainder of his tour, but that impression stayed with me until late in the 1990s when I had another encounter with a cadre of officers with a different set of values.

As a result of my background as a member of a huge and politicized family, I have often not accepted most negative things people told me about others at face value. I hate gossip with a passion and hold tattlers in very low regard. I always preferred to deal or relate with people and draw my own views of them from my dealings with them. This was my attitude to all the many stories in the small Nigerian community in Manila about the successive regimes of Nigerian envoys who toured in the Philippines. During the 1980s, but before the embassy siege of 1986, offended community members had started to complain about the embassy’s arrogant mistreatment of the people as if the Mission had not been opened to take care of the welfare of Nigerian citizens in the Philippines. This arrogance escalated in 1986 with a Mr. Onah, who reportedly had told some students during the popular revolution in the country that the Embassy of Nigeria was not opened to look after their welfare. It seemed far-fetched that a trained and supposedly responsible representative of Nigeria would make such naïve and insulting remarks to students. I did not try to actively follow-up on the complaints or to learn more about this allegation against Mr. Onah, for like many more community members, I had little need of the embassy, pre- and post- the seizure of the embassy. I had been one of the students whose remittances of school fees had been cancelled by Gen. Buhari when his band of coup plotters struck on December 31, 1983, ending the Second Republic. Having been financially cut-off by Nigeria, I spent my time focusing on finding alternative means of receiving support from Nigeria.

I had supported and participated in the takeover of the embassy in 1986 after the People Power Revolution in the Philippines for reasons that were very basic: there was so much pain and hardship in the student body and the embassy was indeed derelict in its duty of care for the welfare of the people. The presence of Nigerian students in the Philippines made the opening of the embassy five years earlier possible. This followed years of representations to the Nigerian Government by successive student leaderships. I knew, therefore, of no interest of Nigeria in the Philippines more paramount than the welfare of her citizens on the ground. As such, it was then, as it still is today, so offensive for a Nigerian diplomat to tell Nigerians their embassy was not opened to care about them! That was a most insensitive assault not just on the people but also on the very mandate of the Embassy of Nigeria. The siege of the embassy failed to achieve its goals as you will read in chapter three for some of the same reasons that Nigeria today remains one of the most untamed polities in the world—selfishness, sabotage and treachery

This crusade to reform the Nigerian Mission in Manila was not planned at all. It came as a natural consequence of the offense and insult the embassy heaped on the people even in the wake of clear and present danger to their collective welfare. From when I was a kid growing up in Nnewi, I had learned from my father to treat all men—and women - no more and no less than I would treat myself as a human being. I had left Nigeria with this wisdom and with a lack of exposure to the evils of Nigeria’s ethnocentric politics and both have benefited my relationships to this day. I have never related to any Nigerian with prior review of his or her ethnic or cultural origins. Every person comes across to me as an individual to be treated with respect. This is the reason I go out of my way to provide any help possible to make any person’s difficulties as lighter as my resources can make them. And this was the reason I found it utterly offensive and cold-hearted when I came face-to-face with the worst in Nigerian diplomatic service dealing with the embassy in Manila over the murder of a Nigerian I hardly knew. It was my very deep sense of offense, repulsion and pure outrage that a Nigerian embassy official would blame a murdered victim of violence for his fate rather than make a case for justice that forced me into the crusade that is the subject of this book.

Fifteen years on, a lot of things have faded. Many people have moved on and with that some facts—such as names and titles of some diplomats—have proved challenging to establish. The current officers of the embassy did not respond to enquiries I had sent to them at the start of work on the book. I had requested that they send me the names and titles of all the envoys who had served at the Mission in Manila. The absence of full names and titles does not, however, reduce the specifics of the stories in the book. For obvious reasons, many actors in the stories told in the book did not want to relive their past. I spoke to, and/or exchanged emails with some of them including Johnny Obika, Lawson Ossy Ifeajuna and MacGoddins Chinwuko and requested that they respond to some questions. They agreed but did not return the completed questionnaires I had sent to them. On the same note, I have been very fortunate to have had incredible access to resources inside and outside of Nigeria’s Foreign Service and to members of the Nigerian Community inside and outside the Philippines, who were either actors or close witnesses, like me, to the events recounted in the book. I declare the facts have had multiple verifications before I used them.

I should caution though that this book does not tell the story of the Embassy of Nigeria, or for that matter, of the Nigerian community in the Philippines, from every conceivable angle. The primary focus of the book has been our crusade to compel reform from the time of our personal experience of the embassy’s callousness and insensitivity. I decided to build historical context into the work to provide the reader a sense of the historically shoddy representation of Nigeria in the Philippines which the embassy had become.

Finally, a note on the envoy whose false sense of power and infallibility got me on this collision course with the Mission. Mr. Femi Akenson Rotimi is the very worst servant Nigeria could ever offer to the world. As I send this book to print, I still shudder at how this man ever got into the Foreign Service of the nation, in the first place. Everything about Mr. Rotimi reeks of crime and of abuse and greed. Mr. Rotimi is such a corrupt thief that his presence in the Foreign Service of Nigeria has been a net loss to the nation. It is a national affront and disgrace that the Foreign Service of Nigeria has a criminal like him within its ranks! Rotimi did not just rob Nigeria; he stole from a poor Filipino orphan and his own illegitimate child. In this book, you will read about how this sleazeball broke every standard of normal human behavior—and of diplomatic ethic—to perpetrate such mindless abuse of office and trust that would have gotten him locked away in most civilized societies. It is only in Nigeria that a lowlife like Rotimi gets promoted to a directorship from where he certainly would wreak more damage to the interests of his country. It is a shame that Nigeria has this man as a diplomat!

Nigeria is at a crossroads in its walk towards full nationhood. With runaway crime and corruption, it is questionable it will ever get to port. What I have done in this book and will continue to do is to seek the truth, and to speak that truth whenever and wherever I find it, no matter whose ox gets gored.

JMO Igbokwe, MSC

September 21, 2011

ONE

Before 1981—

Nigerian Community Philippines

Longer than twenty five years before Ajewole and Rotimi arrived on the scene in the early 1990s, Nigerians had known the Philippines for reasons beyond diplomacy. In fact, the interchange between the Republic of the Philippines and the Federal Republic of Nigeria is believed to go back many decades before Nigeria established formal diplomatic presence in the Philippines in the early 1980s. A few years after Nigeria gained her political independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, the Philippines had opened her embassy on Ribadu Road in Lagos, the former capital of the new Nigerian nation. Following this recognition by the Asian nation, exchanges between the two countries commenced at a gradual, steady pace. The first Nigerians started arriving in the Philippine archipelago in the 1960s as students. They were mostly young men from the Eastern Region of Nigeria. At the time, there were not many economic exchanges between the two countries. Soon after their arrival, the new students found themselves cut off from their homeland which had entered a Civil War in 1967 between the Federal Government and the Eastern Region led by a young Oxford-educated army Colonel named Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The blockade of the Eastern Region and the secession that followed meant separation from the homeland for these Nigerian pioneers in the Philippines. Separated by war from their families, the students grew desperate and despondent as news about the pogrom against their people back home reached them through the international press. They also grew penniless as support from their war-torn homeland ceased. News of genocide and war atrocities cut deep causing the students to depress over the state and survival of their relatives. Without a lot of financial opportunities, the Philippines offered peace but little hope of