Guardian Nigeria’s Centenary: Amalgamation of North and South not a mistake, says British High Commissioner, Pocock TUESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2013 00:00 OGHOGHO OBAYUWANA FEATURES -FOCUS Nigerians should work out survival beyond In this interview, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr. Andrew Pocock, gave insight into the bilateral relations between the United Kingdom (UK) and Nigeria, Britain’s role towards ending Nigeria’s internal security challenges, repatriation of looted funds, economic cooperation and a range of other emerging issues. He spoke with Foreign Affairs Editor, OGHOGHO OBAYUWANA. Excerpts: BRITAIN has been Nigeria’s traditional ally over the years. What is the state of their bilateral relations now, can Nigeria still count on the UK today? I think it is very good, very strong and very frank, and I think that is a tribute both to the past and the fact that we have had very strong, continuing relations for a very long time. Next year is the centennial celebration of Nigeria becoming a unified state. Our relations even predate that. Part of this is due also to the future. I like to emphasize this – our history and cultural connections, our people-to-people connections. Nigeria has a large Diaspora in the UK. We see Nigeria as a very important emerging country in today’s globalized world. And if you ask me, I think Nigeria is becoming bigger than that. You are becoming a player on the global stage, an important country in the sub-region, the largest member of ECOWAS. You have been the stabilizing power in the region and then on the African continent. The evidence is there – your role in the African Union and in other organisations. You are becoming more and more a player on the global stage. I think this has to do with Nigeria’s size, sheer population and natural resources and also its ambition to become a player on the global stage. You will, in fact, be joining the (United Nations) Security Council as a non-permanent member next year for the next two years. We see that next two years as very important and we are looking closely to working with Nigeria at the Security Council on a whole range of international issues. That’s my limit about the future. We are not simply talking about the agenda that we have had for a very long time and will continue to have. We are looking at new agenda where Nigeria plays an affirmative role in making sure that our relations is in the best possible shape. Let me say that good relations does not mean that we agree on about everything. What it means is that we are both sufficiently grown up, sufficiently confident about our own policies and so sufficiently confident of the good work of our partnership; that we can speak very plainly with each other when we need to. We can be frank, we can disagree, but that does not mean there is a collapse as a consequence. That’s the fundamental nature of friendship, being able to talk plainly and in confidence with each other. It is good that you spoke about the amalgamation of 1914, as we like to call it here in Nigeria. Looking back at all the problems we seem to be having as a modern state, do you think Britain has some regrets fussing all of these divergent peoples of the south and north together? Now it is being said in Nigeria that this fusion was a mistake. How do you react to that? A difficult question. I think it is a question not for the UK, but for modern Nigeria to answer. All I will say is that, I think when the north and south were amalgamated in 1914, it was done in good faith. It was done in an attempt to create a large and prosperous nation that could more than hold its own and the region in the world that was to come, in the Commonwealth after its independence, and I think it’s a question that Nigerians debate quite regularly as to what West Africa would have looked like, what this particular part of West Africa would have looked like. If there was not a single Nigeria, there could have been maybe two or three states, and what would have been the economic and political consequences? I think the thing is that a single unit Nigeria the Nigerian people a chance to play a much more commanding role, both on the continent and on the global stage, than if there were to be separate entities. The answer I will give to the first question is what’s important to our relationship, what our relationship is – that we are dealing with a large, wealthy, powerful unitary state. History never moves in a straight line; there is never a single verdict on decisions, so it is a very interesting question and I think it is something that I look forward to hearing Nigerians debate with their usual vigour as we look forward to the 100 years anniversary. Talking trade and economic relations, trade delegations coming to Nigeria from the UK have steadily been on the increase in the recent past. What is the trajectory of Nigeria’s trade with the UK currently? There are figures about the volume and balance of trade being bandied. What is the correct picture? In 2011, when President Goodluck Jonathan and our prime minister met in Lagos, we drew up a memorandum of understanding aimed at an ambitious target, which is to double trade between our two countries by year 2014. At the time, in 2011, the total volume of bilateral trade on both sides was about £4 billion a year, so we want it by next year to be at close to or to exceed £8 billion, and that will be a remarkable achievement. Statistics always lag behind a little bit of what we say. In 2012, we saw an increment of trade of 40 per cent, which was quite remarkable. So we think that we can be talking about £6 million a year in terms of trade. And we hope that this carries on. I mean this is very significant for both countries. Trade is one of the areas where there is mutual benefit and it is an important foundation for progress in Nigeria. And as for the balance of trade, it is actually in Nigeria’s favour. In other words, you export more to us than we export to you. And the whole point of increasing the volume back and forth is to get more people on both sides of the equation involved in looking towards the other country. In the case of the UK, we are looking to get particularly the small and medium entrepreneurs in the UK interested in Nigeria as a focus for possible trade, and secondly for investment, and there are certain well established sectors in Nigeria where British companies have a genuine competitive advantage. One of them is oil and gas – I mean we have got the giant multinational here, Shell. We have perhaps 400 service chain companies. The oil and gas companies are hugely complex. There are 400 British companies perhaps involved to have input to this. With the sheer quantum leap we have taken, Nigerian banks are also getting active in this regard. In collaboration with the British partners, the Nigerian banks are being quoted in the British Stock Exchange. We are looking at all of these areas where there is competitive advantage. The legal services sector as well...there are plenty areas in this country where there can be cooperation and we can come in. Infrastructure, health, education – in these areas, British companies have expertise. So I think our overriding priority in the next few years is to get more British companies looking seriously at Nigeria and also involving the many Nigerians in the Diaspora. For instance, we see citizens that have some British parentage in this regard. Such have been natural interlocutors in terms of trade with this country and we are doing our best to encourage them to play in the Nigerian economy. You were going to talk beyond trade volume to trade balance and diversifying the Nigerian economy. This is a very penetrating question and a lot depends on what the government of Nigeria makes of our trade dimensions and economic relations and the idea of diversifying the Nigerian economy. Yes, we import crude oil from Nigeria and we also export finished products to Nigeria, part of the supply chain that we are talking about. What we import from Nigeria is quite phenomenal –agricultural inputs – like Cadbury, the chocolate people. Cadbury was always linked to the development of the cocoa industry many years ago. As for the balance of trade, it is slightly in Nigeria’s favour. In the case of the UK, we are looking at considering alternative sources of energy and that depends very much on what Nigeria is doing in this regard. So it has to do with Nigeria diversifying its economy, which will ensure you do not just export raw produce only. We want to be involved in this. The refinery project, for instance, is almost taking off. That is why you had the agreements (with the Dangote Group) signed last week. So, in all, you will have agricultural products, not just raw products; it would be interesting to see Nigeria exporting services. Actually, the UK’s largest export globally is services, and manufactured goods. It is the value added end of the chain that is increasingly important to the modern world. And that is where Nigeria needs to also do something. That is where Nigeria wants to go. You need to key into that. From the books, we know that Nigeria has some kind of security cooperation with the UK and security has become very critical now given all of the challenges that we are having internally. One wonders what Britain is doing with regards to Nigeria’s internal security challenge. The first thing to say is that we regard Nigeria’s continuing stability as extremely important. It is always important for the people in this country as well as for the sub-region, stretching up to the Sahel. So we want Nigeria to win its conflict with terrorism. To help, we are doing a number of things on the counter-terrorism side. And we are doing some operational things, but we are doing analytical and legal things as well. We are looking at the counter-terrorism doctrine, things like how you fight in this electrical war or conflict against an enemy that you don’t see and one that hits you when he wants to. It is very important. We try to be on top, not just reacting to the incident and trying to put up a coherent contest. We are working on the legal side. How does Nigeria deal with captured terrorists, and there are very many in the north of Nigeria presently? This should be for efficiency sake and I think for Nigeria’s reputation as a country that is working to respect human rights, there should be a proper system of arrests, of trial, which means proper prosecution, a sound method of trial and then incarceration. It is extremely important how you treat these people. The process must be done securely and also humanely. As I said, this is not simply about human rights reasons. It is an important component of it. It is important for efficiency reasons. Things work better if you’ve got a system that allows you to deal with the effects of military success. So we are doing quite a lot of work with the Nigerian authorities. And we want to continue. We think it is important for us to contribute to Nigeria’s capacity to combat terrorism successfully while its security forces, its armed forces, are seen as protectors. There have been issues about that in the north. So it is important to continue to be seen as protectors of the indigenous population. We talked very plainly to each other about this. The question of how one proceeds in a conflict of this kind is a core element of our relationship. But what we say to the people on the security side here is, the UK has an understanding of what it is like to fight terrorism on your own soil. We’ve done it in many parts of the world including Northern Ireland for 25 years. It is a different thing when you are fighting on somebody else’s soil. So we appreciate the dilemmas, the difficulties that the Nigerian forces face, we understand the hostile nature of the environment in which they must operate. We also offer as a fruit of our experience, having done it ourselves, the observations that if you can get the civilian population as much as possible on your side, on the side of the authorities, and are seen to be their protector and not as an arbitrary force that comes in from outside, you will have a much better chance of not only minimizing your own casualty and losses but of winning hearts and minds. So that is the burden of what we are saying and what we try to offer. We are not here to tell the Nigerian security forces how to do it, Nigeria has a lot of experience too. People like to say that the West quibbles too much about human rights. We don’t quibble about human rights, we raise important questions and that does not disguise the fact of Nigeria having both the right and responsibility to secure its territory, its sovereignty. Those rights are very important. We agree with them, only seeking to find perhaps more effective ways of the conduct of the tasks. And we do that with humility. We do it from the point of view that we know better, you know we’ve done something like this before. These are what we found, perhaps they can help. Sorry sir, apart from information sharing, is this cooperation in form of training, logistics or equipment supply? No, no, not such much on the logistics and equipment side. There are plenty of ways out there in which we assist. Buying equipment from the UK can be quite an expensive business. We haven’t been selling military equipment to Nigeria for quite some time now. These imports are probably not the way we want to go, so we are concentrating on the other end. We are looking less at the unprocessed end of the commodities and looking more at the value added end, and in areas where we have experience and expertise. These are two different things but one can come from the other. That is what we are doing. I would like you to speak on looted funds. I know we have some form of cooperation with Britain that has resulted in some arrests and prosecution of corrupt officials by the Metropolitan Police. Give us an update on the current state of affairs in the attempt to repatriate these looted funds. Good question again. A great deal of work was done after the end of the military era and after Gen. (Sani) Abacha to repatriate the looted funds. Now a lot of it was not in Britain. They were actually in other countries. As you know, from Gen. Abacha’s time, some of it was found and returned to the Nigerian Government. Since then of course, other people who have looted funds have been reported and we are very concerned in the UK about the need to crack down, cut down on the proceeds of crime. The Metropolitan Police has actually set up a unit called the Proceeds Of Crime Unit (POCU) and their job is to try and track down funds and assets deposited in the UK, identify them and find ways in which they can be legally returned to the Nigerian Government. I don’t have the figures as to how that might be, but I do know that a lot of work is going on in that regard. We are working actively on it and when we find people that we should prosecute, we prosecute them. Mr. James Ibori is in the British prison. Prosecutions are quite complex and require a great deal of cooperation between authorities of both countries. So it is worth saying that why we have the Proceeds of Crime Unit, looking at it from the British end, we work with the Nigerian authorities here in Abuja, with your anti-corruption agencies. We work with the Nigeria Police and other agencies of that kind, not just looted funds coming in from your country, we track funds that come from illegal trafficking of any kind. It is very important that we reduce exported funds to the UK, and the best way to do it is for the UK to have a good, strong cooperation here, apart from having a strong base on this in Britain. So here we have partnership between trusted interlocutors. That is always a process, never an event. Both sides have to keep investing on making this happen. And I am pleased to say that on your side, things are also being followed through. The visa bond palaver. How can both countries manage the resentment in Nigeria such that it does not strain relations? I think three quarters of the problem, in the so called visa bond – It is called migratory bond in the UK, is that people here don’t fully understand what they involve. I mean the consequence and are afraid of what they regard as dreadful. Let me try and put it in proper contest because getting the facts right often helps in the argument. Firstly, we don’t have a policy on this yet, so when I read in the press and in other places that we are doing this, we are not doing this yet. Secondly, even when it does becomes a policy, we will tell people. I have solemnly promised to tell the minister of external affairs here, Mr. Ashiru (before the cabinet reshuffle), not just the government, we will tell people and the media, it won’t be an ambush, it would be a clear announcement, but we are not there yet. In any case what are we talking about? What the visa bond is intended to do, it is not going to be a fee. This is not a £3,000 pound fee that every Nigerian traveller has to pay for a UK visa, it is not that at all. Our visa fees would not increase because of the bond. What the bond is intending to do is to apply to a few, very small categories of people who look risky. Not risky enough under our rules for us to refuse them visa but risky enough to cause some concern that they might overstay their visa term. So with that very small category of people, we will ask them to pay a deposit of £3,000 pounds, if they return within the period as stipulated in their visas, then they get their money back. It is not a one way transaction. It is only if they overstay, in other words, if they break their visa terms, only then is the issue of the visa charge accepted. Who would have to pay this? As I said, a very small number of people in categories that we regard as possibly risky. And if category is too strong a word, let’s just say people who don’t provide quite enough information or in some way fit a profile that causes a lot of concern. But the number would be tiny. And to give you a sense of the context again. Last year, 180,000 Nigerians applied for visas, quite a big number. We granted 125,000 of them, that is about 70 per cent of visa applications were successful. We think that is also a good number. Of the 125,000 who succeeded, we will probably have more applications and more successes this year, if a couple of hundreds were to be affected by a visa bond scheme, that will be a lot, so we are talking about something that isn’t yet a policy and if it becomes, would affect a tiny fraction of the applications. So I think my summary message would be let’s not jump the gun on this and wait for it to happen. If it does happen, it would affect a tiny amount of people. It is not a £3,000 pound charge for visa, that would be simply preposterous, and ultimately, we remain in the same position as we said here, which is that we want as many legitimate Nigeria travellers in Britain as chose to come, we want them to come and do business, study, trade, visit, visit families, we want that. We are not going to do anything to discourage that, why would we, it would hurt us. So what we hope and want people to understand is that it is actually a very modest proposal. Very modest and the effect would be very limited too. We will explain all these again, should we get to that point, but Nigerians and the Nigerian government would be put in the picture, not just what people think about it, and not feel that they have to automatically retaliate. But I understand and it is been made very clear to me by officials and also by reading in the media, I do understand that it has caused a lot of apprehension, and somehow as if the UK is seeking to discriminate against Nigerians and to be treated with contempt, to disregard all of our affinities. And the answer is emphatically, no, why would we want to denigrate our standing friend and partner with a strategic role in the modern world in all of the ways I had mentioned. All we are trying to do is to protect ourselves from individuals, not just in Nigeria, they come from a range of countries, individuals who would choose to take advantage of a legitimately obtained visa and abuse their visa status in Great Britain’s laws. So, actually it is not an arrogant, dismissive attempt, it is a defensive measure by the British government to protect our law and it would affect a very few people. So having said all that, we still haven’t got to the point of a policy yet. So my only plea would be to Nigerians to look at this, look at the facts of this, should it happen and let’s discuss then how do we respond to it, rather than feel obliged to take retaliatory action. And certainly not to feel insulted. We are not here to insult Nigeria or individual Nigerians. As I said, why would we? It would be wholly counterproductive and it would be completely opposed to everything that I am here to do in terms of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship...This is what it is. It is not anything more than this or less than this. And it is not a slap in the face. When you say it might happen, it might not. It is not a policy yet. I know it is difficult to be exact, but around what time would the “might” be? There are quite some debate about this in London at the moment. And a lot of the debates are caused by a number of issues. And people are saying: look, this could cause misunderstanding in the countries that might be affected by it. So I can’t give you a definitive date, but I will be surprised if we didn’t know where we were before the end of this year. I don’t see this one running into the new year. Either the policy would take shape and we will run a pilot project. And it simply won’t just be introduced globally when it happens. It would have been piloted and we will see that we have the means to administer it properly, so if people were asked to pay a bond for example, they would be confident that their money would be placed in an account and they would get a receipt for it, and claim their money back, that it would be returned to them. All of these have to be put in place. I think we will try and see how to get it organized by the time it happens. So this would be towards the end of this year or so. Lastly, we want you to speak on the Chevening programme. You were quoted during a reception recently to have said you’ve had 1,050 scholars who have benefitted from it in this pace of 30 years that the scheme has been on...would you say the programme has impacted positively on the Nigerian polity considering what awardees are doing when they come back...I mean the way it was envisaged at inception? That is quite interesting and we are mindful of the impact as well. It is the reason why we want to do a little audit and just find out where all our scholars have gone to. What we try to do is extract maximum benefit from this. The Chevening programme is not a charity on one hand, which the UK is running, nor is it a kind of brain drain process. It was in the press recently that the number of Nigerian doctors in the UK is very large. There are thousands of Nigerian doctors. Chevening doesn’t look to do that, we are not looking to extract members of the medical profession and other areas and to bring them to the UK for our benefit. What we are looking to do is brain gain as we said. To take quality people, they’ve got to be talented, but also mature. We are not taking undergraduates. We are looking for people that have a track record in their own field, whatever this could be, who we could assess for their leadership potentials. It is hard to tell for example a 21 year-old that has just come out of the university that he is going to be this kind of desired professional. But someone in his thirties, or their late twenties who has been working for 10 years and has a track record of achievement, you could say well, that is someone who could go further. Take him to the UK, put him in a top university, I just had one of them make a presentation here, the final one of our 11 scholars, a very bright young man, I think in his thirties. For me that is ok, he is going to the University College in London to study Security and International Affairs and I think that is fine for all that is happening in Nigeria at the moment. That will add value when he returns to this country. So we are looking for people with that rare leadership qualities. We are looking for people that can come back and add value, add some intellectual and technical density to the Nigerian society. You know, we talked about diversifying the economy and all of that, a competitive modern economy is generally emerging. What is required is the right kind of investment and that can come from people who have real expertise, who are prepared sensibly to risk their capital. People like Dangote for example, such businessmen, in order wards, people from the private sector. The private sector is hugely about the middle class, the buoyant middle class, so people can go overseas and boost their knowledge in a whole range of disciplines, to be research scientists, to be industrial chemists, in the financial sector and the rest, to go into the stock market, to go into the oil business. To be entrepreneurs and set up their own businesses, to work with the IT, or social media, to work in the creative industry, Nollywood is just one aspect of it. Lots of talent in Nigeria in many areas. There is a huge spectrum of activities where young, relatively young people coming back from the UK can shape and most of that can go a long way in making Nigeria as a modern 21st century society. So the political dimension of somebody returning home, we are looking for a broad expanse of potential. We are not picking future politicians in that sense. We are picking people who can contribute in the broader sense to the advancement and uplifting of their society. And to do exactly what you suggest, to pull them together and to know what they’ve been doing and to make some kind of assessment so we can have a fair knowledge of what Chevening may have contributed to Nigeria.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 07:16:07 +0000
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