Your Excellencies and Colleagues,

On Tuesday, 2nd February 2009, I formally assumed duty as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a Ministry where I have spent the best part of my adult and career life. For four years, I have been away on sabbatical leave and on an interesting and fulfilling journey in the home service, first as the National Co-ordinator of the Nigerian National Volunteer Service and for the past two years, as Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, OSGF both in the Presidency.

2. During all these years, my heart had never left the Ministry and while there, I did the best I could to maintain contact with the Ministry, my colleagues and friends. It is therefore, with a heart full of gratitude to God for his journey mercies, and even more for the opportunity he has given me to end my career where it started, among colleagues and friends of many years, that I come today to interact with you.

3. I am very much aware, and indeed we should all be aware and realistic about the challenges facing us. They are real, huge and complex but they are surmountable, especially if we all, together with our principals, courageously work to advance the mandate of the Ministry rather than seek to promote our individual interests. This has been responsible for, and indeed continues to exacerbate the problems and unhappiness we all feel about the state of affairs in the Ministry.

4. In the coming months, we must all endeavour or agree to change our attitude and, with renewed vigor and commitment, work to strengthen the fabric of the Ministry which is the basic institution for the formulation and execution of Nigeria’s foreign policy. The effective implementation of our Foreign Policy objectives in the years gone by, ensured that Nigeria provided leadership to the continent, thus occupying an enviable position in the comity of nations.

5. To strengthen the Ministry, some changes and tough decisions would have to be made, and this is where I need your support, cooperation, understanding and prayers. The task ahead is not for the Ministers and Permanent Secretary alone. Each and every one of us in this Ministry has a role to play in revitalizing the Ministry and making MFA a great place to work in. That change must start with us and now.

6. For a Ministry that is charged with specialized functions and was once highly regarded for the quality of its staff, we must re-tool ourselves and demonstrate our intellectual prowess and knowledge through the improvement of our analytical inputs and the quality of advice we give to our principals and stakeholders. We are not paid to work to the answer, we are paid to give the best advice we can, based on empirical facts and analyses, a sound knowledge of the issue and our experience.

7. For the next few months and years, we would have to collectively strive to return to what essentially is our core business; foreign policy and diplomacy. Working in concert with the leadership of the Ministry, we must re-orient ourselves and build up the requisite capacity for effectiveness and competitiveness in our representational duties. We must build new capacities and competencies, expertise and knowledge on such issues as globalization, migration, the environment, global warming and climate change, while strengthening our professional capacities and capabilities in diplomacy, negotiations, conflict resolutions, regional integration and developmental issues, particularly on health and poverty, which are likely to dominate contemporary debates and discussions, especially with reference to the MDGs.

8. Beginning from to-day therefore, we have to fundamentally change our attitude and the way we work. Let us start with the basic. I am aware that many officers live far away from the office. It only makes sense therefore, to advise that those who live far away should leave home early to work and when you arrive here, please stay in your offices and work. We have to apply ourselves more to our work and arrest the phobia of initiative. Treatment of files and correspondences must be prompt, especially those from our missions. In this regard, let me draw your attention to the recent circular by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation which directed that files must not be left overnight on any officers table or be unnecessarily delayed. I shall have the circular re-issued again.

9. Reports of all activities we are involved in, including meetings and conferences, among others, must be ready immediately after the events. Briefs and speeches for State Visits must be ready at least two weeks in advance. We must also put a stop to the growing penchant of sending relatively and inexperienced officers to inter-ministerial meetings. Our representations at these meetings must be of sufficient seniority. More importantly I will frown at the lack of preparedness for these meetings.

10. We must improve on the synergy between missions and Headquarters by giving deserved attention to all correspondences and reports from missions. The reports must be properly analyzed, synthesized and issues requiring attention promptly attended to. Those requiring the attention of home Ministries must be brought to their attention without undue delays.

11. With regards to communication with missions, in this era of information technology, we must recognize the importance of prompt, effective and efficient communication between Headquarters and missions on the one hand, and between the Ministry and the Presidency as well as other agencies of government on the other. Likewise, our directives to missions must be clear, precise and unambiguous.

13. In return, I expect missions to be more professionally active and more prudent in the management of the resources at their disposal. Officers at post must be pro-active and spend more time on active and robust engagement with their hosts. Every effort must be made to avoid slipping into inactivity or spending quality time on forlorn wishes and complaints about the perceived or actual shortcomings of the Ministry. Those at multilateral posts must sharpen their negotiating skills and become masters of the issues they are engaged with. They must show initiative, expertise and leadership at meetings through the quality of their contributions and in defending our national interest. I am emphasizing this because it is what we are paid to do: to win friends and respect for the country and defend her interest.

14. For a country with the kind of international image that we have, for a country with the tall dream or ambition of becoming one of the twenty largest economies by 2020, our job has been well cut out for us. In this regard, we should revisit, review, re-energize and strategically pursue our economic diplomacy in order to effectively play our role in attracting foreign investors. Missions, especially those in Asia, America, Europe and in some key African countries, should therefore evolve programmes to attract investors to Nigeria.

15. As part of our focus on citizen diplomacy, we would have to strengthen our consular representations, to respond to the criminal behaviour of some Nigerians abroad on the one hand and to embrace and encourage the large pool of expertise of Nigerians in the Diaspora on the other, and involve them in Nigeria’s development process. The process of doing this has begun and quite a lot has been achieved, but we are yet to bring into the process the critical mass that is required to trigger the impact of the diaspora in this country.

16. While we must review our budget process which is partly responsible for our financial problems, we must seek to manage our limited resources with prudence. More importantly, we must also come to terms with the reality that the resources at our disposal are limited and indeed shrinking. With declining oil price, the time has come to really think out of the box on how best to address the problems confronting the ministry. Accordingly, Transparency and accountability must be our watch word especially at the missions from where complaints of mismanagement of resources are increasing.

17. We must figure out how to end the perennial problems of remittance to our missions. Those directly involved in accessing and processing funds to missions must do this with an urgent sense of responsibility. We must end the unnecessary international embarrassment we cause ourselves over our incessant delays in paying our rents and bills in missions.

18. In all these, we must embrace technology. In other words, if you are not computer literate, I urge you today, to go to a computer school and equip yourself. There is no way we can be competitive in today’s world, if we do not equip ourselves technologically and utilize ICT in our work. Equally, I also doubt our effectiveness in advancing our mandate when we can only communicate in one international language, the fact that we are serving in linguistic zones different from ours notwithstanding. A 21st century Nigerian Diplomat must of necessity be bilingual, and therefore multi-lingual. Can I, therefore, hope that most officers on SGL 8-16, whether at Headquarters or in Missions would by next year have become bilingual? This can be achieved through both individual and collective effort.

19. In the next few days, I shall, as much as I can, engage in consultations and explore our preferences. Let it be known that, if we fail to voluntarily act as quickly as possible to address some of the challenges, some decisions would be forced on us. Already, the Federal Executive Council has directed the HCSF to examine our manning level. Time therefore is not on our side. However whatever we choose to do we must be guided by fairness, Justice and equity.

20. And so, if I am returning to emphasize on the need for a change of attitude and commitment to hard work, it is because it is key and imperative and there would be no compromise on this. I urge Under Secretaries and Directors to take this message back to their staff members as I will hold them primarily responsible and accountable for any hitches in the smooth functioning of their departments. I will depend on them to affect discipline and ensure that officers live up to their responsibilities. Above all we must ensure that we do not continue to reward lethargy. I also want you to help me re-assure the staff that we will do the best possible to boost the morale of staff, enhance their productivity and efficiency. We would try to seek and institute a mechanism for rewarding hardworking and deserving officers.

21. Let me re-iterate, therefore, that we must all internalize the culture of punctuality, discipline, hard work and team spirit required for the accomplishment of our goals. Let us endeavour to create a suitable and lasting system that would work for us. We cannot perform optimally without such an enduring system. All officers must have enough to do and must be assisted by their immediate bosses to realise and transcend their potentials.

22. I therefore wish to thank you all for your warm welcome felicitations and prayers. I am particularly touched by the outpouring of support and encouragement. I therefore look forward to working with you all for the good of our beloved Ministry and country.

Once again thank you all

MFA