Amb Nicholas Ella, Nura Rimi As a Window on 8 New Perm Secs in Nigeria

Correction

It has become necessary to correct two impressions created by this story, based on calls from readers.

(1) This story did not imply that Ambassadors Nicholas Ella and Nura Rimi are from the same state in Nigeria. It joined the two only because they are the ones whose exposure is being used to demonstrate the solidity of this cohort of PS. While Ella is from Benue, Rimi is from Katsina State.

(2) They did not join the service in 1983 as erroneously reported. Even at the level of common sense, that is not possible since such would mean that, Ella, for example, joined before or immediately after secondary school which is not the case. It was rather in the early 1980s he finished secondary school, then to the School of Basic Studies and the Faculty of Law at ABU, Zaria and then Law School in Lagos. For a while, Ella was in Lagos rejecting several federal offers because he had decided that the foreign service is the place to be. What this background means is that he could not have joined foreign service before 1993. Proving that should not be a headache for any Thomasses since recruitment into the service is done in cohorts.

Intervention thanks all callers on this matter. Enjoy the story of two of the latest set of technocrats in town as originally presented:

It might seem a routine, quota-based filling of the bureaucratic machine which underpins federal power but the appointment of eight new Permanent Secretaries by President Bola Tinubu may also be seen as a fortification move too. This conclusion is inevitable if one takes the two of the eight new PS who emerged from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although the recruitment pattern did not follow what Professor Bola Akinyemi has been recommending to Nigeria – a Foreign Service Commission – instead of subjecting recruitment and selection process in the foreign service to the logic of the Federal Civil Service Commission, the outcome satisfies what Akinyemi must have in mind: diplomats with the turn of minds that can anticipate the world from the Nigeria standpoint.

Intervention is keener on the foreign affairs component of the new PS not because the foreign service is different or superior to the home service. No, it is basically because in a world of complicated great power peer competition as is today, the home and foreign service do completely interconnected but different things.

A recent internet picture of Amb Ella (middle) during Nigeria’s 63rd Independence celebration in Senegal

No observer would, therefore, be anything but pleased that Ambassador Nicholas Agbo Ella, one of the two from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has served as a Nigerian diplomat in the UN system, in the United States and in China. Add India, an emergent global power to his list of Nigerian missions he has served. What a better Permanent Secretary than one who has experienced the Great-2, the name suggested for China and the US but which they rejected to bear.

Some others such as the late General Murtala Muhammed would add for Ella his overwhelming height as an instrument of diplomacy. It is not clear where Murtala got his sense of the body from as biopolitics could not have been a taught subject in any military academy during Murtala’s time. But he made a big point of the late General Joe Garba towering over Henry Kissinger almost to the point of physically looking down on the then American Secretary of State.

Those who would not be fascinated by the spread of missions he has served or his physical attribute in terms of pleasant overwhelming presence that reflects the Nigerian size and global ambition – President Tinubu is saying that “Nigeria is the candle of hope that will light the way for Africa” – might be interested instead in the records of his service at the Headquarters. Intervention is told Ambassador Ella served in the Postings and Discipline Section, Legal and Treaties Division, African Affairs, Office of the Honourable Minister of Foreign Affairs and headed the Consular and Legal Department as Director at one point or another.

An internet picture of Amb Nua Rimi in Cairo

There are informed elements inside and outside the Nigerian foreign service that are worried about the quality or depth of diplomatic attention to Nigeria’s neighbours. Such elements might be keener on Ambassador Ella’s record in that respect. There, they would find he served in Yaounde and headed the Embassy in Dakar, Sénégal as Charge d’Affaires prior to the announcement as one out of eight new PSs..

Ambassador Nura Abba Rimi is no less a chip off the old, record-breaking Nigerian diplomatic block in the early years of independence. Ambassador Rimi would hardly be out-competed in terms of hard work and thoroughness.

Intervention understands that when he served in the Nigerian mission in the UK, there was hardly any day that he missed being at Heathrow airport in London to receive one set of Nigerian delegation or another passing through the airport, notwithstanding the awkward time the British Airway flight from Nigeria, for example, arrived Heathrow in those days. And there were many others.

London is a city nobody can say s/he knows. Only very few people can find their way in London without having to read maps or train routes now and then. Ambassador Nura Rimi is one of the few who can find his way without reading anything. At home, he has worked in the Presidency or the seat of power, if you like. Above all, he has served as Ambassador to Egypt, one of Africa’s three power houses. Ambassador Rimi is reportedly mentioned at his as perhaps the only son of a former governor in Nigeria who has no iota of arrogance.

Interestingly, Ella and Rimi joined the foreign service the same year in 1993 and have bonded together so well, Intervention is told.

The argument in this story is that if the duo from the foreign service captures the totality of the six others in terms of versatility and quality mind, then there is a sense in which the appointment of the eight new Permanent Secretaries is beyond the routine. As funny as the logic of setting examinations for career officers with few years left before their exit from service, it sounds great to hear that the set is a product of merit. While the phenomenon of ‘Super Permanent Secretaries’ in those days is no longer thinkable, the possibility of some sanity due to injection of new blood may be thinkable. But only time may tell!