- Nigeria’s environment minister becomes global civil servant
The recent appointment of Mrs. Amina J. Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) is yet another testimony to the heights Nigerians are capable of reaching when ethnic, gender, religious and other primordial sentiments are set aside.
Like the recent appointment of Dr. Adebayo Ogunlesi to the Policy and Strategic Forum of incoming American President Donald Trump, Mrs. Mohammed’s elevation demonstrates Nigeria’s possession in abundance of world-beating human resources that it could put to beneficial use.
Mrs. Mohammed will join the incoming UN Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, as his deputy when he takes office next year. Her appointment marks the start of a long-awaited gender-based reform of the global body at its highest echelons and is accompanied by several other appointments of women to senior positions.
Mrs. Mohammed brings to her new office some three decades of unflagging commitment to the vexed issues of sustainable development, particularly as they relate to the environment. She has founded a private business concern and a think-tank, and has been nominated to serve on continental and global bodies such as Advisors for the Reform of the African Union, the Gates Foundation and the UN Secretary-General’s Global Sustainability Panel. She oversaw the Task Force on Gender and Education within the UN Millennium Project.
In Nigeria, she was Senior Adviser to Presidents Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As Minister of Environment, she spearheaded the Buhari administration’s comprehensive attempts to tackle long-standing oil pollution in the Niger Delta and mitigate the negative effects of environmental degradation elsewhere within the country.
Indeed, such is the significance of Mrs. Mohammed’s contributions to the development and implementation of environmental policy in Nigeria that the Federal Government must be careful to ensure that her replacement is endowed with similar skills and an equal level of commitment to ensuring that national development takes place within the framework of a strong environmental policy.
As Deputy Secretary-General, Mrs. Mohammed will help the UN manoeuvre its way through a world beset by old threats and new dangers, including the refugee crisis, climate change, conflict in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, as well as the regular eruption of regional health crises. The task will be made even more difficult by the rise of populism across Europe and in the United States. It is to be hoped that she will bring all her consensus-building and other skills to bear on what will definitely be a difficult assignment.
As Nigerian-born professionals and experts continue to garner recognition and respect across the world, their country of origin would do well to ensure that it is better able to avail itself of their services. It is tragic for there to be more medical doctors of Nigerian origin practising in the United States than in Nigeria, or to have Nigerian university teachers enhancing the reputation of universities abroad while local schools stagnate and decline.
However, if the country is to attract and retain the best, it must provide the conditions that will enable them to stay. Apart from issues of remuneration and conditions of service, this would mean undertaking an infrastructural overhaul, paying greater attention to the needs of the country’s extensive diaspora, and ensuring a reduced emphasis on appointment to public office as the standard form of political compensation.
It is especially important that these principles inform the Buhari administration as it prepares for the impending cabinet shakeup. Only proven records of outstanding achievement should determine who stays and who goes. Nigeria can no longer afford to present its second eleven while the rest of the world enjoys the sterling services of its most talented individuals.
