Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, former presidential aide, has said that President Bola Tinubu’s administration is using the latest batch of ambassadorial postings to sideline political critics and “neutralize” potential rivals within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
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Baba-Ahmed, who resigned as special adviser on political affairs in the office of the vice-president in April 2023, made the remarks during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme aired last night. He described the nominations submitted to the Senate for confirmation earlier this week as a mix of competent career diplomats and politically motivated appointments aimed at “getting rid of” troublesome figures.
“I’ve seen critics of the president who suddenly are on that list,” Baba-Ahmed said, his tone laced with sarcasm. “And my initial instinct, I’ll be honest with you, was that President Tinubu is sending out all his critics outside the country to be ambassadors.”
The nominees include high-profile names such as former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, former Governor of Rivers State Rotimi Amaechi’s ally Reno Omokri, legal activist Femi Falana’s son (Femi Fani-Kayode), and several ex-governors from the pro-Tinubu “G5” group. Baba-Ahmed expressed particular concern over Yakubu’s inclusion, questioning the optics of appointing the man who oversaw the controversial 2023 elections to a global role so soon after his tenure.
“I hope Professor Mahmood Yakubu was consulted… Everything he did while he was in INEC, and everything he will do for the rest of his life, is going to be defined by what he did during his two terms in INEC,” Baba-Ahmed cautioned, emphasizing the need for “thorough thinking” to avoid perceptions of impropriety.
Drawing from his own experience as a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under President Goodluck Jonathan, Baba-Ahmed likened the non-career slots reserved for political appointees to a form of exile. “We used to say that you send out political appointees to be ambassadors because you want to get rid of them. They become a problem for you. So you send them out,” he explained. “And there have been one or two politicians who were sent out and literally neutralized because of their ambassadorial position. You literally cease to be relevant… Now, in two years, there are people on that list who would change identity entirely, and I’m not sure they will recover from being an ambassador outside the political mainstream.”
The 30-plus nominees, comprising both career foreign service officers and non-career politicians, aim to fill vacancies in Nigeria’s 90-plus diplomatic missions worldwide—a gap that has left the country “globally absent” for nearly two years under Tinubu, according to Baba-Ahmed. He lambasted the delay as a “disaster,” arguing it damaged Nigeria’s international standing, particularly amid recent U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to intervene in Nigeria’s security crisis over alleged “Christian genocide.”
“Two years is a long time not to have representation at the global level,” he said, pointing to missed opportunities for lobbying and crisis aversion. “If we had had an ambassador in the U.S., he has officers who are trained… to smell something. We are being watched. We are in trouble.”
Baba-Ahmed’s comments come amid broader backlash over the list’s regional imbalance, with critics noting an overrepresentation from Tinubu’s Southwest base (nine nominees) compared to slimmer picks from other zones. He urged the Senate to “scrutinize these individuals thoroughly,” prioritizing “personal integrity above everything else—above politics, above regionalism, above ethnicity.”
The Presidency has defended the appointments as “professionals with the experience needed to represent Nigeria’s interests,” aligning with Tinubu’s foreign policy reset. Senate screening is expected to begin next week.
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