I decided to confront the Director-General with the news that my God would remove him from office through a television announcement.
In 1986, I was appointed Special Adviser to Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi. When I was offered the job, my boss at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Professor Gabriel Olusanya, advised me to reject the offer. When I decided nevertheless to accept it, he gave me a bad security clearance. He said I was too close to my West Indian wife and would not be able to keep national secrets away from her. As a result, my appointment could not be confirmed.
Paradoxically, Professor Olusanya’s wife was also a West Indian. Moreover, the wife of Professor Akinyemi, the foreign minister I would be working with, was also not a Nigerian. She was British. It took the intervention of President Babangida to break the logjam. In his no-nonsense manner, the president gave the State Security Service an ultimatum to give me a security clearance within 48 hours.
Warfare
I was at the Ministry of External Affairs for a little less than two years. Then I took a decision that some insist was unwise: I decided to go back to the Institute. On return there, I faced a lot of petty persecutions from the Director-General, who now saw me as an adversary.
