I’ll be honest: I swear to God, I had to Google the name of Nigeria’s foreign minister to remember him. And any official whose name triggers a search engine before memory should, at the very least, come with a warning label.
Nigeria has never lacked underperforming foreign ministers. It’s almost a tradition — like jollof on Sundays or INEC confusion during elections. But Tuggar seems determined to elevate underperformance to an art form. And unfortunately for him (and for us), his limitations shine brighter because, for over two years, President Bola Tinubu has been too busy junketing to France and back to appoint ambassadors.
With no ambassadors in key capitals of the world to keep global relationships from falling apart, everything lands on Tuggar’s desk. It’s the diplomatic equivalent of leaving a toddler alone with your wedding cake.
You know it won’t end well, but somehow you hope for a miracle.
Worse still, Tinubu’s own past international entanglements are so delicate that he can’t face global media without worrying they might ask him questions whose correct answers are self-implicating.
And any non-answer would carry worse repercussions.
As a result, a diplomatic vacuum exists in Nigeria. It is so large it could swallow the Sambisa Forest.
Career diplomats, exhausted from years of no promotions, no recognition, and no clear direction, now look understandably unenthusiastic about bailing out the country. Meanwhile, politicians beg the president to deploy respected Nigerians to defend the nation’s reputation abroad — especially after Donald Trump reclassified Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” with allegations of Christian genocide.
And then came Tuggar’s performance on the Piers Morgan show, an interview so calamitous it deserves its own case study. His brief was simple: defend Nigeria. The result? He accidentally auditioned for the role of “How Not to Do Diplomacy.”
Even before the interview aired, our foreign minister was already sparring with Piers online — a sure sign that things had gone off-script.
“I appeared on Piers Morgan’s flagship programme where I presented a factual and contextual perspective on the misleading narratives and allegations of religious persecution in Nigeria,” Tuggar writes. “My explanations, supported by verifiable data, may not have conformed to certain preconceived views. However, for the sake of integrity and transparency, it is essential that the full interview be aired exactly as recorded, without edits or selective omissions. Nigeria’s truth must not be distorted to fit external biases.”
Right there, Tuggar sounded like a man either panicking or rehearsing a defence of a not-so-good performance. Like a shark, Piers Morgan smelt blood in the water and said so in his response.
“You seem to be panicking, Foreign Minister,” Morgan writes. “Rest assured, we will air your comments in full. The show is called Uncensored for a reason. Whether people believe what you said remains to be seen.”
To which Tuggar responded with a tantrum that would make Wike and Trump proud.
“I am as cool as a cucumber, Mr Morgan. And if I wasn’t more equable, I would say you are flattering yourself, but I won’t. Just want to make sure you don’t edit out the parts where you kept referring to “Chibok Boys”! Well researched.”
Emeka Anyaoku must be pulling his remaining hair out while reading this exchange. Bolaji Akinyemi must be chewing his bow tie, wondering what happened to the once-respected Foreign Ministry of the most populous black nation on earth.
Note to future diplomats: when in doubt, don’t act like a Twitter troll, even if Trump does it.
This is not how serious nations court the media, especially a country’s chief diplomat. Tuggar should leave these kinds of jobs to Reno Omokri and Femi Fani-Kayode.
That Marco Rubio does it for America does not mean that Yusuf Tuggar should do it for Nigeria. The rat that jumps into the rain because the lizard is dancing in the rain should be aware of the aftermath.
Imagine what serious media houses in the world think about Nigeria’s foreign minister when they read such an exchange. Folks at the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times will not be stepping on each other trying to interview such a character. Or maybe they will do so to get a laugh or a viral video clip.
But can we blame Tuggar entirely? For decades, Nigerian officials have avoided serious journalism, preferring the comfort of bendable local media where money places a leather boot on the head of the truth. Real interviews? Hard questions? Accountability? No, thank you — who needs that when you can pay for a glowing headline? And then the day comes when they must face journalists they cannot bribe with brown envelopes, and suddenly the emperor’s wardrobe reveals alarming transparency.
In Nigeria, we say, you think you’re doing me, but you’re doing yourself. Nigerians invented this phrase for this moment.
And let’s not forget the larger failure: Tuggar has not convinced President Tinubu to appoint ambassadors for over two years. What was the grand plan? Fire the old ones and replace them with… Abike Dabiri-Erewa and a gang of highly paid lobbyists?
Tinubu’s cabinet choices have been generally underwhelming, but his selections for Defence and Foreign Affairs deserve special mention. If governance were a relay race, these are the two legs you absolutely must get right — yet here we are, watching the baton dropped by these two Lilliputians at a critical juncture.
Their failure is not just Tinubu’s failure; it is a national failure. A system that rewards the least prepared cannot produce anything different. Tuggar may well go down as the worst foreign minister in Nigerian history, but the consequences — the embarrassment, the lost opportunities, the diplomatic stumbles — fall squarely on the shoulders of Nigerians.
In the end, it’s not about who holds the title of “worst.” It’s about who pays the price. And as always, it’s us.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History, Afrodiasporic Literature, and African Folktales at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of the Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life” and “Children of a Retired God,” among others. His upcoming book is called “A Kiss That Never Was.”
