Dr. Elijah Onyeagba is the Nigerian Ambassador to Burundi. With a degree in Economics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he also holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Calabar, a Master’s in Applied Economics from the American University in Washington DC, USA, and a Ph.D. in Economics (Public Policy).
A BOT member of IgbaK’Igba Foundation, Onyeagba sits on the Advisory board of Democracy Youth Roundtable. An Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow of the African Leadership Institute, he is also a Senior Member of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIB) and a Fellow of the Institute of Treasury and Financial Administration (FITFA).
He has over 20 years of experience in commercial, corporate, retail, mortgage banking, real estate, research, marketing, and leadership. He is an expert in the structuring and advisory on construction finance deals, with a specialty in residential/affordable housing projects.
He was the CEO of Countrywide Housing Company (CHC) – a company that was set up to develop affordable housing units in Nigeria and to create value within the Nigerian housing ecosystem. He also worked as Head of Commercial (Marketing & Sales), Northern Operations of the Nigeria Securities, Printing and Minting (NSPM Plc).
Before that, he was the Group Head (AGM) in charge of Real Estate Transaction in ASO Savings & Loans Plc; Nigeria’s largest originator of mortgage assets with additional responsibility of overseeing the company’s business concerns within the Federal Capital Territory, North and the Southern Regions of Nigeria. Before joining ASO, Onyeagba worked with Equitorial Trust Bank (Now Sterling Bank) as Head of Business, Bond Bank (Now Skye Bank) as a relationship manager, and Platinum Bank (Now Keystone Bank) as a relationship officer and customer service officer. He also worked as a research assistant with the Policy Analysis and Research Group (PARG).
Onyeagba is an alumnus of the International Housing Finance Program and Securitisation of the Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania. He has undergone several leadership and management courses at Harvard Business School, USA – High Potential Leadership Program (HPLP) – 2008, Leadership Development (LD) 2009; Wharton Business School, USA – Strategic Marketing – MT 2010; Said Business School, Oxford, UK, 2012 and INSEAD Business School, Fontaine Bleau, France – Leadership Transition LT, 2013.
In this interview with Onyeagba spoke on his exploits in Burundi, his life as a diplomat, and the political situation in Nigeria.

What has been your experience so far as the Nigerian ambassador to Burundi?
I was appointed the Nigerian Ambassador to Burundi by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2020 and it was about a year before we were deployed. My background is in the economy, banking, real estate, and, of course, enterprise. Because I wasn’t trained for diplomacy, that timing allowed me the liberty to study and understand how diplomacy works. I spoke to a few people, persons you could refer to as authorities in diplomacy.

There is a woman called Prof. Joy Ogwu, who was a former Nigeria permanent representative to the United Nations. She was also a former Nigerian Minister for Foreign Affairs. I called her, she was in the US, and I introduced myself. I told her ‘I’m a young person recently appointed by the president, I don’t know where I am going to be posted, but I felt it was important to talk to you,’ and she said “Okay.”

She surprised me first. She told me to call her back by 6 pm, and then I called her by 2 minutes to 6; she was ready to pick up the call. I remember her telling me, ‘That’s a good start because as a diplomat, your time is your time; that is one of the things you must learn.’

After a long discussion, she tried to know who sent me, and all of that. I just introduced myself. She told me what she had been doing, what she had been up to, what she did in the past, but she said all of the conversations weren’t enough for me, that she needed me to go to Lagos and meet the director of the National Institute for International Affairs (NIIA) on Victoria Island. She said I should go and meet the ambassador there, and I should just say from Joy Ogu. So, I went to Lagos.

The first day, I didn’t meet the man. So, I just took up a hotel on Victoria Island and slept there. A day or two later, the man came. I just introduced myself and told him who sent me, and all of that. So, the man started loading me with a lot of books on the practice of diplomacy, the history of diplomacy, Nigeria’s relation with the rest of the world, and how foreign policies have moved from Shagari to Obasanjo, to Babangida, up to President Buhari.

So, I bought a lot of books; I spent close to a million naira buying books on diplomacy. I spent time reading those books. If I were to write exams, I could say that I would have had a Diploma in Diplomacy and International Relations.

So, by the time we were called for induction, I already had a very good background theoretically. I haven’t practised, but that time allowed me to prepare. Eventually, I found out I was posted to Burundi. Everybody was upset about it, including the minister. They thought I was going to Europe, but maybe something happened last minute.

What did you do when you found out you were going to serve in Burundi and not Europe?
You see, I have never been a very good lobbyist for positions, so I told myself, if it is Burundi, no problem, we will go. I searched for Burundi on Google, they said it is the poorest nation on earth and all of that. But I was pretty much open-minded. First, I was young; I was appointed ambassador at the age of 42, so, I was young. Again, I didn’t think it is a good idea to even start big; I felt it was also good to start small and then you can find something you can build on. So, Burundi presented a good start for me. If you make mistakes, you have the opportunity to amend.

What was the feeling when you arrived in Burundi?
I got to Burundi and I just told myself, ‘You know what, we will try to put in a lot of energy, passion, and commitment towards diplomacy.’ I got to Burundi on April 26, a month down the line (May 21, 2021). I was asked to go and present my letter of credence to the president and we immediately clicked; he loved my vibes, he loved some of the things I said and just from the first meeting, he said, ‘I like you already, you are here, it seems you want to focus your energy on economic diplomacy.’ Those are the words he used, and I said, ‘You have played into my turf.’

On my 90th day in Burundi, we inaugurated the Nigerian-Burundi Joint Commission. Establishing a joint commission is establishing a platform where governments of countries have an understanding; it is a platform where they can say they have a bilateral relationship. So, within 90 days, we established the commission that made the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs come to Burundi with people from the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Education, Trade and Investment basically to look at what is going on.

From there, we established that maiden edition and in that process, we also signed very important bilateral agreements on political consultation between both countries, a bilateral agreement on education cooperation and then we commenced discussing bilateral agreements on economics, trade, and investments, as well as on technical aid assistance to Burundi. We kick-started the discussion, but we signed two agreements. The Nigerian team was in Burundi for about a week just basically looking at the agreements and then we eventually inaugurated and signed the agreements and everybody went their way.

How important are those agreements to Nigeria and Nigerians?
In diplomacy, it is not just signing agreements; there are a thousand and one agreements that the Nigerian government already signed. The issue is how to implement those agreements. So, Mn the backdrop of that agreement, I found out that there was an opportunity to begin to link the education institutions in both countries.

Under that agreement, the University of Uyo reached out to us through the Ministry of Education for an exchange programme. They sent some professors to come to Burundi to do programmes and vice visa. I also brought the Vice Chancellor of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University to Burundi to sign another MoU on research, students exchange programme, and so on.

In that regard, I also felt that there was an opportunity to have a Nigerian university in Burundi. I called some investors to come in. Today, there is a Nigerian-owned university, English-speaking, the first private university to offer Pharmacy, Nursing, Computer Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Surgery in Burundi. It is owned by a Nigerian, 100 per cent.

That agreement on education cooperation provided for the implementation of this. So, I didn’t think it was enough to just sign agreements and move on; we signed the agreement, and we followed it up with action, just to have things that we can say are the legacies.

If I leave Burundi today, any day I come back, I know that Olivia University in Burundi is part of my legacy as an ambassador of Nigeria to Burundi. That was about that.

I looked at Burundi and I felt that there were a lot of things that we could do between the two countries. That relationship commenced in 2006, but when I looked through the files, other than the reports that they wrote, there isn’t anything concrete that has happened between the two countries.
It looks like that mission started with you because not much happened in Burundi until you arrived.

I didn’t find anything on the ground, but I was determined to make the best of that opportunity. So, I looked at the country and I said, ‘Okay, but it is a small country, 12 million 29,000sqkms, just maybe the size of Kogi State or Niger State.’ It is not as big as Nigeria, but, of course, laden with a lot of opportunities. They have opportunities across all sectors, from infrastructure to finance to tourism, to education, to health… Burundi is like a virgin country because they have had their history of war, they are just coming out of war.

I studied Burundi and one of those things you find in the country is that they are a nation that has suffered, the Tutsi-Hutu crisis was a big problem for the country, so they are coming out of that with distrust for themselves. If you sit down with the Burundians, it is difficult to get information out of them, but I also understand that these are cultural issues, that are a result of what they had gone through in the past.

You can’t have a meeting with a Burundian and walk away thinking that they haven’t told you anything, because they hardly speak. I found out that you have to do something with them over and over again before they can earn your trust and begin to open up.
How stable is the politics of Burundi; are there things to learn from their political culture?

I found their political practice a bit stable, and very much interesting. They amended their constitution, providing a 7- year tenure for the president and the president can run for two tenures. The president, as I speak, is in the third year of his first tenure. So, you can sit through 14 years. The political economy is stable, so you can see through it. They have fought a civil war, but one of the things they did while amending the constitution was to address all of the problems from the civil war.

What are those specific issues addressed in their constitutional review?
For example, their senate is split 50-50 in gender and tribe. Every political party knows that they must, for every province or state, have two senators, one must be a Hutu, and the other one must be a Tutsi. One must be male while the other one must be female. This is the way you present the candidates.

So, in their senate, they’ve achieved that balance, 50 per cent of senators are females, 50 per cent of senators are males. Also, 50 per cent of senators are Hutu, and 50 per cent of senators are Tutsi. These are part of the things they negotiated in their agreement.

One more important thing that I even found impressive is the fact that after the elections, the party that came second nominates three people for the president to choose a vice president.

So, a presidential candidate in Burundi does not pick a vice president before the election?
No, they don’t pick a running mate. You vote for only the president, but the party that comes second in the presidential elections will nominate three people from outside the president’s tribe for him to pick the vice president.

The question again one may want to ask is: what happens if the president dies? Their constitution is structured so that if the president dies, the leader of the parliament takes over power because he will come from the majority party. But that inclusion of having someone who is from the other tribe and the other party sorts of creates some level of balance. You lose an election but you don’t entirely lose out; there is some level of representation in the government.

Is there a lesson from that system for Nigeria?
For us as a country, the challenge is that we fought a civil war and continued as though nothing happened. We fought a civil war, very bitter, people died, properties were lost and we just said no victim, no vanquished, and some of the challenges that led to the civil war are not addressed.

In Burundi, they also fought a war. It was a tribal war fought for years and people died. You know about the issue of genocide, whether it is Rwanda or what have you because Rwanda and Burundi are the same people; they are the same tribe. So, whatever is happening here is also happening there, at the same time. But they have reflected some of these issues in their constitution to try and address them.

For example, the Tutsi are about 15 per cent of the population, and the Hutu are far more, but the Tutsi are the elites, so they have been able to negotiate that they can still maintain 50-50 in the Senate. These are some of the things. When you begin to talk to one another, you can develop a constitution that is of the people and some of the issues like marginalisation, representation, and gender equality will be resolved.

They don’t have the resources yet, you can’t call them a great nation yet, but they have all the indices for development, it is just a timing difference.

Did you see any influence of religion at all in their politics?
Unfortunately, Burundi is about 90 per cent Christian, but they still do have a Muslim community that respects themselves and everybody lives in peace in Burundi. And for them, their independence and some of those things that have happened, they fought, people entered the bush and fought from the bush and took over the government, so they spilled blood.

For us, I think we got independence on a platter of gold, so somehow, we probably didn’t even understand what happened when it happened. But, as I said, usually wars are caused by hatred, marginalization, and injustice, among others.

You must look to the Constitution and try and make an attempt to address those issues. So, this is the difference politically between Burundi and Nigeria.

I found out that in the country, they are poor but they do a lot of running; they do a lot of exercise. In Burundi, it is normal in the afternoon to see somebody running, it is normal to see people in the daytime, in the evening, even late in the night, at 10 pm, running and I tried to find out what is exactly the history behind the running.

You know they have a lot of hills and all of that, East Africans generally are very good athletes. What I found out was that it was because of the war. People needed to exercise so that even if you don’t have a gun to shoot, you can at least run. So, this is the history of where that comes from. In Burundi, people run even with bare feet.

I then decided to institute an event around running. If you go to Burundi today, there is an event, there is even a website for it, if you click run Buja. Buja is a short form of Bujunbura, so I introduced an event called “Run Buja” that we usually do around Nigeria’s Independence Day.

Usually, we invite people, they register online and we give them T-shirts, they come out, and we organise it with the athletes. We have done it for two years now, back to back, and we give prizes. Sometimes I get companies in Burundi to come in and sponsor the invite. It is something that I can call my legacy. I call it the “Ambassador’s Trophy”.

How were you able to get the locals to key into the project?
I went to the Ministry of Sports, spoke to the athlete’s federation and we organised it. We have done it and we will continue to do it. Even this year, we will do it again on October 1st. Any Saturday around October 1, we will try to do the event.

They provide us with police, an ambulance and it is usually a very big event. This is one of the events we do just to find a way to ensure that the name Nigeria resonates with the Burundians.
Talking about the Nigeria – Burundi Business Council, what’s the idea behind the initiative?

I felt that now that the government has established a platform for the countries to talk, there is a need for the private sector to come in. So, we established Nigeria-Burundi Business Council which had some people from Nigeria and some people from Burundi working together.

In alliance with the Council, we organised the maiden edition of the Nigeria-Burundi business summit that was attended by people from fashion industry, education, and ICT. We sat down and spoke to ourselves. One of the things we left that meeting with was the signing of an MoU by a Nigerian company to supply a Burundian company $20 million worth of Urea as a raw material for fertiliser production.

In addition to some of those things, quite a lot of Nigerian people are now talking to Burundian business people just to see how we can continue to improve on ourselves. We have had the maiden edition. For the first time, the president of Burundi came to declare open the event of the Nigeria-Burundi business summit himself. He doesn’t really attend events of this nature, but because of the relationship we have, he came himself to declare that event open.

In between, we have had people visiting. We have the Nigeria Defence College, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Study (NIPSS) in Kuru, near Jos. About two sets actually came to visit Burundi. We have had the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) people come, we have had the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) people come, we have had the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) people, we have had even the former first lady visit Burundi as well. So, we have put in a lot of works that I think Nigerians now know that there is a country called Burundi.

Burundi is a small country but Nigeria’s presence is noticed there. You know the way diplomacy is, sometimes you are required to take business from the country of tour of duty to Nigeria, but where there is nothing to take, you can also do the other way round, you can take Nigeria to that place.

They are also good with entertainment, if you go to their clubs, pubs and restaurants, 90 per cent of the music they play there is by Nigerian musicians. Each time you say you are a Nigerian, they are like ‘Wow.’

How has that helped your mission?
I am arguably the most popular diplomat in Burundi, to be honest across all countries. We have America, the UK, all of these, but I think the Nigerian Embassy has done a lot of programmes so much so that the last time I was with the South African ambassador, he said, ‘Each time I see you, I feel like I am not doing any work, come and tell me how are you doing these things. I feel guilty that I am just being paid to do nothing.’

At the moment, I have brought a Nigeria that is going to be doing a big real estate project at their new capital called Kitega. His name is Dr. Chigbo, he has some investors and they are talking to Burundians to do a project of about $20 million somewhere at the heart of Kitega.

This is about what we are doing, but in Burundi, they obey the rule of law because it has been militarised over the years. Even when a policeman blows a whistle, it signals something in Burundi.
When a policeman stops you, you must stop.

In Burundi, for example, they just introduced speed limits on certain roads; they have cameras that track when you are coming and know your speed. They are not there yet, traffic there cannot be compared to what you see in any part of Nigeria, because it is a small country. You can drive through the whole of Burundi in six to seven hours on the same day. The country is small, but they are yearning for infrastructure.

The interesting thing about the country is that it houses the second largest lake in the world called Lake Tanganyika, which is 760 km long and 75 km wide. Burundi is surrounded by Rwanda, Congo DRC, and Tanzania. They are part of the East Africa Community (EAC). It is about seven countries; Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Congo DRC.

The president of Burundi at the moment is the chairperson of the East African summit; that is the reason I insisted that he has to come for our inauguration. He is not just coming as the president of Burundi, he is also coming as the leader of East Africa.

This is what we have done, it is a lot of work. I actually have a feeling that I am done with my assignment, because what I have done there in the last two years is much more than what has been done since the embassy opened. So, I have done my quota, let another person actually come and continue with what we have done. but it is actually a big shoe that whoever is coming must find a way to fill.

What has been the experience for you as a young person?
It’s has been quite a very good experience for me as someone that doesn’t even have any background in diplomacy to just push in and do some of the things we have done. So, that’s about what we have done in Burundi.

You are back in Nigeria, how do you feel about our politics?

First of all, you must understand that I am from All Progressives Congress (APC). I joined politics in 2014, but not actively. From banking, I went to work for Nigeria Security Printing and Minting, but I developed an active interest in 2014 when the formation of APC was going on. I actually participated in Anambra State governorship election in 2017 as an APC member; we did a lot of work for Tony Nwoye, unfortunately, he didn’t win the elections, but it has been a long journey for me.

APC in Anambra, APC in the South East is a big problem. There is a total disconnect, I think from Buhari’s presidency of 2015. People of the zone voted en masse for the PDP and clearly the president at the time also made a couple of comments that suggested that people that didn’t vote for the party shouldn’t expect to get certain kinds of appointments and that created a distrust that, as time went on, it didn’t really matter the amount we spent on projects in South East; people of South East didn’t feel that they were part of the government.

However, for me, I have always known that I am going to join politics. My work for Nigeria Security Printing and Mint was just to have experience working in the civil service more or less. It wasn’t because I was going there looking for anything, but I just wanted to have it in my CV that I have worked in that setting because it is different principalities working there; the making of the organisation is entirely different from the corporate setup where I come from.

I felt that for you to be in a position to make policy for certain sorts of people, you needed to have been part of them so that it is easier for you to understand their psyche, how they think, and how they behave. That is actually the reason I went into that place.

What’s your take on political inclusion?
The people that designed Nigeria, part of the things they had in mind was inclusion. That is actually where the federal character sneaked in. We are a country that is made up of several nations, and 250 tribes, we are not more than the tribes in America, they speak over 300 languages. We are also not more than the number of languages that are being spoken in the US, but irrespective of these differences, they have managed to find unity in the course of building a nation.

I’m an Igbo man, but Nigeria must find expression or my Igboness must find expression within the Nigerian context without necessarily having to be seen as someone fighting Nigeria, because of my ethnic background. We have to find a way to collectively bridge this, because I have seen a lot in diplomacy that opened my eyes to so many things.

We will not compete with the world powers concerning strong factors like military, infrastructure, and technology, but we have something that is going for us; we have soft powers in terms of our culture, music, movies, and even diplomacy. It is part of our soft powers that we can deploy.

If you go to O2 Arena in London, 100,000 capacity, when Burna Boy is performing, it is filled to the brim and less than 5 per cent are Nigerians. The world comes; 120,000 people gathered in a place. They pay so much money to watch Burna Boy or Davido or WizKid. That is a strong power that you can’t afford to ignore.

If you move around Africa, nearly every country is in love with what we have done with our entertainment, Nollywood, and all of that. Nigerian music has taken the world by storm; Kizz Daniel’s Buga went viral globally. We are not where we can say we have all the technologies, we have the military, but we have soft powers that I believe we can engage the world.

That is why I feel that as a young populated country, the leadership and governance structure must find expression; must allow the young talents to feel comfortable to express themselves. That is why I always argue that the only way to get it right for us is to get the young people involved in governance because you can’t make policies for the young people when they are not on the table.

But when you give them an opportunity to be at the table, they will speak to their people, their age mate, and their classmates in the language that they will understand. That is actually one of the things.

I remember when Tinubu was declared the winner of the election, one of the first things he said was, ‘Nigeria youths, I heard you and I heard you very loudly.’ He said that like two or three times.

Also, in his inaugural speech, he said very clearly that the young people of Nigeria would feature prominently in his government. So, I think the youths are looking up to him.

There have been a lot of changes here and there. Even the naysayer or people that didn’t believe in him are beginning to be convinced that Tinubu is ready and indeed prepared for the job.

We are hoping that he will give a lot of young people the opportunities because he is a man we’ve known to be a driver for excellence; someone that will identify talent and nurture them and try to groom them into something big. We are hoping that his government will also allow a lot of young people to show their talent.