As the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, His Excellency, Godffrey Onyema, assumes office at the Tafawa Balewa House, Abuja  expectations are high on the future of the nation’s foreign policy and diplomacy. Nigeria needs a new foreign policy direction to remain relevant  both in Africa and on the world stage in the fast changing sphere of international diplomacy.

The Ohio governor announced his idea in a foreign policy speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., "I will consolidate them [U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting] into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share".

Recent developments at home and abroad suggest that Japan’s foreign policy is at a major turning point. Concrete steps are being taken to deepen the bilateral security alliance with the United States, and yet there is no national consensus on what should be done about the overconcentration of US bases in Okinawa. [...] The thrust of public diplomacy in the postwar years was to project an image of Japan that was not militarist. 

This latest report, alas, sticks to the idea of the UK as a global power with a unique contribution to make, if only in “soft power”. Well, our soft power benefited no end from the successful London Olympics, but the fallout from Abu Ghraib and the compensation paid to former inmates of Guantánamo have to be set against that.