Nigeria, July 19 -- 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 o...