The Foreign Service Journal, December 2018

32 DECEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL A retired FSN reflects on his experience working for the United States in Nigeria. BY I D I KA ONYUKWU Idika Onyukwu was the publications specialist and editor of Crossroads , the flagship publication of the U.S. Mission in Nigeria, before leaving the State Department and emigrating to the United States. He served under nine different U.S. ambassadors and several counselors for public affairs and press attachés. W hen I joined the United States Information Service as a Foreign Service National in August 1994, I planned to stay with the agency for three years and then return to my first love, journalism. Instead, I ended up spending 20 eventful and thoroughly enriching years working for the Department of State. I left the service in May 2015. Two notable factors contributed to my long stay at the embassy. Given the comparative strength of the U.S. dollar against the local currency, it made economic sense for me to stick with the U.S. mission. But more important was that I saw the obvious commitment of the U.S. mission to directly impacting the Nigerian people through the development of our communities. Through my work, I was playing a part in helping Nigerian communities realize their developmental aspirations. In 1999 when the United States Information Agency was folded into the Bureau of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, I became a Foreign Service National with the public affairs section of the embassy—not by choice, but by administra- tive fiat. I had my fears entering a new agency whose structure and operational modalities, especially decision-taking abilities, were quite different from what I had come to cherish at USIS. Through the Lens of anFSN: ON FSN PERSPECTIVES FOCUS Ambassador Robin Sanders commissions the Goronyo water borehole, July 18, 2007. IDIKAONYUKWU