Former UN diplomat appointed foreign minister

President Olusegun Obasanjo has named a former United Nations diplomat as Nigeria’s foreign minister in the first cabinet post to be filled since his re-election in April, officials said on Thursday. Oluyemi Adeniji, who was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative to Sierra Leone, was sworn into office on Tuesday morning. He immediately embarked on his first official mission, flying out with the president to attend the African Union summit in Maputo, Mozambique. "The President decided he wanted a career diplomat as foreign minister this time and chose Adeniji," a foreign affairs official told IRIN. Adeniji was among 40 ministerial nominees whose names were submitted to the Nigerian Senate for screening and approval late last month. He was one of four sworn in by Obasanjo on Tuesday, but the only one assigned a portfolio. The screening process was scheduled to be concluded at the Senate this week. Under Nigeria’s delicate ethnic and geopolitical balancing, Obasanjo had chosen at least one nominee from each of Nigeria’s 36 states. Adeniji, like the president, is from the southwestern Ogun State. After he won office for a second term, Obasanjo had declared he was going to chose for his ministers and advisers some Nigerians who had distinguished themselves in international organisations. Among the nominees is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Vice-President of the World Bank, who has been designated minister of finance. She would be the first woman to serve in such a capacity in Africa’s most populous country of 120 million people.