Amb. Ijeoma Chinonyerem Obiezu learned politics in the wards of Ideato North, Imo State, long before she learned diplomacy. Her first public role was community speaker. Her most recent was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Ireland, a post that also covered Iceland.
She presented her Letters of Credence to President Michael D. Higgins in September 2021. Two years later she was home again, one of many envoys called back when President Bola Tinubu recalled every Nigerian ambassador in September 2023.
In a new episode of PEG Dialogues, Ambassador Obiezu sits down for a frank conversation about that recall, the long wait for new ambassadors, the Nigerian community she served abroad and her plans for the years ahead.
On the recall, she does not hold back.
“In my opinion, and I may be right or wrong, I don’t think the President was properly advised and briefed on how diplomacy works,”
she says.
Nigeria waited until January 2026 for its first new ambassadorial postings, and she believes the country paid a real price for the delay.
“It takes an ambassador to open certain doors,”
she explains, describing the access that slipped away while the posts sat empty.
Her road to Dublin did not run through the foreign service. She rose from ward politics to local government chairman, then to deputy chairman of the Imo State Board of Internal Revenue and Special Assistant to Governor Rochas Okorocha.
“I started at the bottom and worked my way up,”
she says. In the episode, she explains why she believes political ambassadors bring a boldness that the job often needs, and she backs the claim with a story from her own posting.
That story is the Nigeria Ireland Trade and Investment Summit, which she brought to Dublin in 2022. By her account, nothing like it had happened in more than fifteen years. She talks about the doubts she met from within the system and how she pushed the summit through anyway.
She also speaks warmly about Nigerians in Ireland, from county councillors to senior professionals in health and technology, and shares her view that diplomacy is now everybody’s business.
The conversation ends on the question many people in Imo are already asking. Has she left politics behind? Her answer is short and clear.
“I am still in politics,” she says.
What she plans to do with that, and why she believes the platform still matters, is in the full interview.
Watch the full conversation with Ambassador Ijeoma Obiezu on the PEG Dialogues YouTube channel: youtube.com/@pegdialogues
