Overhauling Nigeria’s foreign policy: My view

As we write (August 2011), a conference to assess and review Nigeria’s Foreign Policy is under-way in Abuja. Convened by the Emeka Anyaoku-led Presidential Advisory Committee on Foreign Relations, that meeting would be expected to chart out an acceptable foreign policy thrust for the Jonathan years, and perhaps beyond.

As publisher of the bi-lingual pan-African newspaper, The Difference, this writer considers himself to be a stakeholder in this territory. And so he would be making this comments that follow from that prism. 

Indeed, this summit would not have come at a more auspicious time as in the course of traversing the West African sub-region where the paper has presently taken physical root, and interacting with both its peoples and the very large Nigerian communities that have since settled there, I has since come to a conclusion that there may be a more pragmatic need to now declare ‘West Africa,’ not all of Africa, as the new centerpiece of Nigerian Foreign Policy.

Going down memory lane, Nigeria’s foreign policy has seen some relative motion. In the days immediately following Independence, the Balewa administration defined its thrust to be ‘non-alignment,’ particularly as it had to do with the then raging squabbles between the historical ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ blocs.

On assumption of office in July 1975 and at the peak of the closing struggle for the decolonization of the continent, the Murtala regime swung heavily in support of the African liberation movements, strongly affirming that colonialism must be halted in Africa, that she has ‘come of age’ and that flag independence for all of Africa was now to be the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy engagements. The country, rightly then became a well-regarded and indeed much respected ‘frontline state,’ notwithstanding that a lot of the immediate theatre of war at that time was in the relatively distant Southern African axis of the continent! 

It is all now history, but coming also at a time when Nigeria witnessed its first oil boom, many of our brothers from the continent’s West Coast made their way into the country to partake in the goodies that God had so liberally bestowed on their big brother. Quite a handful of these were from the neighbouring countries of Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali and Senegal.

Today, with the country’s population almost bursting at its seams and with the very unfortunate leadership hiatus that has seen successive governments fail to translate boom eras into sustained prosperity, we have presently come to be faced with the reality of reverse migration with very many Nigerians traversing the coastlines of the sub-region in search of the better life.

As a nation that is clearly set for global heights once it puts its house in order, it is tempting for Nigeria to define its foreign policy to embrace all of the world. It is also possible to define this within the context of a now nebulous 'Africa-centredness,' Again, there may be flights of fancy to define it within the prism of the now most patronising 'search for foreign investments!' But this writer would allign more closely at this time with the Chinwezuan paradigm that if Nigeria must stand for anything at this time, it should be aspiring to be Africa's first renascent 'Black' power. And what better way (and easier also) does she have to start but through consolidating relations with fellow West African states in an expanded West African economy.

And the 'facts on ground' do aid our proposition. Undoubtedly today, Nigeria is already a foremost player in the West African sub-region in many respects. In terms of sheer numbers, its population of 150 million people is just under half of the overall figure of 300m for the entire sub-region. Its economy is the strongest and it not only plays host to the headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it is the West African country with the most widespread diplomatic representation in the sub-region.

Further, when there are the occasional and sometimes perennial crisis situations in the sub-region, it is its soldiers that comprise the bulk of peacemakers that are drafted to contain the situations even as it equally towers over its neighbours in the sporting arena as well as in the influence charts of global diplomacy. Very safely then, Nigeria is unarguably a West African power.

But with power comes responsibility. Thus, as many of its neighbours see it, the challenge before West Africa’s ‘big brother’ is how it would harness its monumental God-given endowment and placement in the interest of all of the peoples of the sub-region. This I believe are the details that the Anyaoku-Jonathan conference should  be proceeding to fill at this point.