The Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, (NIIA), is still stretching the reaches of contemporary international politics by bringing sports and diplomacy into a conversation. This conversation coming up Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 thus offers a subject-matter that escapes (neo)-realism and its inclination to so-called hard foreign policy analysis which has dominated foreign policy analysis since the late 1970s.
Nigerian geopolitical practices does not include systematic deployment of sports yet
Courtesy of NIIA principally, International Relations scholarship and practice is gradually incorporating ideas, norms, culture, discourse and practices in the analysis of (Nigerian) International Relations and foreign policy. Thursday’s conversation, for instance, is a project of its Sports and Diplomacy unit, running the theme: Festac of Sports.
Although Nigeria is yet to move into deliberate mobilisation of sports as an instrument of global geopolitical identity, it is the sort of conversation the NIIA is bringing about that will provide the discursive condition of possibility for such systematic deployment of sporting as a crucial part of the country’s foreign policy beyond the momentary joy of defeating an opponent.
NIIA’s Zoom meeting which is part of its ‘The conversations’ series is scheduled for 11:00 am (West Central Africa), the Meeting ID being: 831 4223 6536 and the Passcode: 590088. The link from NIIA is given as https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83142236536?pwd=MDNwUzdTdDJ0dEVnZStzNU9FVHdxZz09
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