By Ambassador Usman Sarki
Understanding the drivers of Nigeria’s foreign policy and the determinants of the national interest is an important activity that should occupy our passing moments of reflection. Moreover, in view of the many separate and intersecting issues that are prevailing in the world at the moment, the need to craft Nigeria’s positions on the main and relevant issues that are of interest to the country should be paramount in our consideration.
Some basic facts may be adduced by way of creating relevance and establishing the significance of Nigeria that would warrant her adopting a reasonably robust foreign policy posture in the world today. Nigeria is ranked among the top forty economies of the world. It has the fifth largest population and the 35th largest territory in the world. Nigeria’s location presents it with the unique attribute of a central power that could play a significant role in Africa, the Middle East and both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in relation to the Americas and the European continent.
Memories of yesteryears
Nigeria is a significant producer of natural resources particularly oil and gas, with additional production of mineral resources, and exportable extractive products both of mineral and agricultural components. This resource endowment has made Nigeria an attractive destination for foreign investment and other rewarding economic and financial transactions. Nigeria could also become a transport hub and transit post between Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas either through air links or maritime trade.
Nigeria’s historical affinities also present it with the attributes of a friendly power to countries of North Africa and the Middle East and the Southern European states. Demographics and historical human dispersal have linked Nigeria to the states of the Caribbean, Latin and North America.
By virtue of trade and commercial engagements, Nigeria has increasingly been brought closer to countries both near and far in Africa and elsewhere. Nigeria today enjoys close partnership with China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and many Asiatic countries.
Its liberal policies and accommodative nature have allowed foreigners from all lands and climes to come and seek their fortunes and live in her ample spaces. Likewise, Nigerians in their countless numbers are able to visit and live in far-flung countries like China and India, the UAE, the United States and United Kingdom, South Africa and all the ECOWAS member-states and many more.
Nigeria’s ties with Europe are both longstanding and very far-reaching. They encompass people-to-people contacts and relations on a far greater scale than with other regions of the word. Trade and commercial ties and investments have linked the destinies of the two partners together. Various mechanisms have been established that have ensured the strengthening of relationships between Nigeria and the European Union member-states.
Across the Atlantic, Nigeria had for long enjoyed cordial and friendly ties with the United States and Canada. Ties of education, science, military cooperation, travels and culture as well as history, have rendered them inseparable in either good or trying times and situations.
Also, Nigeria’s relations with the Caribbean and Latin American countries are conditioned by history, culture and other identities and factors. Brazil, Haiti and Cuba in particular, contain substantial populations of Africans tracing their roots to Nigeria. The continued survival of archaic cultural and religious practices derived in the past from Nigeria still survive in enclaves in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and other states of South America.
Nigeria’s relations with African countries are fundamental and cardinal to its global outlook and assessment of its own standing and worth in the global scheme of things. Nigeria finds a reflection of her being and purpose in the dynamic interaction with other African states. Its purposes of belonging to the African Union and ECOWAS for instance, are to foster amity everywhere in the continent.
Which doctrine might President Tinubu be cooking in Nigerian foreign policy?
Nigeria’s essential attribute is to restore the dignity of the Black person after its negation by centuries of slavery, colonialism and general conditions of backwardness and underdevelopment. The correcting of these adverse and negative perceptions that have relegated the Black person to a second class global citizen, is the major and fundamental task of the Nigerian state and its foreign policy posture.
Other desirable outcomes of its foreign policy should be the unification of the African continent along the lines enunciated by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and subsequently adopted by the African Union based on the structure of regional economic communities or RECs, with ECOWAS as the centerpiece.
Proceeding from the above general perspectives, it is necessary to assert the need for a discriminatory approach to the selection of Nigeria’s priority areas in the conduct of its foreign policy. Chief among such considerations is the building of capacity of the state institutions and machinery for the effective and efficient conduct of foreign policy. This will necessarily entail strengthening the position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the foremost statutory body responsible for the conduct of foreign policy in the country.
The roles and responsibilities of Nigerian Missions abroad and diplomatic and consular personnel should be assessed against the background of emerging challenges and opportunities that they will be collectively called upon to deal with. In this case, training of officers should be uppermost in the priorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its bid to make itself relevant and indispensable in the conduct of Nigeria’s foreign policy.
The adequate financing of the entire foreign policy and national security establishments of Nigeria must be based on the progressive and incremental significance of such institutions in the creation and seizing of opportunities to understand and overcome perceived challenges. This is particularly more so in the prevailing conditions of limited choices that will have to be made in the face of resource constraints and ever shrinking space for unilateral action on the global space.
This would naturally dovetail with the prioritization of objectives to be attained at the multilateral level of our diplomacy and interfacing with other actors on the regional and international scenes. Addressing issues like climate change and other global challenges would require a well-oiled diplomatic machine manned by highly trained and motivated cadre of officers dispersed around the world working in unison to ensure the lofty objectives of the Nigerian national interest are attained.
