By Prof Hassan Saliu
The recent editorial in The Guardian on Nigeria’s foreign policy reminds me of the releases that I issued on the subject matter. In the closing days of my tenure as President of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) I revisited the subject of Nigeria’s foreign policy, with particular reference to its trajectory in the current dispensation.
My intervention centered on what I characterised as a manifest decline in the efficacy and doctrinal clarity of Nigeria’s external relations. Specifically, I noted a departure from the post-independence principles of autonomy, activism, and Afro-centric leadership that historically undergirded the country’s international posture. The response to this critique in some quarters suggested that the assessment was overly severe.
However, the empirical basis for the concern remains compelling. First, there is the observable deterioration of Nigeria’s relations within its immediate sub-regional milieu — West Africa — a space that has traditionally constituted the fulcrum of its foreign policy. Second, and more troubling, is the emergence of a disposition of heightened subservience toward Great Power states. This trend appears to be rationalised under two emergent frameworks: the dilution of the doctrine of strategic autonomy, and the recent articulation of a “Nigeria First” posture.
Taken together, these developments portend a fundamental deconstruction of the historical linchpins of Nigeria’s foreign policy. To privilege narrow national interest calculations and external alignment over continental leadership is to evacuate the policy of its normative and strategic content.
Conclusion and Recommendations
It is against this background that I argued for an urgent recalibration of Nigeria’s foreign policy, to re-anchor it on its traditional mandate of providing leadership and stability on the African continent — a role that constitutes one of Nigeria’s most enduring legacies in international relations. The abandonment of this mandate amounts to a strategic self-denudation in the global system.
In this regard, I proffered three core recommendations:
- Doctrinal Overhaul: Nigeria’s foreign policy framework requires a comprehensive review to align it with contemporary geopolitical realities, while retaining its foundational Afro-centric orientation.
- Institutional Strengthening and Resource Allocation: Given the observable deficit in the prioritization of external relations within the architecture of governance, there is a need to enhance the institutional status of foreign policy through rigorous scenario-building, strategic planning, and commensurate budgetary provision.
- Widening Participatory Ownership: The formulation and execution of foreign policy should be democratised. To this end, I proposed the convocation of a Nigerian Summit on Foreign Policy as a mechanism for eliciting broad-based national consensus and expertise.
These recommendations, alongside others, merit urgent consideration. Furthermore, the uncritical extension of neoliberal economic rationalism into the domain of foreign policy is likely to compound existing deficits, rather than ameliorate them. Its strong presence as a governance philosophy of the country is more disabling than enabling.
The author is the interim president of the Nigerian Society of International Affairs
