A quote attributed to one of Africa’s most illustrious icons, Nelson Mandela, that is often used to highlight the critical and significant role of Nigeria in the birthing of a competitive African milieu reads: “The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence.” The weight and depth of this profound statement is backed by evidence and fact. However, one will be amiss to find justification for that if the only evidence available is the reality of the current times.
To seriously appreciate the profundity of Mandela’s insight, one will need to step back in time and view Nigeria’s history of influence in the West African sub-region, on the continent as a whole and beyond Africa’s borders, all of which established the country as a reputable hegemon and all but declined today.
Any noteworthy examination of the historical account of influence that Nigeria wielded in the early decades of her independence must take into consideration the determination of the country’s first set of leaders to operate an Afro-centric foreign policy regime that placed the freedom and peaceful coexistence of African countries, front and centre, buoyed by a resolve to not spare any cost to see this singular objective come to pass. From the beginning, Nigeria focused her post-colonial direction around the struggle to overcome Africa’s political turmoil, the resultant violence and the continued exploitation by colonial masters.
At different stages of foreign policy frameworks post- independence, Nigeria’s expanding foreign policy direction centered on the abolition of Apartheid in South Africa; the enhancement of Nigeria’s relations with member countries of the European Economic Community (EEC), the United States, the Soviet Union, and with other major countries to increase the flow of foreign investments and capital into the country plus the continued support for international organisations, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). These were choices Nigeria made that predisposed her to being involved in the affairs and concerns of other countries on the continent and elevated their regard for her.
In the 1950s and the first few years of the 1960s, with Nigeria well respected on the continent and beyond, the Sir Tafawa Balewa government focused on promoting world peace, upholding sovereign equality and maintaining nonalignment as part of its foreign policy.
General Yakubu Gowon kept up that tradition, but he also had Nigeria maintain a low profile by acting in accordance with the OAU’s guidelines and by using tacit diplomatic strategies. OAU in turn backed the Nigerian Government against Biafra during the Civil War. Because Nigeria’s major focus was Africa, the liberation of southern Africa, the unification of ECOWAS and the requirement for comprehensive economic independence throughout Africa were the goals of the 1970s.
Indeed, Nigeria’s 1979 constitution contained the following objectives: advancing African unification; liberating Africa’s political, economic, social, and cultural systems; fostering international cooperation; and doing away with racial discrimination.
As Africa’s big brother, Nigeria assisted in resolving disputes between Togo and Ghana, Burkina Faso and Mali, and Liberia and Sierra Leone. Nigeria kept her neighbours “safe” in part to support territorial claims and in part to maintain peace in the interactions between the countries that were next to her. Nigeria’s backing of ECOWAS, despite conflicting allegiances to other groups within the subcontinent, maintained the organisation’s goals in order to further the economic interests through foreign relations within West Africa.
Strengthening ECOWAS served Nigeria’s security interests by reducing colonial divisions within West Africa, resolving border disputes, advancing African unification and enhancing West Africa’s negotiating positions with the EEC. It also promoted regional economic growth and discouraged its neighbours from depending on extra-African nations for military, political, and economic survival.
Beyond the sub-region, Nigeria was a founding member of the OAU and frequently used it to coordinate key policy endeavours.
The OAU ideals served as a guidance focusing Nigeria’s main African commitment towards ending apartheid in South Africa and freeing Africa from the final remnants of colonialism. After the civil war, the movement for liberation grew from a timid and conservative attitude in the 1960s to a more aggressive objective. General Murtala Muhammed successfully aided the Movimento Popular de Libertaço de Angola’s (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola – MPLA) rise to power in Angola in 1975 by casting the deciding vote in the OAU resolution to recognise the MPLA, a significant contribution to Angola’s freedom.
Nigeria also contributed to the independence of both Zimbabwe and Namibia, contributing around $20 million to the South West Africa People’s Organisation to help with the 1989 elections and other preparations for Namibian independence. She also made financial contributions to South African liberation groups, as well as to the frontline states of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, who were frequently targeted by South Africa.
In the early 1990s, Nigeria’s armed forces were among the biggest in all of black Africa. The army sent personnel to support United Nations peacekeeping missions and engaged in peacekeeping missions either independently or through the OAU.
Nigeria was one of the major donors of troops to the ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), which was sent to Liberia on August 23, 1990, after the unsuccessful peace negotiations there, in accordance with its ECOWAS community commitment.
In late September 1990, more troops were dispatched. Additionally, Nigeria provided financial and technical support to a number of African nations, frequently by way of the African Development Bank. Furthermore, the Gowon military government resolved in July 1974 to sell crude oil to African nations at discounted prices as long as they had their own refineries and agreed not to re-export to other nations. All these made Nigeria a force for good and a bulwark of reckoning in the subregion and on the continent for years.
When the country returned to civilian rule in 1999 under a former military Head of State, Geberal Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria continued to exert influence and project power, while pursuing pan-Africa goals. Obasanjo’s African direction was a foreign policy from the perspective of peace-building, countering the coup culture and the promotion of civilian rule. This placed Nigeria at the forefront of regional efforts to make military coups unacceptable, to end civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia and to resolve territorial disputes peacefully. For example, Obasanjo ceded over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon to demonstrate this policy. The Obasanjo presidency also worked to strengthen regional organisations and UN peacekeeping agencies, to which Nigeria was a major supplier of peacekeepers and for which it continued to earn respect.
All of these have changed for the worse as Nigeria’s internal maladministration at the highest levels have not only pushed the country’s unity to the brink, but also left the West African subregion and the continent rudderless, while diminishing Nigeria’s influence to nothingness.
The country’s leadership in the region was dealt a severe blow by issues of weak leadership, internal instability, regularised corruption in government, security collapse, porous borders, dwindling economy, the rise of violent non-state actors and successive governments that have abdicated their responsibilities to the country and the continent. Her peripheral regions, such as the terrorist-overrun areas of the North, the bandit-stricken locations across the country and the kidnapping dens across motorways and train tracks have seen Nigeria’s capacity to secure her own citizens collapse all around.
Even the security of the county’s major source of income, crude oil, has been a colossal failure added to the theft of solid minerals in the core north and some states in the south west. The economy is in shambles, lives hold no value, corruption is rife, illegality is the order of the day, the best brains are shipping out, education is comatose, inflation is skyrocketing and there is no semblance of a government with a sense of responsibility in sight.
True to Mandela’s words, Africa is worse for it. Without the stabilising influence of Nigeria, between 2020 and 2021 there were two military coups in Mali and one each in Chad and Guinea, as well as an attempted coup in Niger. Burkina Faso, which registered a coup d’etat in October, together with Cameroon, Mali and Niger are under siege from jihadi insurrections and separatist groups. Bandits have grown in number and are a mélange of criminal, ethnic, religious and domestic insurgent elements. There is anxiety among the political classes of coastal West African states, such as Senegal, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire that their countries might be next to face incursions by the terror-inducing jihadists.
The porosity of Nigeria’s borders is also helping to move arms and numbers of radicalised persons into neighbouring countries, thereby putting the entire subregion at risk. And, disgracefully, smaller countries around Nigeria have had to deal more decisively with these terrorists than the famed Nigerian army, living mostly in past glory.
It is therefore imperative that, before the ground around us cave in to bury the country for a lack of action to turn this ugly decline around, Nigeria returns to the fitting role it played in those early years of post-colonial self-rule which appeared to have been tailor-cut for her based on the sheer size of her population, wealth of natural and human resources, capacity of military forces, abundant wealth and both political and economic influence that made her a regional power. It will demand a pair of necessities.
The country will have to reclaim economic power lost through years of running a mono-economic system based on crude oil and actually diversify rather than simply voice the importance of diversification. Leakages within the system that siphon the country’s wealth through acts of corruption and regularised thievery must be plugged just as wastefulness must be nipped. Every one will be tasked to play their roles in making this project of reclamation a success.
Yet, above all, it must find a leader that is worth that title. The opportunity for next year’s polls once again presents the country with the chance to begin the arduous process of dragging Nigeria from the brink of failure towards renewed greatness in the subregion and continent with the election of a respectable, charismatic, effective and strong president.
A president who will be conversant with leadership in the 21st century and the demands of transparency, openness, fairness and justice, who will be wise and firm and who will remember that he is the servant of the people, whose welfare and security ought to be his priority. If he can earn the respect of Nigerians, the respect from beyond will come and Mandela’s dream for Nigeria and African can come through in our lifetime.
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