PeeCeeJay

By Jideofor Adibe

 

Issues in Nigeria’s Foreign Policy

pcjadibe@yahoo.com

 

In my column last week on corruption, I mentioned that I was a discussant on the foreign policy segment of the recent 2-day Policy Dialogue – ‘Implementing Change – from Vision to Reality’ organised by the Directorate of Policy, Research and Strategy of APC’s Presidential Campaign Organisation. My interventions borrowed heavily from my published criticisms of aspects of Nigeria’s foreign policy under the Jonathan administration, viz: ‘NEC Was Wrong on New Foreign Policy Proposal’ (published November 3, 2010) and ‘How Not to Formulate Foreign Policy’ (published on August 20, 2011). It equally borrowed from my article on ‘Debating Diaspora Voting’, (published 28 August 2014).

In late 2010 the National Executive Council (NEC)  took  a decision that Nigeria would no longer play ‘big brother’ to countries in trouble “without getting anything in return”, and that going forward the nation’s foreign interventions and assistance would be  guided by the ‘national interest’. Briefing journalists after the Council’s meeting at Abuja, Babangida Aliyu, who was at that time the Governor  of Niger State was quoted as saying: “…we are going to shed that belief that we are big brother where we go to help other people and we never get something in return…So, wherever we go or whoever we relate with, must be because it will help us develop, rather than, as we normally say, that we have gone to help these or that people without getting anything in return.”  At a seminar to ‘review Nigeria’s foreign policy’ organised by the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations (PAC-IR) in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Abuja from August 1- 4 2011, this point was re-emphasised.

While it is true that ‘national interest’ is at the heart of foreign policy, (in fact the French word ‘raison d’état’ - meaning ‘reason of the state’ -vividly captures this), rarely is a country so rude as to stick it to the face of other international actors that its primary concern in its relations with them is the advancement of its ‘national interest’. For instance though the colonisation of Africa was in the main undertaken because of the interest of the colonists to find raw materials, it was couched on the morally acceptable ideology of the ‘need to civilise the natives’. In the same vein, former US President George W Bush justified the Iraq war on the moralistic need to find Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Even the Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860), one of the most mercantilist projections of ‘national interest’ in history was still given a morally acceptable justification. Though the wars were caused by the smuggling of opium by merchants from British India into China in defiance of Chinese prohibition laws, Britain’s formal justification for the war was a need to stem China’s balance of payment deficits. Those calling for a more explicit embedment of immediate economic gratification in our foreign policy are therefore not only throwing diplomatese to the winds but also advertising the country’s weakness to the world. As Wole Soyinka would tell us, “a tiger does not need to proclaim its tigeritude.”

I was also very uncomfortable with the idea of announcing to the whole world that Nigeria was reviewing its foreign policy. Not only did this re-echo policy reversals and instabilities for which we have become infamous, my personal opinion is that you don’t really need to have a Presidential Committee on Review of Nigeria’s Foreign Policy to do this. How many times have we read about the US, Britain or Germany announcing a panel to review its foreign policy? My personal opinion is that this is the day job of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and think-tanks such as the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs and similar institutions. Given the dynamic nature of international relations, a country through its Ministry of Foreign affairs, independent think-tanks and consultants is constantly reviewing its relations with different countries and institutions depending on changes in power configurations that create new opportunities or threats. I have a feeling that people who grandstand about trade and economic-driven foreign policy or immediate financial gratification from any international engagement, are mixing up the role of the economic/trade missions found in the country’s various embassies with foreign policy.

I also feel that there is a little confusion about the meaning of ‘national interest’ – the totality of a country’s goals and ambitions whether economic, cultural, military or otherwise. Contrary to the impression that ‘national interest’ is projected only when financial gains are expressly and immediately extracted from an interaction with other state and non-state actors, sometimes states invest in enhancing its influence in a country or region because of the leverage such influence could give it in the future (such as being allowed to station a military base in the country/region in the future or to avoid the influx of refugees that could overwhelm its social services). This too is projecting ‘national interest’. I believe that contrary to popular belief, we have actually benefitted from the countries we helped in the past – South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone etc. I believe that we derived the intangible benefit of our international prestige rising as we ‘helped’ them. If we were not able to leverage on such intangible assets, it was more because of the failure of leadership or poor economic circumstances at home, not foreign policy. Usually forgotten in the discussion of how ‘ungrateful’ countries we have helped in the past have become is that we often ‘unleash’ our human capital on them after ‘helping’ them. It certainly seems that the population of Nigerians in countries we ‘helped’ increased astronomically after our ‘help’.  It seems that the role of such Nigerians in the remittance economy is overlooked.  It is therefore misleading to assume that playing ‘big brother’ to other African countries means that the country’s ‘national interest’ is not being projected. This is the whole notion of ‘soft power’ - winning over the minds of the people in the countries we play ‘big brother’ to. Converting this soft power to economic benefits will depend on the character of the country’s political leadership, the cohesiveness of its elite and the level of development of its productive forces.

Related to this is that a nation’s respectability in international relations is not wholly contingent upon its past benevolence but often more on the current leverages it can bring to the table. Even in domestic politics, past benevolence seems to count for little as we have seen in the face-offs between political god-fathers and almost all the Governors that they installed in office. The bottom line therefore is that if Nigeria wants to command influence and respect, it must improve and sustain its ability to bring leverages to the table. This is obviously where the interplay between domestic politics and foreign policy comes into play. As the street urchins would say in Pidgin English, “I get am before no be property”.  

I was miffed at suggestions in 2010 that Africa would no longer be the centre-piece of our foreign policy.  Part of my critique of that proposal was that Africa being the centre piece of our foreign policy does not mean that we would always take Afrocentric position on issues – but that we should strive to be a leader in the continent.  It is not unusual for a country to once in a while have a more compelling national interest which would require taking positions that is contrary to the position of most of its immediate allies. For instance during the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-1648) – a largely religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics - France chose to intervene on the side of the Protestants despite its overwhelming Catholicism because the regime was apparently more interested at that time in blocking the growing power of the Holy Roman Emperor than in protecting its religious faith. Similarly though Europe could be called the centre-piece of British foreign policy, Britain sometimes disagrees with other European countries (such as during the Iraq War) but would often return to rebuild burnt bridges after such disagreements in other not to undermine its leadership role in the continent.

I am not suggesting that all is well with our foreign policies. But the problem, as I see it, is not in trying to find one sexy phrase to encapsulate our foreign policies – Africa as the centrepiece of our foreign policy, the notion of concentric circle, citizen diplomacy etc. The problems in our foreign policy are largely symptomatic of the crisis of underdevelopment weighing down the country and which in turn feeds on our stalled nation-building project.

A key solution is re-starting the stalled nation building process (given the interplay between domestic circumstances and the vibrancy of a country’s foreign policy), pursuing policies of inclusion, (including voting rights for our Diaspora, that in 2013 alone, according to the World Bank, brought into the country a whopping $21bn through remittances) and continuing and improving upon those economic policies that led to the country being included in the Next 11 emergent economies in 2005 and in MINT countries (Mexico, India, Nigeria and Turkey) that were predicted to become break-out economies. The global interest in Nigeria in the last five years has been unprecedented, leading to a huge inflow of foreign direct investments. We must sustain and improve on policies that helped to power such optimisms in the country – before the collapse of oil prices. The bottom line here is that we must not, for political expediency, throw away the good in Goodluck Jonathan.