Occasional Paper

Nigeria’s Foreign Policy Before Buhari: Global Expectations Amid Domestic and Regional Challenges

“The major problèmatique of this paper is that, due to the drag that the woes and worries of Nigeria’s domestic political economy have spawned and the widening gap between the country’s illusion of grandeur and the contemporary stark reality, there is hardly any fit between the type of state Nigeria’s foreign policies project externally and the realisation
of those policies’ enunciated goals. Its Africa-centred foreign policy, bereft of those critical elements that made it irresistible from the 1960s to the early 1990s – notably the decolonisation agenda and the anti-apartheid struggle – now lies in tatters. As the PDP has few redeeming features, only a brand new government, post-February 2015 general elections, can re-invent or renew a compass for Nigeria’s foreign policy. This will necessarily be predicated on a recomposition of the state’s social contract with Nigerians.”