Why France can’t be Nigeria’s strategic partner (III)

John Measheimer, the leading Realist scholar in international relations, shows in his The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, how, before it became a superpower, the US first became a regional power or hegemon in the Western hemisphere by expelling all European imperial powers (British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch) and imposing the Monroe Doctrine on […]

John Measheimer, the leading Realist scholar in international relations, shows in his The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, how, before it became a superpower, the US first became a regional power or hegemon in the Western hemisphere by expelling all European imperial powers (British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch) and imposing the Monroe Doctrine on them— signalling clearly that the Western hemisphere was the US’s backyard or sphere of influence and would go to war to defend it. This was why John Kennedy used the strategic policy of madness (what Thomas Schelling called ‘the rational use of irrationality’) to eject the Soviet Union’s nuclear missiles from Cuba in 1962, by threatening to uproot them even if his actions led to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union both actors would perish. The key point in all of this, as Measheimer points out, is that big powers always try to protect their immediate region by becoming the regional hegemon.

 

Nigeria’s foreign and strategic policy

By virtue of the size of its population and economy, vis-a-vis other African countries, Nigeria has historically seen itself as the Giant of Africa. It has, over many decades, developed strategies and policies that seek to enhance its ambition to become a regional power and an important state in the world system. However, the crafting of Nigeria’s strategic policy of greatness lagged behind its actual practice of projecting regional power status.

The oil boom of the early 1970s ignited much confidence among policymakers that Nigeria was destined for greatness. There was a range of big and well-funded policy initiatives on, among others, industrialisation, economic indigenisation, large-scale agricultural development and promotion of national unity schemes, such as the National Youth Service Corps. It’s not surprising that Phillip Asiodu, one of the Super Permanent Secretaries at the time, described the raft of big policy initiatives that Nigeria embarked upon in the 1970s as ‘The Nigerian Revolution’.

The oil boom provided a shot in the arm of Nigerian leaders to forcefully project an Africa-centred policy, starting with Murtala Mohammed when he seized power in 1975 from Yakubu Gowon and decided to strongly support the liberation movements in Southern Africa. Mohammed openly denounced US President Gerald Ford’s policies on Angola, resisted his pressures, and unequivocally threw Nigeria’s support behind the MPLA, which was waging an armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. Nigeria was even made a frontline state in the fight against apartheid and Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique, even though it was thousands of kilometres away from Southern Africa.

• Addressing the urgent crisis of malnutrition in Northern Nigeria
• Teachers collapse as FCT council chairs fail to implement minimum wage

In 1976, during the regime of Olusegun Obasanjo, Murtala Mohammed’s successor, Nigeria established a Southern Africa Relief Fund, which attracted donations not only from the government but also from citizens. It has been reported that Nigerian civil servants contributed 2% of their salaries to that Fund. Nigeria also issued more than 300 passports to black South Africans to enable them to travel abroad. Nomfundo Ngwenya, writing on the online platform of the South African Institute of International Affairs in 2010, reported that Nigeria had spent an estimated $61 billion in supporting the frontline states by the end of apartheid in 1994.

It should be noted that anti-imperialist and anti-apartheid sentiments were very strong in Nigeria even during the leadership of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1960-66), who was generally regarded as conservative. His decision to sign the infamous Anglo-Nigerian Defence Agreement in 1960, just after independence, generated strong popular protests that led to its abrogation in 1962. However, Balewa adopted an uncompromising position on the question of apartheid and African liberation.

The Sharpeville Massacre of 69 black people in South Africa the same year that Nigeria gained independence may have radicalised him on the issue of apartheid. Balewa lobbied for South Africa’s expulsion from the Commonwealth and provided annual financial assistance of $5 million to the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress.

Prior to the Mohammed-Obasanjo regimes’ pro-active Africa-wide initiatives, Yakubu Gowon had taken the crucial step of pushing for the creation of the Economic Community of West African States in 1975. This was partly aimed at advancing Nigeria’s influence in that region and to wean the Francophone African states from France, which had supported the breakup of Nigeria during the civil war of the 1960s.

Gowon was smart in choosing a Francophone African leader, Gnassingbé Eyadema of Togo, as a partner in launching the West African integration project. Even though Nigeria accounts for half of the population of West Africa (English-speaking West Africa accounts for about 60%) and more than 60% of its GDP (before the devaluation of the naira in 2023-4), nine of the sixteen states in the region are Francophone. The Francophone states also account for about 90% of the region’s land mass. It was important, therefore, that Nigeria worked with a Francophone country to advance the integration project.

By the end of the 1970s, the broad outline of Nigeria’s foreign and strategic policy had clearly emerged in the practical field of inter-state relations. The logic of that activist foreign policy was that Nigeria must primarily project its power in its immediate environment or become the regional hegemon in West Africa, while acting as the voice of Africa within Africa and the world at large.

It was Ibrahim Gambari, the foreign minister of the regime of Muhammadu Buhari, between 1984 and 1985, who translated this evolving practice into a theoretical or strategic scheme by situating understanding Nigeria’s foreign policy within a framework of what he called ‘three concentric circles’. The first circle is the homeland or Nigeria; the second is West Africa; and the third is the wider Africa. Gambari had prior to his job as foreign minister played a lead role in establishing an international studies programme at the Ahmadu Bello University, which made the study of French or Arabic compulsory for students who enrolled in the programme.

Study tours to Francophone countries, such as Togo, were organised to get students to understand the Francophone West African world. I joined that programme in its commencement year in 1980, the year that I was recruited into the university, and was in charge of the courses dealing with international political economy. To be continued

 

Bangura wrote from Nyon, Switzerland [email protected]