Nigeria’s Foreign Policy: How Tinubu Turned Diplomacy into a Travesty

If international relations were a stage upon which nations performed geopolitical dance, Nigeria, under the Tinubu government, would have been taken off stage a long time ago.

Nigerians can only watch in dismay as their country’s influence and visibility on the global stage is reduced to zero.

This descent into diplomatic abyss is an ontological collapse, a wilful abdication of a once-vaunted continental leadership that now manifests itself as a tragicomic spectacle.

What we are witnessing, with a mixture of horror and profound embarrassment under Tinubu, is the transmutation of diplomacy into a travesty, a carnival of ineptitude presided over by a regime that appears to confuse statecraft with social media virality.

Unfortunately, even those drafted to do Tinubu’s fighting in cyberspace are just as inept as they are uninformed and uneducated about geopolitics, just like their principals.

An Al Jazeera interviewer reduced a Nigerian presidential spokesman to a whimpering, clueless idiot.

To comprehend the sheer magnitude of the debasement of Nigeria’s foreign policy, one must cast a discerning eye back to the halcyon days, to an era when Nigeria's foreign policy was not merely reactive but assertive, purposeful and grounded in unmistakable active Pan-Africanism.

From the cautious yet principled non-alignment stance of Nigeria’s first premier, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who, despite his pro-Western leanings, laid the foundations of African unity, to the incandescent Afrocentrism of the Murtala/Obasanjo era, Nigeria strode the African continent as a veritable and hugely admired colossus. No one challenged Nigeria’s authority on continental matters.

There was a period, roughly spanning 1975-1979, when Abuja flexed its diplomatic muscle with an authority that resonated from the liberation struggles of Southern Africa to the nascent economic blocs of West Africa.

Nigeria’s foreign policy then was imbued with a clear vision and mission: the total emancipation of Africa, the eradication of apartheid, and the projection of Black dignity on the global stage. Nigeria spared no effort or resources to prosecute this Pan-African agenda.

In the 70s and 80s, Nigeria was not merely a participant in the global geopolitical arena; it was an architect of African destiny, a nation whose passport was indeed a shield, and whose voice commanded respect in the chancelleries of the world.

Fast forward to the present, and the contrast is not merely stark; it is a grotesque parody.

Who today would believe that Nigeria once told an American president to go and pound sand over the liberation struggles in Southern Africa?

Today, Tinubu grovels before France, an American vassal.

Rather than building upon this formidable diplomatic legacy, Tinubu has, with breathtaking audacity, dismantled it brick by ignominious brick.

Under him, the very notion of protecting national interest, projecting power, and defending Nigeria’s prestige appears to have been supplanted by a bewildering pursuit of ephemeral optics and a profound misunderstanding of diplomatic exigencies.

The Sahel, a region of immense strategic importance to Nigeria (the country shares a 1,800km border with Niger), stands as a testament to this catastrophic miscalculation.

Where once Nigeria, through ECOWAS, was a bulwark of regional stability, it has now become a bewildered spectator, watching as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, with a collective shrug of disdain, detached themselves from the regional body, which has turned into a tool of French imperialism.

For an unexplained reason known only to Tinubu, he chose the side of France in its wily battle to maintain its neocolonial stranglehold on Africa.

The exit of the AES from ECOWAS is not merely a crisis of regional integration; it is a profound humiliation, a self-inflicted wound that leaves Nigeria diminished and its erstwhile influence in tatters.

Opportunistic external actors are swiftly filling the vacuum created, while the self-proclaimed "Giant of Africa" is reduced to issuing impotent communiqués.

The festering wound of xenophobic violence in South Africa further magnifies Nigeria’s diplomatic impotence.

For years, Nigerian citizens have been subjected to brutal attacks, their businesses looted, their lives extinguished on the streets of South African cities and towns.

Tinubu’s response has been a deafening silence, punctuated only occasionally by the insipid, performative outrage of diplomats who seem more concerned with curating their online personas than with defending the lives of their compatriots.

Nigerians are, rightfully, comparing their country’s tepid response to Ghana’s surefooted move to repatriate its citizens and call out South Africa.

Ghana even turned down Ramaphosa’s request for a visit.

When a nation abdicates its sacred duty to protect its citizens abroad, its passport ceases to be a symbol of sovereignty and becomes, instead, a mark of vulnerability.

Nigerian passport has lost its luster
Which brings us to the most egregious manifestation of this diplomatic decay under Tinubu: the spectacle of the Foreign Minister, Bianca Ojukwu, dancing among Nigerian inmates in an Ethiopian prison.

Whichever way we dice it, Bianca’s silly dance is not merely a diplomatic faux pas; it is a profound insult to the very concept of diplomacy, akin to the elevation of the frivolous over the substantive. It is the substitution of the 'slay queen' dancing aesthetic for the gravitas required of a nation's chief diplomat.

The Yoruba sages foresaw this when they told us: Ìyàwó tí a bá fẹ́ lójú àgbò, ìrán ló máa wọ̀ lọ - the bride married on the dancing floor ends up following the spectators.

Mrs. Ojukwu has no other qualification aside from being married to the revered late Igbo leader, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu. It’s doubtful if she would be able to define geopolitics even if her life depended on it.

Yet, to lay the blame entirely at the feet of the current administration is to miss the deeper, more insidious pathology.

It would be wrong to treat the government of Tinubu as the disease; it is merely the most glaring symptom of a profound national complacency.

Nigerian citizens, ensconced in their stupor of cowardly inertia, lament the collapse of their country on WhatsApp, complain with pious solemnity in church, and then, with a perverse consistency, return to the ballot box to endorse the very architects of their misery.

The most destructive force in Nigeria is not tribalism or corruption; it is the cowardly, utterly foolish belief that some external savior, be it the UN, Americans, NGO’s, or the gods, will miraculously descend to rescue the country.

Of course, this is stupid; nobody is coming to save a people unwilling to fight for their own dignity.

The arduous, thankless task of salvaging this rotting leviathan belongs unequivocally to Nigerian citizens.

Nigerians must understand that their country remains the singular Black nation possessing the sheer weight, the abundant resources, the confident citizens with the unyielding stubbornness to lead the Black World.

That destiny is not irrevocably lost; it has merely been temporarily hijacked by the forces of incompetence and agents of neocolonialism.

Either Nigerians awaken now from this collective stupor, or they shall be condemned to explain to their bewildered grandchildren why the "Giant of Africa" ultimately devolved into a dancing Chimp on the global stage.

©️ Ọdọ́fin Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan, Ọdọ́fin I of Kasoa)

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com .

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