Nigeria’s foreign policy shows that even a giant can’t go too far
Last week, Liberian president Ellen Sirleaf wrote to US President Barack Obama to implore the US to help Liberia fight Ebola. She told Obama in the letter, “Without more direct help from your government, we will lose this battle against Ebola.”
It’s been about nine months since Ebola broke out in West Africa. About 5,000 people have been infected and half of them have died. International health bodies have warned that the affected countries, which are all in West Africa, don’t have the means to manage this crisis. So some people think Nigeria should assume a stronger leadership role in this emergency, given its status as a superpower in West Africa and Africa in whole. But the Nigerian government seems to have other priorities.
Nigeria has traditionally stepped in and taken the lead to help fellow African countries whenever they’re in some crisis, similar to the role the United States plays on a global level.
From the 60s to the 80s, Africa was the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. Nigeria prominently
supported liberation causes in various African countries including South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia. It also spearheaded peacekeeping operations in countries faced with conflict such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. However, it looks like the country has laid back considerably in its foreign policy posture concerning Africa.
Last year, when rebels were about to sack the Mali government and overrun the entire country, Nigeria alongside other African countries under ECOWAS and AU were very languid in responding to the emergency. In the end, the Malian government cried out to the French and it was the French who intervened to flush out the rebels.
This year, there have also been ongoing conflicts in CAR and South Sudan. There has been large scale bloodshed, displacement and suffering. 40 years ago, Nigeria would predictably have donated generously and had its men over there in Juba and Bangui to help stop the bloodshed and restore order. But Nigeria has been largely anonymous in the international response to these two cases, and the countries have had to rely heavily on Western aid.
The Nigerian government wants to focus on foreign policies that bring investment and primarily serve the nation’s interests, a position that has popular backing. Policy experts think Nigeria’s assistance to troubled African nations in the past has cost it enormously in terms of financial and human resources, but has brought little commensurate gain to Nigeria and the Nigerian people. So they think this kind of foreign policy is unsustainable.
Moreover, despite Nigeria’s past record of assistance in Africa, there hasn’t been strong relations between Nigeria and some of its African brothers in more recent times. Nigerians in countries such as South Africa and Gabon have been mistreated and harmed ‘unjustly’ by those people and their government. So it looks like Nigeria’s not having a lot of excellent bilateral relations in Africa these days. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much multilateral agreement within the African Union either, which is why Nigeria and the other African countries often drag their foot and it’s often a problem to mobilise a joint response whenever their fellow Africans somewhere on the continent are in some trouble.
By the way, some people think Nigeria can’t reasonably be splashing money on foreign aid these days in view of the prevailing economic reality. In the 60s, Nigeria was a new state and the economy was doing really well. In the 70s there was an oil boom and the economy was galloping like never before. When the government announced a staggering N2.6bn budget in 1974, a Daily Times headline screamed, “BIGGEST BUDGET EVER”.
That was 40 years ago, and of course Nigeria’s not really in boom mode right now. So some people think it doesn’t make sense to spend huge sums on foreign aid when many Nigerians back home do not have a job or food and kids are out of school.
Omotola Ilesanmi was Senior Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, and now Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. She says, “Charity begins at home. There are lots of issues back home that we’re trying to hold up to, and you know, your foreign policy should be a reflection of your domestic affairs.
“In the past, we were idealistic in our foreign policy towards Africa. We were vibrant. We wanted to show the world what we could do, and we’ve carved a niche for ourselves. We’ve done well. But our current reality and domestic affairs have impacted Nigeria’s foreign policy, and so our capacity to assist has greatly diminished. It’s not as if we don’t want to, but there are issues on ground that we must deal with first.”
Nigeria has been with battling with insurgency on its own soil for close to a decade now, and there has been considerable unrest at various points in the time. So the military has been a lot busy and does not appear to have the resources to spare on external expeditions.
More so, Nigeria was also affected by the ongoing Ebola epidemic, but though it staved off the threat and the fight is virtually over now, Ilesanmi thinks the government initially didn’t have the capacity to deal with the disease or help others deal with it.
“Nigeria didn’t have the means to help at first,” says the foreign policy expert. “We had to improvise, because Ebola was a novel case. It wasn’t something we prepared for, and it wasn’t something we had the capacity to deal with or help others deal with. So when it happened, we had to develop a quick internal mechanism to curb the outbreak.
“Funding is usually a problem in Africa when it’s time to deploy resources to emergency areas. But Nigeria has done significantly already in this Ebola outbreak. The government donated $3.5 million to the affected countries to help with their fight against the disease.
“Besides, we have to remember that other countries have the same challenge. For example, Obama has been criticised for not having a dynamic foreign policy but the fact is Obama has so much to address under the present circumstances in the US. Challenges at the home limits the assistance a country can give to other countries. Nevertheless, we still maintain the lead in ECOWAS and the AU.”
