Today Abuja addresses Pretoria from a position of weakness.Since
the images and videos of the maiming and killing of black foreigners in
South Africa began to emerge on various social media platforms last
week, Nigeria has been an emotionally frayed place. Tens of thousands of
Nigerians live in South African cities and in recent years, they have
become frequent targets of xenophobic attacks.
This time, anger
in Nigeria boiled over and young Nigerians took to the streets
protesting South African aggression and unleashing some of their own on
South African-owned businesses.
The Nigerian government felt
pressured to act and subsequently recalled its ambassador from Pretoria
and announced it was pulling out of the World Economic Forum meeting on
Africa which was held in Cape Town. While some Nigerians welcomed the
move, others thought it was not enough and called on their government to
intervene and rescue its citizens.
Examples abound of powerful
countries going to great lengths to protect and repatriate their
citizens who have faced danger abroad.
But Nigeria is not one of
them. Indeed, in the past, the country has stood its ground on a number
of occasions when defending its national interests. In the 1960s, for
example, Nigeria had a face-off with France over the latter's continuous
tests of nuclear weapons in the Sahara desert. The government of
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa acted decisively, breaking diplomatic relations
with Paris, expelling the French ambassador and imposing a full embargo
on French goods.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Nigeria led the
international effort to isolate and pressure the apartheid regime in
South Africa. It threatened economic action against Western powers for
refusing to sanction the regime and supported the national liberation
movements in Southern Africa, including the African Nation Congress
(ANC), with millions of dollars annually.
In the 1990s, the
country, under the leadership of military ruler Sani Abacha, defied
international sanctions and welcomed a visit by Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi. It also directly intervened in the Liberian civil war,
dispatching Nigerian troops to fight.
Most of the reactions to
the violent attacks on Nigerians and other Africans in South Africa
reflect a yearning for Abacha-style diplomacy. But as recent
developments in its relations with the United States demonstrated,
Nigeria can no longer wield such diplomatic power. Last month, the
Nigerian government was spectacularly quick to react to the US's
reciprocal rise in visa fees by reducing the charge for Americans
applying for a visa to enter the country. And last year President
Muhammadu Buhari decided to "keep quiet" on President Donald Trump's
alleged "s***hole" remark about African nations.
At present, it
is clear Nigeria does not have the military, the intelligence capability
or the diplomatic clout to pursue a serious escalation against even a
regional power, such as South Africa.
This diplomatic "standoff"
with Pretoria has exposed the weakness Abuja has masked in parading
itself as a self-styled "Giant of Africa". South Africa used to be a
bully that Nigeria could restrain through its support for proxies inside
the country and its neighbourhood. But since the end apartheid, this
relationship has evolved into a regional competition, which Pretoria is
winning.
After the sanctions and international isolation were
lifted, South Africa quickly became the continent's more favoured ally
of developed economies and foreign investors. Pretoria emerged as the
recipient of the largest share of foreign direct investment in
sub-Saharan Africa and in 2011 joined the BRIC countries in an economic
pact formed to challenge the domination of Western economic policy.
It
is also an important trading partner that Nigeria cannot afford to
lose. South African businesses have major investments in the country,
including the DSTV cable service, MTN telecom, the Shoprite supermarket
chain and others. Nigeria exports $3.83bn worth of goods, mostly oil and
oil products, to South Africa. By contrast, it imports just $514.3m of
South African products, which accounts for less than one percent of
total South African exports.
The more contrasting feature of the
two economies, and which again highlights Nigeria's weakness is that
while Abuja levers around a commodity-dependent economy, Pretoria has
built a highly-diversified economy with a superior industrial structure.
In other words, Nigeria needs South Africa economically, much more than
South Africa needs Nigeria.
Nigeria's geopolitical power has
also waned in recent years, while South Africa has remained a major
regional power. Abuja has been battling with a rebellion in the north
for years and has struggled to put a stop to flares of tribal violence
regularly killing dozens of people. In its neighbourhood, Nigeria
continues to feel largely insecure, surrounded by Francophone countries
whose allegiances to France threaten the commitment of the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to stability and
non-aggression in the region.
The Nigerian government has also
been unable to muster enough influence in the West to become a trusted
partner. In 2014, the Obama administration, for example, blocked the
sale of arms to the Nigerian military. The Trump administration decided
to proceed with it but under heavy conditions which Nigerian officials
have deemed "unacceptable". Western reluctance to sell weapons to Abuja
has pressed it to seek arms on the black market. South Africa has
embarrassed it twice in recent years by intercepting large arms shipment
bound for Nigeria.
In this sense, the Nigerian government cannot
do anything about the violence against its citizens in South Africa
beyond making a few symbolic diplomatic moves and bringing up once again
the Nigerian role in liberating South Africans from its white
oppressors. It is clear that in doing so it is addressing Pretoria from
the position of weakness.
Indeed, using persistent references to
sub-Saharan African commonality and solidarity as a result of shared
history, race and geography is not an effective foreign policy tool.
The
idea of One Africa is a farce taken too far, and successive Nigerian
elites have pandered to this fantasy to the detriment of national
interests. The legacy of this pan-African misadventure is a
geopolitically weak Nigeria which cannot stand up to for itself and for
its citizens
This very much has to do with mismanagement of the
economy. The redemption Nigeria needs is one that moves the country away
from dependence on oil exports, foreign imports and interventions and
towards diversification and industrialisation. We cannot afford to
glorify the idea of producing pencils in the age of artificial
intelligence any more.
Only if the country becomes materially
secure and industrially productive will it be able to regain its soft
power and international clout and stand up to the old bullies in its
neighbourhood.
Source:
Aljazeera
0 Comments