Before the lecture proper, the president of the society, Prof. Jide Owoeye, who is also the Pro-Chancellor and founder of Lead City University, Ibadan mainstreamed the day’s intellectual activity by noting the ever-expanding boundaries of the discipline of international relations in its bid to capture emergent issues of terrorism, climate change, transborder crime, gender conflict and globalisation. This is another way of making the point that the search for a new foreign policy for Nigeria connotes a diversified intellectual menu spanning several disciplines, as well as an inclusive political and philosophical agenda with a society-wide purview.
The Chairman of the distinguished lecture, Gen. Ike Nwachukwu (retd.), hinted at one of the paradoxes of Nigeria’s external relations and self-image when he queried poignantly: “How realistic is it to play in China’s league when our economic and social infrastructure are weak and in some cases non-existent… and where corruption appears to define our political culture?”. In other words, and as Osuntokun also remarked, any rethinking and reforming of foreign policy must begin with an earnest effort to clean up our act, domestically, by creating an exportable Brand Nigeria as well as undertaking a harnessing of our soft power indices. Consider, for example, that the lecture itself was held in the face of a national strike by the Association of Academic Research Institutes, which includes the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs venue of the lecture. Persistent underfunding and refusal of government to honour outstanding agreements are the main grouses of the association. And, so we are dealing with a political elite stashing away enormous financial resources to contest the 2015 elections but which has no time or patience with properly funding the research institutes which constitute its brain box.
The contradiction of mounting vigorous external relations in a context of state decay was pointed out by Osuntokun who alluded to our earned reputation for successfully policing West Africa through interventions, in Guinea Bissau, Togo, Sao Tome and Principe, Liberia, Sierra Leone and recently Mali. The scholar, Nigeria’s former ambassador to Germany and a member of the elite Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations, nonetheless went on to say that, “In recent times, due to corruption and the Nigerian factor, our troops have sometimes been provided with poor arms and equipment leading to them performing below par and consequent United Nations criticism of our troops’ ineffectiveness and lack of courage”. This is the international outworking of state dysfunction and anomie in which disorder and corruption at home are exported abroad, with serious consequences for our image and human resources. Extremely interesting is the question raised slyly by Osuntokun as to whether Nigeria is a hegemon on its own behalf or on behalf of western military and economic power. He alludes to Nigeria’s intervention in Cote d’Ivoire and more recently Mali in which French interests were barely disguised as well as our support for a western-led effort to remove Gaddafi. In his words: “A situation where a former colonial power intervenes to remove a sitting African President and with Nigeria being complicit in this removal raises a fundamental question in one’s mind”. This is to say that we need to think through our policy options with a view to reasserting our national identity and leeway, rather than merely acting out scripts authored in London, Paris or Washington.
Political economists, a dying intellectual tribe in Nigeria’s endangered scholarly tradition, would pursue the question further and ask whether a country so beholden to the west and which routinely relegates its scholars who ought to theorise new perspectives can define a foreign policy in its own image. For sure, globalisation reduces the margins of independent action for all nations, great or small; but the international system, partitioned by a Westphalian paradigm of sovereign nation states permits nations a sense of manifest destiny and role-definition even in a globalised arena. There is the question too in Osuntokun’s lecture of what Nigeria gets for all its good neighbourliness and philanthropic gestures in the sub region. To rephrase the question in Prof. Ibrahim Gambari’s classic formulation: Is Nigeria paying the piper without calling the tune? The examples given by Osuntokun in support of this argument include; the scuttling of Nigeria’s unanimous election into the UN Security Council in 2010 by Guinea which absented itself and by Liberia, Togo and Sierra Leone which voted against Nigeria. Paradoxically, these are countries which at one time or the other had benefitted from Nigeria’s generosity and in some cases, peacekeeping operations to prevent their collapse. Along the same lines, Nigerians have often been treated harshly by several countries to which Nigeria has extended various kinds of assistance. The scholar advocates that “in future, this kind of behaviour should not go without consequence. There ought to be a limit to our tolerance, in spite of our avowed policy of sisterly relations with countries in our region and on the African continent as a whole”.
Controversially, Osuntokun somewhat in contradiction of his earlier point on preserving our national interest in the face of challenges from the west argues that there is nothing wrong in Nigeria allowing American bases in the country in the interest of our security. To quote him: “The point I’m making is that an American base does not necessarily translate to a derogation of a country’s sovereignty”. Expectedly, this latter point generated heated debate during the question-and-answer session which also saw the lecturer robustly defend his position.
The lecture was notable not just for the quality of the presentation but more importantly for the vigorous audience feedback from what one may call the foreign policy elite which included former Director Generals of the NIIA such as Prof. George Obiozor and the current DG, Prof. Bola Akinterinwa. There were also in attendance academics such as Prof. Solomon Akinboye of the University of Lagos, Prof. Kayode Soremekun of Covenant University Ota, Profs. Dasylva and Yerima of Redeemer’s University, Profs. Adele Jinadu, Akinyeye, Akinyele as well as Dr. Olajumoke Yacob-Aliso. Lead City University which currently hosts the secretariat was heavily represented by such scholars as Profs. Alaba Ogunsanwo, Chibuzor Nwoke, among others. There were also the Professorate from the NIIA and other well-known foreign policy scholars such as Prof. Saliu of the University of Ilorin and Dr. Obuoforibo of the University of Port Harcourt.
It was a rewarding afternoon of engaging and stimulating conversation on Nigeria’s foreign policy; it remains to be seen, however, how much of this intellectual exchange will impact on the remaking of Nigeria’s foreign policy.
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