By Nnamdi Elekwachi
President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria will be joining other world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly 78th session, UNGA 78, where he will be contributing to global discourse while wooing foreign investors. It marks a watershed in his diplomatic outings, especially as he will be delivering his inaugural national statement before the Assembly’s High-Level General Debate, being a newcomer. It will enable him have bilateral talks with world leaders, including presidents of South Africa, Brazil, European Union Commission, and to further discuss with owners of businesses and global brands, energy experts, tech gurus and other major players in the global business community. But the catch is Tinubu’s scheduled sidelines talks with President Joe Biden of America which sources said would focus on the coups d’etat happening across the continent and what Nigeria’s role would be going forward in the region.
Tinubu has been having quite a plethora of diplomatic outings recently. From India, where he was Prime Minister Nerandra Modi’s guest at the just-concluded G-20 Summit to United Arab Emirates, UAE where he met President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and had a dialogue aimed at relaxing diplomatic row between both countries, Tinubu will be appearing at the UN General Assembly’s 78th regular session, where he will lend his voice to issues like climate change, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), economic inequalities and other items on the agenda. Tinubu, unlike Buhari before him, has not recorded any poor outing in all the diplomatic circles and for a he had so far participated in. His call for a fairer and inclusive world at the G-20 summit was articulate. But there is more to diplomacy!
Contagiously, with a domino effect, coups d’etat are sweeping through Africa where West African states now play hosts to military juntas. The coups, however, are making Tinubu a sought-after African leader before the West whose mining interests and assets, including businesses and military bases, are to be safeguarded. Nigeria’s democracy, no doubt, is ‘stable,’ at least in the African sense, meaning that Tinubu remains an option available to the West. The Nigerian president, who is courting the West, is willing and enjoying the ride, making many to wonder whether the leader of the most populous black nation is a pawn in the power gaming board of the West.
After he was announced the winner by INEC following the February 25 presidential election, Britain’s former high commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing, had blithely urged Nigerians to ‘embrace’ the outcome of the election and improve on their electoral system. France’s Emmanuel Macron would give Tinubu a red-carpet reception after he was sworn in during a State Banquet in Paris, the first Western leader to host him, and it wasn’t long before Tinubu was made the Chairman of ECOWAS’ Authority of Heads of State and Government. Prompted by France, Tinubu read coupists in West Africa the riot act, but hardly had his words finished than a military coup happened in neighbouring Niger. Having failed to commit Nigeria to war since the National Assembly did not vote in favour of military action, Tinubu while speaking to Ulamas, Muslim clerics, who had opened a diplomatic channel with the junta in Niger had this to say: “I am managing a very serious situation. If you take ECOWAS aside, other people will react, those who are outside of our control. I am the one holding back those sides. I am the one holding back ECOWAS.”
It Is obvious Tinubu was not talking about ECOWAS or the AU here because continuing he said, “Even as at this morning, I have been inundated with calls on the readiness of countries with their military force and contributions. However, I told them to wait…”
Since he said “countries,” not a “bloc” or “body,” were readying and massing up troops for a military showdown in Niger, it is clear that Western countries were mobilising for war, waiting for Nigeria to open a sector under the banner of ECOWAS only for the National Assembly to flatly refuse levying war against Niger.
In a telephone call, Tinubu spoke with Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, assuring him of Nigeria’s commitment to protecting democracy in the sub-region. Junta-led Niger and Gabon were discussed with the two leaders affirming their commitment to strengthening people-to-people ties between both countries.
Tinubu is the West’s democratic asset in West Africa, even President Biden who did not officially call to congratulate him following the 2023 polls is willing to speak with him on the sidelines at New York during the UNGA session, just to secure his nation’s interest in Niger where America has a drone base with over 1000 military personnel. There is talk of German chancellor, Mr. Olaf Scholz’s proposed visit to Nigeria later in October. Considering Germany’s role and influence in Europe (the EU), this may signal a new foreign policy era. With France, Britain and Canada already on his side, America and Germany edging closer, Tinubu’s arms are wide open for an embrace with the West; perhaps that explains why he did not attend the Russia-Africa Summit at Saint Petersburg where Vice President Shettima represented Nigeria.
Obviously, there is a foreign policy goal realignment observable in Tinubu’s diplomatic romance with France. Tinubu, likely, is relating with France, his medical tourism destination, more than any Nigerian president before him. I do not think it is rapprochement; I think it is simply strategic, my concern is whether Tinubu understands the flexibilities and dynamics of international relations enough to maximize favourable foreign policy goals for Nigeria. There is also a reversed trend in Franco-Nigerian relations. As a newly independent African state in the early and mid ‘60s, Nigeria, exercising her leadership role in Africa, had challenged France over nuclear tests the European nation conducted at Algeria’s Sahara axis, degrading and destroying Reganne, some 750 miles away from Algiers, Algeria’s seat of power. It had happened during the Cold War, at a time when Russia had her nuclear tests at Kazakh steppe. Again, during the Nigerian civil war, France had contemplated supporting the short-lived republic that was Biafra, her way of checking Nigeria’s growing influence in the continent. France stood by Cameroon during the Bakassi Peninsula maritime boundary conflict with Nigeria because it never supported Nigeria’s leadership and ‘big brother’ role in Africa. Benin Republic, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, all which border Nigeria, are French-speaking countries and former colonies of France, the latter wants to protect from Nigeria, a former British colony. So, under Tinubu, what changed?
What is required more in foreign policy framing is looking inward to maximize one’s interest; scholars these days talk of “intermestic policy” – how domestic considerations shape international relations. Tinubu’s aborted armed intervention in Niger had no African consideration. Tinubu is the most unpopular Nigerian president having polled less than 10% of votes from registered voters in the last presidential election. And unlike Yar’Adua who admitted before the G-8 (now G-7 following Russia’s expulsion) that his election was “flawed,” Tinubu who had addressed the G-20 summit and other for a smugly preaches ‘democracy in Africa.’ Contrarily, Tinubu’s undemocratic utterance, before his followers after the Chatham House interview, where he said that political power must be grabbed, snatched and run away with could be likened to when Trump charged his supporters before the Capitol Hill riot, to “fight like hell.” It was in Western interest that Tinubu threatened ‘fire and fury’ on Niger where an unconstitutional change of government had happened, not necessarily to restore constitutional order in that country.
The question becomes, Is the West the thrust of Tinubu’s foreign policy? Recently, Tinubu’s new foreign affairs minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar proposed the ‘4Ds’ of foreign policy, a new foreign policy dimension of the Renewed Hope agenda. ‘Development,’ ‘Democracy,’ ‘Demography’ and ‘Diaspora,’ Tuggar said, are to be the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign engagements. How these relate to Tinubu’s pro-West diplomacy remains yet to be seen.
I did say earlier that all this is strategic and interest-driven. Tinubu wants to look good before the West; the West see in Nigeria’s president a partner in democracy. This is to be seen in how the Democratic Party, in America, during Obama’s presidency threw their support behind Buhari who later won Jonathan of the PDP. Biden had been vice president then, Tinubu had been the acclaimed ‘leader’ of the APC having deployed resources, including propaganda machinery, to oust Jonathan who was often perceived as ‘clueless.’ When Trump had Nigeria on the list of countries with religious freedom concerns following an unprecedented spate of killings and persecution Christians in the North suffered under Buhari, a newly elected Biden would remove Nigeria from that list. If there was anything that showed Biden’s support to the APC-led Federal Government, perhaps it was America’s stance on the EndSARS Protests where according to a release from Department of State, Biden said the Nigerian military fired shots into the air and that there was ‘no evidence’ that young people who gathered at Lekki Tollgate were killed, contrary to CNN’s report. Today, fresh evidences are still emerging, including leaked memo on mass burial of alleged 103 victims of the shootings.
In relating with the West, Tinubu must be able to explore Nigeria’s development drive, because there are no free riders in international affairs. He’s enjoying a Western hype so far, even when his economic policies have yet to take root. After he removed subsidy upon assumption of office, for example, the IMF and World Bank lauded Tinubu who they later said was embarking on monetary and fiscal policy reforms. Tinubu himself has to be cautious because the same Breton Woods institutions, in the mid ’80s, had advised Nigeria to embark on structural adjustment programme, SAP that later later resulted in economic somersault Nigeria is yet to recover from decades after. Like SAP, subsidy removal and certain reforms initiated by Tinubu could be well-advised, but whether they suit the times is an entirely different ball game.
While leaders of the West are eager to host, telephone and visit Tinubu, the conversations, ironically, do not harp on the need for electoral reforms, building of institutions that make democracy the best option in Nigeria. Tinubu, many still believed, bullied his way through, but Trump could not subvert democracy in America because the institutions, always stronger, stopped him. In Africa, weak institutions continue to render the judiciary weak, the press gagged, opposition stifled and the people hopeless. The meaning is that military coups continue to be seen as panacea for failed democracies, had become an attractive option more desirable than unpopular governments where presidents-for-life dictate everything. Irony is that men like Alassane Ouattara of Cote D’Ivoire who altered the constitution to enable him enjoy a third term of office are pontificating on democracy, ready to deploy some 850 personnel to ECOWAS standby force. Tinubu too is no different, the only thing is that like Ouattara, the circumstance is making Tinubu an option. Whether he leverages that to build a robust diplomacy is left for history to judge.
West or wherever, Tinubu needs to look inward to draw his foreign policy goals from home, not to take Nigeria outside. Doing this is part of what Nigeria needs, not chiefly Afrocentric or pro-West diplomacy. Intermestic!
Nnamdi Elekwachi, historian and public affairs analyst, can be reached via nnamdiaficionado@gmail.com
