| Pub. Date | : Oct, 2019 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of International Relations |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJIR31910 |
| Author Name | : Temitope Peter Ola |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Management |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 10 |
The study discusses whether Nigeria’s Afro-centric foreign policy is still sustainable in the 21st century. For a long time, since the 1960s, Africa has been the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. Few would doubt Nigeria’s material and human resource investment in the prosecution of African diplomatic enterprise. However, at a point, Nigeria reached a crescendo, especially in the second half of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, and receded to diminuendo. Subsequently, what is seen and heard more about Nigeria is tolerance for corruption, avarice, greed, primitive capital accumulation and sheer lack of direction on how to achieve development. It seems the country’s successes have always been written on waters while it failures are cast in stone.
In the literature, Nigeria’s foreign policy has consistently been called into question as regards its remaining consistent in projecting African principles, espousing African causes, and defending African interests. Though scholars generally agreed that the pursuit of Nigeria’s Afro-centric foreign policy, since independence, has experienced a meteoric rise and fall, what has become of Nigeria’s African foreign policy since the country became a mere demographic and ‘economic Gulliver’ in Africa, and a political and ‘diplomatic Lilliputian’ in African affairs, has not been examined. This has led to a plethora of conceptual and epistemological confusion as it becomes unclear whether Nigeria still pursues its Afro-centric foreign policy. Therefore, to unravel what has become of Nigeria’s foreign policy of Africa, this study looks at the nexus between national interest and foreign policy, the place of Afro-centrism in Nigeria’s foreign policy, actualization of Africa as the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, as well as issues against Nigeria’s policy of Afro-centrism.