Revisiting Tuggar’s Strategic Autonomy and Nigeria’s Non-Alignment Policy
by Ambassador Usman Sarki
“Where premises are misunderstood inferences must be unsound” James Bryce
Foreign policy has always been a preserve of the intelligentsia and its exposition and articulation are both within the ascribed prerogative of this informed group. In this respect, it is refreshing to read the views of Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister on constitutionalism, democracy, rule of law and foreign policy, as presented in his recent article titled “Foreign Policy and a Path to Peace in a Dangerous Neighbourhood”, that appeared on January 7, 2025. Intellectualizing foreign policy especially by a sitting Foreign Minister is a vital process of engaging with the discerning public in Nigeria. After all, diplomacy and foreign policy are restricted affairs that could even be termed elitist in substance, therefore; making an effort such as this to speak across the divides to reach the critical reading public is a timely undertaking. The various treatises of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinski, Condoleezza Rice, and others readily come to mind as samples of intellectualization of foreign policy and national security issues.
Therefore, the meticulously assembled and coherently presented points around Nigeria’s foreign policy as undertaken by Ambassador Tuggar offers us the opportunity to constructively delve into the areas of foreign policy and national security premised upon constitutional rule and democratic values of transparent opinion sharing. Ambassador Tuggar’s article not only laid out the contours of Nigeria’s foreign policy, but also laid prostrate the antagonistic posture of Nigerians towards the government in its foreign policy undertakings. It is in the nature of things that countries reassess their foreign policy doctrines and premises from time to time, in order to provide the contexts and the directions needed to cope with emerging challenges and rapidly changing situations. In this endeavour, both academics and policy-makers in the realm of foreign policy have a responsibility and a common purpose to provide impetus to this undertaking.
Foreign policy therefore, is not a hide-bound assumption that is also static in its outlook and operation. It is in fact a dynamic proposition that reinvents itself with time and the opportunities and challenges that go with the relentless alterations in the contours of geopolitics and the driving forces of the national interest. One critical question that “The Academia and Foreign Policy Making: Bridging the Gap”, (DIIS Working Paper 2011:05) sought to answer was – how do academic research in the field of international relations and the making of foreign policy coincide, coexist and even work together? The other question it sought to answer was – “what does the relationship look like if seen from the perspective of practitioners and policy planners?”. These are important and yet not generally explored premises in the Nigerian academic and foreign policy circles, to warrant the arrival at a conclusive position that could be helpful to researchers and the foreign policy practitioners alike.
To my mind, this gap is beginning to be filled or addressed by the two discourses that have been placed before the Nigerian public by Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his article referred to above, and Professor Bola A. Akinterinwa’s piece titled “Yusuf Tuggar’s Strategic Autonomy and Nigeria’s Non-Alignment Policy: Beyond the Dangerous Neighbourhood”, published on January 12, 2025. The role of the academic in foreign policy discourse is to frame the questions and provide the answers around the competent prosecution of a country’s foreign policy. This realization should entail a modicum of understanding and appreciation of the constraints, restrictions and opportunities in which the practitioners are often situated, and the decision-makers invariably have to take into consideration, in moving the premises for attainment of the national interest forward with assuredness, discretion and circumspection.
This explains why sometimes foreign policy and its attendant companion diplomacy, are seen as reactive and conservative in nature. Constitutional restraints, reciprocity and its intricate equilibrium, as well as the need to be seen as a reliable partner in any critical endeavour, are some of the considerations that inform certain tendencies and approaches exhibited by those at the helm of state affairs and the foreign policy direction of countries. Competence, discernment, a balanced temperament as well as a capacity for holistic appraisal of situations both settled and emerging, are needed in the person in charge of a delicate enterprise like foreign policy. In this sense, the article by Ambassador Tuggar offers a glimmer of the intellectual fiber that is now driving Nigeria’s foreign policy, which seems to be the point of interest of the article by Professor Akinterinwa.
In this sense, a worthwhile endeavour has been presented to Nigerians by the erudition exhibited by both writers one in exploring the extent to which foreign policy can be stretched to become the instrument of peace in an increasingly unstable and volatile neighbourhood, and the other in contemplating the kernels of Nigeria’s foreign policy under past and present administrations and offering an alternative opinion. The Professor’s erudition shone through his articulate and engaging article in which he summed up and expatiated on the unfolding trends in Nigeria’s foreign policy as expounded by none other than the country’s Foreign Minister. We could consider Professor Akinterinwa’s article as a rejoinder, a critique, an explanation or even a contextualization of the paper by Minister Tuggar.
In all these instances, Professor Akinterinwa no doubt seems well placed to undertake these exercises, having gathered in his palms both the strings of academic excellence and practical exposure to foreign policy in our country. I think Professor Akinterinwa’s interest in this matter was sparked off by two things namely his professional attachment to the study of Nigeria’s foreign policy, and his longstanding interest in French affairs that he developed while studying in that country, alongside a taste for baguette and croissants I would dare to presume. The basis for a friendly discussion was established from the outset by Professor Akinterinwa in his characterization of Tuggar’s article as “scholarly”, “quite interesting”, “explicative in intention”, “thought-provoking in argument”, and a “good attempt”, etc., which does credit to the Minister and reflects his intellectual capacity for grasping the finer points of the intricate and sometimes abstruse propositions of geopolitical and foreign policy constructs.
This much was admitted by Professor Akinterinwa himself, when he quite rightly pointed out to the ambiguity of the phrase “foreign policy” and its several connotations as a technique or tactic, a decision or objective, as a focus or vision, or even as a process. It is in this light that the discourse on a “new” foreign policy posture by Nigetia, if such was the case, as propounded by Minister Tugger, should be welcomed and entertained by the discerning constituency of foreign policy academics and practitioners. It should be received as something worthwhile and in dire need of expatiation in these times of global uncertainties and geopolitical upheavals. The fact that no aspect of governance including foreign policy undertakings should be kept or allowed to remain static, should dictate that a new construct should from time to time, be devised and presented to the country in terms of moving forward the basic premises for articulation of foreign policy.
Minister Tuggar’s relative youthfulness compared to other past Foreign Ministers may expose his restlessness and impatience with static positions in foreign policy, but his mental acumen will certainly enable him to navigate the intricacies and complexities that are inherent in the conduct of any country’s foreign policy, let alone those of a country such as Nigeria, which is at the epicenter of regional contradictions as well as tendencies that are inevitably linked to evolving geopolitical trends in the region and the larger world today. It is this capacity for discernment perhaps that provided the impetus to view Nigeria’s relations with France as an opportunity to be welcomed than an impediment to be repulsed as seen by some, in the resolution of the endemic challenges in the Sahel and the larger West African region.
A country like Nigeria that seeks to play a meaningful and constructive role in regional and global affairs, by necessity will have to place herself in an equidistant position, not above or below other powers, but at a level of respectful parity in the estimation of herself against other powers. I believe this is the crux of the “revisionist” posture of Minister Tuggar if at all that was the case, in his proclamation of the doctrine of “Strategic Autonomy” vis-a-vis the unfolding dynamics in our region. It is in this context that both his article and that of Professor Akinterinwa offer us the exciting prospects for introspection and explicit demonstration of our understanding of the nexus between foreign policy, constitutionalism and a hybrid system of approach to the pursuit of the national interest in diplomacy.
It is hard to say that a new doctrine or a redefinition of Nigeria’s non-aligned foreign policy was expounded in Minister Tuggar’s article, as asserted by Professor Akinterinwa. It is more like a reaffirmation of the basic premises of the country’s foreign policy now framed against the backdrop of emerging trends in our region and the constitutional and legal aspects that should determine such reorientation. The “critique” of Ambassador Tuggar’s article by the erudite Professor if that was what it seemed, was actually a partial endorsement of the Minister’s interpretation of the longstanding principles of Nigeria’s foreign policy as first enunciated by the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister. That point has actually been very clearly explained by the Professor in connection with his examination of the doctrine of “Strategic Autonomy” of Minister Tuggar.
We cannot find too many divergencies in the positions of the two enterprising theorists and expounders of foreign policy doctrines, only that the defense of some salient issues in the national question discourse by Professor Akinterinwa seem rather incongruous in the context of a foreign policy debate. For one, the issue of self-determination in international law and in the context of foreign policy is a settled idea, that translates into the emancipation of colonial and non-self governing territories from alien control. The current contest between Israel and its supporters in the West and the Palestinian people is premised on the immutable principle of self-determination of people.
Perhaps a recourse to the principles of the Bandung Declaration of April 1955 which the Professor is well acquainted with, might give a better picture of the historical and philosophical underpinnings of this principle. It goes beyond mere legalities and other assumptions but is rooted in the dignity and worth of people and their right to live free of foreign or alien domination. Therefore; applying the concept to the internal dynamics of a sovereign and independent country like Nigeria begs certain questions to be answered and certain conditions to be explained. Professor Akinterinwa cited the Yoruba and Igbo agitations for “self-determination” which he also explained as a search for “separate identities”.
Today, what constitutes a “separate identity” of any group in Nigeria is merely defined by culture, rituals and languages, while a leveling factor of the economy and legal values that it engendered have destroyed any claim to uniqueness of any section of the country. The operations of the capitalist economy and the inexorable march of modernization have removed any pretenses of separate identities of every people on this earth, unless of course if they exist in a world that is completely divorced from the global economy and have no relationships whatsoever with the interactions that are going on around them.
The other issue of significance is the premise upon which an “Igbo” or a “Yoruba” self-determination can be located and justified in the discourse on the national question in Nigeria. What are the driving impulses of this agitation? What are the compelling reasons for the agitation for separatism by these groups of Nigerians? Why is the justification for such a tendency being placed on the repudiation of the 1999 constitution, which Professor Akinterinwa also seems to have issues with?
I suppose a dialectical interpretion of self-determination that separates states, nations and peoples in its operability should be discussed by way of removing contradictions and ameliorating problems inherent in this topic. The same problems and controversies emerged during the final stages of the San Francisco Conference in May 1945 that established or created the United Nations. Self-determination as a concept or principle did not appear in the Dumbarton Oaks Proposal, but was later added to the proceedings of the San Francisco Conference.
The matters raised by Professor Akinterinwa in connection with self-determination, separatism, the rights of ethnic groups and the 1999 constitution can only be adequately covered in a separate submission. However, they raised deeply subsumed challenges around the question of ethnic minority rights, the operations of a constitutional government, the introduction of innovations and changes into the concept of rule of law etc, which should be given vent to, by scholars, politicians and government officials alike in the context of the evolving dynamics in Nigeria. The right to self-determination within the context of an existing nation-state presents the dilemmas and existential challenges of micro-nationalism and enclave mentality that actively repudiate the idea and essence of the larger national construct.
What has been proposed in Professor Akinterinwa’s article seems to be the acknowledgement of such tendencies that are either anarchic in political outlook, or iconoclastic in legal contexts, both capable of causing disruptions in the national set up in an inherently fractious country like Nigeria. Ambassador Tuggar’s postulations were precisely made to offer certain remedies to these conflicting sentiments, by presenting the possibility of a more meaningful and constructive relationship within the larger national space, as well as in the relation of Nigeria with the outside world particularly with a country like France, in the unfolding miasmic relations between it and Niger Republic. He did not elevate relations with France above those with any African countries, but simply pointed to the obvious fact that Nigeria can and should be allowed to determine the course of her interactions with all countries on the basis of competent and prudent assessment of her interests.
Even great powers occasionally are afflicted by incompetence and disorientation in the direction towards which their foreign relations are taken. Anne-Marie Slaughter in her article “A Time of Domestic Reckoning and Renewal”, (Aspen Strategy Group, 2020), examined the internal dynamics of American foreign policy and reasoned that “Incompetence surely decreases American soft power, dysfunctional countries are not models for others to emulate”. Going by this reasoning, the contextualizing, articulation and execution of Nigeria’s foreign policy cannot be less competent or more dysfunctional than those of other countries. Professor Akinterinwa has already provided the argument in favour of a competent management and prosecution of Nigeria’s foreign policy by making reference to the “4Ds” principle and his apparent endorsement of the actions of the Foreign Minister. This is as it should be in the interactions between the seasoned academic and the budding practitioner.
