Gulliver’s Troubles: Nigerian Foreign Policy after the Cold War (review)

Since gaining independence on 1 October 1960, Nigeria has been through several foreign-policy phases, in addition to successfully seeking to be the economic and political giant of Africa. After 1960, successive Nigerian leaders have created policies dictated by colonial experiences and world events of the 1960s and 1970s.

With a large oil reservoir and a strategic location, Nigeria has often been of great interest to many foreign ideological powers, especially during the Cold War; however, a dent in its pursuit of African leadership occurred when U.S. President Barack Obama did not visit the country during his first official trip to the African continent. Instead, the then new and relatively young Mr. Obama, accompanied by his family, chose to visit neighboring Ghana, from where he made important foreign-policy announcements on Africa.

This book, divided into various sections, addresses pertinent issues that have led Nigeria’s evolution in its foreign policy. Its coeditors have done an excellent and exemplary job in their choice of contributors, all of whom have made rich and vivid descriptions in their essays to illuminate their topics or selected subjects. Readers are drawn into the discussed issues with an introduction to the background and domestic context that has created the Republic of Nigeria. Also addressed are the social and economic inequalities that have existed since independence and their cumulative effects. Coeditor Mustapha, for example, brings to the fore the persistence of some inequalities between the northern and southern geographic divides (or halves) of the country. This has led to poverty and crime in some parts of the country. In his chapter, he tackles the Nigerian personality, and how it affects its foreign policy. Among other details, he aptly states: “in international relations, perception is an important part of reality” (p. 54).

Other chapters address the military-related national security issues that have had an impact on Nigeria’s foreign policy. The army, which the ruling elite created after independence, was to serve primarily in ceremonial functions and, as Fawole put it, “only to secondarily defend the nation from external attacks—a remote possibility at the time” (p. 96). However, military-trained individuals have used coups d’état to control the majority of Nigeria’s postindependent years, and they have been the major players in drawing up Nigeria’s foreign policy.

The book has a useful discussion of the Bakassi imbroglio, which has left tense relations with neighboring Cameroon, a former French colony. It has been sufficiently explained that there used to be a military element in the Bakassi situation that embroiled Nigeria and Cameroon in a border conflict. Consequently, the military has been a force in Nigerian politics; hence it is underscored in this section of the book that the Abacha military regime’s hanging of Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni activists in November 1995 adversely affected Nigeria’s image in the outside world. These and other issues addressed in the book further explain the current state of Nigeria’s foreign relations.

Sections three and four of the book place Nigeria in regional and global contexts in various issues. They discuss how regional events have shaped Nigeria’s approach to the outside world. These events included military interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other countries, and they are seen as positive endeavors at imprinting the Nigerian leadership in West Africa.

The book addresses how effective this foreign policy has been and whether or not it has brought any appreciable payoff for Nigeria. At this juncture, Ambassador Uhomoibhi, looking at Nigerian–U.N. relations, succinctly traces the history of Nigeria at the U.N. His diplomatic presentation offers a glimpse of the relationship between Nigeria and other world bodies. Dating from the years that Chief Simeon Adebo and other Nigerian diplomats ably represented the country at the U.N. and in other international arenas, Ambassador Uhomoibhi highlights the role Nigeria has assumed in peacekeeping missions around the world, including the fact that...