Prime Business Africa
Nigeria’s Dissonance and Loss of Global Leverage
By Oseloka H. Obaze
Nigeria remains under the klieg lights. Regrettably, this is not for all-too-positive reasons. There is a clear correlation between her domestic policy and governance dissonance and her discernible loss of global leverage. Once considered Africa’s bellwether, Nigeria has since fallen on hard times. Relatedly, she has also lost the capacity to deploy both hard and soft power in tackling national interest matters. For now, she straddles the BRICS and the G-20 blocs and yet is neither a full member in either, which makes conversations with her international partners very awkward. It’s extremely sad that Nigeria is being described as a “now disgraced country.” But she has perhaps, unwittingly earned that sobriquet and comeuppance.
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What happened to Nigeria? In the local jargon, which has since gained currency, “Nigeria happened to Nigeria.” Her plight is largely self-inflicted. And that is very bad news. Conventional wisdom holds that Nigeria’s bane was and remains bad leadership. True; but several other variables have since further compounded her challenges. Of her present predicaments, policy dissonance, which translates to the conflict “between stated policy goals and actual actions,” which creates “contradictions that hinder effectiveness,” seems to be the most palpable. Add to these, impunity, bigotry, ethnicity, and disrespect for the rule of law, factors that have all coalesced into a potpourri of negativity that continues to hobble good governance and nation-building.
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The resultant negative indices have not only created domestic policy dissonance hitherto unimagined, but have translated into the waning strength of government, both at home and in the international arena. Today Nigeria is very polarized and disunited. Understandably, long held high expectations of Nigeria has been pretty much a bust. In some ways, and perhaps counter intuitively, those who once had great hopes for Nigeria, are reflexively doing a rethink.
Nigeria no longer commands the global respect it once had and did. Her power of persuasion is badly eroded; as is her power to play the role of a regional hegemon and enforcer. A nation that rewards thieves and scofflaws with honours, positions, and national awards, simply demarket itself as unserious and unreliable. The capacity, by those presently in public offices to contrive, sustain and tolerate impunity is unprecedented. Some of the profligate happenings in Nigeria boggle the mind. According to Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, they amount to “heaping unlawfulness upon criminality.”
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The 2025 Christmas night airstrikes by US forces on Islamic non-state, rogue actors and terrorists within her frontiers spoke volumes. In 2007, Nigeria spearheaded the opposition to African states hosting the headquarters of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The grounds were sovereignty concerns. The Buhari administration backtracked on that opposition. It’s hugely ironical, that the Tinubu administration now understands and appreciates sufficiently, the efficacy of AFRICOM in counter-terrorism, to have requested their assistance.
Inviting AFRICOM is one thing, addressing factors that gave rise to and fertilized the grounds for terrorism is another. Terrorism is terrorism; be it domestic or otherwise. Nigerian authorities for religious reasons, loathed to brand the non-state actors within its jurisdiction as terrorist. So they elected to call them bandits. Nigerian authorities discernibly pandered to such destabilizing actors; and they never exhibited zero-tolerance for their mission, presence or activities. In fact, some in the governance circles reportedly financed and abetted the so-called bandits. Indeed, some canvassed and succeeded in pushing through amnesty and rehabilitation policies, for those who in actual fact had clearly committed treason.
In all these, Nigeria’s present leaders failed to learn from history. If they were sufficiently curious, and had national interest at heart, they would have inquired how President Shehu Shagari, a Muslim, tackled robustly the extremist Muhammad Marwa-led Islamic Maitatsine sect that threatened Nigeria’s national security, with the Yan Tatsine insurgency.
Several other recent indicators point to Nigeria’s increasing irrelevance as a regional or global player. The emergence of the AES cluster as a hump in the ECOWAS orbit, the recent coup in Guinea Bissau, her clearly bungled response to the coup in Benin Republic and her apologetic groveling in order to retrieve her military aircraft and crew that were seized by the authorities in Burkina Faso, are critical pointers to her vastly diminished status. Her recent inclusion on targeted travel ban by the U.S. also speaks to her progressive loss of clout.
Paradoxically, all the variables that once qualified Nigeria as a potentially rich and powerful medium power are still in place. The players and institutions that once drove Nigeria’s bullish disposition have not disappeared. They have merely been weakened or sidelined by a clog and cadre of myopic leaders. Those who have the mindset and capacity to re-energize Nigeria have also been sidelined and are hardly consulted, incentivized or given the opportunity to make meaningful policy contribution. Notable academic think-tanks from University of Lagos, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Ahmadu Bello University, that once drove policy formulations and responses, are now moribund.
Interestingly, this is a juncture when Nigeria’s Diaspora remains a behemoth in terms of numbers, knowledge and wealth transfer capacity, intellectual and fiscal wherewithal as well as patriotic fervour. However, the inability of the incumbent administration to constructively rally the Nigerian Diaspora to the clarion call of nation building speaks volume.
Characterizing Nigeria as having become a banana republic won’t be a tad unfair. It won’t be gross over exaggeration either. The political opposition, particularly those who have abandoned their moral and constitutional obligations and roles, by defecting to the ruling party, has validated that contention. To choose precepts over time-honoured practices might be expedient, but also mortally harmful to the republic.
Were Nigeria still a parliamentary democracy, the public vote-of-no-confidence so far heaped on the Tinubu administration, would have warranted a snap election, and surely, a change in leadership. Assessing a nation’s strengths and weaknesses requires heady analysis of cause-and-effect. The causative factors that brought the nation to its present conundrum are hardly alien. They are all home-grown, self-inflicted, and self-imposed.
It’s inexplicable, that the hitherto peaceful cattle ranching and husbandry industry, a major facet and revenue earner of Nigeria’s economy since 1914, would suddenly become a veritable source of conflict. It’s even more difficult to explain how in a pluralistic and secular Nigeria, religion was allowed to become justifiable grounds for visceral violence and internecine conflicts. One thing is certain; these are all domestic issues that are now laden with traditional emotionalism, thanks to very myopic and exploitative national leadership elite.
Lack of consequences for crimes, impunity and for undermining the rule of law, is destroying Nigeria. When elected and appointed public officials disavow their sworn oaths of office and engage in nefarious acts, and grand larceny, the nation suffers. The recently disclosed forgery and alteration of the Tax Reform Act, is a glaring example. Some people ought to be held accountable and sanctioned. But that is most unlikely. And that is the crux of the rut and rot in Nigeria’s leadership circles.
Insofar as Nigeria is unwilling to fix her domestic challenges, by fixing how she selects her leaders, her governance plight will persist. No consequences or reprisals for bad governance, is the green light for impunity, crime and criminality that continues to dog Nigeria. In an executive presidential system, the “buck stops at desk” of the president. Shall we remind the president of that reality? Shall we tell the President?
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