Politics of Membership of International Organisations:The Case of Nigeria in BRICS

Bola A. Akinterinwa 

Membership of any national or international organization is, more often than not, a resultant from political decisions, because it is first a matter of choice between joining and not joining. Nigeria’s interest in joining the United Nations Organisation (UN) was made clear on October 7, 1960 in Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s statement at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) when Nigeria was admitted as the 99th Member of the UN. 

Membership can be of many types: original membership, membership by accession, full membership, observer status membership, and membership with limited rights like the Palestinian case at the UN. Palestinians want to become a full member of the UN but were obstructed by the whims and caprices of the United States and Israel in the main. This is one good example of politics of membership. Membership can be unlimited in periodic terms and can confer equal and unequal rights as the example of the United Nations has shown. 

Every Member of the UN has one vote but the one vote can be more equal than others as it is the case with the right of veto at the UN Security Council (UNSC). For instance, as provided in Articles 108 and 109 of the UN Charter, no reform of the UN can take place without the consensual support of the Permanent-5 (P-5). It is equally useful to note the financial weighted principle in several financial institutions. The principle is about the determination of number of votes based on how much money one has in an organization in decision processes.

It is partly because of this that there has been growing complaints about inequality, injustice and unfairness in the conduct and management of international financial questions by the Bretton Woods institutions. It is also one major reason for the establishment of the BRICS to which many members of the UN are seeking membership and which the new organization has categorized. 

Politics of Organisational Membership

It is useful to note that the membership of an international organization carries along with it the personality of the Member and should not be confused with the personality of the organization.  This point is raised in understanding the context of Nigeria’s membership of the BRICS. Put interrogatively, is the BRICS an international organization? What constitutes an international organization? In the eyes of Akehurst M.A., in his Modern Introduction to International law, an ‘international organization is set up by agreement between two or more states.’ Garner, B.A says it is ‘an intergovernmental association of countries established by and operated according to multilateral treaty, whose purpose is to pursue the common aims of those countries.’

More interestingly, S.C.C. Okoronkwo says an international organisation is ‘an association of States established by treaty with a Constitution and Organs having legal personality, possessing privileges and immunities, which is formed for the purpose of achieving the common aims of its Members.’ From the foregoing, it is expected that an international organization must have a state character, organs and more than one member. Besides, it must be the outcome of an agreement aimed at pursuing shared values. It is at the level of the pursuit of shared values that the politicization of membership of the organization takes place.

Membership experiences in international relations are quite interesting and thought-provoking especially from the perspective of the international politics of it. First, there is the example of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) which has two types of membership: individual and collective membership. As provided in Article 5 of the April 4, 1949 NATO agreement, ‘the parties agreed that an armed attack against one or more in Europe or North America shall be considered an armed attack against them and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of the individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such actions as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area…’ 

The politics of membership is noteworthy: an attack on one is an attack on all others; such an attack warrants a reciprocal treatment; the reciprocal treatment should be ‘reported to the Security Council;’ and must be ‘terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.’ Without doubt,

Article 5 of the Charter has been applied only once since the inception of the NATO in 1949. It was applied following the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. 

Besides, the truth remains that no one wants to wait for an attack to take place before responding. The practice has always been to prevent or nip in the bud security threats. But the non-occurrence of an armed attack has not prevented intra-organisational misunderstanding that was the main feature within the NATO. France is on record to have been quarrelling with the mania of directives of the NATO commander, generally an American citizen. The NATO Allied Command Operations is under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The misunderstanding prompted France’s withdrawal from the NATO’s collective membership. France wanted prior consultation and her consent before participation in any reciprocal and collective armed defence. And true enough, the misunderstanding also led to the conversion of the NATO headquarters into the University of Paris-Dauphine. As such, France remained a political member of the NATO at the level of individual membership. 

There is also the category of unwanted membership in international relations, which is the case of the Nuclear Weapons States or the Nuclear Club. The nuclear club operates in an informal or officious setting and capitalizing on international regulations to project their national interests. For instance, the Nuclear Powers, synonymous with the Permanent Members of the UNSC and also generally referred to as the Nuclear Weapons States, do not want any other Member State of the United Nations to acquire nuclear capability, arguing that other States could be careless. The P-5 only support the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Most unfortunately, however, the processes for developing nuclear capability for war purposes are not different from the processes for peaceful purposes.

In fact, France and China are on record to have initially refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They wanted to perfect their nuclear capability before committing themselves. They later came back to sign the agreement after they were satisfied with their nuclear status. The P-5 does not want North Korea and Iran to acquire nuclear capability but both countries have insisted on acquiring it for purposes of their self-defence. They do not want to be protected under the nuclear umbrella of any foreign country. While some countries insist on becoming a member of the nuclear family and the nuclear family does not want new members, this has generated much controversy and cannot but be an interesting aspect of politics of membership. Additionally, all the members are state actors. There are no institutional structures and there is no collective collaboration apart from the UN framework. 

Shared interest is also a major dynamic of membership of an organization. There are the cases of the G-5, G-7, G-8, G-20, G-77, etc. The G-5, also referred to as Group of Five, was founded in 2014 as a regional and intergovernmental organization to foster security and development in the five Member States (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger). The shared values include the need to support democracy and good governance, as well as sustain mutually beneficial, regional and international cooperation. It is from this G-5 that the Group of Three or the Alliance of the Sahel States (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) has been carved out. 

The G-7 is similarly an intergovernmental political and economic forum, comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States. Economic cooperation, as well as pluralism, liberal democracy and representative government are the main motivational dynamics of coming together. But, for other various reasons of force majeure, Russia was admitted into the group to form the G-8. Again for further considerations, membership of the G-8 was increased to G-20. The G-20, made up of 19 sovereign States and two regional organisations (the African Union and the European Union), is the first intergovernmental group for international economic cooperation.

Nearer home in Africa, there is the African Union of 55 Member States. Membership of it requires the ratification or accession to the Constitutive Act of the Union. In essence, it is the perception of gainful benefits that generally drives the urge to join an international organisation. By joining, a State cedes part of its sovereignty to the organization which makes the organization to acquire supranational authority. But when the supranational authority is used to the detriment of a Member’s interest, the membership can be withdrawn as it is the case with the ECOWAS and Mauritania and ECOWAS and the AES countries.

 It is against this background that the exegesis of Nigeria’s reported membership of the BRICS is a desideratum, especially in terms of its implications for Nigeria’s foreign policy of the 4-Ds. In this regard, how do we explain Nigeria’s membership of the BRICS?

BRICS and its Nigerian Membership 

Before explicating Nigeria’s membership of the BRICs, it is quite relevant to first investigate Nigeria’s quest to be an Associate Member of the European Economic Community (EEC) of Six in the 1960s. Nigeria sought the status of an Associate Member of the EEC, following France’s plea to the other five Members (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy) to consider giving a preferential treatment to all her former colonies. The other members accepted the idea, but advised that the same preferential treatment should also be extended to other countries for two reasons.

First, France could not but have the potential of maintaining a preferential treatment vis-à-vis other Members in the said former colonies of France. The belief was that the preferential treatment would be contrary to the spirit of the Rome Treaty. Secondly, the EEC would be discriminating by according the colonies a preferential treatment in the EEC relations with other third countries. It is within this context that, rather than agree to give France a different privileged position in the former colonies, a consensus was reached on a regime of association for all their former colonies. This was the background to the inclusion of Articles 131 to 136 in the Rome Treaty. A protocol on the modalities for implementation was specifically done on 27 March, 1957 for five years.

Following the general accession of many African countries to national sovereignty in the 1960s, the issue of the need to extend the preferential treatment to the Commonwealth countries was raised in 1962. And true enough, on July 20, 1963 the EEC showed its preparedness to negotiate with countries interested in becoming an Associate Member. Nigeria applied. In fact, the United Kingdom also showed interest in joining the EEC as a full member. The UK was not allowed to join the EEC until January 1973. Negotiations with Nigeria continued until January 1966 when the negotiated agreement was to be signed in Lagos. As we noted elsewhere, France waited until the last minute of signing to apply her veto against Nigeria’s membership. 

The veto against Nigeria was in reaction to Nigeria’s declaration of the French Ambassador to Nigeria, H.E. Raymond Offroy, persona non grata in protest against France’s atomic bomb tests in the Reggane area of the Sahara Dessert in February, April, and December 1960 (vide Bola A. Akinterinwa, Nigeria and France, 1960-1995: The Dilemma of Thirty-five Years of Relationship [Ibadan: Vantage Publishers,1999), 282 pp.] The politics of membership played by France was interesting from the importance and use of veto. France knew that Nigeria was much interested in an associate membership of the EEC and did not want Nigeria to have any advantage over the former French colonies, France simply took active part in all the negotiations with Nigeria. She did not oppose Nigeria’s membership during the negotiations but opted to send a plenipotentiary to Lagos, not to ratify the agreement but to veto the entry into force of the agreement. The veto killed the agreement.

As regards the politics of membership of the BRICS, it first of all began with four countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) whose Foreign Ministers met at the margins of the UNGA in September 2006 to discuss the modalities of the would-be organization. On 16th June 2009 the BRIC was founded at Yekaterinburg, Russia as an inter-governmental organization during the First BRIC Summit. Shanghai in China plays host to the headquarters of the BRICS. Thus the BRICS had four original members until 2010 when South Africa showed keen interest in joining, and eventually succeeded in joining the BRIC in September 2010. South Africa’s membership led to the re-coinage of BRIC. The letter ‘S’ was simply added to it to become BRICS. This enabled South Africa to attend its first BRICS leaders’ summit in 2011.

In 2023, the BRICS invited six countries (Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) to join the BRICS. Argentina is not on record to have accepted the kind invitation to become a member. All the other invitees have joined the BRICS since 1 January 2024. What is particularly noteworthy is that the BRICS has created two categories of Member States: Official and Partner States. The official members comprise the five original members and the invited countries: Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia was invited to join as an Official Member. As such, the official members are ten in number. Thirteen States were invited to join as Partner States: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekstan and Vietnam.

One major rationale for the establishment of BRICS is the consideration that the international institutions are generally dominated by Western powers to the detriment of the Third World countries. The need to stop the domination and bring about fairness was considered a necessity. It is against this background that the original members agreed to promote cooperation between and among themselves, with emphasis on mutual respect, consensus, inclusiveness, sovereign equality and strengthened solidarity. The need to promote political and security cooperation also became a top priority.

And true, the BRICS leaders meet twice a year: once for the Summit and once on the margins of the G-20 Summit. In the same vein, BRICS Foreign Ministers also meet twice a year, once for a standalone meeting and again on the margins of UNGA. Meetings are generally held on the basis of the principles of mutual respect, consensus, sovereign equality, inclusiveness and strengthened collaboration as noted earlier. The BRICS is particularly interested in a restructured global political, economic and financial architecture that will be particularly reflective of the situational reality of the world, as well as enable a more equitable balanced and representative world. It is against this background that Nigeria’s membership of the BRICS is not only quite interesting, but also raises several questions.

First, is Nigeria’s membership of the BRICS in Nigeria’s national interest? If it is, which national interest is at stake? Second, why is Nigeria’s membership that of a partner member? What are the institutional implications of official and partner members of the BRICS? Answers to some of these questions remind of the politics of the Franco-African Summits. There used to be pre-summit meeting on the eve of the summit in which only the Francophone leaders were involved. In other words, at the inception of the Franco-African summits, non-Francophone States were not invited. When invitation was extended to non-Francophone countries, such as Nigeria, they were not part of the Francophone tête-à-tête meetings. Apparently, there is the politics of inner caucus as distinct from that of the plenary. The situation is not different from that of the P-5 within the UNSC. When we compare this situation with what obtains in the BRICS, it can be rightly argued that the official membership is the real thing and the partner members are on the sidelines. Partnership implies acting autonomously to contribute to whatever the BRICS is aspiring to achieve. The level of commitment of the partner members cannot but be to the extent of what the partnership agreement provides for.

In essence, Nigeria does not appear to have been invited to join the BRICS. Nigeria applied to be a member and she falls under the category of partnership. Nigeria first mooted the idea of a Concert of Medium Powers to protect the interests of the global south. Some of the countries that were invited by Foreign Minister Bolaji Akinwande Akinyemi, are now members of the BRICS. Short sightedness did not allow Nigeria’s policy makers to appreciate the beauty in the idea.  Several meetings were held and Nigeria acted as the primus inter pares. Nigeria was internationally respected. As a result of fears expressed domestically and internationally, the Concert was renamed Lagos Forum. At the end of the day, the Forum was thrown into desuetude. Today, Nigeria sought membership as a partner, but not as an official member. The nitty gritty of a partner member is not yet well known. However, Nigeria’s membership is in conflict with her policy of non-alignment and national interest because the BRICS is fraught with many internal contradictions: the politico-economic conflicts between China and India, Russia and US, the quest of BRICS to replace the US-dominated global system, and the Russo-Ukrainian conflict have the potential to undermine the protection of Nigeria’s core interests. This is not the ideal time to join any group. Nigeria is a leader, not a follower, and should have self-respect.