Yusuf Tuggar’s Strategic Autonomy and Nigeria’s Non-Alignment Policy: Beyond the Dangerous Neighbourhood

Bola A. Akinterinwa 

Yusuf Maitama Tuggar is Nigeria’s current Minister of Foreign Affairs. He wrote a scholarly article, entitled “Foreign Policy and the Path to Peace in a Dangerous Neighbourhood” on January 7, 2025 (vide https://newspointnigeria.com). The article was published on the same day France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, generated a new controversy in Franco-African relations. By design or by coincidence, Nigeria’s plurilateral relations were not only raised, a new doctrine, not to say a redefinition of Nigeria’s foreign policy of non-alignment, was also propounded.

Consequently, the article is quite interesting. It was explicative in intention, thought-provoking in argument, and very defensive of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his rapprochement with France. And perhaps more interestingly, the article is a good attempt to give a more articulated focus to the diplomacy of 4-Ds earlier propounded as a doctrine. 

As we have noted in this column, foreign policy can be ambiguous a word. It can simply be a name, like a name of an academic journal. It can refer to a technique or a tactic, in which case we can talk about foreign policy tactic. It can also be a decision and objective in which we also talk about foreign policy strategic focus or vision. As an area of study, foreign policy can be synonymous with a process which involves foreign policy tactics of implementation or achievement of foreign policy objective. This is why foreign policy tactics can be easily confused with foreign policy vision. Our intention here is not to disagree with the thrusts of the article per se, but to explicate the nexus between France’s new controversy and Franco-African relations, on the one hand, and Franco-Nigerian relations and Nigéro-Nigeria relations, on the other. The ultimate objective is to underscore the difference between Nigeria’s attitude towards France and towards Niger Republic as neighbours. The difference actually defines the danger in the ‘neighbourhood’ and beyond which Nigeria must go.  

Strategic Autonomy and Non-Alignment  

Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar came up with a new foreign policy objective that makes it the sixth declared Nigerian foreign policy objective. The new objective is Strategic Autonomy. As a new foreign policy objective, it is coming on the heels of the existing constitutional foreign policy objectives. Explicated differently, there are five categories of Nigerian foreign policy principles: a) foundational principles, the first of which is reciprocity, good neighbourliness, international cooperation, and non-alignment; b) Pan-Africanist principles, like Africa as cornerstone and centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy, exceptions to the rule of non-interference and non-intervention as they applied to the cases of apartheid in South Africa from 1960 to 1994 and the brutal killing of President Sylvanus Olympio of Togo in 1963; c) Circumstantial principles, like Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi’s Consultation Doctrine, Foreign Policy Concentricism as propounded by Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari and Constructive and Beneficial Concentricism in the mania of Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji; d) Internationally-inherited principles, such as Uti Possidetis Juris (sanctity of inherited colonial frontiers), self-determination, pacta sunt servanda (sanctity of agreements), etc.; and e) Constitutional principles as contained in Nigeria’s foreign policy objectives in the 1999 Constitution as amended.

As provided in Article 19 of the 1999 Constitution, Nigeria’s foreign policy are also five in number: promotion and protection of the national interest; promotion of African integration and support for African unity, from which the pan-African principles are derived; promotion of international cooperation for the consolidation of universal peace and mutual respect among all nations and elimination of discrimination in all its ramifications; respect for international law and treaty obligations as well as the seeking of settlement of international disputes by negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration and adjudication; and promotion of a just world economic order. 

Of these five objectives, three are particularly noteworthy in the understanding of the implications of Foreign Minister Tuggar’s essay and his new foreign policy objective of ‘strategic autonomy. The three objectives are protection of the national interest, African integration and unity, and respect for international law and treaty obligations. In this regard, is the promotion and protection of the national interest a goal or means to a goal? Protection and promotion are nothing more than an act and an act cannot be a pursuit in our own thinking. 

As regards promotion of African integration and support for African unity, it is clearly an objective which is having an integrated and united Africa. And true enough, it is because of the need for a fast-tracked integrated Africa that the OAU Council of Ministers redefined Africa as a continent of five regions contrarily to the United Nations consideration of the whole of Africa as a region. On the issue of respect for international law, how can an act of respecting be an objective? How can respecting treaty obligations, a sovereign obligation on the basis of pacta sunt servanda, be an objective to be pursued? These questions are raised because the Foreign Minister largely predicated his core arguments on the 1999 Constitution. He agreed that the Constitution may not be perfect and that is why it has always been subject to review, amendment, or modification in some areas. 

Perhaps most interesting is the proposition of ‘strategic autonomy’ as Nigeria’s foreign policy objective in her international and plurilateral relations. What does he mean by this? Lato sensu, Ambassador Tuggar raised six issues in his article that have the potential to help the foreign policy debate in Nigeria. For us, it is a redefinition of the principle of non-alignment. Let us interrogate some of the issues raised in his article.

First is the factor of interconnectivity as a definiendum of Nigeria’s foreign policy. He noted that the world is interconnected and therefore defined sovereignty in the context of the right to self-determination, right to defend Nigeria’s autonomy, as well as secure Nigeria’s borders and respect the country’s obligations under international law. This argument of right to self-determination of Nigeria is valid only to the extent of the first meaning and application of the term, that is, its application to colonial dependency. The principle used to apply to people under colonial tutelage and exploitation. The universal belief is that such people have the right to determine their future and be whatever they want to be.

However, there has been an evolution of the concept in international relations. People within an existing sovereign states are also now asking for the application of the principle to them. Expectedly, the United Nations is hostile to the disintegration of its Member States. Besides, sovereign states have generally not bought the idea of the application of the principle to their constituent member communities. They use force and manu militari strategies to maintain national unity. Spain, in the past and more than three centuries, has been challenged by the Catalan struggle for autonomy. The constituent republics of Yugoslavia were split.

The Tigray Defense Forces (TDF) and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) fought the Ethiopian central government to stand still in the quest for self-determination. They wanted Tigray and Oromia nations. In fact, Eritrea has been carved out of the multi-ethnic Ethiopia. South Sudan was carved out of Sudan in 2011 because of the forceful struggle of the separatists, especially the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). 

The situation in Nigeria is not different as there are the Igbo and Yoruba separatists agitating for separate identity on the basis of the right to self-determination. While the Government can lay claim to the 1999 Constitutional provision that stipulates the indissolubility and indivisibility of Nigeria, the self-determinists are also acting on the basis of the international principle of self-determination, which is hardly given on a platter of gold.

Ambassador Tuggar says that not acknowledging that the constitutional foreign policy objectives are foreign policy, and not accepting that the Constitution is neither the manifesto of political parties nor that of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) is being deliberately disingenuous. As he put it, ‘those who suggest Nigeria does not have a foreign policy or those who agitate for a shift away from an afro-centric policy are wrong; either they are ill-informed, or deliberately disingenuous.’ This observation is most unfortunate because it is neither of being ill-informed nor being disingenuous. It is basically a matter of psychology of human differences. Many Nigerians do not believe in the 1999 Constitution on which the Foreign Minister largely predicated his main arguments. The main source of the controversy is ‘We the People,’ the opening preamble to the Constitution. Interrogatively, can any amendment or review of the Constitution obliterate the falsity of ‘We the People?’ 

No amount of ‘panel beating’ of the constitution can turn an untruth to truth. When people raise issues with the Constitution, they cannot be rightly adjudged as being disingenuous or ill-informed. The truth is that Government always says ‘Yes’ when it really means to say ‘No.’ Rather than seeking to share ideas on disagreement, Government engages in the effrontery of insulting people. As we have argued above, respecting international law is a wrong foreign policy objective. Nigeria should not be seeking to respect a law that is discriminately respected by others. Nigeria cannot be holier than the United States or the EU countries in the regard to international law. Let us discuss the other points of Nigeria’s relationship with France and the Foreign Minister’s ‘dangerous neighbourhood.’ 

Macron’s Controversy and Dangerous Neighbourhood 

Nigeria has two categories of neighbours: neighbours by territorial contiguity and neighbours by geo-political propinquity. Nigeria’s neighbours by contiguity are Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroun. The neighbours by propinquity or by shared values are France in the main and her EU partners through France secondarily. This is so because the neighbours by contiguity are nothing more than a vacuum without France. France has privileged and preferential ties in Nigeria’s immediate neighbourhood and the ties necessarily conflict with Nigeria’s foreign policy interests (vide Bassey E. Ate and Bola A. Akinterinwa, eds., Nigeria and its Immediate Neighbours: Constraints and Prospects of Sub-Regional Security in the 1990s, Lagos: Pumark Nigeria Limited, 1992, 288 pp); and  Bola A. Akinterinwa, Nigeria and France, 1960-1995: The Dilemma of Thirty-Five Years of Relationship (Ibadan, Nigeria: Vantage Publishers, 2000, ©, 1999, 282 pp). 

It is against this background of France also being a strong neighbour of Nigeria that Ambassador Tuggar’s exegesis of Nigeria’s relations with other neighbours of Nigeria should be explained and understood. It is also against this background that the new foreign policy objective of strategic autonomy should be understood. This is also the nexus earlier on referred to. 

At the level of France, President Emmanuel Macron noted at the 2025 annual conference of French ambassadors, held on Monday, January 6, in Paris, that the French helped African leaders to contain terrorism in 2013 but the African leaders never showed gratitude.

As put by President Macron, ‘we had a security relationship. It was in two folds: one was our commitment against terrorism since 2013. I think someone forgot to say thank you. It does not matter. It will come with time. Ingratitude, I am well placed to know, is a disease not transmissible to man.’ If the French president knows that ingratitude is a disease and that gratitude would come with time, it is also because he so admits that there are some factors of delay in showing gratitude. One of the factors cannot but be the failure of the French to permanently nip in the bud the terrorism saga. When Opération Serval could not succeed in Mali, Opération Barkhane replaced it, not only in Mali, but also in other countries of the Sahel, on August 1, 2014. The new operation was also to no avail, as it ended on 9 November, 2022. 

In this regard, the popular view of the protesting Francophone West African countries is that the more the French purportedly were helping, the more the aggressiveness of the terrorists, and therefore raising suspicions that France might be aiding and abetting the terrorists. France ought to seek the understanding of why African leaders have not appreciated her efforts before his allegations. Nigeria must also understand why many of the Francophone neighbours of West Africa are now against France. Strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Governments should be differentiated from strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the people. This is one miscalculation in Nigeria’s foreign policy towards the Nigérien crisis.

President Macron also informed that ‘we (the French) left because there were coups d’état. We were there at the request of sovereign states that had asked France to come. From the moment there were coups d’état and when people said “our priority is no longer the fight against terrorism.” France no longer had a place there because we are not auxiliaries of putschists. So we left.’ The French president can be correct but he is also giving the impression that France left the AES countries on her own volition. Published information have shown that France was given a sort of manu militari ultimatum to leave. 

What appears to be the most offensive Macron’s comment against African leaders is ‘none of them would be sovereign country today if the French army had not been deployed in the region… My heart goes out to all our soldiers who sometimes gave their lives and fought for years. We did well.’ President Macron did well to commend the French soldiers many of whom died. True, it was a great sacrifice. However, when President Macron added that France’s influence was not in decline in Africa and that France was only ‘reorganising itself on the continent, this is where the tenability of President Macron’s statement is arguable. This is also the juncture at which Nigeria’s strategic autonomy becomes relevant for explanation. 

Considering that international legal sovereignty becomes an issue when factoring the respect for international law and treaty obligations into foreign policy calculations, considering that Nigeria is a Member of the ECOWAS which is founded on treaties and protocols to which Nigeria’s foreign policy objectives commit the country, and strongly believing that ‘to achieve a lasting peace in Libya and the Sahel, Nigeria needs to deal with all the countries in the neighbourhood, as well as all the major powers,’ Foreign Minister Tuggar, said ‘it does not make sense to simply deduce that Nigeria has to distance itself from France because that is the prevailing trend in its former colonies.’ 

The issue is not about distancing but the nature of collaboration with France and the implications of distancing for the immediate neighbours. How does Niger perceive the Franco-Nigerian collaboration? How does the collaboration help integration sub-regionally, regionally, and continentally? Can insecurity in Niger not be easily extended to Nigeria, especially in light of the reported hard blow suffered from the terrorist border attack on Benin Republic on 10 January, 2025? (Vide Paul Njie and Wycliffe Muia, “Beninese army suffers ‘hard blow’ in border attack with insurgency-hit Niger and Burkina Faso”). How can Nigeria also easily prevent the re-direction of the 613 Nigériens deported on this same day, 10 January, from Libya to Nigeria? (vide Elizia Volkmann, The Guardian (London), Friday, January 10, 2025). These are some of the questions that are begging for national attention. 

Additionally, Ambassador Tuggar said the ‘fulcrum of the Tinubu administration’s foreign policy is ‘Strategic Autonomy,’ providing it with the clarity to engage with any and all nations based on our national interests and not those of others. As a nation, Nigeria is adult enough and sophisticated enough to deal with countries without being unduly influenced, because that has been part of our historical and civic tradition. You cannot cure an illness by picking which systems to consider and which to ignore.’

This strategic autonomy is a re-explanation of Nigeria’s policy of non-alignment. In the words of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, ‘we shall not blindly follow the lead of anyone; so far as is possible, the policy on each occasion will be selected with a proper independent objectivity in Nigeria’s national interest. We consider it wrong for the Federal Government to associate itself as a matter of routine with any of the power blocks’ (vide House of Representatives Debates (Lagos), 20 August 1960, col. 2670). This statement is ‘strategic autonomy’ per excellence, because it seeks decision-taking on the basis of ‘proper independent objectivity’ and national interest-driven foreign engagements. While Tuggar argues that engagement should not be based on the interests of others and that Nigeria, being an adult, should not be unduly influenced, Tafawa Balewa talked about no association with anyone as a matter of routine or by following the lead of anyone blindly. Consequently, if Associate Professor Anglin Douglas talked about Nigeria’s political non-alignment and economic alignment in 1964 (vide Journal of Modern African Studies, volume 2, no 2, July 1964, pp. 247-263), it simply meant that the two positions were driven by Nigeria’s national interest. Non-alignment as a policy never meant that Nigeria could not and should not align but whenever there is the need to align or not to align, the definiendum should always be the national interest decision processes must be with proper independent objectivity.

Consequently, Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar should build up on ‘Strategic Autonomy’ as a new foreign policy objective upon which a foreign policy grand strategy can be pursued. In this regard, the diplomacy of the 4-Ds can be made relevant to serve as the quadrilateral foundational dynamics. Rather than seeking the return of the AES countries to the ECOWAS, Nigeria should encourage the AES as a sub-regional unit of the ECOWAS. Nigeria should create a new sub-region to comprise Nigeria and the four immediate contiguous neighbours because they are all part of the innermost circle of Nigeria’s foreign policy circles. Professor Ibrahim Gambari rightly posited that Nigeria’s national security is intertwined with the national security of all the immediate neighbours. If it is borne in mind that France’s foreign policy calculation is always to prevent Nigeria from influencing Francophone Africa, especially the immediate neighbours, to her own detriment and Nigeria is similarly hostile to the use of the Francophone countries by France to the detriment of her own foreign policy interests, it therefore goes without any whiff of doubt that any Nigeria strategic alliance with the neighbours cannot but be helpful to integration, peaceful coexistence and united front against terrorists in various ramifications. In fact, Nigeria’s leadership of Africa will be further strengthened. The neighbourhood will be made less dangerous. As such, opposition to government’s policies will no longer be seen as being driven by ignorance or being disingenuous, but more as a result of psychology of human differences, dignity and objectivity of purpose.