The idea that Nigeria’s foreign policy has been on the decline for nearly two decades has become axiomatic among scholars and analysts. Ever since former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who governed from 1999 to 2007, got the country out of diplomatic jail and back in the good graces of the international community, Abuja has lost its luster on the international stage.
On the surface, President Bola Tinubu, who took office in 2023, has extended this dreary run. In general, he has given the impression that foreign policy is not a primary concern of his administration. One of his first acts after becoming president was to recall all career and noncareer ambassadors in ostensible pursuit of what a presidential spokesperson described as “world-class efficiency” in Nigeria’s foreign service. Many of those posts remain empty today.
The idea that Nigeria’s foreign policy has been on the decline for nearly two decades has become axiomatic among scholars and analysts. Ever since former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who governed from 1999 to 2007, got the country out of diplomatic jail and back in the good graces of the international community, Abuja has lost its luster on the international stage.
On the surface, President Bola Tinubu, who took office in 2023, has extended this dreary run. In general, he has given the impression that foreign policy is not a primary concern of his administration. One of his first acts after becoming president was to recall all career and noncareer ambassadors in ostensible pursuit of what a presidential spokesperson described as “world-class efficiency” in Nigeria’s foreign service. Many of those posts remain empty today.
Yet upon closer inspection, there is an underlying method to Tinubu’s chaos, particularly in the West African subregion. For all the apparent disorganization, Tinubu may be quietly constructing a diplomatic dossier that puts Nigeria on the path to rediscovering its old identity as a diplomatic powerhouse.
It’s not hard to see why analysts view the Obasanjo era through rose-tinted glasses. Obasanjo had a lot going in his favor. He carved out an overarching foreign-policy strategy for a country seeking to break free of diplomatic isolation after the debacle of the military era, when Nigeria effectively became and operated like a rogue state, and the international community, especially leading Western democracies, rightfully gave the country a wide berth.
He did this all with brio, investing Nigerian foreign policy with a freshness and confidence that produced tangible dividends in terms of rising international investment, $18 billion in debt relief, and a new image as a country ready to adopt the mantle of leader of the African continent. Whatever recognition Murtala Muhammed, Nigeria’s head of state from 1975 to 1976, may have achieved by flexing his diplomatic muscles with his support for anticolonial movements in southern Africa, Obasanjo arguably surpassed it with a charm offensive that augmented Nigeria’s coffers while putting it on the radar of global powers.
However, since those glory days, the best that can be said about Nigeria’s foreign policy is that it has lost its focus. It would not be unduly harsh to suggest that any real doctrine has been practically nonexistent.
Obasanjo’s immediate successor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, was understandably preoccupied with his health and spent too little time in office to put any meaningful flesh on the bones of his signature “citizen diplomacy,” a putative attempt to shift the locus of Nigerian foreign policy from traditional geopolitics to the welfare of ordinary citizens, both home and abroad.
Goodluck Jonathan, who assumed power after Yar’Adua’s unexpected death in 2010, was vaguely committed to “global peace” and Nigeria’s leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). But he was encumbered by the imperative of establishing personal legitimacy at home and the strains of tackling an incipient Boko Haram extremist insurgency. The fact that he burned through four different foreign ministers—Henry Odein Ajumogobia, Olugbenga Ashiru, Viola Onwuliri, and Aminu Bashir Wali—across his five years in office points to an underlying chaos.
With two full terms, Jonathan’s successor, Muhammadu Buhari, had the best chance of resetting the diplomatic dial. Yet under Buhari’s tenure from 2015 to 2023, the Foreign Ministry was not spared the same lack of initiative and chronic provinciality that doomed his presidency.
Tinubu may seem to have continued this legacy of apathy and insularity. While he has not been exactly travel-shy (according to reports from Nigerian newspaper the Punch, as of June, he had logged “approximately 261 days abroad, visiting at least 30 countries on 51 unique and recurrent trips”), there is scant indication that the Nigerian president’s frequent foreign trips are aligned to any overarching diplomatic philosophy or tangible foreign-policy objectives.
Furthermore, after ordering the immediate recall of all Nigerian ambassadors in September 2023, just three months into his presidency, Tinubu did not appoint replacements—nor did he bother to explain what was keeping him—until he abruptly changed tack with three noncareer appointments in November. And the relationship among his signature “4Ds” (democracy, development, demography, and diaspora), the ostensible quadrilateral anchors of his foreign policy, is not exactly clear, leading critics to suggest that his administration may have cobbled them together more for alliterative resonance than policy coherence.
Because of all this, the notion that a consistent thread actually runs through Tinubu’s actions on the international stage might sound far-fetched. Yet a close inspection reveals that there may indeed be a kind of doctrine underlying his foreign policy. Overall, Tinubu has been guided by a concern about safeguarding liberal democracy in Nigeria’s immediate neighborhood—an instinct that makes complete sense in light of his background as a pro-democracy activist who was once forced into exile by the military.
Upon assuming the leadership of ECOWAS in July 2023, Tinubu defended liberal democracy in terms that left no room for misunderstanding: “We must stand firm on democracy. There is no governance, freedom, and rule of law without democracy. We will not accept coup after coup in West Africa again. Democracy is difficult to manage, but it is the best form of government.”
Since then, Tinubu has put his money where his mouth is. Following the coup d’état led by the commander of Niger’s presidential guard, Abdourahamane Tchiani, later that month, Tinubu led ECOWAS in denouncing the putsch and followed this up with a one-week ultimatum to the junta to return to constitutional order.
When Tchiani refused to back down, Tinubu ordered that electricity to the country be cut off and did not restore it until the following March. (At the time, Nigeria accounted for around 70 percent of Niger’s total electricity supply.) Tinubu ultimately failed to reverse the coup and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum, but it was not for want of trying.
In pursuit of that same principle, Tinubu has had greater success in Benin, Nigeria’s western neighbor. After a faction of the Beninese military attempted to take down the democratically elected government of President Patrice Talon in December, Tinubu did not hesitate to deploy fighter jets and ground troops to thwart the putschists. In recent weeks, Tinubu has deployed more troops to Benin, which are “aimed at deterring potential security threats, reinforcing public confidence and supporting a peaceful democratic transition,” according to army spokesperson Appolonia Anele.
Tinubu has been severely tested by the antics of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, the three junta-led countries that broke away from ECOWAS in January 2025 to form a separate Alliance of Sahel States. While it is far from certain that the renegade countries can be tempted back, it is a testimony to Nigeria’s growing diplomatic prowess and Tinubu’s apparent determination to heal the rift that he has successfully initiated several meetings with them—Niger especially—aimed at tackling growing insurgency in the region. These overtures seem to be borne out of a genuine desire to see ECOWAS made whole, a position that Tinubu himself articulated in a Foreign Policy article on the occasion of the bloc’s 50th anniversary last year.
To all this must be added Tinubu’s ongoing counterterrorism collaboration with Washington, a partnership that is no doubt fraught with political danger but potentially beneficial at the same time. At the risk of alienating northern Nigeria’s influential political establishment, which has tended to approach Washington and its Western allies with a mix of skepticism and resentment, Tinubu sanctioned direct collaboration between the U.S. and Nigerian militaries late last year, including the exchange of intelligence and joint reconnaissance operations. Arguably the most important achievement of this collaboration thus far is the joint operation in May that eliminated senior Islamic State commander Abu-Bilal al-Minuki.
To be sure, Tinubu is not Obasanjo, and his administration is arguably still playing catch-up to South Africa, which has challenged Nigeria’s status as a continental leader since becoming a multiracial democracy in 1994. Pretoria has not been shy about taking the lead on controversial matters, with its landmark case against Israel at the International Court of Justice being the most obvious example. Indeed, it has sought to position itself as the moral conscience of the continent, showing more diplomatic forthrightness where Abuja has hedged its bets.
Despite this, it would seem that many analysts have overlooked a certain cogency in the Nigerian president’s foreign policy. His administration is leaving money on the table by not shouting it from the rooftops.