Nigeria’s foreign policy has for long been built on idealistic considerations. The country attempts to deny its internal configuration and peculiarities. From 1970s till date, Nigeria lives in denial of the unspoken or unacknowledged fact that her external policy should be Sahel based because majority of her population have an integrated link and root with the Sahel region.
When the Sahel states of Mali, Niger, Burkina and Chad openly opted out of the West African regional alliance, the ECOWAS, Nigeria acted as though it could indeed divorce herself from those Sahelian states, even locking its borders among others. The reality is that for Nigeria’s stability, the Sahel region is more important to her than Ghana, Ivory Coast among others.
Several factors account for the above assertion. First, the religious linkage between Nigerian adherents of Islam and the Sahel region is beyond ordinary. Beyond the Sokoto caliphate, Mali and other Sahelian states hold spiritual significance for Muslims from Yorubaland and Kwara state. The depth of relationship confirms Islamic partnership which transcends borders.
Secondly, the economic relationship is so deep that Northern Nigeria and by extension some parts of the South have centuries-old relationships with the Sahelian states. We are talking of a closely knit economic marriage which is a daily fact across the border and which may even be beyond the Nigerian state to regulate.
Thirdly, we have the geographically intertwined reality. In the north, you cannot even demarcate the border rightly. Across the borders are people of same ancestry and heritage. They may not recognise national boundaries in their daily deeds and activities.
The fula language is continental as well as the Hausa language, both which are language of commerce across the borders. Islamic studies and the practice of roaming scholars are unchangeable routine dating back to centuries. Those structured linkage integrated the Sahelian states more closely with Nigeria than between Nigeria and her West African neighbours.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari realised this hard reality. He started a transnational railway project which was designed to address this unspoken fact. Yet, he did not back it up with an intellectually driven foreign policy innovation. He did not canvass arguments which should point to the need for strategic policy shift.
A reality based foreign policy for Nigeria must come to terms with the strategic significance of the Sahelian states to Nigeria. The stability and prosperity of Nigeria depends on her strategic atunement to the imperative of closely packaged partnership with Chad, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. There is no two way to it. Iraq cannot stop partnership and close collaboration with Iran because of the facts listed above.
For Nigeria to grow unhindered, she must revise her foreign policy priorities. Nigeria is partly Sahelian and partly a coastal nation. Abandoning the Sahelian linkage is a misinformed premise for crafting foreign policy. It is even worst now that the Sahelian states have assembled under an umbrella of Sahelian States.
This is the right time to raise this debate, a time when Nigeria is facing alleged influx of bandits and terrorists. As Nigeria is largely separatee from her Sahelian brothers, her policy makers grope in the dark. As much as instability is an African problem, it is more of a Nigerian problem as the giant of Africa share so long unpoliced boundaries with the Sahelian states.
We call on the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs to kick-start this debate. We challenge our universities to take up this discourse. It is time to stop pretence that Nigeria is not half Sahelian or that it can get it right without a strategic partnership with the sahel region.
