Strategic Challenges of Nigeria's Foreign Policy from 1960-2019

Abstract

The attempt to go chronological has robbed Nigeria's foreign policy sufficient analytical depth. Nigeria's foreign policy has been narrative as most scholars tend to give historical description of foreign policy events. Such approach has not allowed for in-depth analysis and detection of fundamental defects. This paper examines the process of Nigeria's foreign policy formulation from the structuralist defects teasing out major challenges which affect the emergence of a foreign policy that is strategic. This paper employs the system approach to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of a one-off analysis of Nigeria's foreign policy to the extent that all issues raised can be applied to discourse of Nigeria's foreign policy at all time. The paper concludes that to surmount its challenges, Nigeria's foreign policy needs to establish a coordinate between its goals and the means to achieve them to attain a focused, structured and strategic foreign policy.