Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, 57, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a widely circulated opinion article titled, ‘Foreign Policy and The Path To Peace in A Dangerous Neighbourhood’, basically sought to defend President Bola Tinubu against unnamed critics of his government’s apparent closeness to the French government, and his handling, as Chairman of the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government, of the military coup in neighbouring Niger Republic.

The coup d’état which took place on July 26, 2023, led to the country’s presidential guard removing and detaining president Mohamed Bazoum. The sub-regional group unadvisedly gave the leaders of the military coup one week to reinstate the ousted Bazoum, and suggested a possible military action if they failed to do so.  Rather than back down, the military government in Niger, together with the military juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso gave notice of their withdrawal from ECOWAS and later formed the Alliance of Sahel States – or Alliance des États du Sahel, AES, in French.

Written in an urbane, entertaining and flowery prose, the minister’s intervention could be interrogated on several fronts:

One, on criticisms about France’s purported closeness to President Tinubu, Tuggar floated the thesis of ‘Strategic Autonomy’. As he put it: “The fulcrum of the Tinubu administration’s foreign policy is Strategic Autonomy, providing us 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 symptoms to consider and which to ignore.”

The idea of Strategic Autonomy is not original to Tuggar. In international relations, it is defined as the ability of a state to pursue its national interests and  pursue its preferred foreign policy options without depending heavily on other foreign states. The concept was popularised by the European Union which defined it as the ability of the European Union to not be overly reliant on the United States when it comes to defending Europe and its neighbours, and to be able to pursue foreign policies that will be independent of those of the United States. It should be recalled that  the European Council had in December 2013 called for the development of European defence capabilities to enhance the strategic autonomy of the European Union. 

Following the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election in the United States and a belief that Trump’s presidency had shown that the USA could be an unreliable partner, France became the chief advocate of Strategic Autonomy at the European Union level. Macron was quoted as advocating that the European Union should strive to be a “third super power” and should avoid being drawn into any confrontation between the USA and China over Taiwan. It is important to underline that ‘Strategic Autonomy’ for the European Union is not only about military and political autonomy from the USA but also about securing autonomy on economic, energy and digital policies. 

Given the above, there are number of issues about Tuggar’s ‘strategic economy’ argument. For instance, when he talked about the fulcrum of Tinubu’s policy being ‘Strategic Autonomy’,  the next logical question should be, “Strategic Autonomy” from whom? The European Union’s Strategic Autonomy is clearly directed at the USA. Given the current situation of multiple dependencies of our country – dependent on China and the Bretton Woods systems for external loans; dependent on  the West for its technology, dependent on the validation of  Western institutions like Fitch and  think tanks like Chatham House to validate its economic and political processes, and even dependent on foreign countries for coaches for its national football teams, it becomes exactly unclear what Minister Tuggar means by Strategic Autonomy. It will certainly be wrong for the Minister to mistake multiple dependencies or even non-alignment policy, for Strategic Autonomy. Is Nigeria really able to achieve Strategic Autonomy(meaning act independently), even as a regional power, where almost all the countries in the region are also dependent on one big power or the other?  

Two, with respect to the ECOWAS’s management of the July 26, 2023 military coup d’état in Niger Republic, Tuggar wrote: “President Tinubu pushed for the unconditional removal of ECOWAS sanctions imposed on Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. What he has consistently asked of the countries in question is for them to come up with a timetable for the restoration of constitutional rule and, in the case of Niger, the release of ousted President Bazoum.”. 

While the diplomatic efforts mentioned by the Minister towards the three states may be true, they also mask the fact that Tinubu, as Chairman of the Authority of Heads of States of ECOWAS mismanaged the issue of the coup in Niger:

First, ECOWAS under Tinubu inadvisably gave the coup leaders one week ultimatum to return Bazoum to power or face the prospect of military intervention. It made this threat when it had no troops in Niger, and no means of enforcing its threats. That was clearly a failure of deterrence as a strategy of using the power to hurt as a bargaining chip. For deterrence to work, it must be credible. If ECOWAS’ threat of military intervention was meant to be a deterrence strategy, it was clearly not credible. 

Second, the constant threat of war by ECOWAS gave the impression that the newly installed Tinubu government was being pushed by Western powers which had strategic interests in Niger, to go to war. Some have suggested that ECOWAS’ eagerness to restore constitutional order in Niger after the coup (when it did not display the same enthusiasm with the military coup in Mali in 2020 (two military coups) and in Burkna Faso in 2022 was because of fears that the coup in Niger might torpedo the Trans-Saharan Gas pipeline project, which was planned to connect natural gas pipelines from Nigeria to Algeria to plug into European gas supplies. It should be recalled that in 2022 Algeria, Nigeria and Niger signed an MOU to revive the estimated $13 billion project which was initially conceived more than 40 years ago. The gas pipeline measured 4,128 kilometres – of which 1,037 km is in Nigeria, 841 km in Niger, and 2,310 km in Algeria. Remarkably, Bazoum that ECOWAS was fighting to reinstate in office had publicly backed the 2021 military coup in Chad. At a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, Bazoum claimed that the security context justified the suspension and violation of the Chadian constitution.

Third, while it is true that the coup leaders in Niger lacked legitimacy by virtue of the fact that they came to power through an unconstitutional means, Tuggar forgot that most of the leaders of ECOWAS also face various degrees of legitimacy crisis. The argument here is that there are actually three types of coups in Africa – military coup, constitutional coups (where leaders elongate their tenure by changing the constitutions of their countries to remove term limits that would have prevented them from staying beyond a certain period in office) and election rigging (where the leaders manipulate the electoral process to gain power). In essence, while the coup leaders in Niger lacked legitimacy, the same could also be said of many of the leaders of the sub-regional group condemning the military takeover in the country.

Three, there remains a lingering suspicion of the role of France in Africa. Not only has France’s policies towards its African colonies been problematic, France has also been variously suspected  of undermining ECOWAS since the 1970s by sponsoring rival organisations to weaken it. Some have argued that with many French speaking African countries  having a dim view of France, the latter is trying to remain relevant in Africa by warming up to countries like Nigeria. 

In article in the Daily Trust of  December 9 2024, entitled, ‘What does France want from Tinubu?’, Suleiman A Suleiman raised suspicions about the chummy relationship between France and President Tinubu. Let me quote portions of the article:

“ There is no gainsaying that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu received the loudest ‘international recognition’ of his presidency yet during his recent two-day state visit to France, the first by a Nigeria president since Obasanjo was received by Jacques Chirac in May 2005, almost 20 years ago. But since there are hardly coincidences in politics, certainly not in international politics, we must raise the appropriate question: What does France want from Nigeria that it would treat our president to the most lavish state reception of his presidency so far?”

Suleiman further noted:

 “President Tinubu received more than a red-carpet reception in Paris. The French made sure that the Nigerian delegation got the message that they regarded this as an important visit. President Emmanuel Macron welcomed his Nigerian counterpart at the Les Invalides complex, a place that holds so much of France’s imperial history, vestiges of which now seem threatened across much of Africa. Macron was profuse with praise for our president, whom he referred to as a “friend”. At a joint press conference, Macron said President Tinubu is “a great leader”, who will transform Nigeria the way he transformed Lagos, precisely the sort of things that Tinubu, politically embattled at home by an increasingly restless citizenry groaning under the weight of his economic policies, would like to hear said about him by a foreign leader, better still a European one.”

Suleiman noted that how “world leaders” use flattery to massage the bloated egos of African leaders in order to get what they want.  Following from this he expressed concerns about the effusive flatteries heaped on President Tinubu by Macron and concluded that, “we must worry because President Tinubu appears to be running a one-man foreign policy, and since the consequences of foreign policies often outlast the administrations that enter into them, we must ask yet again, what did President Tinubu promise the French that is not now in the news? We must know because our future as a secure nation might yet depend on it.”

Following from the above, if the Alliance of Sahel States remain cynical or impervious of ECOWAS’ diplomatic moves, it may be acting on the aphorism that the friend of my enemy is either my enemy too or at best cannot be trusted.

•Adibe is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Nasarawa State University