Inside Nigerian foreign policy, 1960-1993: Ethnicity, class, state and leadership contradiction

Nigerian foreign policy (NFP) has been subject to more debates than that of any other state in Africa or elsewhere in the South. These debates can be classified into realist-radical contending paradigms of NFP consisting of three approaches: realist socio-psychology, radical dependency and capability empiricism. The debates can be acrimonious, and the literature is voluminous and rich in its description of the events and issues.;The present study is revisionist. It is a longitudinal, comparative attempt (i) to systematically rethink the basic premises of NFP across issues and leaders in the period 1960 to 1993; and in the process (ii) to bring a degree of conceptual clarity and integration to the subject, its historical base and possible future directions. The substantive question is why NFP has remained a patch work of reactions and inactions contrary to its asserted national role conception to lead Africa?;Contrary to the lack of power and dependency arguments in realist and radical paradigms, the central thesis is that a foreign policy capable of promoting this role conception has been willingly sacrificed in order to maintain the precarious balance between the North and South, within the bourgeoisie and among state actors, with the survival of Nigeria as a unit the priority. Nigeria's inability to design and implement a foreign policy in line with its attributes and role conception must thus be viewed as a function of elite interests and behaviour, and the misuse of available resources.;The crucial but paradoxical explanatory variable in this thesis is leadership. This explains why internal constraints have not rendered external action impossible, and accounts for why NFP has ranged from the innovative and pro-active to the passive and re-active. It is concluded that, as long as foreign policy is not integrated with a coherent strategy of economic restructuring and political transformation, NFP is not likely to change. This is to say, its future can be seen in its past.