Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Calls For Strategic Autonomy In Shaping Foreign Policy
Nigeria must chart an independent course in global affairs by aligning its foreign policy with emerging realities rather than falling into “entangling alliances,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, has said.
Speaking at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) in Lagos on Friday, Tuggar emphasised that the world is undergoing seismic shifts, from climate change and artificial intelligence to transnational terrorism and the rise of a multipolar order.
He warned that pressures from global powers to bandwagon could compromise Nigeria’s interests, recalling how the country once resisted similar traps during the Cold War era through intellectual guidance from the NIIA.
“The Tinubu administration’s foreign policy is rooted in Strategic Autonomy,” Tuggar explained, anchored on what he described as the four Ds: Democracy, Demography, Development and Diaspora. This, he said, would allow Nigeria to build issue-based partnerships while preserving flexibility and national interest.
On democracy, the minister stressed that Africa must define and own its democratic models.
He revealed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in partnership with the UNDP, has developed a Regional Partnership for Democracy (RPD) to strengthen institutions and promote dialogue across the continent.
Reaffirming Africa as Nigeria’s priority, Tuggar underscored the importance of regional economic integration under the AfCFTA and collective security frameworks such as ECOWAS, the AU and the MNJTF.
“Our foreign policy remains guided by moral precepts and ethical considerations,” he said. “Binary alignments inhibit nations like Nigeria with the size and scale to remake the world.”
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