It was bemusing to read in the news that Nigeria has joined the Red Sea Alliance, an ostensibly “maritime security” coalition cobbled together by Saudi Arabia, along with 12 other predominantly Muslim countries in tow. The announcement exposes our current approach to foreign policy: episodic, sentimental, and reactive rather than deliberate and strategic. It has the fifth-largest Muslim population in the world. It is Africa’s largest country by population and ranks in the top three biggest economies on the continent. Nigeria’s annual Hajj and Umrah contingent probably doubles those of all sub-Saharan African countries combined. Much the same applies to Christian pilgrimage to Israel, a country with which our relationship has been deepening over the years, if surreptitiously. A sizable number of Nigerians study, work, and live across the Gulf in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, etc. Yet, we have shown a stark inability to weave all of this political, economic, and cultural capital into a coherent and long-term Middle East regional strategy for advancing our national interests.
Instead, we have allowed our age-old domestic divisions to encroach upon and becloud our thinking about foreign policy. Since the unnecessary controversy over Nigeria’s membership of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in the late 1980s, virtually every Nigerian leader has had to walk on eggshells in the Middle East, be it with Israel or the Arab states, as demonstrated during President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s recent visit to Turkey. Yet, the international arena is distinctly shaped by broad and long-term national interests, where domestic divisions are subordinated to the overall national interest. Countries that succeed at the international level are those that develop coherent strategies capable of translating their geography, history, culture, and diplomacy into tangible economic, security, and political gains. As the Chinese have shown so spectacularly these past few decades, there is something to be gained in every country by those who are clear-eyed and strategic.
Nigeria has moved in the opposite direction, and as a result, we have failed to exploit the strategic opportunities in the Gulf and the wider Middle East region, even though countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, not to mention China, India, and South Korea, have deliberately targeted the Gulf countries in pursuit of their development objectives right before our eyes. Nigeria, therefore, must shake off the fog of sentimentalism and develop a coherent and strategic approach to guide our external relations with the Gulf countries, including not just Iran, but also Israel, Turkey, Egypt, etc. And to do that, we must harken back to rediscover our enduring foreign policy principles that served us well during periods of global turmoil. First, any new Nigerian approach to foreign policy in the Gulf and the Middle East must be rooted in a clear-eyed understanding of the emerging geopolitical realities in the region. After all, strategy begins with accurate diagnosis. Only by clearly understanding the bold new world emerging out of the current conflict in the region can we hope to develop a clear strategy for engaging appropriately with the various countries and their divergent interests.
No one knows how the ongoing American–Israeli war on Iran will end, but three fundamental changes are clearly now underway. One, Iran has demonstrated quite clearly that it is not going anywhere politically, militarily, and geographically. The Iranian government has suffered a catastrophic loss of its leadership, but it has emerged relatively intact and has become even more legitimately entrenched in the wider society. Militarily, Iran has demonstrated a surprising but real ability to inflict as much damage on American and allied assets in the region as it receives, if not more. The geographical fact of Iran as a permanent neighbour also now looms much larger to the other Gulf countries than before the war. Moreover, Iran’s control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz is a new reality. For Iran, control over the Strait of Hormuz is at once an existential leverage equivalent to a nuclear arsenal, a strategic means of economic relief from decades of choking American sanctions, and the ultimate symbol of victory in a war imposed on them by outside powers. Equally important, public opinion across the world has shifted massively in favour of Iran since this war began. By standing up to Israel and the United States in an illegal and unprovoked war, and by doing so with dignity, maturity, and self-reliance, Iran has earned the respect of ordinary peoples across much of the world, particularly among Muslim populations, including in the Gulf.
All of these mean that a whole new set of geopolitical, economic, and security realities are shaping up in the region. America’s overwhelming military influence in the region will likely decline. The Gulf monarchies, having witnessed the limits of their American security umbrella, are likely to diversify both their security partnerships and their economic relationships beyond the United States. Iran is likely to emerge from decades of isolation with greater opportunities for global economic and political integration. Perhaps most importantly, the traditional Sunni–Shiite divide would now be less decisive for politics in the region and the wider Muslim world. This is why we must pause and reflect about Nigeria’s membership of this new Red Sea Alliance. Regardless of how it is framed in the news, the Red Sea Alliance represents Saudi Arabia’s early response to a changing Middle East. It is, in short, an understandable Saudi attempt to both secure alternative sea routes for its 10 million barrels of oil per day and to preserve the old regional order beyond Iran’s emerging influence in the Persian Gulf. This makes it a fundamentally political alliance. And in this context, Nigeria must resist the temptation to align hastily with any emerging bloc without first defining our own long-term strategic interests. For Nigeria, the question is not a simple yes or no, but of what strategic objectives and what general foreign policy principles inform our membership?
Second, Nigeria should firmly return to its long-standing doctrine of political non-alignment. Our relationships with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, the smaller Gulf states, and others in the region should all be guided by the same principle: constructive engagement without discriminatory alignment. Each of these warring countries has something we need, and we can have it—and give something back—without being involved in their wars or political schemes. And as a former colony ourselves, we can continue to support Palestinian statehood within the framework of the United Nations. In a volatile region such as the Gulf and the wider Middle East, we must, to repeat, stay clear of anyone’s political alliances, however well disguised. Third, Nigeria must now give teeth to our long-standing principle of economic diplomacy. Our presidents and Foreign Ministers have talked up this idea in every speech, but we have never fully developed it into a coherent strategy. Now, we must give it teeth.
In the present context, economic diplomacy should mean leveraging Nigeria’s huge market, not as a dumping ground, but as opportunities for trade, investment, technology transfer, infrastructure finance, tourism, educational exchanges, and labour mobility. It means transforming our cultural affinities with the Gulf and the Middle East into tangible economic gains in all directions, rather than the sentimentalist and often unnecessary mass hysteria about going east or west.
The same Nigerian team should be able to hold talks with Saudi officials on how that country can invest some of its Sovereign Wealth Fund in Nigeria by morning, engage the Israelis on agriculture and computing technology by afternoon, discuss with the Iranians on low-cost defence technology by evening, and textiles with Turkey by dinner. We can do all of these without needless controversy back here at home or discriminatory alignments with any of them. Finally, these objectives require institutional support. Nigeria should establish a Nigeria–Middle East Relations Council, bringing together government, ex-diplomats, academia, business, and other stakeholders to conduct research, formulate policy, coordinate implementation, and periodically review progress of our engagement with the region. Such an institution would help ensure that our Middle East policy is driven by long-term strategic interests rather than the ad hoc reactions that currently characterise our diplomacy. Whatever we do, we must remember that Nigeria is a potential middle power in its own right. It should not be anyone’s vassal state.
