Nigeria Restrained: Foreign Policy under Changing Political and Petroleum Regimes

Abstract

The cyclical pattern of Nigeria's external relations has followed that of its political constitution and petroleum production. Aspirations to great-power status in the 1970s have yielded to austerity and modesty in the 1980s. Yet core concerns about development, integration, and liberation continue despite a series of changes in governmental structure and oil profitability. Throughout, there have been lively debates about preferred policy directions and alternative analytic explanations, symptomatic of the openness of Nigeria's political culture. If its political economy can become more self-reliant and self-sustaining, then its foreign policy can yet be influential. But leadership in Africa requires the redefinition of established linkages with other, mainly Western, economic partners. If Nigeria can use the present period of economic difficulty to reduce its oil dependence, then its ambitions in and for Africa may yet be realized in the coming decade.