The central foreign-policy task of Nigeria’s next administration should not be to restore diplomatic activity. It should be to restore national credibility. So far under President Tinubu, too much of the political energy of the presidency and its surrounding political establishment has appeared preoccupied with protecting, managing or legitimising the interests and political inheritance of the President’s past. The consequence, from a foreign-policy perspective, is that Nigeria’s broader national interest has been subordinated to the immediate imperatives of the President’s political management. A country cannot conduct an ambitious external policy when its leadership is principally consumed by defending its political record, its networks and its accumulated interests. The next administration must therefore make a decisive break with this orientation and place Nigeria’s long-term national interest at the center of foreign policy.
The post-Tinubu administration therefore needs a foreign policy of reputation, strategic activism and economic statecraft. It must begin by confronting a problem that has become increasingly difficult to separate from Nigeria’s external image. That is, the perception that the country’s political class too often treats public resources as instruments of political accumulation rather than as capital for national transformation.
The term “economic mugging,” coined with Robert H. Jackso and Carl G. Rosberg in their analysis of Zaire, provides a useful intellectual frame for thinking about this problem. Their account of Zaire drew attention to a political economy in which the resources of the state could be appropriated and dissipated through political networks, leaving citizens to bear the economic costs. Applied cautiously to contemporary Nigeria, the concept captures the danger of turning public investment into an instrument of political accumulation rather than national development.
Infrastructure can therefore become politically impressive but economically destructive when projects are conceived without rigorous appraisal, competitive procurement, fiscal discipline and transparent accountability. Roads, bridges, railways and other visible projects may generate political symbolism while imposing substantial costs on the public if they are poorly conceived, overpriced, inadequately financed or disconnected from wider productive capacity. Nigeria’s problem is not infrastructure itself. It is infrastructure without sufficiently credible institutions behind it.
Recent evidence illustrates why this matters internationally. BudgIT’s Tracka reported in 2026 that, among 2,760 federal projects it monitored across 28 states, 92 projects worth N15.07 billion were identified as fraudulently delivered, while hundreds remained incomplete, unexecuted or abandoned. Premium Times Transparency International’s 2025 index places Nigeria at 142nd of 182 countries, with a score of 26 out of 100. These are not are domestic governance problems. They affect how creditors, investors, development partners and foreign governments calculate risk.
The next government should therefore make international reputation a measurable instrument of foreign policy. Public procurement should become more transparent so that major infrastructure projects should require published feasibility studies, cost-benefit assessments, procurement information and independent audits. The objective should be to demonstrate that Nigeria has moved from the politics of announcing projects to the politics of delivering value.
This reputational reconstruction must also address security and human rights. Amnesty International has documented continuing killings, abductions, attacks on journalists and excessive use of force, while reporting that thousands have been killed in attacks by armed groups since the Tinubu administration took office. A country seeking greater international influence cannot indefinitely separate its external reputation from the quality of security and citizenship at home.
Nigeria must also recover its place in multilateral diplomacy. For too long, Nigerian foreign policy has behaved as though historical entitlement were sufficient. Seats, coalitions, committees, negotiations and international institutions reward persistent presence.
The next administration should revamp the multilateral strategy covering the UN, AU, ECOWAS, G20-related diplomacy, climate negotiations, international financial institutions and emerging Global South platforms. Nigerian diplomats should arrive with negotiating positions, coalition partners and concrete proposals, and not just statements.
This matters because Nigeria’s traditional diplomatic space is increasingly contested by other African states. Countries such as South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana and Rwanda have demonstrated that African influence is not permanently assigned to any one country. Nigeria must therefore stop assuming that its demographic and economic weight will automatically translate into diplomatic leadership. Thus, the principle that “where Nigeria’s interests are affected, Nigeria must be present and where African interests are negotiated, Nigeria must be active” should be the cruise.
The most urgent regional task is the reconstruction of West African strategic cohesion. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger formally left ECOWAS in 2025, although the organization deliberately kept channels for dialogue and continued certain trade and movement arrangements. Since the ECOWAS has already appointed chief negotiator for discussions with the Alliance of Sahel States, Nigeria’s next president should make reconciliation with these three countries a central foreign-policy project. This cannot mean simply demanding that military governments accept Nigerian preferences. It requires patient diplomacy that addresses their security and sovereignty concerns, economic grievances and distrust of ECOWAS.
Nigeria should champion a new compact between ECOWAS and the Sahel built around counterterrorism, intelligence-sharing, infrastructure corridors, trade, migration and political dialogue. The objective should be to make regional integration economically and strategically more valuable than fragmentation.
Nigeria also needs to liberalize its diplomatic relations with great and middle powers. This does not mean choosing Washington over Beijing, Moscow over Brussels, or one geopolitical camp over another. It means abandoning the psychology of exclusive alignment.
Nigeria should cultivate simultaneous, issue-based partnerships with the US, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Turkey and other relevant middle powers. Security cooperation deserves particular attention. Therefore, intelligence, maritime security, counterterrorism, cyber-security, defense technology and border management should be negotiated according to Nigerian interests rather than ideological preferences.
The principle should be strategic diversification without strategic confusion. Nigeria should cooperate with different powers where their capabilities serve Nigerian and African objectives.
The Gulf Cooperation Council states deserve a much more sophisticated Nigerian strategy. Relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and other Gulf economies should move beyond presidential visits, sovereign announcements and episodic investment promises.
Nigeria should negotiate structured partnerships in industrialization, solid minerals, logistics, agriculture, energy and finance. Gulf capital could participate in mineral processing rather than simply extraction and industrial partnerships should include local value addition, technology transfer and Nigerian employment, and financial cooperation should strengthen infrastructure finance and export capacity.
The Nigeria-UAE experience demonstrates both the potential and fragility of this relationship. After a nearly two-year disruption, the two countries agreed in 2024 to resume flights and visa issuance, following efforts to resolve financial and diplomatic difficulties. The lesson is that economic diplomacy requires institutional reliability, not just political goodwill.
Finally, Nigeria should undertake a serious review of its relationship with the European Union, particularly the Economic Partnership Agreement framework. Nigeria has not signed or ratified the EU-West Africa EPA. That creates negotiating space.
Nigeria should use it intelligently. The objective should not be protectionism for its own sake, nor unconditional market opening. Any future agreement should advance Nigerian industrialization, support value-added exports, protect strategic infant industries where justified, improve technology transfer and facilitate Nigerian participation in European value chains.
Europe remains enormously important as EU-West Africa trade reached €68 billion in 2025, making the EU West Africa’s largest trading partner and West Africa the EU’s largest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria therefore has leverage precisely because of the size of the relationship.
The foreign policy of post-Tinubu Nigeria should consequently be neither nostalgic nor reactive. It should be reputational, multilateral, regional and economically strategic. Nigeria cannot demand recognition as Africa’s leading power while allowing institutional credibility to deteriorate at home, diplomatic space to be occupied by others abroad and regional relationships to fracture around it.
The next administration must understand that foreign policy begins domestically. A government that demonstrates transparent procurement, credible institutions, respect for citizens, economic competence and strategic consistency will possess international credibility, which is something no diplomatic communiqué can manufacture.
