Nigerian Foreign Policy Dynamics: From Economic Diplomacy to Citizen Diplomacy

Nigerian Foreign Policy Dynamics

Abstract

Nigeria’s several years’ preoccupation with economic and citizen diplomacy has not yielded the desired dividends in terms 
of positive foreign policy output. Foreign investment inflow is still low. Domestic economy is still weak. The standard of 
living is still very poor. Unemployment rate and incidence of poverty have continued to increase exponentially. Nigerians 
living abroad are still being treated with contempt and many have been victims of extra judicial acts such as imprisonment 
without a fair trial, and jungle justice. Relying exclusively on secondary data and using the decision-making approach as 
the framework of analysis, this paper qualitatively examines why economic diplomacy and citizen diplomacy failed to 
remedy these anomalies which are the fallouts of many decades of marginalization of the domestic economy. The paper 
argues, among other factors, that the economic diplomacy failed, largely because after its introduction and the political 
rhetoric that ensued, the Nigerian political leadership failed to provide both physical and institutional infrastructures that 
are fundamentally necessary for industrialization and rapid economic development. Also, citizen diplomacy failed mainly 
as a result of the failure of economic diplomacy, since both are mutually inclusive. It is our position that citizen diplomacy 
cannot be achieved without economic diplomacy and that neither economic diplomacy nor citizen diplomacy can yield the 
desired dividends in the absence of basic infrastructural fundamentalism that would mediate economic development, and 
thus, boost Nigeria’s international image and respect for its citizens all over the world