Nigeria’s foreign policy and progressive trans-pacific partnership

The truism elicited in the adage, charity begins at home, reverberates in the foreign policy of every civilised sovereign state, to the extent of creating, facilitating and securing, the best deal for citizens and the country, across all realms. Plus, it retains a jurisprudential and philosophicalconstancy in sound statecraft.

Anchored upon that foundational thesis, emerges the rationale for the constitutional provisions enshrined in section 14 (2) (b) of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (as amended) viz “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”

Likewise, section38 (1) of the Indian Constitution of 1949 (as amended), which establishes that the State shall secure a social order for the promotion and welfare of the people. Indeed, what can the purpose of any progressive government be other than to protect and safeguard the wellbeing of its people and interests?

By inference therefore, sovereign nations accede to treaties, enter bilateral and multilateral agreements, ditto sub-regional, regionaland international blocs for wide-ranging reasons but, fundamentally, to advance their geostrategic, geoeconomic and geopolitical interests and those of key strategic allies.

It explains the basis for Nigeria’s President Tinubu and China’s Xi Ping, executing five Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) within the last 24 hours, engaging deeper cooperation on economic development, national, regional and international security, satellite technology, agriculture and mutual strategic concerns.

This is against the chilling backdrop of Chinese company, Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Company Ltd’s seizure of Nigeria assets; pursuant to the Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Company Ltd v Federal Republic of Nigeria (23-7016) bilateral investment treaty dispute; decided by the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit on August 9, 2024. Thus far, Zhongshan has confiscated Nigerian-owned assets in Canada, France, United Kingdom notably real estate in Liverpool, UK, a Dassault Falcon 7X in Paris, a Boeing 737, an Airbus A330, the Bombardier 6000 valued at over $100 million.

The African Union, African Free Trade Continental Agreement (AfCTA), BRICS, ECOWAS, European Union, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) further exemplify the point of foreign policy as pedestal for the advancement of each nation’s vital strategic priorities.

Others include the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA), United Nations, United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) et al. In short, there is nothing inherently altruistic nor charitable about these strategicforeign policy platforms. Enter the Combined and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a free trade agreement between 11 countries viz Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile and Japan. Other partner countries are Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

The CPTPP strives to simplify trade between members by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade; catalysing economic integration and cooperation; boosting trade facilitation and investment opportunities; and safeguarding intellectual property rights. It also aims to develop digital trade and e-commerce policy frameworks for partner nations whilst boosting support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Although executed in 2018, the CPTPP became operational in 2019, and it is regarded as a strategically vital regional trade agreement, given the scale and scope of its coverage which absorbs circa 13.5 per cent of global GDP and 15.3 per cent of global trade. The CPTPP is clearly distinguishable from the European Union and ECOWAS for instance, in that it is fundamentally an economic partnership, not an outrightpolitical compact, in direct competition with domestic legislatures and courts.

CPTPP, unlike the EU and ECOWAS, does not have super-state federalist structures like parliaments, and the inference of its appeal to nationalists and globalists within the domestic political milieu, is not far-fetched. Furthermore, its claimed benefits extend toboosting market access for goods and services; simplified customs procedures; enhanced investment opportunities; reinforcing intellectual property protection and activating economic growth and job creation.

Thus, the CPTPP is viewed as a significant trade agreement, demonstrating the commitment of its member countries to free market economic principles, enterprise, open markets, economic integration, and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

Even so, vital strategic policy questions emerge. Why is the United Kingdom, the first European country to join CPTPP? Why is China, the world’s second largest economy, after the United States, seeking to join CPTPP? What is the underpinning logic for Ecuador, South Korea, Uruguay et al for aspiring to joining CPTPP? Statecraft orthodoxy, transformative leadership, governance, seamless continuity, establishes, that resource constraints and competing policy demands should adaptively inform policy choices.

The opening thesis of this treatise therefore stands; geoeconomic, geonational andgeostrategic considerations underpin foreign policy rather than pure altruism. That is, the charity begins at home argument. Ostensibly therefore, sovereign nations join free trade areas or pacts, to advance their geostrategic interests and that’s certainly no different with the UK, other CPTPP members, and aspiring members like China, Ecuador and South Korea.

With the UK, after the divisive June 2016 Brexit referendum resulting in 52 per cent voting to leave the European Union (its largest trading bloc!) and 48 per cent opting to remain, the country needed to develop new economic alliances, export markets and partnerships with other countries and trading blocs. Accordingly, the economic logic for the UK’s CPTPP membership is pragmatically impeccable, and it will be part of UK domestic law effective: December 15, 2024.

Buttressing the assertion of advancing geostrategic interests, the Brookings Institution asserted that China’s CPTPP application is a “masterful stroke for Chinese diplomacy even if the intended outcome of membership is far from assured” The rider within that assertion implicates political tensions between China and Taiwan (which has also applied to join CPTPP), given that the former considers the latter to be an indivisible part of its (Chinese) territory and genuine concerns amongst existing CPTPP members over the prospects of China’s economic dominance and the quantum of state owned enterprises. Either way, Chinese foreign policy is patently proactive.

What then is Nigeria’s foreign policy calculus on the CPTPP assuming, without conceding, that one exists? For a start, in shaping and safeguarding the country’s economic, national security and political interests, Africa has, since Independence on October 1, 1960, remained, the beating heart of Nigeria’s foreign policy.

Evidence for this hypothesis is demonstrated by Nigeria’s regional leadership of ECOMOG, the West African multilateral military alliance, to quell the Liberian Civil War (1989/1997); Sierra Leone Civil War (1999/2023); (UN Congo Peace Mission in the 1964 under late General Aguiyi Ironsi); strategic, financial and technical support for dismantling South Africa’s apartheid regime, including providing over $61 billion, through 1960 to 1995.

Importantly too, Nigeria was the singular nation, globally, to establish the National Committee Against the Apartheid (NACAP) in 1960. NACAP’s objective was to cascade apartheid’s abhorrence in all schools, public media, markets and mobilise local and global opinion against the apartheid government. Veritably, Southern African students were on full Nigerian government scholarships at Federal Government Colleges and Federal Universities throughout the anti-apartheid struggle.

Given that overarching Afrocentric context, Nigeria’s foreign policy priorities today reaffirm the “4Ds” of Democracy, Development, Demographics and Diaspora, for the purposes of advancing international cooperation, universal peace and respect among nations. It aims to deepen democracy in the country and beyond; enhance self-reliance and reverse dependency; optimise the country’s vast 200m+ local and international populationforhuman development, wealth creation, investment and boosting GDP.

Whilst these are all noble aspirations, the fact remains that the world is a veritably complex, uncertain, volatile place, where realpolitik, dictates that each nation must consistently raise its game across the geoeconomic, geonational and geostrategic spheres, whilst proactively defending those interests.

Nigeria therefore needs a more nuanced, proactive and visible foreign policy stance where its interests are demonstrably, and methodically advanced on the global stage. It is in that context that the country ought reasonably to examine the merits and demerits of participation in the CPTPP. That there is currently no African member country there, is no reason not to strategically analyse its potential benefits for Nigeria, and this should not be at the political cost of the country’shistoric foreign policy Afro-centrism doctrine.

Yes, Nigeria contends with the suffocating albatrosses of economic crisis, ethno-religious terrorism, major security challenges, and rightly, policy expectations have to be managed. Nevertheless, all foreign policy is tinged with geostrategic, geoeconomic and geopolitical interests and Nigeria’s cannot be an exception nor should policy, whether foreign or domestic, be cast in stone. It should always be adaptively reviewed relative to emerging and enduring strategic opportunities, risks and threats.

That’s a challenge, and an opportunity, for leading foreign policy experts, scholars and key political actors.Innovative action is required by the Federal Government for a think-tank with these persons to frame effective strategic thinking and critique on foreign policy in the country’s vital interests. Fortuna favet fortibus (fortune favours the brave)!
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of Lagos-based legal practitioners, strategy consultants, and author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development.