FROM NON-ALIGNMENT TO STRATEGIC AUTONOMY: REINTERPRETING NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY IN AN EMERGING MULTIPOLAR WORLD, 2015–2025

Abstract

This paper examines the changing character of Nigeria’s foreign policy from non-alignment towards strategic autonomy within the emerging multipolar global order between 2015 and 2025. It argues that strategic autonomy does not represent an abandonment of Nigeria’s non-aligned tradition but its functional recalibration to conditions of multipolarity and complex interdependence. The paper adopts a qualitative documentary research design, drawing on scholarly literature, official policy documents, government statements, institutional reports and relevant economic and diplomatic records. The evidence is analysed through thematic content analysis, focusing on external diversification, policy discretion and domestic capacity. The findings show that Nigeria progressively diversified its external relations under the Buhari and Tinubu administrations while maintaining established Western, regional and multilateral partnerships. This orientation became more explicit under the Tinubu administration through the Demography, Development, Diaspora and Democracy (4D) foreign policy framework and engagement with emerging Global South platforms, including Nigeria’s admission as a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) partner country in 2025. However, diplomatic diversification has advanced more rapidly than the domestic capabilities required to sustain substantive autonomy. Persistent economic vulnerability, a concentrated export structure, security pressures and institutional weaknesses continue to constrain Nigeria’s policy discretion. The paper conceptualises this condition as diversified dependence, whereby the multiplication of external partnerships widens diplomatic options without necessarily overcoming the structural vulnerabilities that constrain autonomous action. It concludes that Nigeria’s strategic autonomy remains an emerging and constrained orientation whose consolidation depends on strengthening domestic productive and institutional capabilities while sustaining diversified and regional engagement.