Of Sound and Fury: A Critical Appraisal of President Bola Tinubu's 4D Foreign Policy Thrust

Abstract

No nation is an Island to itself. For several reasons, among them the promotion of their development, nations, irrespective of their endowments, relate with other nations across the globe. For this reason, countries accord as much importance to their foreign policy as they do domestic policies. The reality is that both domestic and foreign policies are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, reinforce one another. At independence, Nigeria's Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, proclaimed the cardinal principles of Nigeria's foreign policy thrust. Rather than being static, Nigeria's foreign policy has been dynamic, changing with regime type, leadership personalities, the domestic challenges, and in reaction to the international environment. Hence, Nigeria's foreign policy has moved in terms of primacy from Afrocentrism to non-alignment, concentric circle, economic diplomacy, and now to the "4D" (democracy, demography, development, and diaspora) doctrine of President Bola Tinubu's administration. This paper undertakes a critique of Tinubu's" 4D" foreign policy orientation using the theories of decadence, postcolonialism, and globalisation. It argues that despite the policy's acclaimed newness, Nigeria remains trapped in dependency, a product of its position in the international political economy. The paper notes that Nigeria's weak state capacity and its subjection to Western developmental paradigms are among the causes of a disjunction between foreign policy aspirations and reality. It argues that to achieve its objectives, there is an urgent need to match rhetoric with concrete actions and strategies of ending imperialist domination and transnational capital control of Nigeria.