SECURITY AND INVESTMENT DIPLOMACY AS NEW PARADIGM PHASES IN NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT

Abstract

A nation’s foreign policy is central to its external relations with the entire world. The nature of such drive is piloted by the laid down objectives and principles that have been designed over the years. Nigeria’s foreign policy guideline that emerged in the 1960 sequel to her independence from Britain has been changing based on the dynamics of international politics, in the pursuit of her national interest both in bilateral and multilateral dimensions remains central to the African continent. It has evolved from Afrocentric, radical, conservative, economic diplomacy, shuttle, citizenship etc. The contemporary challenges of terrorism and insecurity in Nigeria and the world at large necessitated a new security diplomacy paradigm to navigate in the course of finding solutions to the problems as they affect the nation and the world in a view of securing her homeland, utilising her potential to provide stability, peace and prevent immediate and future threats to the people of Nigeria, while investment diplomacy, a reinvented concept/strategy to deploy and maximize the drive for financial and material resources to the advantage of her economic growth through foreign direct investment and capital flow. This paper posits interrogating reasons for insecurity challenges in Nigeria as they have corresponding effects on the world such as kidnapping, banditry, terrorism, piracy, crimes, human and drugs trafficking, youth unemployment, political instability and weak institutions of government and the deficit in investment diplomacy where foreign investors cannot invest in Nigeria, the burden of low investment, heavy external debts, lack of savings and income, huge external borrowing, fluctuation in crude oil earing and general economic crisis. The paper, therefore, attempts to provide policy options and recommendations in the area of security diplomacy, security forces in the management of the nation’s porous borders, aligning and the observance of international conventions and treaties in security and protocols with other states, sharing intelligence information and robust procurement of sophistication weapons to prevent criminal, address social crimes, invest in political stability, entrench human rights redefine and restructure national security policies and employ good governance indicators for the society, while on the part of investment diplomacy, pathways for investment inflows, and the attraction of foreign capital, the great premium on human resources and promotion of export trade. The paper makes use of secondary sources to elicit data for the paper, while it adopts investment theory as its theoretical framework to midwife the study.