When president Obasanjo remarked recently during the launch of Musikilu Mojeed’s The letterman, that ‘… Idris Deby was shot in the back and it was Doha that decided to put the different elements together, not Nigeria…’ despite that ‘Chad is in our backyard…’, he was reciting a dirge about Nigeria’s waning geopolitical influence which continues to be on a freefall. Still, regaining our country’s political clout is especially critical at this time given that the patronising rumblings of giving African countries a seat on the UN security council (UNSC) has once again been resurfacing.  last year August, Japan’s premier; Fumio Kishida, told the Tokyo international conference on African development in Tunisia that ‘Japan reiterates its determination to redress the historical injustice against Africa of not being represented through a permanent membership on the security council’.

Similarly, Joe Biden, when giving a speech on the AU’s Agenda 2063 at the recently concluded US-Africa summit, followed up on a previous declaration by announcing that the ‘United States fully supports the idea of reforming the UN security council to include a permanent representation for Africa’. It is unclear whether this support means a collective seat for the African continent or a single African hegemon. However, given that the permanent members of the UNSC are choosing to engage the African continent as a bloc instead of African leaders insisting on having separate and deeper bilateral relationships with advanced countries of their choosing, all indications point to the idea of a collective seat. Choosing to adopt this model will of course be a colossal mistake.

It will be a direct impediment to emerging African powers, if African leaders decide to accept a single seat for the entire continent in a roundtable of single, nation-states. Any utopian ideas that amount to having a ‘Pan-African foreign policy’ in the future, led by some empowered AU super-state is frankly for the birds.  Naturally, given the size of our military and economy in relative to other African countries and the extent of Nigeria’s previous engagement with the African continent especially through peacekeeping, any ‘African’ permanent seat on the UNSC should be ours. But do we currently deserve it? No. The failure to consistently scale up our contributions to current UN peacekeeping operations amongst other reasons has hampered any chances our country might have had. Some of the reasons for this failure are self-evident. Internal security woes since the emergence of the Boko Haram terrorists and the current levels of insecurity in the country has rendered our armed forces busy with domestic disruptors, when traditionally their concerns should be with external agents.

Historically, Nigeria has always pursued an ‘afro-centric’ foreign policy which had been defined by substantial contributions to peacekeeping operations either unilaterally or through multilateral instruments like ECOWAS and the UN. Nigerian International relations (IR) scholars such as the current chief of staff; Ibrahim Gambari mostly agree that Nigeria has contributed about 150,000 troops to UN peacekeeping in over 25 missions around the world. In Africa, the post-independence drive to maintain peace christened ‘Pax Nigeriana’ by the Oxonian former minister of foreign affairs; Prof Bolaji Akinyemi would see Nigerian military leaders intervening in different conflicts across the continent buoyed by an ideology of protecting flailing African states from disintegrating. This interventionism was typified by Yakubu Gowon’s goodwill message to Angola in 1975, when he pledged that ‘We in Nigeria are committed to the total liberation of the whole of Africa and we will not fold our hands to see our brothers and sisters in Angola subjugated…’.

Even though some Nigerian military dictators might have had their own motives for intervening in conflicts, such as in Liberia where some Nigerian IR scholars have pointed out that the personal relationship between Ibrahim Babangida and Liberian Warlord Samuel Doe might have influenced Babangida’s interference, Nigeria’s active participation in peacekeeping between the 1980s and early 2000s still ensured that it commanded a domineering presence in African affairs. This leading peacekeeping role had earlier given calls for Nigeria to have a seat on the UNSC by former leaders like Babangida some legitimacy even though it might have been far-fetched.

Recently, however, calls for a permanent seat on the UNSC from the current administration have been rightly ignored. For example, on October 2019, President Buhari, on the side lines of the Russia – Africa summit in Sochi asked President Putin to support Nigeria’s bid for a permanent seat on the security council, following up on his speech at the 71^st UN general assembly, where he pledged that ‘Africa should be adequately represented on the United Nations Security Council in the permanent member category…’ and that ‘…Nigeria stands ready to serve the world and Africa to enhance peace and security in a reformed security council’. VP Yemi Osinbajo also called for a Nigerian seat on the UN security council because of its previous peacekeeping operations.

These calls are however without legitimacy, as mentioned earlier because Nigeria has failed to scale up her peacekeeping contributions in tandem with emerging conflicts around the world. The Buhari administration, especially has overseen a sharp decline in the number of Nigerian peacekeeping forces. In December 2015, Nigeria had a sizable contribution of 2954 military/police personnel to UN peacekeeping missions. However, as of October 2022, according to UN’s ranking of peacekeeping contributors by country, this contribution has declined to a paltry sum of 329 military/police personnel. This is well below that of fellow African countries which have proudly planted their flags at the summit of the table such as Rwanda (5752), Egypt (2798) and Ghana (2762). Our current small contributions are a far cry to periods of previous active involvement such as in October 2005, where Nigeria contributed 3,025 troops to peacekeeping operations, ranking seventh out of a total number of 107 countries on UN’s list of top contributors. In 2013, the total number of Nigerian troops serving in UN missions had increased to over 6000.

For any aspiring African hegemon desiring of a seat on the UN security council, demonstrating a commitment to global peacekeeping is very important. This is not just because conflict is the greatest threat to development in the world, but also because the politics of the UN security council often favours actors that make large contributions, either by bankrolling peacekeeping operations or donating a substantial amount of peacekeeping personnel. This is especially true for the P5 countries which currently supply the bulk of the funding for peacekeeping operations, even though their personnel contributions are relatively small.

For African countries that cannot afford to rival this amount of spending, contributing personnel is one of the ways to either justify their calls for a seat or simply boost their international profile. This is especially true of Rwanda which has seen her profile rise as an emerging regional power. Rwanda has consistently used peacekeeping as a foreign policy tool since the first deployment of her peacekeeping personnel in 2005. Since then, the land-locked country has been among the UN’s top ten contributors with her number of personnel contributions dramatically reaching 6383 in 2020. Currently as of October 2022, it ranks third behind India and Bangladesh in total contributions of peacekeeping personnel in the world.

Despite this, it is highly unlikely that Rwanda gains a permanent seat in the nearest future. Beyond adequately fulfilling the first criteria that makes countries eligible for a seat in the security council, which is contribution to the maintenance of peace, the practicality of gaining a permanent seat amongst the inner sanctum of the powerful countries that conceived the idea of the UN simply requires matching their level of military/economic power and influence. Currently, the country that ticks these boxes and is more likely to gain a permanent seat in the nearest future is India, given that it has the necessary population, currently ranks second in the list of UN peacekeeping contributors and has just overtaken the UK (a permanent member) as the world’s fifth largest economy. Nigeria is still in prime position to be the heir to this ‘Indian’ model, although we have clear contenders like South Africa and Egypt, whom, at present boast more favourable international profiles.

Yet, with an ever-growing population and an emerging economy that has the potential to expand to world beating status, a permanent seat is still ours for the taking, that is, if the politics of UNSC remains unchanged. What is crucially important is that the basis of our future calls for a permanent seat should rely, not just on on our capacity to adequately fulfil UNSC’s peacekeeping criteria but also to match the influence of the P5 countries. This is the right way to go about staking our claims for a permanent seat rather than pandering to the patronising call of giving African countries a seat because of ‘historical injustice’ or simply expanding access to African countries. In essence, even though it is not yet time because of the numerous problems plaguing our country, the ‘pax Nigeriana’ doctrine associated with peacekeeping must remain a key plank of our foreign policy and we must endeavour to see off competition from both our African neighbours and other global competitors before taking our rightful place among great powers.