Nigeria’s Foreign Policy towards African Union’s Integration: Challenges & Advantages (2002 – 2020)

Abstract

This study investigates the nexus between Nigeria’s foreign policy and African Union Integration towards collaboration and cooperation. Since Nigeria’s independence, its foreign policy has been Afrocentric, as it has made Africa the centre-piece in external relations with other countries in the continent. Nigeria has been one of the principal founders of organization of African Unity (OAU) and its transformation into the African Union (AU) and its integration initiative programmes like New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in which it has contributed greatly through her foreign policy disposition. The study identifies some challenges like most African economies suffered from harsh macro-economic disequilibrium, foreign debt services/burden, narrow tax base with custom duty, limited and national regional capacity, Nigeria’s domestic challenges, intra – African crises, lack of common language to facilitate integration while the study proposes benefits and prospects such as regionalization of economies, monetary integration, trade creation, communication and transportation linkage to aid collaboration and cooperation. The study therefore adopted qualitative, historical and descriptive methods through the use of secondary source to collect and analyse data, while it makes use of integration theory as its theoretical framework to navigate the study. Keywords: African Union: Domestic Politics: Diplomacy: Foreign Policy: Integration: National Interest.