Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine Nigeria’s hegemony in West Africa and its implications on Nigeria’s national core development programmes. This is done via critical examination of some selected regional and national development indicators with a view to fi nd ways of improving the overall national performance as signifi cant contribution to regional development. On political impact, the study found that successive Nigerian governments were engrossed in unprecedented national corruption than development, diverting billions of dollars meant for national development in the guise of national security, regional peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention and socio-economic development of the sub region. The consequences of such political ineptitude were widespread: failed leadership, clientelism, rentierism, political apathy, escalating national insecurity, wide-spread poverty and unemployment and poor macroeconomic development. Overall, the study opines that Nigeria should shore up greater commitment and responsibility towards her national and human capital development, massively improve the infrastructure, reorientate both military and political elites to ensure integral national growth, overhaul her regional and foreign policy goals to meet her national interest goals as true catalyst for regional development.
Highlights
The struggle for African Unity and self-determination championed by pan-Africanists in the post-World War II period was, among other factors, to control and contain ravaging insurgencies and colonialism in Africa
The study found that successive Nigerian governments were engrossed in unprecedented national corruption than development, diverting billions of dollars meant for national development in the guise of national security, regional peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention and socio-economic development of the sub region
Referring to the current challenges to Nigeria’s national security, General Abdulrahman Dambazau of the Nigerian Army apart from defining security as “freedom from danger, fear or anxiety”,62 strongly argues that security encompasses “threats that may impact on our physical body as individuals or groups; psychological thoughts or behaviour; our properties; means of livelihood; socioeconomic needs...state, region or even the world as a whole.”63 National security is as such understood in this paper as the capability of a state to defend its territorial integrity, national interests, and deter threats to national sovereignty including such other threats as economic, political, social, religious or terrorism
Summary
The struggle for African Unity and self-determination championed by pan-Africanists in the post-World War II period was, among other factors, to control and contain ravaging insurgencies and colonialism in Africa. Nigeria in the 2015 portends the history of a 55-year polity unevenly torn, pressurized, politically and economically contested among the superpower nations, the regions and her nationalities It is cultural mix of multiple inter-arching variables: a) There is the dominant influence of over three decades of deviant militarized past in the present; b) the continual struggle of about two decades of nascent democratic dispensation (1979-1983, 1999-2015) to wrestle itself from the compelling unsavory mix of foreign interference, military and civilian interventions; c) There is the burgeoning influence of the ECOWAS sub region and, d) the overbearing question of Nigeria’s capability to shoulder regional affairs alongside its exacerbating monolithic economic problems. This article examines the implications of Nigeria’s strategic posture as an acclaimed regional peacekeeper, economic and political enabler and stabilizer in (West) Africa
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