Nigeria often behaves like a nation haunted by memories of its former greatness.
There was a time when Nigeria did not wait for foreign capitals to define West African security. From the anti-apartheid struggle in Southern Africa to military interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Nigeria projected power, influence and diplomatic leadership. Whether one agreed with its methods or not, nobody doubted who was leading.
Today, however, the greatest external security threat facing Nigeria is not in Europe, the Middle East or Asia.
It is directly above Nigeria’s northern borders in the Sahel.
And under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria appears to be watching events unfold from the sidelines.
Nigeria Once Understood Regional Threats
During the struggle against apartheid, Nigeria invested enormous diplomatic capital, financial resources and political influence in support of liberation movements across Southern Africa.
Nigeria funded anti-apartheid organisations, championed sanctions, sponsored South African students and became one of the loudest voices demanding the isolation of the apartheid regime.
Many Nigerians still remember the so-called Mandela Tax.
The logic behind those sacrifices was simple.
Nigeria understood that developments elsewhere in Africa could eventually affect Nigeria itself.
The same strategic thinking guided Nigeria’s interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone through ECOMOG. Successive governments understood that state collapse, armed conflict and instability in neighbouring countries eventually spill across borders.
That doctrine now appears abandoned.
The Sahel Is Not Foreign Affairs. It Is National Security.
The insecurity spreading across Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso is not a distant geopolitical issue.
It is Nigeria’s immediate security environment.
The weapons, fighters, trafficking networks and extremist organisations operating across the Sahel do not recognise colonial-era borders. The same routes used by smugglers and terrorists in the Sahel often connect directly to northern Nigeria.
Yet one of the most striking features of the Tinubu administration’s approach has been the absence of visible diplomatic urgency proportional to the scale of the threat.
For a crisis that directly affects Nigeria’s security, economy and territorial stability, the issue appears permanently relegated to the background.
The Alliance of Sahel States, consisting of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, has emerged as a new political and security bloc outside ECOWAS. The three countries have steadily deepened security cooperation and developed alternative regional structures.
This development represents one of the most significant geopolitical shifts in West Africa in decades.
Yet the response from Abuja has often appeared reactive rather than strategic.
A Crisis Placed On The Back Burner
Perhaps the clearest sign of Nigeria’s failure is what has not happened.
For a government that routinely speaks about regional leadership, there has been remarkably little evidence of sustained, high-profile political engagement matching the scale of the crisis.
While leaders from other West African countries have undertaken diplomatic outreach to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, discussions around the Sahel have frequently involved Nigeria being briefed by others rather than visibly driving the engagement itself. Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, for example, visited the Sahel states and later briefed Tinubu on developments and dialogue efforts.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his current Foreign Minister Mrs Bianca Ujukwu are yet to visit any country in this hotbed region.
The impression created is troubling.
Nigeria increasingly looks like a country reacting to events unfolding around it rather than shaping them.
The administration eventually dispatched Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar to Burkina Faso in late 2025 to improve relations and address security concerns.
But the broader criticism remains.
For a crisis sitting directly on Nigeria’s borders, engagement has appeared sporadic rather than relentless.
Foreign policy is ultimately about priorities.
And governments reveal their priorities not through speeches but through sustained attention.
Following France’s Crisis Instead Of Defining Nigeria’s Interests
One of the most remarkable developments in recent years has been the collapse of French influence across the Sahel.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger expelled French military forces, challenged long-standing French influence and increasingly sought alternative partnerships with countries such as Russia.
The problem is not whether Nigeria should support France or oppose France.
That is not Nigeria’s job.
Nigeria’s responsibility is protecting Nigeria.
Yet much of Abuja’s posture during the crisis often appeared tied to defending ECOWAS positions that many citizens within the Sahel increasingly viewed as aligned with French and Western interests.
Whether that perception is accurate is secondary.
Perception shapes political reality.
Nigeria failed to appreciate how dramatically public opinion was shifting across the Sahel.
The result was a foreign policy that frequently appeared more concerned with managing the collapse of the old regional order than constructing a new one.
The Libya Disaster Nobody Wants To Discuss
Perhaps the greatest intellectual failure of Nigeria’s security debate is the refusal to openly connect today’s insecurity to the collapse of Libya and the broader destabilisation of the Sahel.
The fall of Libya unleashed one of the largest uncontrolled movements of weapons and armed groups in modern African history.
Weapons spread across the Sahara.
Militant organisations expanded.
Smuggling networks flourished.
State authority weakened across vast territories.
The resulting instability accelerated the deterioration of security across the Sahel and created conditions that extremist organisations would later exploit.
Yet successive Nigerian governments, including the Tinubu administration, have often discussed banditry, terrorism, kidnapping and insurgency as if they emerged in isolation.
They rarely frame these problems within the wider geopolitical collapse that has unfolded across Libya and the Sahel over the last decade.
This is a serious strategic error.
A country cannot effectively respond to a security crisis if it refuses to publicly identify the regional forces driving it.
The insecurity devastating communities in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi and parts of the North-East did not emerge from thin air.
Many of the conditions enabling those conflicts were shaped by developments far beyond Nigeria’s borders.
Ignoring that reality does not make it disappear.
The Failure Of Imagination
Perhaps the Tinubu administration’s greatest foreign policy failure has not been inactivity.
It has been the failure to imagine an alternative strategy.
Abuja largely viewed the crisis through the narrow framework of military coups versus constitutional order.
That was important.
But it was not sufficient.
Nigeria could have simultaneously defended democratic principles while aggressively pursuing security cooperation, intelligence sharing, border coordination and sustained diplomatic engagement with the governments controlling the Sahel.
Leadership requires engaging with realities as they exist, not as one wishes they existed.
Instead, Nigeria frequently appeared trapped between defending ECOWAS positions and reacting to events already in motion.
Leadership shapes events.
Management reacts to them.
Nigeria Must Return To Being Nigeria
Nigeria does not need permission from Paris, Moscow, Washington or Brussels to defend its interests.
Its obligation is neither preserving French influence nor opposing French influence.
Its obligation is protecting Nigerians.
That means recognising that instability in the Sahel is not somebody else’s problem.
It is Nigeria’s northern frontier.
The greatest irony of the Tinubu administration is that while it regularly speaks about regional leadership, the most important geopolitical transformation occurring around Nigeria is unfolding largely without Nigerian direction.
A nation of more than 200 million people, possessing the region’s largest economy and one of its most powerful militaries, should not be watching the remaking of the Sahel like a spectator at a football match.
It should be helping write the script.
Because if Nigeria does not shape the future of the Sahel, others certainly will.
And history offers a simple warning.
When governments place fires at their borders on the back burner, those fires rarely stay at the border for long.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 