Nigeria and the emerging multi-polar world order.

"There are decades where nothing happens; and weeks where decades happen"

     - Vladimir Lenin

Nigeria is behemoth saddled with a burden of destiny, a burden of being a beacon and guide for the African continent and other nations of the global south. Factors such as a strategic geographical location, huge landmass (Nigeria is bigger than Germany, France and Belgium combined), a population of two hundred and twenty million (more than France, Germany and Britain combined) serve to make her the epicenter and centre of gravity of the African continent. 

To buttress her centrality, Nigeria was at the forefront of support of the anti-apartheid movement, giving sanctuary to activists, financial subsidies and diplomatic support. Nigeria also brought an end to a raging civil war in Liberia and Seirra Leone using mechanisms like the ECOMOG where Nigeria invested the blood of her sons and her treasure to bring peace to sister nations of Africa. Nigeria's successful interventions in Darfur, Congo, Mali and other hotspots in the continent cannot be overemphasized.

Nigeria's journey of nationhood has been challenging, with accompanying trauma and fissures, a civil war which cost millions of lives, militancy in the oil-rich delta, terrorism and an insurgency in the the north, further devastating an already disadvantaged region. 

However, with every challenge that brings the nation to the precipe, the odds are not only surmounted, but she comes out stronger, like iron passing through fire for purification.

Recent developments on the global chessboard point to an evolutionary process for the birth of a multi-polar world order, an order which unlike the post cold-war era uni-polar world which left the United States and her surbodinates having an undisputed dominion over the planet. With great power comes great responsibility, this period of uni-polarity left the United States and her surbodinates intoxicated with unbridled arrogance, and they wrought unprecedented chaos and destruction, this can be seen in countries like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and a host of other nations of the global south.

These foreign 'mis-adventures' aside raining death and destruction on the targeted nations, also end up destabilizing contagious regions, as can be highlighted by the geometric growth of Boko Haram, banditry in Nigeria and the spread of terrorists and terrorism in sahelian African societies post Ghaddafi, flooding the region with arms, ammunitions and men with the intent, motive and means of using them.

The dollar's reserve status, and western control of institutions like the IMF, world bank, and mechanisms like SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) have been weaponised, sanctioning nations, stealing their foreign reserves, exporting inflation, austerity, unemployment, poverty and instability across the global south.

But whisper it softly, their is a slow geopolitical burn which can now not be easily snuffed out and which grows in strength. This emerging bloc of independent states led mainly by Russia and China, organized in the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-China-India-SouthAfrica) and Shanghai Corporation Organization (SCO) represent an alternative system to the glaring wanton level of inequality and stands out like a beacon of light against the parasitism and orthodoxies of laissez-faire extraction western imperialism.

Constant provocations vis-a-vis China, Russia, Iran and other states has forced these nations to seek alternative avenues for collaboration beyond the control of the leviathan that will for a more democratic and responsible system. Institutions like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) SCO (Shanghai cooperative organization) and China's BRI (belt and roads initiative) seek to liberate by giving nations an alternative means of accessing markets for trade, technology, know-how, capital and infrastructure independent of western parasitic dictates.

Events are unfolding in remarkable pace that Nigeria cannot afford to remain by the sidelines without identifying with her natural instincts, nor will ambiguity serve her interests as that will be tantamount to abdicating her leadership position leaving a vacuum no other nation can satisfactorily fill in the region. Nigeria needs to step confidently onto the world stage and emerge from the western shadow, stop mimicking and assuming that technological or economic advance can only be found within the western liberal-economic way.

A multi-polar world is being birthed and Nigeria must not remain in the background, but rise, firmly and strategically in promoting her interests and that of the continent.

Najeeb Wali

walinajeeb2@gmail.com