DOMESTIC SECURITY CHALLENGES AND NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY, 2015–2024

This study examines how domestic security challenges, with particular attention to armed banditry in the North-West, shaped the direction, capacity and implementation of Nigeria’s foreign policy between 2015 and 2024. Evidence shows that persistent insecurity diverts state resources, limits diplomatic capacity and alters regional engagement, yet few studies have traced this process for Nigeria across two consecutive administrations. A mixed-methods design was adopted. Questionnaires were administered to 390 officials and analysts drawn from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of State Services, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, the Nigeria Police Force and academia, of which 328 (84.1%) were validly completed; ten key informant interviews supplemented the survey. Realism and Threat-rigidity theory guided the analysis. The findings show that 81.7% of respondents agreed that insecurity redirected diplomatic resources toward security partnerships, 81.1% agreed that it shifted Nigeria’s focus from economic diplomacy and regional integration to counterterrorism and border security, and 77.7% agreed that banditry disrupted the implementation of bilateral border-security agreements. Respondents nonetheless rejected (81.1%) the claim that Nigeria became more reliant on formal bilateral security agreements; interviews explained that its security partnerships were informal and transactional. The study concludes that insecurity reshaped Nigeria’s foreign policy through attrition, budget reallocation and agenda crowding rather than formal policy change, moving it from a proactive, Afrocentric and economic posture to a reactive, security-dominated agenda. It recommends a protected budget line and a reserve corps of trade, legal and regional-integration specialists in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, parallel planning tracks for security and economic diplomacy, and a commitments-tracking unit with minimum civilian deployment guarantees for ECOWAS and African Union missions.