FOREIGN POLICY

This study assesses Nigeria's foreign policy under the administration President Muhammadu Buhari from 2015 to 2023, with emphasis n s objectives, implementation, achievements, and challenges. The research examines how the Buhari administration pursued Nigeria's national interest through security diplomacy, economic diplomacy, regional cooperation, and international engagement. Using a qualitative research design, the study relies on secondary sources of data, including government publications, scholarly journals, books, policy documents, and reports from international organizations. The analysis is anchored on the Realist Theory of International Relations, which emphasizes the pursuit of national interest and state security in foreign policy formulation. The findings reveal that the Buhari administration recorded notable successes in strengthening regional cooperation against terrorism, enhancing Nigeria's role within ECOWAS and the African Union, promoting anti-corruption initiatives internationally, and attracting foreign investment in critical sectors. However, these achievements were constrained by persistent domestic insecurity, economic recession, declining foreign direct investment, border closure policies, and inconsistencies in policy implementation, which affected Nigeria's diplomatic influence and global image. The study concludes that although Buhari's foreign policy reaffirmed Nigeria's traditional Afrocentric orientation and commitment to regional peace and security, its overall effectiveness was limited by internal political, economic, and security challenges. The study recommends greater policy consistency, improved economic management, stronger institutional capacity, and a balanced approach that aligns domestic development priorities with Nigeria's foreign policy objectives to enhance the country's international standing and leadership role in Africa.

Whenever political differences within a society or a state takes on a territorial and organizational character, that is, inspire the consolidation of territories with organizational structures, with the addition of a triggering condition, conflict is inevitable.1 What the history of conflict, whether civil or international, will show is that there was a stage in which differences took on a territorial character, which is, it became possible to recognize the territories of the contending and already mobilized groups. The history of Nigeria since 1914 is deeply rooted in major political issues which are violently contested along the lines of ethnic, religious, and regional boundaries in the country. It can be noted that Nigeria inherited a constitution, from the British which gave absolute majority to one region, thereby promoting regional politics and political division in the country.3 For Nigeria, the civil war that raged between mid 1967 and early 1970, has been described as inevitable