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Title:Essays on Nigeria's Foreign Policy, Governance and International Security Author: Olu Adeniji Publisher: Dokun Publishing House, Ibadan, Nigeria Year of Publication: 2000 Pages: 311
Olu Adeniji's work is a collection of eighteen essays written over a period of fifteen years. The author has, no doubt, been inspired by his vast experience as a diplomat. As a Nigerian civil servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador to Switzerland and France, and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, he must have, apart from personal experience, derived a major impetus from extensive reading. Thus the book is an important contribution to the growing literature on Nigerian's foreign policy.
It is divided into three parts. Broadly, it explores the future of Nigeria's foreign policy within topics such as the national economic background, the implementation and administration of the country's foreign policy, and the emergence of South Africa from apartheid and its implications for Nigeria's foreign policy. A chapter examines the application of nuclear technology, which the author advocates for the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
The author looks at some of the essential principles which have underpinned the country's foreign policy from the earliest history of foreign policy-making. He traces the genesis of Nigerian's foreign policy to the pre-independence period when officers were attached to selected British embassies in Europe and America. He depicts a major concern of the nation's foreign policy: the desire to uplift the black people and to defend their interests wherever they may be. The first clear statement of this principle and objective was articulated in Parliament by the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa on 20 of August 1 960. The point made that Tafawa Balewa was his own Foreign Minister for one year until 1961 when he relinquished that post to Jaja Wachukwu.
When Nigeria was formally admitted into the United Nations on 7 October 1960, Balewa 's statement on the principles and objectives of Nigeria foreign policy...