The Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Tuggar said Nigeria’s foreign policy focus on democracy, developments, demography and diaspora (4-Ds) would enable the country advance meaningfully at the global stage.
He disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja during the dialogue series with members of the Global Shapers Community, a group of highly motivated individuals with great potential for future leadership roles in society.
According to him, the 4-D foreign policy under President Bola Tinubu is neatly tidying up approach to be able to engage in international affairs.
Tuggar said, “The fulcrum of all this, is strategic autonomy. The whole idea is to have a foreign policy agenda. The foreign policy objectives of Nigeria enshrined in the Constitution focus on Africa.
Then, you have other things like international rule of law, maintaining good relations with other countries following laid down rules and being good global citizens.
“Even though those are some of the objectives, the 4-D is what the administration has come up with to achieve its foreign policy. You will notice we interchange which ‘D’ we should start with depending on who we are engaging; the 4-Ds are all important.
“It is essentially a way of neatly tidying up approach to engage the fulcrum of this strategic autonomy and being autonomous enough to be able to engage any country. So it is all non-alignment.”
The minister said Nigeria’s policy on non-alignment could have been traced to the 20th century, when countries that became independent after the Second World-War chose non-alignment due to the bipolar world.
He mentioned that after Nigeria’s independence in the 1960s the objective in the 70s and 80s was to free up Africa.
“The focus on Africa is to make it free. We ourselves will not be free until all other countries that were under the yoke of racist regimes became free. So, what we are trying to do is fully realise our foreign policy, Tuggar said.
Chimdi Neliaku, Curator of Abuja hub Global Shapers Community, said they were at the ministry in view of preparation for the Abuja dialogue series and to officially introduce the organisation to Tuggar.
According to her, the dialogue series is a programme focused on engaging critical stakeholders in policymaking roles for young people to contribute meaningfully in foreign policymaking process.
Neliaku said, “Such is policy centered conversation; we decided to look at one of the foremost policies of the ministry we feel is important to us as young people, which is the 4-D foreign policy agenda.
“This is important to us because we understand global scheme of things.
“Nigeria is in a place where without taking our rightful place, the rest of Africa will not be able to become what we want it to be.”
The curator further commended Tuggar for the ministry’s achievements so far, while revealing that the organisation had executed not less than 100 projects across governance, education, training students and teachers.
(NAN)
