Tuesday, January 21, 2025 3:14 pm
Ademola Araoye
Ademola Araoye
As usual, the Nigeria state propaganda machinery is presenting the recent announcement of the offer of a partnership into BRICS as some sort of victory. That offer of a partnership, instead of full membership, rather sadly reflects the shameful nadir to which Nigeria has sunk as a political force even if Nigeria still definitely remains an economic pivot of Africa. The context informing the subterranean dynamic of Nigeria’s application for membership of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), that was earlier denied by Abuja, is directly related to the struggle for strategic preeminence between Nigeria and South Africa on the African continent. Unfortunately, the domestic circumstances of the former is seriously constraining the pursuit of a radical, dynamic and transformative foreign and security policy that has catapulted South Africa into the stratosphere of quasi-elite state actors in international policy circuits. Nigeria has regressed significantly from its halcyon days in that department. As Nigeria has declined from the era of General Sani Abacha, who sent the country into an international downward spin into a pariah status, South Africa has carefully cultivated the image and effectively articulated a bold and radical philosophy in global affairs. It leveraged the special bond forged by the African National Congress with China and Russia, as the successor state of the Soviet Union, in its liberation struggle in post liberation to create strong linkages with the main centers of alternative ideo-philosophical pole in global affairs. In deftly managing these assets, South Africa has become, sort of, the champion of radical emancipatory impulses on the continent that is codified in the philosophy of “radical pan-Africanism” on the continent.
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The advancement of that philosophy has become the litmus test of afrocentric policy orientation in contemporary times. Nigeria had in the past crowed about the same philosophy and validated itself at the pinnacle of diplomatic hierarchy in Africa. But, no more! Under Nelson Mandela South Africa, collaborating with the United States, was in the fore front of negotiation for the ouster of the monstrosity of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire/ Republic of Congo. South Africa led the Afro-centric forces against the French proxy in Cote d’Ivoire. Nigeria was eminently on the wrong side of history and Africa’s transformed political sensibilities in that crisis. In more recent times, again we got it awfully wrong on the situation in the Sahel only to be rebuffed by South Africa at the African Union.
Meanwhile, BRICS is an multilateral organization consisting of ten countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. It is considered to be a counterpart and alternative to the G7 bloc of the world’s largest economies and combined represent nearly half of the world’s population. Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates attended their first summit in full capacity as member states at the 2024 summit in Russia. The admission of Egypt and Ethiopia into membership of BRICS and the offer of second tier partnership to Nigeria tells the story of how are the mighty fallen. It is instructive that official Nigeria denied that it had applied to join the body, when its application for membership was denied by the group meeting in South Africa. For cold comfort, it is prudent that the offer of a partnership to Nigeria was announced in Brazil. It softens the humiliation that would have been if South Africa’s Foreign Minister had to deliver the message. Again, for Nigeria, living in the world of the ostrich has consequences that though may be unforeseen are sure to be uncomfortable when concealed facts intrude into daylight.
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Meanwhile, a fragilized Nigeria is already being wooed by the West as a proxy to counterbalance the dominant influence of South Africa as the dominant voice of the continent on the global scene. That is what the recent overt endorsement of Nigeria for one of the proposed two seats in the Security Council of the United Nations is all about. It is by no means certain, where Nigeria should or would roll. Domestic exigencies and the careers of our politicians have however always triumphed in the calculus of policy choices impacting the long term interests of the Nigerian state and people. Accordingly, informed guesses may lead one into certain conclusions.
(Below is a relevant extract from a book Post-Colonial Statehoods in the Global Order by the author).
The advancement of economic interests has been the bedrock of strategic policy across time. Economic imperatives have historically underpinned relations across global societies. Historians generally recognize three motives for European exploration and colonization in the New World: God, gold, and glory. Of the three, the search for material expropriation from other lands has been a central motif to the horrendous experience of Africa longitudinally through slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism that is seemingly unending. The propagation of the European god among heathens was indeed in the service of appropriating the material wealth of the converted society. From the Catholic Church that financed expeditions for slaves, like most European monarchies, the objective was to increase the wealth of the institutions, both temporal and spiritual. Considerations for wealth have thus driven the evolution of human history and impacted the character of relationships that have emerged among societies across the globe. The economic history of the world encompasses the development of human economic activity throughout time. Human economic activity and processes have rested on values that have supported the character of subsisting economic relations. The values have conveniently been the premises of various contrived kinds of relationships, including the historic subordination of Africa. The subordination of Africa was designed to facilitate the appropriation of a disproportionate quantum of global production for the benefit of minority-dominant societies at the expense of subordinated societies. Global economic relations have thus been premised on the exploitation of the weak by the powerful at all levels of human economic interactions. From Marxist orthodoxy through dependency theories, the exploitation of weak societies has been the canonical precept in understanding the underpinnings of the structure of the planetary strategic order. This structure principally applies to the tangential location of Africa in international economic relations that is almost immovable. That is the context of massive value transformations in the continent that are motorizing the repudiation of the subsisting construction of the global economic system by some African leaders. The implication at the domestic and sub-systemic levels has been agitations to oust institutions in Africa built around the old values rationalizing the subordination of the continent. It also accounts for contemporaneous movements toward a radical redirection of preferences in partnerships and the character of the new partnerships that are built around advocated parity to drive equity in international economic relations.
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The emergence of the BRICS challenges the dominant paradigm of the United States-directed global economic governance in which Africa is in subordination. BRICS is perceived as the flip side of the turbulence at the level of the search for superiority in raw power through realignments of the global strategic template. Before BRICS the attempt by Muammar Gadaffi to establish a common African currency to drive African emancipation had been sabotaged by the dominant West. It was a major consideration for the West’s inspired ouster of Gadaffi. Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails revealed that NATO’s goal in destroying Libya was to prevent Gaddafi from unifying Africa and introducing the African gold dinar. BRICS expresses the impact of changes in the dominant value systems, including enhanced consciousness across the South. These new realities pose challenges to the continued integrity of old institutions. As Francis Fukuyama notes, when the surrounding environment changes and new challenges arise, there is often a disjunction between existing institutions and present needs. However, he notes further, that those institutions are supported by legions of entrenched stakeholders who oppose any fundamental change. The values on which BRICS is anchored and its emerging operational protocols are antithetical to the conception and operations of the United States-led World Economic Order. Indeed, by the mid-1990s, the industrialized beneficiaries of the skewed global structure had been going through not merely a crisis but a worldwide economic revolution, which had been making itself felt at the same time that the economic system had been hit by a cyclical crisis. The many structural changes brought about by this revolution are creating new rules of the game and necessitating a new modus operandi for all the primary players in the world economy.” BRICS is partly a response to the paralyzing crisis of the global economic order.
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The term BRICS was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, to refer to what were then the four fastest-growing emerging markets – Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The actualization of the idea of “BRICs” into a formal institution began with the meeting of the then leaders of China, India, and Russia (Hu Jintao, Manmohan Singh, and Vladimir Putin) on the margins of the 2008 Group of 8 (G8) meeting in St. Petersburg. Russia was then a member of the G8 before its 2014 expulsion over its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea a territory that it historically claimed. Expert opinion however notes that with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence in 1991 most of the peninsula was reorganized as the Republic of Crimea. The Republic of Crimea in 1995 was forcibly abolished by Ukraine with the Autonomous Republic of Crimea established firmly under Ukrainian authority. Paradoxically, India and China attended the G8 gathering as part of the group’s “outreach” to emerging economies. They, however, along the margins of the meeting, seized the opportunity to begin talks on rejecting Western dominance of the global economic system. BRICS has operated as a formal group since 2006. In 2006, the four foreign ministers of the BRIC met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. In 2009, the inaugural BRICs’ summit took place in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Annual summits have taken place ever since. A decade later, at the instance of China, South Africa was admitted into the group, thus expanding BRIC to BRICS.
The institutionalization of BRICS, therefore, was motorized by imperatives of economic partnership among states dissatisfied with the structure of the global order and management of global economic relations. BRICS was conceived as a diplomatic forum and development financing, outside of the Western mainstream. The movement outside the mainstream of global institutional financial arrangement almost immediately was perceived as undermining the character of a subsisting pattern of global economic relations, and specifically a threat to the preeminence of the United States dollar as the main currency of international trade. The emergence of the BRICS, revolving around China and Russia, became an element in the overall restructuring of the strategic planetary order. In fact, BRICS was almost immediately dubbed the global South alternative.
In 2021, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh took up shares in the BRICS bank. Since then perceptions of the institutional legitimacy of the BRICS group and its plans have grown among medium powers and smaller economies across South America, Africa and Asia. South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor affirmed that worldwide interest in the BRICS group was “huge.” In early March 2023 she confirmed that the receipt of 12 letters from interested countries desirous of joining the body. She counted among new applicants for entry into the group Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina. She named others as Mexico and Nigeria. “Once we’ve shaped the criteria [for lending], we will then make the decision,” she added, noting that the issue of expansion would be placed on the agenda for an upcoming August 2023 summit in South Africa. In furtherance of this process, Naledi Pandor will host the Meeting of BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs and International Relations on 01 June 2023 in Cape Town.
The meeting would enable BRICS Foreign Ministers to reflect on regional and global developments. Minister Pandor, as the Chair of the BRICS Ministerial Meeting, emphasized that the gathering of Foreign ministers will advance the policy of inclusive engagement by inviting 15 Foreign Ministers from Africa and the global south to a “Friends of BRICS” meeting to be held on 02 June 2023 the rise of BRICS has attracted intense apprehensions and outright hostility in the West. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said China posed “the greatest challenge of our age” in regards to global security and prosperity, and that it was “increasingly authoritarian at home and abroad”. But the most important part of the message of western leaders centered on what they called “economic coercion” of China. Western analysts contend that “the founding myth of the emerging economies has faded,” even as “the BRICS countries are experiencing their geopolitical moment.” Günther Maihold, deputy director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, or SWP, affirms. In this perspective prevalent in the West, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are trying to position themselves as representatives of the Global South, providing “an alternative model to the G7”. The G7 is an “informal forum” of heads of state of the world’s most advanced economies, founded in 1975. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the US are members, as is the EU. In the attempt to destroy the cohesion within the BRICS pro-western analysts have focused attacks on China and Russia on different planes. Beyond the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the threat of de-dollarization as the main currency of international transactions has been the prime concern of the West and the iconic symbol of the danger posed by the emergence of BRICS in the international trade system. De-dollarization had become synonymous with BRICS.
The anxiety of the West to a potential BRICS currency was heightened by the planned expansion of the group to include Saudi Arabia, given its status in the global economy and wealth. The formal application of the Kingdom to join the BRICS validates the raison d’etre of the BRICS group. The economy of Saudi Arabia is the largest in the Middle East and the eighteenth largest in the world. A permanent and founding member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia is also a member of the G20 forum as one of the world’s largest economies. $ 1.061 trillion (Nominal, 2023 est.) $2.300 trillion (PPP, 2023 est.) Saudi Arabia reportedly has the third most valuable natural resource reserves in the world, mostly petroleum and natural gas. The kingdom has the second-largest proven petroleum reserves, and the fourth-largest measured natural gas reserves. Saudi Arabia is currently the largest exporter of petroleum in the world, which sees it occasionally referred to as a petro-state in Western media. Other major parts of the economy include refining and chemical manufacturing from the oil reserves, much of which is vertically integrated in the state-owned enterprise, Saudi Aramco. Total reserves (includes gold, current US$) in Saudi Arabia was reported at 473889603513 USD in 2021, according to the World Bank.
Post-Colonial Statehoods in the Global Order is published by Africa World Press/Red Sea Press, New Jersey, USA. The book would be released on 25 March, 2025. It would available on all major e-platforms such a Amazon
*Professor Ademola Araoye is a retired official of the United Nations and former Director of Abuja Leadership Center, a TETFUND Center of Excellence in Public Governance and Leadership at the University of Abuja. He is author of Sources of Conflict in the Post- Colonial African State (AWP, 2012).