There is a particular art to Nigerian optimism that foreign observers often misunderstand. It is not blind faith, but the practiced resilience of a nation that has learnt to navigate complexity as a survival skill. In a year defined by geopolitical uncertainty, economic recalibration, and a crisis of trust in multilateralism, optimism can easily sound naïve. Yet, in foreign policy, optimism is strategy.
In 2025, that resilience found sophisticated expression in how Nigeria engaged the world: strategically anchored in credible policy, disciplined implementation, and a repositioned diplomatic posture grounded in the belief that credibility is built through action, coherence between domestic reform and external engagement, and presence, rather than wishful thinking. We did not just navigate the world; we began reshaping how the world navigates us.
Optimism Rooted in Reform and External Engagement
As someone directly engaged in foreign affairs, I have observed how Nigeria’s external posture has evolved in response to both domestic reform and global flux. In 2025, Nigeria acted with a clearer understanding that foreign policy is inseparable from economic governance at home. Engagements with international financial institutions, development partners, and global economic forums increasingly reflected this reality. Rather than presenting reform as a burden, Nigeria framed it as a signal of seriousness and readiness for global partnerships. The message was consistent: sustainable growth, debt sustainability, and investor confidence all rest on credibility, and credibility is earned through disciplined policy and transparent engagement.
This strategy produced measurable results. Over the course of 2025, Nigeria’s diplomatic outreach and international engagements were credited with attracting more than $50 billion in Foreign Direct Investment commitments, spanning energy, manufacturing, technology, and logistics. These commitments came from global firms including ExxonMobil, Indorama, Jindal Steel, Shell, Coca-Cola, and Arise, reflecting a pattern of targeted economic diplomacy that married domestic reform, such as easing foreign-exchange constraints and restoring fiscal discipline, with external confidence-building.
Trade outcomes reinforced this trajectory. Nigeria recorded its highest trade surplus in six years, reaching ₦19.34 trillion from a total trade value of ₦113 trillion within the first nine months of the year. The country’s terms of trade rose to 101.37 points, indicating that exports commanded greater purchasing power. Europe accounted for 43 percent of exports and 34 percent of imports, while Asia absorbed 29 percent of exports and supplied 43 percent of imports. India emerged as Nigeria’s top export destination, with ₦2.26 trillion in trade in the third quarter alone.
At the continental level, Nigeria’s trade with other African countries grew by 14 percent in the first half of 2025, following renewed efforts to strengthen regional ties. Together, these outcomes reflect a dual strategy: deepening continental integration while expanding global reach. This is the kind of methodical, cumulative progress that builds economic resilience, challenging the notion that Nigerian optimism is merely declarative rather than earned.
Multilateral Advocacy With a Measurable Posture
Nigeria’s diplomacy in 2025 was also shaped by a renewed commitment to multilateral reform. Global institutions built in the aftermath of the Second World War are increasingly misaligned with contemporary distributions of power, population, and risk. Nigeria has remained firm in advocating reforms that give Africa a meaningful voice in global decision-making, particularly within the United Nations system. Its long-standing call for a reformed Security Council and greater representation in global economic governance reflects a practical position: institutions that exclude entire regions from permanent representation cannot deliver legitimacy or stability. For Nigeria, fairness and functionality are inseparable.
Climate diplomacy emerged as another defining arena of engagement. As climate impacts intensified across Africa, Nigeria worked to position itself as both a responsible energy producer and a credible climate partner. Diplomatic efforts emphasised climate finance, adaptation, and a just energy transition that recognises development realities rather than obscures them. The creation of the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy on Climate and the Presidential Climate Action Committee strengthened coordination across institutions, reinforcing the idea that foreign policy can serve as an enabling platform for climate action. At the BRICS Summit, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s interventions reflected this posture, presenting Nigeria not as a passive victim of climate change, but as an active architect of solutions within global environmental governance.
Diversification of Diplomatic and Economic Space
If 2025 had a diplomatic soundtrack, it would be the sound of doors opening. One of the most consequential shifts in Nigeria’s foreign policy posture was its admission as a partner country into the BRICS bloc – a grouping that, by purchasing power measures, accounts for a substantial share of global economic output and more than half of the world’s population. The move signalled Nigeria’s intent to diversify its diplomatic space, deepen South–South cooperation, and engage more assertively in debates on global governance reform, particularly in international finance and multilateral decision-making.
Trade data from the first three quarters of 2025 underscored the material impact of this engagement. Trade with BRICS countries rose to over ₦5.41 trillion, outpacing exports to some traditional partners and illustrating how Nigeria’s engagement with emerging markets is reshaping its trade patterns. Crucially, this recalibration did not come at the expense of existing partnerships. Nigeria maintained active ties with Europe, North America, and multilateral institutions, reflecting a calibrated strategy of pragmatic and strategic autonomy: engaging broadly without tethering itself to any single bloc.
Beyond participation, Nigeria began to claim institutional space. Securing the hosting rights for the regional office of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance signalled an ambition to shape agendas, not merely attend meetings. Similarly, Nigeria’s return to the International Maritime Organization Council after fourteen years – winning a Category C seat for the 2026–2027 term – reinforced an intent to influence agenda-setting rather than react to it. Here, optimism was operational. It was about claiming space, not pleading for inclusion.
Regional Leadership Under Pressure
At the regional level, Nigeria’s leadership within West Africa remained central in 2025. Security cooperation, democratic stability, and preventive diplomacy dominated engagements across ECOWAS as the sub-region confronted a convergence of unconstitutional power transitions and evolving security threats. Nigeria engaged in stabilising diplomacy with neighbouring states, keeping channels open with key actors in Niger and Mali while maintaining principled positions on democratic governance. This approach reflected a pragmatic, interest-based posture – one that prioritised regional stability over episodic moralising or rhetorical escalation.
Within ECOWAS, Nigeria played a pivotal role in sustaining mechanisms for collective security and political coordination, grounded in the recognition that instability in the sub-region directly affects national prosperity, public trust, and citizen security. At the 68th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government in Abuja, regional leaders moved beyond declarations toward institutional action. The activation of emergency security mechanisms strengthened the legal and political framework for collective responses to threats such as banditry, organised crime, and unconstitutional seizures of power. The articulation of a regional standby force – designed to enhance deterrence and rapid response capacity – sent a clear signal that credibility and preparedness still matter in regional governance, even as operational decisions remain subject to consensus and political judgment.
Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, and a Contested Global Narrative
Nigeria’s foreign policy in 2025 also invested more deliberately in soft power and public engagement. Beyond formal negotiations and summit diplomacy, Nigeria’s global standing is shaped by its people, culture, and ideas. Through sustained media dialogue, diaspora engagement, and cultural diplomacy, foreign policy increasingly shifted from a distant governmental function to a broader national conversation.
Diplomacy began to more explicitly recognise Nigerians abroad as economic actors, cultural ambassadors, and connective tissue between societies. Initiatives such as the return of the Benin Bronzes resonated not only as cultural milestones but as diplomatic touchpoints – reframing global perceptions of Nigeria as a country reclaiming narrative agency rather than seeking validation. In an interconnected world, influence is negotiated not only in country capitals and conference rooms, but also in how a country’s story is told, contested, and understood.
The year, however, was not without friction. Visa restrictions and reduced validity periods for Nigerian travellers to the United States tested bilateral relations and public sentiment. Rather than allowing these tensions to harden, both countries moved toward resolution through sustained diplomatic engagement, ultimately restoring momentum to the relationship and clearing the path for newly appointed ambassadors to assume duties in 2026. The episode underscored a broader lesson: mature partnerships are not defined by the absence of disagreement, but by the capacity to resolve it without erosion of trust.
Nigeria’s security challenges drew heightened international attention in 2025, particularly from the United States – a development that is often politically sensitive but can also create space for deeper cooperation when approached with clarity and confidence. Rather than framing this attention as external pressure, Nigeria engaged it as an opportunity to shape partnerships around intelligence sharing, technological assistance, and institutional capacity-building, anchored in mutual respect and national interest. Security cooperation, when conducted within agreed frameworks and sovereign consent, is most effective when it strengthens domestic capacity rather than substitutes for it. This approach marked a clear contrast with earlier periods of strain, when Nigeria was designated a Country of Particular Concern by the United States and public rhetoric compressed a complex security landscape into a narrow and coercive frame. That moment reflected a breakdown of diplomatic trust and an imbalance between pressure and partnership. The evolution since then – characterised by dialogue, coordination, and institutional engagement – signals a recalibration in how Nigeria’s security challenges are understood and addressed by its partners.
The User’s Guide, Then
In 2025, Nigerian optimism was defined less by sentiment than by agency: a readiness to engage uncertainty, take risks, and shape outcomes without being paralysed by structural constraints. It manifested in strategic action – recalibrating partnerships, guiding critical conversations, and steadily investing in credibility across multiple fronts.
This optimism translated into tangible outcomes. Nigeria aligned trade and investment priorities, deepened diplomatic partnerships, and asserted itself in multilateral forums. Influence was not claimed rhetorically; it was built patiently through consistency, coalition-building, and a pragmatic engagement with the world as it is while pursuing what it should become.
Domestic economic reform reinforced this posture. Fiscal discipline, exchange-rate adjustments, inflation management, and a growth-oriented 2026 budget is strengthening Nigeria’s negotiating position abroad, signalling seriousness to partners and investors. Economic coherence became an instrument of foreign policy, not a parallel track.
Simultaneously, Nigeria managed multiple diplomatic fronts: securing over $50 billion in foreign direct investment commitments, joining BRICS as a partner country while maintaining constructive ties with Western allies, and repatriating citizens from conflict zones in Libya, Ethiopia, Gaza, and the UAE. These were not isolated successes, but cumulative effects of a calibrated, confident external posture.
If there is a user’s guide to Nigerian optimism, it is straightforward but demanding: take your seat at every table, negotiate from principle with pragmatism, build coalitions across divides, and invest in institutions even when returns are not immediate. 2025 demonstrated a capacity for reform, diplomacy, and strategic autonomy pursued in parallel – a capacity whose durability now depends on the choices that come next.
Looking Toward 2026: Consolidation and Measurable Impact
As Nigeria enters 2026, the central question is no longer whether optimism is warranted, but whether it can be converted into durable influence and outcomes that meaningfully serve national aspirations. The emphasis therefore shifts from positioning to consolidation, and from opening doors to shaping what happens inside the room.
The durability of recent gains will depend on institutional follow-through. Diplomatic frameworks, economic partnerships, and multilateral engagements must mature from visibility into leverage, particularly in global finance, climate cooperation, trade facilitation, and peace and security. In this phase, diplomatic representation becomes decisive. Ambassadorial appointments are not ceremonial markers of presence; they are operational assets whose effectiveness will be judged by their ability to translate access into outcomes and dialogue into negotiated advantage.
Economic diplomacy will also assume sharper strategic significance. Nigeria’s demographic trajectory – among the youngest and fastest-growing globally – means that foreign policy cannot be separated from employment, technology transfer, and productive capacity. Deeper engagement with the African Continental Free Trade Area and diversified global partnerships will test whether Nigeria can move from participation to leadership, and from market access to value creation.
Strategic autonomy will remain a defining advantage in an increasingly fragmented international system. As competition among major powers intensifies, Nigeria’s capacity to engage broadly without default alignment will matter more, not less. Non-alignment in this context is active calibration anchored in institutional resilience, policy coherence, and clarity of national interest.
The doors are open. The challenge for 2026 is to walk through them with disciplined strategy, institutional depth, and the resolve to convert optimism into sustained influence.
Ademola Oshodi is Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Foreign Affairs and Protocol.
