The target year, 2020, is here and it is worth asking how much of Vision 2020 has been actualized. How have Nigeria’s development indicators compared with those of advanced countries, the first 20 of which Nigeria had aspired to join by 2020?
After 60 years of independence, Nigeria has failed to establish significant political leverage on the global scene and is not the African superpower many tout it to be.
It will be a grave mistake to treat Nigeria’s recent US visa ban as a one-off event, rather than a larger issue of limited leverage in a rapidly changing world that we seem ill-prepared to navigate.
Having accomplished a plethora of historical firsts, observations from the Nigeria-Biafra conflict can act as important references to better understand the evolving dynamics of warfare.
Although Nigeria closed its border by exploiting loopholes in the ECOWAS rulebook (by claiming exemptions to justify its actions), the unilateralist, parochial border closure will negate the possibility of cooperation or forging stronger economic ties in the future.