Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, said the country is wary of Africa becoming the ground for the great power contestation that has been changed from a unipolar to a multi-polar world.
Ambassador Tuggar disclosed this at an interactive session in Washington DC, United States of America.
The Minister, in a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media and Communications Strategy, Alkasim Abdulkadir, said though, there is rivalry on the continent of Africa among the top economies in the world, Nigeria’s bilateral partnership with the US, China and Russia shows its history of non-alignment, but democratic as the largest economy in Africa.
“We are very wary of Africa becoming the ground for the great power contestation that has been changed from a unipolar to a multi-polar world. This tends to attract contestation by great powers. Our outlook is that of strategic autonomy.
“We get along with everyone. We also have a history of non-alignment, but we are democratic. We have had several successive elections since 1999. We don’t want to see any private military company or mercenaries on our continent,” he said.
Ambassador Tuggar also said Nigeria successfully tackled insecurity and conflicts in Sierra Leon, in Liberia, leading ECOMOG, and now doing it with the Multinational Joint Task Force along Niger, Cameron, and Chad.
“We feel that is a way forward as opposed to exogenous solutions, we would rather have endogenous solutions that are supported by countries like America that are great partners to Nigeria and many others on the African continent,” he added.
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