The Politics of International Visibility and Relevance: An Overview of Nigeria's Role Conceptions in World Politics

National Role Conception (NRC) is a fresh perspective in foreign policy analysis in Nigeria. It is however, not as new in western scholarship. Beginning with Holsti in 1970, and further explored by Walker in 1978, Wish in 1980, and Krotz in 2001, NRC has become an attractive prism by which the foreign and defence policies of nations are examined. Nations are viewed to be driven in international politics by roles they have domestically identified, which they wish to perform with the view to securing and furthering their national interest. National Role Conceptions (NRCs), the art of articulation by policymakers of the national roles for the external context, however, constitute the incubation stage of external policymaking, which involve a lot of calculations, strategizing, and rigorous analysis of cost implications of external roles to undertake. This paper examines the role conceptions of Nigeria since independence, arguing that the basic ingredients for conceiving strategic roles towards the realization of core national interest seemed lacking. It adopts the National Role Theory, and interrogates the policymaking process to determine the clarity and strategic importance of national or international roles. While the paper scooped data from oral interviews from the relevant research population and secondary sources; it concludes that Nigeria’s roles in the continent and world are motivated more by visibility and relevance, and not so much of a strategy for national development, which is the basic goal of foreign policy