Recently, leaders of the five BRICS nations invited other six countries to join the bloc, namely, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate. These countries could become members by next year, creating a bloc of desperate nations spanning a range of geography and economic development. These new members represent BRICS first phase of its expansion process.
The make-up of BRICS (except perhaps South Africa) and the new nations that have been admitted have so many things in common. Some of them have been browbeaten into falling in line both economically and in security.
Emerging economies and developing countries are increasingly becoming vulnerable and that leaves them in search of beneficial alliances. Nigeria, realizing that the cornerstone of stability lies in multilateral landscape, is evaluating and studying the variables with a view to working closely with BRICS members. This is intended to foster partnerships that sustain growth in line with the theme for the 2023 BRICS Summit, “BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism.”
There are ongoing discussions within the economic advisory council, the National Assembly, and the Executive Council to determine Nigeria’s position about BRICS membership.
The Berlin Conference partitioned Africa over 100 years ago and pitched Nigeria towards the west. For decades, Nigeria has partnered with the west. It is noteworthy to mention that the world has shifted from bipolarity which lasted between 1945 and 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, to a unipolar system dominated by the west.
What we now see with the emergence of BRICS is a situation where the world is moving into a multi-polar system which gives countries the benefit of having alternatives rather than suffering sanctions and being victims of western powers. To a large extent, IMF and World Bank conditionalities caused Nigeria’s economy to plummet southwards right from the military era.
De-dollarisation will not happen overnight. That is part of the reasons why BRICS nations have mandated their finance ministers to work on it away from prying eyes. The dollar is no longer backed by gold, and as the acceptable currency in many parts of the world, it continues to enrich the United States at the expense of other countries.
There is the perception that membership of BRICS is by invitation even though Nigeria formally applied to join the alliance in 2015 in the wake of the African Development Bank (AfDB) revelation that the trade between BRICS and Africa rose to about $340b in 2012. Nigeria stands to lose nothing if it aligns with the new world order. The country will have better negotiating and trading terms and better partners.
The good thing about BRICS is that it is almost self-sufficient; members can trade among themselves without really looking elsewhere.
For Nigeria to become a member of BRICS, lobbying South Africa may not be helpful because it serves South Africa’s best interest for us not to be in it right now so that they can take the lead in Africa. It serves Nigeria’s purpose to talk to some of the pioneer members of the alliance especially China and Russia that are open to admitting more members.
In BRICS, Nigeria can withstand the bullying from the west, but outside the alliance, the country stands no chance. Available statistics show that nearly 40% of the world’s population is already in BRICS. In terms of recovery, about 1/3 of the world’s economy or GDP is within the BRICS nations. If Nigeria takes away its resources from the west and joins the BRICS, there is the likelihood that such independence will cause the west to seek Nigeria more than Nigeria will need them.
Nigeria needs to be a voice in the room and stop negotiating from outside. That way, it will have better negotiating power to trade globally. The BRICS as a group is a very strong economic bloc right now and they have better negotiating power than Nigeria that is just standing alone especially in the midst of a fractured ECOWAS. The sub-regional body is not speaking with one voice at the moment because of governance issues in some member states.
There is a narrative that the BRICS are trying to change the dominance of the western power in global economy configuration. It is important Nigeria belongs to the bloc especially with the moribund nature of the non-alignment movement as the case may be.
BRICS is a variation of the concert of medium powers (countries that had regional influence) proposed by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, during the military regime. If Nigeria had embraced and pursued that policy, the nation would have been determining the fate of South Africa, and not vice versa. In BRICS, South Africa has got two superpowers on its side and intends to use that to perhaps checkmate Nigeria.
If Nigeria is not invited to join BRICS eventually, it provides the country with an opportunity to look in other directions. There are more countries outside BRICS now than there are in BRICS such as Chile, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, among others. Nigeria could approach these important countries and bring them into an organization that is not going to be against the west or east. This is an opportunity for a clever application of a new concert of medium powers.
There is also the option of bringing together countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey which were popularly referred to as the ‘MINT’ nations. Some of these countries could be willing to revive this bloc because they may also feel that they have been snubbed by the BRICS.
Moses Amadi
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