By Alamu Eleko
recently, a very bold and unpolitical assertion was made by the erudite Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. There is a new world order where nations must negotiate their ways to success. He concluded that Canada will not be idle nor subordinate its future to chances when international law is being glaringly gutted and upturned. There is an African proverb that captures the essence of such survival instincts with brutal clarity: “The lion runs for game, the game runs for life.” Both run with everything they have, but the stakes define the urgency. Today, on the global stage, Nigeria has forgotten which animal it is, apparently. We are running as if we are merely trying to catch a meal, content with the pace of a predator that can afford to lose. But the world is running like prey—fast, ruthless, and unforgiving. We are living through a tectonic shift in international relations. This is a new world order where nations no longer receive what they expect or deserve, but only what they have the power, the presence, and the persuasion to negotiate.
The recent convulsions in global trade policy should serve as a five-alarm fire for Abuja. When the United States administration under President Donald Trump announced hardline trade measures, Nigeria was caught flat-footed. Our exporters now face cumulative tariff pressures . Our trade relationships, while significant, were not secrets; they were matters of public record. Yet, when penalties came down, there was no last-minute lobbying success, no frantic diplomatic save, and no substantive ambassador in Washington to sit across the table and negotiate a carve-out. While Nigeria retreated into diplomatic hibernation, other African nations were wide awake, leveraging their presence to protect their interests. Consider the fate of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)—the cornerstone of U.S.-Africa trade relations for over two decades. When the Act expired in September 2025, the Trump administration showed little urgency to renew it. But a coalition of African states, through sustained diplomatic engagement, kept the pressure on Washington .
When AGOA was finally extended in February 2026, it was a qualified victory—extended only until December 2026, with tough new conditions attached . Yet critically, South Africa kept its seat at the table. Despite facing the double blow of a 30% punitive tariff that “largely offset” AGOA benefits and diplomatic tensions over Pretoria’s International Court of Justice case against Israel, South African officials did not retreat . Trade Minister Parks Tau immediately issued a statement welcoming the extension while voicing concerns—and, more importantly, pledging to continue “constructive engagement” to lower those punishing tariffs . South Africa understands that you cannot negotiate tariffs from the airport departure lounge. You need boots on the ground. Meanwhile, Nigeria, which accounts for roughly one-fifth of AGOA exports, had no ambassador to press its case for a broader exemption or to lobby against the “fantastical” tariffs that threaten our industries . We were silent because we had no voice.
If South Africa’s case stings, the situation in the Sahel should shame us into action. Consider the three junta-led states of the Alliance of Sahel States—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. These are countries under military rule, ostracized by ECOWAS, and openly hostile to Western “neocolonialism.” By every conventional measure, they should be diplomatic outcasts. Yet when the Trump administration decided that containing jihadist threats and securing minerals like uranium and lithium mattered more than democracy promotion, who was in the room? They were. The State Department dispatched Nick Checker, head of the Bureau of African Affairs, to Bamako to convey “respect for Mali’s sovereignty” and chart a “new course”. U.S. Africa Command’s deputy head confirmed ongoing intelligence support for these very regimes. Let that sink in. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—countries led by men who seized power through coups, who expelled French troops, who turned to the Wagner Group—are receiving U.S. intelligence and diplomatic engagement. They are pariahs, yet they are present. They have ambassadors, or at least functioning missions, that can receive a U.S. delegation. They are negotiating from a position of weakness, but they are negotiating. Nigeria, a constitutional democracy and Africa’s largest economy, cannot even get its envoys accredited.
Watching from the sidelines while others scramble and succeed, we see the true cost of Nigeria’s absence. For over two years, our embassies in key capitals, including Washington D.C., have operated without substantive ambassadors . Despite the Senate clearing a list of nominees weeks ago, President Bola Tinubu has yet to deploy them . In the strict hierarchy of diplomacy, rank matters. As Ambassador Ogbole Amedu-Ode noted, seniority counts, and by remaining absent, Nigeria is missing out . The result? We outsourced our sovereignty to a $9 million lobbying firm, DCI Group, to counter narratives we could have managed ourselves. As Ambassador Gani Lawal, President of the Association of Foreign Relations Professionals, starkly put it, “Diplomacy is not something you outsource permanently.” He argued that the lobbying deal was the price of being “penny-wise and pound-foolish,” a direct consequence of leaving our missions “without eyes, noses, or legs”.
Former presidential candidate Kingsley Moghalu has warned that this “dangerous lacuna” in strategic diplomatic posts weakens governance and international standing. The problem has compounded: some host countries are now hesitating to accept Nigeria’s ambassador-designates because, with elections due in 2027, a new envoy might serve less than a year—hardly worth the diplomatic protocol. How did we arrive here? The administration’s foreign policy is anchored on the “4Ds”—Democracy, Demography, Development, and Diaspora. These are fine concepts, but they remain theoretical constructs gathering dust in a policy drawer. They mean nothing when you lack a physical presence to negotiate the terms of counter-terrorism cooperation, or when you cannot sit with U.S. trade officials to explain why blanket tariffs on Nigerian goods hurt American consumers as much as Nigerian farmers. Across the continent, nations are adapting to a world where the U.S. has retreated from multilateralism and embraced transactional diplomacy . They are diversifying partners, strengthening regional integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area, and defending mobility as an economic asset . They are running like the game runs—because they know that in this new order, the alternative is extinction.
Contrast this diplomatic paralysis with a recent, fleeting moment of success. The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed with the United Arab Emirates, which eliminates tariffs on over 13,000 products, is a testament to what happens when we actually show up. It proves that when Nigeria negotiates—when our ministers sit across from their counterparts and hammer out the details—we can win. But one swallow does not make a summer. The lesson of the lion and the game is this: Nigeria is currently running with the motivation of the lion—comfortable, slow, and expecting the meal to fall into its lap. But the world is treating us like the game. We are being hunted by tariffs, by negative designations, and by the assumption that we are a passive actor in a drama written by others.
South Africa fights to keep its AGOA seat. The Sahel juntas win U.S. intelligence cooperation. Even Ghana advances visa-free policies to strengthen continental exchange. They all understand a fundamental truth: in diplomacy, presence is power. Absence is irrelevance.
If we do not deploy our ambassadors, if we do not coordinate our foreign policy, if we do not engage in the hard grind of diplomatic equivalence, we will continue to be acted upon rather than acting. We will continue to pay millions to explain ourselves rather than using our sovereign power to command respect.
The new world order does not care about our potential, our population, or our resources. It cares about our presence. It is time for Nigeria to run like its life depends on it. Because in the diplomatic jungle of 2026, it does.
•Eleko is a public commentator based in Ibadan