Future Forest.

Dramatically narrated speculative fiction about the untapped ecosystems currently associated with criminal herdsmen & Boko Haram in parts of Nigeria.

Date: August 31, 2035

Location: Sambisa Forest, Latitude 11°15′00″N Longitude 13°25′00″E, 60 km southeast of Maiduguri…

Characters: Me, (pressman) & the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Me: Thank you for welcoming me at this busy period, during your preparations for Nigeria’s 75th independence anniversary.

Minister: You’re welcome. I consider it part of my duties to keep the public informed the role of foreign policy in Nigeria’s emergence on the global stage.

Me: Next month, Nigeria will be 75 years old. Will there be any reason to celebrate?

Minister: Thank you, that’s an interesting question. It’s 2035, and Nigeria is recovering from several decades of misdirected governance, incoherent foreign policy, and resulting economic, social and political dysfunctions that gave us a bad image for years. For example, we used to be known as the terror capital of the world, and we had a ‘fantastically corrupt’ government that was unaccountable to its own people, who were at one time, listed as the poorest in the world.

Nowadays, after several cycles of new leadership, all that has changed, and Nigerians have finally begun to grow into a modern nation with a defined global purpose.

Me: 3 years ago, you were appointed Foreign Minister: can you tell us what is the focus of Nigeria’s foreign policy under your leadership?

Minister: When I came in, we felt that Nigeria had been spreading its resources too wide trying to be a global player in areas that should be none of its concern, where no mutual interests were at play, and where there were no foreseeable advantages or profit to the Nigerian people. Steadily, we have started to reduce Nigeria’s global footprint, while at the same time strengthening our impact in selected areas. We call our new approach the doctrine of Strategic Importance.

Me: Strategic importance? What does that mean?

Minister: Well, basically, Nigeria matters. At half a billion, we now have the world’s largest population after China and India. The ramifications of these huge numbers affect global markets and global security. It can have a bad side, like twenty-five years ago during the Ebola crisis, when the whole world was on red alert because of one infected person who entered Nigeria. Or when, in the early 2000s, Nigeria began to export terrorism, which destabilized the West African and Maghreb regions; we had one of the world’s largest internal refugee crises in our north east, with two million people displaced, and we also exported large numbers of boat migrants across the Mediterranean, which became a political concern that destabilized Europe.

Nowadays, our focus is to leverage the good side of our global footprint, and translate that to a market advantage for trade, and exponential increases in domestic income.

Me: So, in what ways is Nigeria now exercising its ‘Strategic Importance’?

Minister: We are primarily concerned with increasing mutual trade.

In close collaboration with other African states, we are developing trans regional infrastructure for transport, border security and money. For the past 5 years, Nigeria has invested 25 billion dollars every year to complete the four trans African highways. Already 2 have been finished, and this year, we expect to open the Cape to Cairo Highway System and the Trans Equator Highway from Senegal to Tanzania. All four are complex systems with in-built 10 lane roads and high-speed rail, both over and underground.

We have also made it possible to transact electronically anywhere in Africa without regard to the currency being used. The universities at Makerere and Ibadan have innovated a socially compatible financial exchange from the old cowrie-based trade by batter, and replaced that by a digital system that requires no currency at all.

Me: That sounds impressive. Isn’t this a continuation of the old African Union?

Minister: Not at all. The idea of a political union between independent states has since ceased to be relevant in modern African thinking. In its stead, we have achieved a functional union, where countries can transact and transport seamlessly, without compromising their political or economic independence, or even having a common currency. If you remember, these sorts of friction partly led to global fallouts, such as Brexit, which happened twenty-five years ago. For us as African people, what matters are the systems, not so much the physical or political structures. We are happy to adapt our traditional African systems of community trading to the times, and so far we’ve seen excellent results: from when Africa had the lowest intra-regional trade in the world, at about $150 billion in 2015 or 15% of the continent’s trade, to over 30 trillion now: surpassing what was in those days considered the limits of global trade.

Me: What do you consider as the next biggest challenge for foreign policy?

Minister: Simple. It’s data. The world has entered the 5th Industrial Revolution, and all transactions are now virtual: artificial intelligence is integrated into the most mundane tasks, people have been reduced to numbers, half of all jobs are automated, universal basic income has replaced salaried employment, and the most valuable tradable commodity is no longer oil or diamonds, but measurable information…or data. That you can see from the Data Wars between Russia and the US in the last decade.

In the past, we found that African countries, and Nigeria in particular, had little to no influence or control over what data was generated from them and used for them. It was a problem on many levels, not the least of which was that we also considered it a huge security risk.

For example, seventeen years ago in 2018, a huge scandal broke out at the headquarters of the then African Union: it was discovered that China had been siphoning data from the servers of the AU. It was indeed a global embarrassment, and it taught us a lesson we would never forget.

Since then, we are more acutely aware of our electronic security: in fact, we now use data systems developed at Yaba and Nairobi, which effectively cannot be breached.

This new technology has important uses in other ways too, such as our health data. For instance, it used to be very embarrassing to us that we only knew the prevalence of diseases like Polio and HIV, based on what the World Health Organization in Geneva told us about ourselves. That was a terrible flaw, and I’m still embarrassed to remember how long it remained that way. Thankfully, new thinking and homegrown data systems have changed all that.

Me: Talking about health, in what ways does foreign policy impact the health sector?

Minister: Well, Nigeria once had the highest number of people living with HIV in the world. What was worse was that their treatment was not in our hands, it was all donor managed. Then suddenly in 2020, the government of the United States, under then president Donald Trump, cancelled all foreign aid investments. Within a year, nearly 10 million Nigerians died of both HIV and tuberculosis. Another 10 million children died from polio infection, and deaths from malaria were 15 million. Such a scandal should never have happened, except that our health system at the time was completely dependent on foreign aid.

Sadly, those were the days of economic profligacy and lack of value for the lives of ordinary Nigerians. We have come a long way since, and health insurance and other forms of health coverage are now universal. Nigeria now considers it a national security risk, and a foreign policy matter, that the healthcare of its own citizens be sponsored from abroad.

If you remember, it was so bad that even our president would travel for his healthcare. He could have been poisoned and we would have been none the wiser. Thankfully, neither our politicians nor the people themselves depend any longer on foreign medical treatment.

Me: So, next month will be the anniversary of Nigeria’s 75th year of independence: Are you rolling out the drums too?

Minister: Indeed we are, and I believe it is important to keep reminding Nigerians of the fundamental value of independence. I personally frown at the idea that colonialism was a beneficial service to us, as is often narrated, because it brought us education, health or religion. I make it a point of duty to remind my fellow citizens that there were systems of education, and health system in place that could have flourished without colonialism. We have a long way to go reversing decades of indoctrination and learning about our true selves.

That’s is why I am glad that this year, our independence day parade will be held at Fort Sambisa, a place that was once synonymous with terrorism only a quarter if a century ago. Since the Boko Haram insurgency ended in the early 2000s, the once-dreaded Sambisa forest is now the world’s largest military base, and home to the most advanced weaponry, research and military technology in the world.

That was why Nigeria’s forces played such a frontal role in the defense of our shared planet against the incursions of alien species, such as the Orcs who were successfully repelled by a joint force of the United Nations in 2030.

Me: What other military bases are being showcased in the independence parade?

Minister: Apart from Fort Sambisa, there is Fort Mambilla, which is dedicated to solar systems and extra terrestrial research, Fort Obudu, where we have our terrestrial defense systems, Fort Delta which is for eco-marine research, the Atlantic Fort in Old Lagos which hosts our Deep Sea Institute, where we have our 4 nuclear submarines, and Fort Idanre where we have the worlds largest underground military complex. There’s also the Joint Military Fortress hosted by Nigeria and 3 other African counties in the Sahara Desert. Each of these fortresses also plays host to non-military academics, such as the group currently unearthing the 4000-Year-Old iron-smelting site at Lejja in Enugu.

Me: In closing, what should be the direction of Nigeria’s foreign policy in the next 5 to 10 years?

Minister: First of all, our country Nigeria has survived many odds, and we are now more united and prosperous than ever before. I think we should remain aware of our vulnerability to colonial thinking and ingrained uncreative thinking from years of military dictatorship.

Foreign policy will align itself with other fronts for national development, to create a homegrown environment for shared prosperity. I think we should keep challenging the way we think, on everything, from complex ideas such as religious fundamentalism, to what’s truly important in life, to simple things such as basic human rights: equality, gender issues, homophobia, and so on. Hopefully our old habits can give way to new research and new ways of thinking.

Me: Thank you for the interview. It was very eye opening.

Minister:You’re welcome. Hope to see you all at the independence parade?

Me: Unfortunately, there are er, pressing matters in the past, so I have to return to 2021…

Minister: Ah, Yes…of course (laughs and banter)

The end.