National Defence College Course 33 Participants Lecture

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LECTURE DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, TO PARTICIPANTS OF COURSE 33 AT THE NATIONAL DEFENCE COLLEGE, ABUJA ON THE 31ST OF JANUARY, 2025

PROTOCOLS

First, let me thank the Commandant of the College for the kind invitation to me to give this lecture. The College has been extremely partial to me as this will be my fourth lecture here. I delivered the Course 25 lecture in 2017, Course 28 lecture in 2020 and in between in 2018, I was invited to give the keynote address by the Alumni Association of the College, at their National Security Seminar. I must say that it is a special privilege to speak to participants of Course 33, as you undertake this higher defence and strategic management course.

Let me say right away that you participants in this course represent the elite in our country and in the other nations from which you have come to attend this course. The elite in a developing country have a special role to play, first unlike in more developed societies, you represent a fraction of a small fraction of people in your society who by virtue of their education, public service experience, and influence, have the privilege of thinking, planning, and ultimately defining the direction that your nation and its peoples must go.

I am not saying that you alone are responsible for all that, all, I am saying is that you belong to that elite, which includes politicians, influential professionals and private sector entities etc. Now, that privilege comes with a responsibility to be rigorous in your preparation for your role, to be intentional about finding the most optimal approaches to decision making and to inform yourself as fully as possible, both in the local, regional and global issues that may impact your high-level decisions or actions.

I am not an expert on the doctrines and principles of strategic leadership, there are many scholars on that subject and I will not spend the few minutes I have trying to do better than they, I will play to my strength which is that I   have had the privilege of serving as Vice President of Africa’s largest nation and Acting President.

I must say that in those years, I came to a reasonably clear understanding of what our nation’s strategic priorities should be. But perhaps as important, what sort of considerations or information should inform such priorities? I intend to spend the next few minutes examining the critical issues that should inform or shape the strategic priorities and actions of our government and other governments, especially in the developing world. It might be important to note that some of them are more in the nature of macroeconomic policy and human capital development issues.

I will briefly consider those before spending more time on the geo-strategic issues.

Empirical evidence strongly suggests that there is a definite correlation between poverty, low human capital development indices and high instability and insecurity in a country. Indeed, today the new paradigm for measuring security is human security. Human security goes beyond the absence of war and conflict, but the availability of the means to livelihood, means to food, shelter and clothing. The economy is central to human security because it is the economy that defines those parameters. Our country is growing at 6 million people a year. And in two decades we will be the 3rd most populous country in the world. But thus far, the pace of our GDP growth is slower than that of population growth.

84 million live in extreme poverty, education and health care are not apace with population growth because state and local governments are responsible for basic education and basic healthcare. The Federal Government must work with them to deliver a practical plan to deploy relevant basic education and secondary education. We must be aware that we may not be able to achieve the scale, quality and speed of the educational ambitions we must have to meaningfully engage the future using brick and mortar alone. Technology will be key; online teacher training and teaching are now much easier and more accessible.  Similarly, university education, bar examinations, and many science and tech subjects can be taught online, we must think out of the box.

For healthcare, there is a need for fully mobilizing universal health insurance. The truth is that the government of Nigeria do not have the resources to pay for healthcare for the size of our population especially, of the poor and vulnerable. There is no other way of funding healthcare for 200 million people except to pool the resources from compulsory health insurance for all.

Food security is at the heart of the security of a nation; the food shortages caused by supply chain disruptions in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have demonstrated to us that you cannot leave feeding of the populace to the whims of geopolitics. We can grow our own food, this must be approached as a strategic imperative.

Cuba in 1990 became self-sufficient in food production because it experienced food shortages after its food supplier, Russia collapsed.

There are also existential global challenges that we have no choice but to pay attention to. One is Climate Change; Africa is warming faster than any other region and has the highest incidence of drought and the second-highest incidence of flooding in the world today.

West Africa has been experiencing intense flooding, especially in Nigeria, Niger and Ghana. In 2022, Nigeria experienced its worst flooding killing over 600 people and displacing 1.3 million. A  2023   study also shows that sea-level rise is expected to impact major African coastal cities, including Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Cotonou, Porto-Novo,  Cairo and Alexandria. Lagos, our commercial nerve centre is especially at risk.

Also several of the often fatal conflicts between farmers and herders have been worsened by shrinking land and pasture caused by climate change. The frustrating thing about the consequences of climate change that we are experiencing here is that it is not our fault! The historical, accumulated and current emissions of dangerous gases from the fossil fuel-based industrialization of the wealthier countries are largely responsible.

Second, we are energy-poor; 86 million people without access to power.  Energy poverty essentially means a lack of access to energy, electricity, and energy for cooking, heating, and cooling, and this of course inhibits any real growth or job opportunities.  Another issue to watch, especially for oil and gas-rich countries like Nigeria is that there has been a growing trend among development finance institutions not to fund fossil fuel investments in Africa.

The World Bank, for example, ceased funding for upstream oil and gas development in Africa, and there are restrictions on financing downstream gas development by the European Union, United Kingdom and United States. Their reason for this is that they are working towards ending fossil emissions. For Nigeria, fossil fuels represent a major source of export earnings and fiscal revenues. Some sources show that divesting from fossil fuels could reduce GDP by as much as $30billion for Nigeria. And really for a gas-rich country such as ours, the argument for gas at least as a transition fuel is simple enough.

In the face of energy poverty, with millions lacking access to power, and one in four deaths of women in rural areas caused by pollution from the use of firewood, what sense does it make to leave this versatile, relatively low-carbon fuel in the ground, when it offers today, a cheap and available source of electricity for domestic and industrial use, and LPG for clean cooking? We must step up our advocacy for gas as a transition fuel and pay attention to how to replace the sources of investment funding that are drying up.

What then should our strategic position be on the whole issue of climate change and the global transition to net zero? It is in my view, to recognise that Africa has two not one existential challenges. Climate change is one, the other is extreme poverty.

Our strategic position must take those realities into account, we must let the global north countries know that Africa can be either the solution to the climate crisis or the nemesis of the world. Why? If we pursue a carbon-intensive trajectory to middle to high-income status such as the global north countries have done, we  will be pumping 9.4 gigatones of Co2e into the environment and by 2050 we will be responsible for 75% of global emissions. If that were to happen then the world would not be in a position to attain its net zero objectives.

On the other hand, if Africa chooses to pursue a climate-positive growth trajectory, it will become the first truly green industrial civilization. We can save the world from the impending disaster of climate change and create jobs and opportunities for our young population. Why does this make sense? It is because we are climate competitive, we have a large, young and entrepreneurial workforce, huge renewable energy resources and critical minerals.

Africa’s renewable energy is not only abundant, but also has very low seasonality, or intermittency which makes it possible to reliably provide renewable baseload to power continuous industrial production. Strikingly, the lowest-cost set-up of solar, wind, and battery storage to get reliable baseload to the power industry is twice as expensive in Germany as it is in Nigeria.

Solar PV in Nigeria vastly outperforms Europe’s industry centre and even Europe’s top PV spot. The same battery-supported PV system in Nigeria will enable a baseload that is 8 times as large as Germany. Green industrialization is a viable strategic development paradigm for Nigeria.

Let us move on to other matters. Nigeria has proved itself to be a pre-eminent African military power. We are perhaps the only country in Africa that can boast of a successful single-country peacekeeping and enforcement campaign in the region, we did it in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But in recent years with internal crisis and insurgencies, the army has struggled to keep its men well-trained and well-equipped. The cost of arms and ammunition has gone up exponentially and the politics of arms procurement has often hampered prompt delivery of even arms and ammunition for which we have paid in advance and it is becoming harder daily to have a well-equipped military.

There is a need for the intentional development of a military-industrial complex and only a few weeks ago, President Bola Tinubu specifically spoke of the government’s plan to establish a military-industrial complex. And we must do so in mission- mode. This is a collaboration between private industry and the public sector in the production of the arms and ammunition that the country requires for its internal and external defence.

The government’s role is crucial. First, the government must initially fund research and development and enable access to concessional capital. The government is the major consumer of weapons so government must intentionally decide to procure weapons locally and issue long-term supply contracts to local manufacturers of military hardware. There is already a legal and policy framework: there is the National Defence Policy 2017 and two Acts, one establishing the Research & Development Bureau (DRDB) and the other an amendment to the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON). DICON has had a chequered history but it has remained resilient, although its manufacturing infrastructure needs to be revamped, it has some capacity to produce and has set for itself in the defence policy a baseline of the production of  50,000 bullet vests and ballistic helmets per year.

Our ambitions for local manufacture of arms and ammunition must be much bigger than these projections. First in the range and volume of ordnance that we should produce including guns, cannons, missile launchers, and other armaments, the volume and range of ammunition, bullets, shells, rockets, bombs, explosives, grenades, landmines, and other explosive devices and military equipment.

We should produce all our small arms locally.  There is no reason why should we not have our version of an assault rifle like the AK47. This is possibly the most widely used weapon by our troops and police. Already we have seen many skilful fabrications of similar assault rifles. This capacity would come from fully engaging private sector players and private capital. Government budgeting for arms production simply cannot provide the needs of an army adequate for a country of Nigeria’s size and military importance.

Already there are several private arms manufacturers and equipment manufacturers producing MRAPS and APCs, some even exporting these including Pro-force, Imperium, Epail, and Innoson. Pro-force has, for example, diversified into satellite technology and aerospace. Through collaborations with notable defence manufacturers, the company has been able to offer advanced technologies like UAVs and satellite solutions. These partnerships often involve joint ventures, product localization and in some cases, intellectual property transfers. Our Trade and Industry Ministry working with MOD and NSA must take an all-government approach to facilitate these joint ventures and technology transfer processes.

The future of National Defence and Security belongs to technology. Countries that invest in the acquisition of relevant technology will dominate those that do not or cannot. The phenomenal advances in technology in the past two decades have transformed the quality and potency of weaponry and defence systems.

Warfare will become almost entirely tech-driven in another decade. The new minimum that national arsenals must have includes the use of advanced sensors, drones, and satellite imaging to provide real-time battlefield awareness. This will enable more informed decision-making through the use of precision-guided munitions and equipment and hypersonic weapons which reduce collateral damage and enhance strike efficiency.

Autonomous Systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) enhance surveillance, logistics, and combat capabilities, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Machine Learning (ML) and Quantum Computing, vastly improve predictive analytics, decision-making, and operational efficiency on and off the battlefield. It is also clear that the future of warfare will be either more asymmetric or Hybrid Warfare, a blend of conventional military tactics with drone attacks, cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic pressure.

Information Operations will become more important and must be prioritised to counter adversary propaganda, disinformation, and cyber attacks. Our national defence strategies will require significant investment in research and development to stay ahead of emerging threats and technologies.

At a geostrategic level for Nigeria, two considerations stand out: the instability and volatility of the Sahel, its significance to Nigeria’s defence and economic interests and the challenge of finding the most effective approach to engaging the Sahel. The Sahel region’s natural resources including oil, gas, gold, phosphates, and uranium,  have drawn the interest of foreign powers. However, its ecological, geographical, and demographic characteristics also make the region particularly vulnerable.

The climate crisis has ravaged its huge agrarian communities, weak governance has emboldened terrorists to take over huge swathes of ungoverned spaces even as they threaten to take more and establish their own governments. Lake Chad  (situated at the intersection of four countries: Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria) had provided livelihood and sustenance for almost 25 million people, and is now less than 1/4 of its original size. Protracted violence has caused severe food shortages and displaced over two million people. Several military coups in the region,  some ostensibly to stem the advance of the insurgents have further weakened institutions of democratic governance.

The resulting food crisis and displacement of millions have worsened illegal migration. Also, it is clear that a huge security vacuum that could engender a region-wide security crisis has been created by the following occurrences:

1. The withdrawal by the new  Military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and  Niger  from long-standing Euro- Sahelian regional security arrangements such as the G-5:

2. The withdrawal of French troops from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso:

3. The expulsion of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali ( MINUSMA):

4. The implicit exit of Niger from the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), which is the combined forces of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon fighting ISWAP in the Lake Chad, and

5. The disruption and uncertainty in ECOWAS since the exit of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

How do we engage this situation? First, we must accept our role as the major Sahelian military and economic force.

Second, we must lead the building of an integrated regional security architecture. This means doing two sets of things: first is to integrate the diverse security arrangements in the region, the G5, Accra initiative,  the ECOWAS Standby Force and the Multinational Joint Task Force( MNJTF).

The third is to engage in more non-kinetic initiatives in dealing with the conflicts in the region.  As one think tank suggests “the security challenges in the region are typically rooted in issues of politics, governance, identity, representation and inclusion. Factors that would respond more readily to non-kinetic approaches than purely military e.g. Niger Delta.

Fourth and perhaps most importantly, we must restore the confidence of the people of the subregion in the capacity of democracy to deliver socio-economic benefits. The several coups since 2020 that toppled the governments of Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Niger and Mali in quick succession and the warm welcome given to them by a populace disappointed by dashed expectations demonstrates the progressively low level of confidence in democracy, and the pervasive disenchantment with governments in Africa, stemming specifically from failure to deliver good governance, public goods and human security.

At a more global level, there are three critical relationships that we must watch from a strategic perspective, the US, US /China relations and to a lesser extent, Russia. There are certain US geostrategic priorities that will have a significant impact on Nigeria. The first is the reduction of development assistance that the new Trump administration has just announced.

Second is its withdrawal from the W.H.O and the Paris Climate Agreements. The US is the third largest contributor to W.H.O ($700m) after Germany and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The withdrawal of US funding from W.H.O will adversely impact the funding of a whole range of W.H.O interventions in Nigeria in respect of strengthening primary healthcare, public health systems, family planning and nutrition.

The resultant shortfalls in funding will compound already existing health security vulnerabilities. Also, American health investments and partnerships in Nigeria include the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the global health security intensive support partnership programme. In 2023, the US health sector investments in Nigeria amounted to over $570 million on measures to help prevent HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. American aid also supports efforts by the Nigerian government and other partners to prevent, detect, and respond to health threats such as cholera and diphtheria and provide assistance in areas like the health workforce, laboratory capacity, and disease surveillance systems.

Regarding withdrawal from the Paris  Climate Agreements, this will affect climate financing for Nigeria and potentially threaten funding for Nigeria’s National Adaptation Plan for Climate Change. Between  2019 – 2020, Nigeria received an average of $1.9 billion per year in public and private capital investments in climate-related activities. This amounted to only 11 percent of the estimated $17.7 billion yearly required to meet the conditional Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target of reducing emissions by 47 percent below business-as-usual by 2030. The chances of meeting this target have become imperilled by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreements.

Regarding US-China relations and its impact on Nigeria, it is evident that Africa and indeed Nigeria are theatres for playing out  Sino-US rivalries. President Trump in his first term clearly identified China as the most significant threat to US economic and security interests. It is evident  that the new  Trump administration will continue to implement measures to subvert China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the emergent BRICS coalition of which China is the preeminent partner country and its largest economy.

President Trump has already warned that any attempt to replace the dollar by the BRICS will result in the imposition of 100 percent tariffs on their goods. As a recipient of Chinese assistance under the Belt and Road Initiative and as a newly admitted partner country of the BRICS, Nigeria may come under American pressure in this regard. Nigeria’s response must continue to be strategic autonomy. Not taking sides while dealing with all parties in the national interest.

Another issue of strategic importance is the price of oil in light of ongoing tensions in the Middle East. Any escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, especially any attempt at regime change in Iran by the US / Israel will put the Strait of Hormuz in play. The Strait of Hormuz is the primary maritime route through which Persian Gulf exporters such as Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates ship their oil to external markets. Only Iran and Saudi Arabia have alternative access routes to maritime shipping lanes.

Approximately about 35 percent of all seaborne oil exports – 17 million barrels of oil per day – pass through the strait, So the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints. In the event of an attack on Iran, Tehran’s allies such as the Houthis in Yemen can be expected to escalate their blockade on maritime traffic and also launch retaliatory attacks on Israel. Further disruption of energy supplies will trigger a surge in global oil prices with an inflationary impact on the Nigerian economy, raising the cost of goods and services for Nigeria. While higher oil prices could potentially increase government revenue and provide more funds for public spending,

Let me conclude by paraphrasing the insightful words of a local think tank, the rapidly changing dynamics of the regional and global order highlight the critical need for scenario modelling and strategic planning. Nigeria faces significant security risks, so we must hone our ability to gather intelligence, provide early warnings, manage crises, prevent conflicts, conduct consular operations in unstable areas, and evacuate citizens from high-risk situations.

Addressing these challenges requires substantial investment in building institutional capacity. Successfully preventing, managing, containing and responding to crises on the expected scale will depend on effective coordination among various stakeholders and proactive planning across short, medium and long-term timeframes.

Thank you for listening.