The Diplomacy of Transformation: Interrogating the Issues in President Jonathan’s Transformation Foreign Policy

Abstract

The crux of this paper is to interrogate the key goals of the diplomacy of transformation adopted by the Goodluck Jonathan administration geared towards achieving foreign policy goals that will reposition Nigeria amongst the comity of nations and accelerate development for the country. This paper is qualitative and it uses secondary method of data collection to gather data. The data so obtained from these secondary sources is analyzed within the arguments of the visionary / transformation theory of leadership on which the discourse is anchored. Findings revealed that the transformation diplomacy recorded little achievement due largely to bad leadership, infrastructural decay, insecurity, chronic corruption inherent in the nature and practice of politics in Nigeria among others. The paper therefore recommends that the government in its actions and through the anti-graft agencies should strengthen their fight against corruption. The Nigerian political class should develop the political will capable of transforming and reposition the Nigerian state for development. These can be achieved through culture of discipline and purposeful leadership. The Fight against insecurity is a collective task, both the leaders and the followers must ensure that, there is peace and security in the society if our society is to experience socio-economic development.