Nigeria, Oct. 19 -- The geopolitical tectonic plates beneath West Africa are shifting rapidly. For decades, foreign policy in Abuja and across the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) oscillated between Western dependencies and cautious non-alignment. Today, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) schism, currency pressures, and multipolar competition have rendered those inherited frameworks obsolete. For Nigerian policymakers and business leaders, the question is no longer which global bloc to embrace, but how to evaluate external suitors through the cold arithmetic of national economic interest.

President Bola Tinubu has anchored Nigeria's external engagement on the "4D Doctrine" (Democracy, Development, Demography, and Diasp...