Nigeria Is Not a Chessboard: Stop Handing Our Mineral Wealth to Great-Power Geopolitics

26th Sep 2026

There is something deeply depressing about watching Nigeria repeatedly discover that it possesses enormous natural resources and then immediately begin looking for a foreign power to help us decide what to do with them. The latest example is the mineral investment framework signed by Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, and US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, an agreement that the government says will deepen cooperation on geological data, exploration, mineral development and processing, infrastructure and technical capacity.

The official language is predictably beautiful, with talk of investment, value addition, local processing, jobs and resilient critical-mineral supply chains, and Alake himself insisted that Nigeria does not intend to remain merely a source of raw materials while other countries capture the value. That sounds excellent on paper, but Nigerians have heard variations of this speech for decades, particularly whenever another foreign partnership is announced around oil, gas, mining or infrastructure.

The question Nigerians should therefore be asking is not whether American investment is good or bad, because foreign investment can obviously be useful, but why does Nigeria so often approach its own natural wealth from a position of dependency? Why are we behaving as though the only way to understand our own geological resources, develop our own mines, build processing capacity and industrialise our own mineral sector is to bring in a major foreign power to hold our hand?

Nigeria is not a small country without resources, territory, universities, engineers, geologists, financial institutions or human capital. We have universities that teach geology, mining engineering, environmental science, economics, law and dozens of related disciplines, while government agencies already possess responsibility for geological surveys, mining cadastre, resource administration and industrial development. We may need foreign capital and expertise for particular projects, but that is very different from behaving as though the country cannot develop a serious sovereign capability of its own, and this is where the geopolitical dimension becomes impossible to ignore.

The United States and China are competing aggressively over critical minerals, strategic supply chains and the technologies that will define the next generation of industry, and Washington has obvious reasons to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled mineral supply chains. Nigeria, with its large population, strategic position and deposits of lithium, gold, tin, iron ore, phosphate and other minerals, naturally becomes an attractive partner in that competition. Recent reporting on the agreement has explicitly situated it within the wider US effort to diversify critical-mineral supply chains.

That does not mean America is secretly stealing Nigeria's minerals. It means Nigeria needs to understand the strategic environment in which it is negotiating.

When two major powers are competing for control of strategic resources, a country possessing those resources has leverage. The stupid thing to do is to voluntarily surrender that leverage by behaving as though you are simply grateful that somebody noticed you exist. The intelligent thing is to make the Americans compete with the Chinese, make the Chinese compete with the Europeans, make everyone compete with Nigerian industrial interests, and then extract the maximum possible value for Nigerians.

That is what sovereignty is supposed to mean. Sovereignty does not mean refusing every foreign investor. Sovereignty means having enough institutional, technical, and financial capacity to negotiate with foreign investors from a position of strength.

Nigeria should be able to say to Washington: You want our lithium? Fine. Here are the terms.

You want access to geological data? Here are the rules.

You want exploration rights? Here are the obligations.

You want to export minerals? Here is the minimum level of local processing.

You want Nigerian resources? Then Nigerian engineers, Nigerian companies, Nigerian communities and Nigerian manufacturers must capture a meaningful portion of the value chain. That is how serious countries negotiate.

Instead, Nigeria has developed a political culture in which the announcement of an agreement is frequently treated as an achievement in itself. A photograph is taken, hands are shaken, press releases are issued, enormous numbers are mentioned, and everybody goes home talking about the historic nature of what has just happened. Then the country waits to see whether the supposed transformation will ever actually materialise.

Even Alake acknowledged the central problem when he said that "a signature is a promise; results are the proof." That is precisely the standard Nigerians should apply to this agreement.

Where is the processing plant?
Where are the Nigerian companies entering the supply chain?
Where are the jobs?
Where are the technical institutions being built?
Where are the geological datasets that Nigerian researchers and companies can actually access?
Where are the refineries, smelters, component manufacturers, and industrial clusters?
Where is the Nigerian capital?
Where are the measurable targets?
Where is the public reporting?

Because if the answer is simply that American companies will come, invest, extract resources, and eventually create some economic activity, Nigeria has learned absolutely nothing from the history of oil. We have already lived through the resource-export model.

Nigeria discovered oil, attracted foreign companies, built an economy heavily dependent on petroleum revenues, and spent decades complaining that the country was exporting raw value instead of building an industrial ecosystem around it. Now we have another generation of strategic resources emerging, and we appear determined to approach them with the same basic mentality. That is not diversification. That is changing the commodity while keeping the economic model.

There is an even bigger problem with the way this particular agreement has been presented. The signing took place thousands of kilometres away from the Nigerian public, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and the announcement came through government communications and media reports rather than through a broad national conversation about what Nigeria is actually committing itself to. The government may have every legal authority necessary to negotiate a framework of this nature, and we should not pretend that every memorandum requires parliamentary ratification, but Nigerians are still entitled to ask what precisely was signed, what obligations were created, what information is being shared, which projects will qualify, who will own the resulting assets, and what safeguards exist for Nigeria's strategic interests.

That is not anti-Americanism. It is not anti-Chinese sentiment either. It is called having a country.

If Nigeria wants to work with America, work with America.

If Nigeria wants to work with China, work with China.

If Nigeria wants to work with Europe, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia or anyone else, do it.

But Nigeria should not become the chessboard upon which Washington and Beijing play their strategic games while Nigerians are left celebrating whichever foreign government happens to sign the latest memorandum with us. The US-China rivalry is not Nigeria's rivalry. American strategic interests are not Nigerian strategic interests. Chinese strategic interests are not Nigerian strategic interests.

They may overlap with ours in some circumstances, but they are not identical, and any Nigerian government that forgets that basic fact has already surrendered part of the country's negotiating position. The irony is that Nigeria actually has the leverage to do something different.

The government itself places the country's mineral resources at around $700 billion, although that figure is an estimate rather than a pile of cash sitting underground waiting to be collected. The country's challenge is therefore not simply discovering resources. It is developing the institutions, infrastructure, technology, capital and security required to turn geological potential into productive economic capacity.

That is where the government should be spending its political energy.

Build the geological survey capability.
Digitise the mining cadastre.
Map the country's resources properly.
Develop Nigerian laboratories capable of testing and certifying minerals.
Finance Nigerian exploration companies.
Build processing infrastructure.
Develop mining engineering.
Strengthen environmental regulation.
Secure mining communities.
Create industrial zones around mineral deposits.
Develop rail and power infrastructure.
Create a financial system capable of financing long-term mining projects.
Then invite the world to participate.
That would be a partnership.
What Nigeria must stop doing is confusing foreign participation with national development.
America can provide capital.
China can provide capital.
Europe can provide technology.
India can provide industrial partnerships.
The Gulf states can provide capital.

All of them can be useful, but none of them can substitute for a Nigerian state that knows what it wants.

The most embarrassing thing Nigeria could do is enter a geopolitical contest over critical minerals without understanding that the contest itself is our bargaining opportunity.

Washington wants alternatives to China.
China wants to maintain its position in strategic mineral supply chains.
Europe wants secure access to critical materials.
India wants resources for its industrial expansion.

That should make Nigeria extremely valuable. Instead of asking, "Who will invest in us?", Nigeria should increasingly be asking, "What will you give us for access to what you need?" That is the mindset of a sovereign country, and if the Tinubu administration genuinely believes that this agreement will create local processing, jobs, technology transfer, and Nigerian ownership across the mineral value chain, then there should be no reason to hide behind photographs and diplomatic language. Publish the framework. Explain the obligations. Publish the implementation milestones. Tell Nigerians what Nigeria receives and what Nigeria gives, then let Nigerians judge the result, because Nigeria does not need another historic signing ceremony and Nigeria needs results.

We have had enough presidents, ministers, and government officials standing beside foreign dignitaries smiling for cameras while Nigerians are subsequently told to wait for the benefits. The era of governing by photograph needs to end, and Nigeria has enough resources to stop behaving like a permanently dependent country.

What it lacks is not another foreign saviour.
What it lacks is the institutional discipline to use its own leverage.
If America wants Nigerian minerals, negotiate.
If China wants Nigerian minerals, negotiate.
If everyone wants Nigerian minerals, negotiate harder.

But do not sell the country the illusion that being wanted by great powers is the same thing as being powerful. Nigeria should not be America's chessboard, China's chessboard, or anybody else's chessboard. Nigeria should learn how to play the game.