By Chinenye Anuforo from Johannesburg, South Africa
Following the controversies that trailed the reason, Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, was not invited as one of the new members of the emerging national economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), the Nigeria High Commissioner to South Africa, Mohammad Haruna Manta, has explained that Nigeria never applied to become a member, hence was not invited when Egypt and Ethiopia were invited to join the body.
Manta revealed this to the second cohort of the MTN Media Innovation Fellows from Nigeria, who currently in South Africa on a training programme, sponsored by MTN Nigeria, in collaboration with Pan Atlantic University (PAU) in Lagos.
Recall that President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, had last month, during the 14th BRICS Summit, which held in August 2023 in South Africa, announced the invitation of six additional countries to join BRICS. The countries include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their membership takes effect from January 1, 2024.
Among the six countries, Egypt and Ethiopia were the only African countries that were invited to join BRICS and Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, was left out.
Nigerians within and those in Diaspora blamed the government for missing out from such important invitation to join the BRICS alliance, whose agenda is to form a common bloc that will challenge a world order dominated by United States and Western allies.
According to Manta, the protocol for submitting application for membership of BRICS is that the applying country will send in the country’s application to the foreign minister of the host country and such application must be submitted not less than two weeks before the date of the meeting. The host country, which was South Africa, will then send the application to the chairman who is the President of the host country (President Ramaphosa), who would then present the application to the country representatives of BRICS members for deliberation.
The High Commissioner explained that Nigeria did not submit any application in the first place to join BRICS. For this reason, Nigeria was not among the countries whose applications were deliberated upon.
“This is the reason why Nigeria was excluded from BRICS membership at a time when two African countries, Ethiopia, Egypt, were invited to join,” Manta explained.
He was however optimistic that Nigeria would apply for membership of BRICS by the next meeting in Russia, since Nigeria now has its cabinet of ministers.
Deputy Minister, Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Republic of South Africa, Mashego Dlamini, who was also worried that Nigeria was not among the two Africa countries invited to join BRICS, however blamed the situation on the political transition that saw Nigeria changing leadership position from one government to another, after its general elections.