Postcolonial Perspectives on Sino-Nigerian Relations: Decentring Western Analytical Frameworks

The dominant analytical frameworks applied to China-Africa relations, including dependency theory, neo-colonial analogies, and liberal institutionalism, are predominantly derived from Western intellectual traditions that may inadequately capture the relational dynamics as experienced by African actors. This study advances a postcolonial theoretical contribution to the analysis of Sino-Nigerian relations, developing an original analytical framework that centres Nigerian agency, historical subjectivity, and strategic calculation. Methodologically, the study employs postcolonial discourse analysis applied to a corpus of 200 Nigerian official statements, parliamentary speeches, and editorial commentaries on China-Nigeria relations from 2010 to 2023, alongside 40 in-depth interviews with Nigerian scholars, policymakers, and civil society actors engaged with the Sino-Nigerian relationship. Drawing on Spivak's subaltern theory, Mbembe's postcolony concept, and the Bandung-inspired framework of South-South solidarity discourse, the study argues that Nigerian engagement with China simultaneously draws on anti-colonial solidarity narratives, pragmatic developmentalism, and strategic balancing against Western conditionality. An original analytical category, transactional decoloniality, is developed to describe Nigerian elite discourse that invokes anti-Western sovereignty rhetoric while pursuing commercially conventional bilateral arrangements with China. The study makes an original theoretical contribution to postcolonial international relations scholarship and provides a methodological template for applying postcolonial analysis to contemporary African bilateral relations.

Keywords: postcolonial theory, Sino-Nigerian relations, Nigerian agency, discourse analysis, decoloniality