Frexit and President Macron’s Greek Gift
By SHEDDY OZOENE
A week ago, on December 7, 2025, President Emmanuel Macron of France made a statement that confirmed what many Nigerians had long feared: his personal closeness to President Bola Tinubu may have started shaping Nigeria’s foreign policy.
On the same day Nigerian fighter jets were reportedly hovering over Benin Republic to quell the uprising against President Patrice Talon, Macron posted on his official X account that he had spoken with President Tinubu and affirmed France’s readiness to strengthen its partnership with Nigeria. His reference to Nigeria’s security threats in the North indicated that the partnership would be a military one.
Macron wrote:
“I spoke with President Tinubu of Nigeria, @officialPBAT. I conveyed France’s solidarity in the face of the various security challenges, particularly the terrorist threat in the North. At his request, we will strengthen our partnership with the authorities and our support for the affected populations.”
The timing of the message, which was released on the day of the failed coup in Benin Republic, was too convenient to dismiss as a coincidence. For some of us puzzled by the unannounced deployment of Nigerian troops to a neighbouring country, Macron’s statement put the pieces together. It immediately became uncomfortable to imagine that Nigeria may indeed have acted not on its own judgement, but at the prompting of the French President.
This is happening at a moment when France is being expelled from several of its former colonies in West Africa. It is derisively called Frexit, just as the British departure from the EU was called Brexit. The idea that France has finally found Nigeria as a new strategic foothold in the region is troubling enough; but the thought that President Tinubu may have sent Nigerian troops—despite our own severe internal security challenges—at the request of a foreign power, is even more worrisome.
This raises a crucial question: What are the implications of President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to a renewed Nigeria–France military cooperation?
The answer lies in why France is being booted out of many West African countries. Since 2022, popular anti-French sentiment has swept across the region. France’s long military presence, once justified as support for counter-terrorism efforts, has been ineffective. France spectacularly failed to stem jihadist violence in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger. It got so bad that the mere presence of French soldiers was now viewed as a vestige of colonial control and an army of occupation, rather than an effort to support the fight against insurgency. Worse still, it portrayed the host nations as voiceless subordinate.
Public anger escalated into massive protests, amplified by social media and nationalist movements. The juntas that emerged from coups in Mali (2020/2021), Burkina Faso (2022/2023), and Niger (2023) rode on this sentiment to assert sovereignty and revoke defence accords with Paris.
From 2022 to 2025, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger took turns to end military cooperation with France by ordering the withdrawal of all French troops in their territories. In November 2024, Chad—a Central African nation bordering Nigeria to the North—ended its defence pact with France, completing the withdrawal of French assets in 2025. Around the same time, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire similarly shut down all French bases in their territories.
Despite fears that removing French forces would create dangerous security vacuums, many of these states have instead used the opportunity to reorganise their defence strategies, rally domestic support, and renegotiate foreign alliances on their own terms.
In this context of massive French pullouts, Nigeria’s warm embrace of France appears out of step with regional sentiment. As Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire distance themselves from Paris, France has desperately shopped for a new anchor in West Africa, and it has done everything possible to woo Nigeria, the region’s largest economy.
Macron’s offer of military partnership may therefore be more of a Greek Gift, a present that appears beneficial on the surface but is designed to entrap and possibly turn us against our cherished neighbours. Like the Trojan Horse, it arrives with hidden motives and strings attached. It is an offer that appears generous on the surface, especially at this time of heightened terrorist attacks, but is actually designed to deceive Nigerians into feeling safe with a country whose recent military interventions across West Africa failed. It has the tendency to entrap Nigeria into antagonising its neighbors that recently kicked them out, or to compromise the people into a worse security nightmare.
The story of the Trojan Horse in Greek mythology should teach us to be mindful of such a present.
France lost credibility in the Sahel after years of deceit, ineffective interventions and, ultimately, failure. Is this the same power Nigeria now expects to help suppress Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits, and coastal piracy? What exactly does France bring that it could not deliver elsewhere?
Accepting France’s outstretched hand may bring some diplomatic and economic benefits, no doubt, but the strategic risks are weighty, and the most frightening is the alienation of our northern neighbours: Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—now united under the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) with strong pro-Russian leanings. Along with Chad, they now view France as neo-colonial and destabilising. Given their strong cultural ties with Northern Nigeria, our new alignment risks making some of our northern communities targets of their hostility.
Beyond Nigeria, it also puts a question mark on our leadership of ECOWAS, the regional bloc. How does a regional leader like Nigeria be seen in warm embrace with a colonial power facing resentment across the area?
If Nigeria becomes France’s main partner in the region, Paris and the EU may expect it to intervene in crises across West Africa—militarily or diplomatically. The episode in Benin Republic may be only the first of many acts of military overreach. The controversy surrounding the seizure of our military plane, the C-130, and eleven military personnel by the authorities in Burkina Faso, is still festering. The Burkinabe alleges that the plane was on an espionage mission in active connivance with France.
Nigeria’s military is already overstretched fighting insurgency, banditry, and separatist threats at home. Taking on France’s discarded regional responsibilities adds new dangers without any guaranteed benefits.
Nigeria’s embrace of France at a time of region-wide French rejection is a strategic gamble—one that may cost more than it gains. Even if there are potential diplomatic or economic rewards, the risks of becoming isolated from neighbours, overstretched at home, and entangled in France’s geopolitical battles may outweigh them.
France’s new overtures may look like partnership. But like the ancient Greek gift of the Trojan Horse, not every gift is a blessing.
