Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations: Why recalibrating the nation’s trade engine is an economic imperative

When the Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations (NOTN) was established in 2017, it was hailed as a watershed moment for Africa’s largest economy. Nigeria had a dedicated institutional mechanism to coordinate, negotiate, and manage its international trade negotiations for the first time — an essential step in modernising a fragmented approach to global commerce.

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Yet, eight years later, as the country grapples with sluggish economic growth, soaring youth unemployment, and faltering industrial competitiveness, it’s time to ask: has NOTN fulfilled its promise, and what will it take to reposition it as a catalyst for national prosperity?

The answer is complex — and urgent.

A Strategic Pillar Born of Necessity

The creation of NOTN wasn’t just a bureaucratic tinkering. It was an intentional response to Nigeria’s glaring absence from key global and regional trade negotiations. For decades, Nigeria, despite its size and influence, had lacked a central authority to articulate coherent trade strategies or defend its interests in multilateral fora.

Ministry and agencies handled Trade negotiations piecemeal with overlapping, sometimes conflicting, mandates.

By institutionalising NOTN, although outside the presidency, Nigeria signalled its intent to professionalise trade negotiations, align it with national development goals, and punch its weight in international trade diplomacy. In a world where trade policy is inseparable from industrial, agricultural, and investment strategies, NOTN was envisaged as the brain that would weave these threads into a competitive whole.

In its early years, the agency scored some notable wins. It played a pivotal role in reviewing Nigeria’s stance on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), ensuring the country’s accession was conditional on protecting sensitive sectors. It also began crafting Nigeria’s Trade Policy focus, a roadmap to boost exports, upgrade value chains, and enhance regulatory coherence. But institutional inertia, political interference, and inadequate resources have blunted its momentum.

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A Direct Link to Economic Vitality

Trade is not a technocratic abstraction. It is an engine of jobs, investment, and value creation. In Nigeria’s context, trade policy is deeply intertwined with efforts to industrialise, diversify exports, and move away from oil dependence. Every percentage point increase in export sophistication or regional integration could translate into thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in new revenue. Yet Nigeria remains a marginal player in global value chains. While Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Kenya have leveraged trade agreements to build thriving textile, agro-processing, and ICT industries, Nigeria’s non-oil exports are trapped in low-value raw commodities. Worse, the country has struggled to attract export-oriented FDI, partly because investors see an incoherent and unpredictable trade environment.

Herein lies NOTN’s unfulfilled potential. A well-calibrated NOTN could be the national architect for embedding Nigeria into regional and global value chains. It could unlock new export opportunities and catalyse industrial clusters by negotiating market access for processed goods, tackling non-tariff barriers, and harmonising standards with trading partners. Every SME that exports processed shea butter instead of raw nuts, every manufacturer that sources intermediate inputs duty-free under a trade agreement, adds value domestically and creates jobs. Yet this won’t happen if NOTN remains siloed, underfunded, or disconnected from private sector realities.

A Time for Recalibration

The imperative now is recalibration, not abandonment. Nigeria doesn’t need less trade negotiation capacity; it needs smarter, more agile, and better-resourced trade diplomacy.

First, NOTN must be institutionally strengthened. Its autonomy should be safeguarded from political interference, its staffing professionalised, and its mandate expanded to cover proactive trade intelligence, monitoring of trade agreements, and dispute settlement readiness. Countries like South Korea and Chile invested in small but highly skilled trade offices that became linchpins of their export success. Nigeria should follow suit.

Second, NOTN must embed itself deeper into the economic ecosystem. Trade negotiations must not happen in bureaucratic isolation. There needs to be a structured dialogue platform with industry associations, chambers of commerce, export councils, and SMES, ensuring that trade deals reflect the needs of real producers, not just theoretical models. This demands cultural change within NOTN: from top-down policy design to inclusive, iterative engagement.

Third, NOTN must be strategically repositioned to align with Nigeria’s industrial policy. Trade agreements should not merely aim for tariff reductions; they must be tools to secure backwards linkages, technology transfer, and industrial upgrading. Nigeria’s trade policy must be development-driven, not merely market-access driven. NOTN is the agency best placed to make this pivot, but only if it is empowered to integrate trade agreements into broader economic planning.

Finally, NOTN needs a global outlook. The world of trade is increasingly shaped by non-tariff issues: digital trade, environmental standards, intellectual property, and services liberalisation. Nigeria cannot afford to be reactive. NOTN must cultivate expertise in these emerging domains, forge alliances in multilateral platforms, and proactively shape trade rules that align with its development agenda.

The Cost of Inertia

The risks of failing to reposition NOTN are stark. As the AfCFTA gains traction, regional blocs coalesce, and global supply chains reconfigure post-pandemic, countries that lack nimble trade institutions will be left behind. Nigeria risks becoming a passive market rather than a production hub. Without strategic trade negotiations, Nigerian manufacturers will struggle to compete under uneven playing fields, and local industries will remain trapped in low value-addition cycles.

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Worse, this failure will have direct political consequences. In a country where youth unemployment hovers near 40%, and public revenues are under pressure, every lost export opportunity or uncompetitive industry fuels economic frustration and social instability. Trade policy is economic policy, and economic policy is political stability.

A Call to Action

Nigeria’s establishment of NOTN was a bold recognition that trade negotiations are too important to be an afterthought. But a structure alone is not enough. It must be continuously recalibrated, resourced, and repositioned to meet evolving challenges.

The stakes are high: not just for export earnings, but for jobs, industrialisation, and Nigeria’s place in the regional and global economic order. The next decade will be defined by countries that can negotiate not just access to markets, but access to value chains, technology, and sustainable development pathways. NOTN was born as an institutional innovation. Now, it must evolve into an economic catalyst. The time for recalibration is not tomorrow. It is now and urgently needed.

Victor Liman is a trade policy advisor and institutional reform strategist. He previously served as Nigeria’s Chief Trade Negotiator and Acting Director-General of the Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations. He was also the Head and Trade Commissioner, Nigeria Regional Investment and Trade Office, Shanghai, China; with concurrent mandate to oversee the South Asian countries’ trade relations with Nigeria. [email protected] (+234 90300 5257)