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Nigerian-Soviet Relations: Retrospect and Prospect

It is a common belief, both within and without Nigeria, that in 1967 there was a sharp reversal in Nigerian foreign relations. That year, it is claimed, marked the end of Nigeria's pro-western and anti-Soviet stances. At the extreme, proponents of this view seek to ridicule Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the first prime minister, as essentially a Western stooge and, conversely though unwittingly, to laud the post-1967 Gowon regime as a veritable independent actor, guided solely by objective requirements of the national interest. This claim (and stereotype-creating) is based on asymmetirc evidence and unsystematic analysis: asymmetric, because it relies on Nigeria's image of and attitude towards the Soviet Union to the exclusion of the corresponding Soviet image and attitudes which might have conditioned Nigeria's Soviet policy in the first place; and unsystematic, because it eschews the political, economic and ideological milieu in which Nigerian-Soviet relations operate. One danger, especially for policy making and policy outcome, is the possible exaggeration of superficial and ephemeral changes to obscure fundamental and enduring continuity in relations. This paper aims to put Nigerian-Soviet relations in a perspective that avoids this failing and, in the process, to underscore the factors of continuity which, it is believed, will determine the future prospects. Nigerian-Soviet relations, Douglas Anglin (1964: 257) once observed, are determined by “the images which each country has of the other.” Before Nigeria's independence on October 1, 1960, these images were far from flattering. All evidence indicates that Nigerian leaders, like their counterparts in other developing countries, had a morbid fear of communism and communist infiltration and subversion (see indications in House of Representatives Debates, henceforth HRD, August 1, 1958: 85; February 12, 1959: 210; and March 1959: 46-48).