Nigeria’s Foreign Policy under the British Colonial Rule, 1914-60

Abstract

The article examines the foreign policy of Nigeria during the colonial period. It addresses factors that impelled the British colonial government to formulate Nigerian foreign policy the way it did. In this manner, the philosophical foundation that later dictated the foreign policy of Nigerian after independence took its root during the colonial era. Understanding the British foreign policy in Nigeria during colonial period therefore serves as the first theoretical background in understanding the foreign policy of Nigeria after independence. The assessment of pre-independence British domination of Nigeria’s foreign policy shows that it is very difficult to divorce what happened during the colonial period from subsequent foreign policy of Nigeria towards outside world after gaining statehood. Thus, it is hoped the article will contribute to existing works on the colonial rule in Nigeria with primary focus on foreign policy. In writing this paper, I have consulted articles and textbooks from libraries and internet. The methodology employed is qualitative in nature which adopts textual mining and latent content analysis as data gathering and analysis procedure.