NIGERIA, THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Abstract

RELATIONS BETWEEN Lagos and Washington were decidedly cool from 1966 until about September 1977. The main source of disagreement between the two countries had been what appropriate policies should be adopted towards the white supremacist regimes in Southern Africa,' although there were other reasons such as the refusal of the US Administration not only to sell arms to the Federal Military Government during the Nigerian civil war (1967-70) but also to permit, if not to connive at, the massive pro-' Biafra' propaganda campaign during and after the war, as well as the tough and the uncompromizing style of the Nixon-Ford Administrations in dealing with Third World countries. The American importation of chrome from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) until the repeal of the Byrd Amendment led to an anti-American outburst in Nigeria. Similarly, the Ford note to all the OAU member states on the eve of the extraordinary summit meeting of African leaders in Addis Ababa early in January 1977, designed to influence their attitudes to the Angolan imbroglio, provoked bitter official attack against the US by the then Nigerian Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, who described the note as 'an insult to the African leaders'. The tragic assassination of General Muhammed on 13 February 1976 during the abortive coup of Lt.-Col. B. S. Dimka led to anti-American demonstrations by university students in Lagos and other parts of the Federation, with the positive encouragement of the Federal Military Government which rightly or wrongly suspected the involvement of the CIA in the attempted coup. On two occasions, the FMG under General Olusegun Obasanjo refused to allow Dr Henry Kissinger, the then American Secretary of State, to visit Lagos during his shuttle diplomacy over Southern Africa late in 1976. Indeed, in October 1976, the Obasanjo regime rejected the Anglo-American proposals for the settlement of the Rhodesian crisis.2 Yet within a year of this series of unfriendly episodes American-Nigerian relations had become so relaxed that in October 1977 General Obasanjo paid the first state visit by any Nigerian Head of State to the US since independence. A return state visit to Nigeria by President Carter, the first by an incumbent