Foreign Relations of Nigeria - Nigeria and The Liberation of Africa

Nigeria and The Liberation of Africa

Upon gaining independence, Nigeria quickly committed itself to the liberation struggles going on in the Southern Africa sub-region. Though Nigeria never sent an expeditionary force in that struggle, it offered more than rhetoric to the African National Congress (ANC) by taking a committed tough line with regard to the racist regime and their incursions in southern Africa.

Similarly, in 1975, war broke out in Angola after the country gained independence from Portugal, Nigeria, a member of the English Commonwealth of Nations, mobilized its diplomatic influence in Africa in support of the MPLA. That support tipped the balance in their favor, which led to OAU recognition of the MPLA.

Nigeria extended diplomatic support to another Marxist cause, Sam Nujoma's SWAPO movement in Namibia, to stall the apartheid South African installed puppet government in Namibia. In 1977, the new General Olusegun Obasanjo's military regime made a donation of $20 million dollars to the Zimbabwean liberation movement. Nigeria also sent military equipment to Mozambique to help the new independent country suppress the South African backed RENAMO guerrillas. Although officially denied by the Nigerian government, Nigeria is known to have also provided secret military training at the Kaduna first mechanized army division and provided other material support to Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe's guerrilla forces during the Rhodesian Bush War(Renamed Zimbabwe in 1979) of independence against white minority rule of Prime Minister Ian Douglas Smith which was armed and financed by the regime in South Africa.

Although her economy and technology could not have supported it, Nigeria announced to a bewildered international community that she was launching a nuclear program of "unlimited scope" of her own. To demonstrate her seriousness against multi-national companies in Nigeria that violated the economic/trade embargo on the South African regime, the local operations of Barclays Bank was nationalized after that bank ignored the strong protests by Nigeria urging it not to buy the South African government bond.

Nigeria also nationalized the British Petroleum (BP) for supplying oil to South Africa. In 1982,the Alhaji Shehu Shagari government urged the visiting Pontiff Pope John Paul II to grant audience to the leaders of Southern Africa guerrilla organisations Oliver Tambo of the ANC and Sam Nujoma of SWAPO. In December 1983, the new Major General Muhammadu Buhari regime announced that Nigeria could no longer afford an activist anti-colonial role in Africa.