Nigeria, 1960-1965: ‘Aligned’? The Evidence Ehimika A.I.

NIGERIA, 1960-1965: ‘ALIGNED’? THE EVIDENCE,

ARGUMENTS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF DISCURSIVE
CLOSURE

Ehimika A. Ifidon*
Abstract
There is hardly any study of Nigeria’s attitude towards the Cold War
between 1960 and 1965 that does not arrive at the conclusion that Nigeria
was ‘aligned’. In fact, this verdict has been elevated to the status of an axiom
with the declaration that it is the consensus among Nigerian scholars. If not
completely ending debate, this posture forecloses the possibility of any
contrary verdict, and pre-determines the outcome of future investigations
since even before the commencement of research, the outcome is already
known or presumed. To investigate the problem is to repeat the verdict. It is
not just to dogmatism that this leads, but also discursive closure. What is the
source of this post-war tradition of analysis, and how valid are its
epistemological pretensions? Deploying historical revisionism as a tool for
the examination of the fit between judgments and their premises, the paper
argues that the tradition is built on the conceptual, methodological, and
evidential components of the contemporary political criticisms of the Balewa
administration, and therefore rests on very shaky epistemic foundation. By
origin, it is an ideological response to the perceived failure of the Balewa
administration to fulfil the expectations of Nigerians consequent upon
independence. Living in the truth, man attaches to the standards he derives
from what is present, and thus he does not discover any more but merely
arranges. In the truth the mystery remains concealed. Man closes himself in
the truth. He does not question the truth. Living in truth, man uncovers
because he does not attach to ‘standards’ derived from what is presenting for
him. What is present he takes as an artifact, and questions it in regard to its
opening (Korab-Karpowicz, 1991:155-156).

Introduction
There is no study of Nigeria‟s foreign policy, or of its external
relations between 1960 and 1991, that is, between independence and

*
Department of History and International Studies, University of Benin, Benin City
mifidon@uniben.edu

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the end of the Cold War, that does not either devote a chapter to, or
contain comments on non-alignment, on whether Nigeria was or was
not a non-aligned state. Even though this matter is usually consigned
to the outermost ring or periphery of the tri-concentric circles model
(Aluko, 1981:3-4; Abegunrin, 2003:194), implying the lowest priority
for the issue area, the Cold War, considering its security implications,
was arguably the single most determinative influence on Nigeria‟s
foreign policy (Ifidon, 2005:59-60).
The foreign policy that has been most studied is that between
1960 and 1965, the foreign policy of Nigeria under the administration
of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Apart from the intense activity in the
sphere of foreign relations, being the period in which the basic
principles and procedures of Nigeria‟s foreign policy were established,
the period would seem to have generated much more documentation,
both in terms of volume and availability. For the latter, the credit must
go to the relative openness of parliamentary government. From the
perspective of the problematic of non-alignment in the history of
Nigeria‟s external relations, the period has also elicited more cognitive
responses than any other period for the reason that it was then that the
Cold War (to which non-alignment was a response) was most intense.
Considering the much that has been written about it, nothing
more seems left to be written: Nigeria between 1960 and 1965 was
„aligned‟. The case is closed, the debate is ended. To therefore seek to
problematise further a subject that has been so „exhaustively‟ studied
seems to smack of intellectual idleness and unwarranted revisionism.
It is to reflect the finished state of discourse on Nigeria‟s non-
alignment during that period that Akinyemi (1979:150) proclaimed ex
cathedra: “The consensus among Nigerian scholars now is that the
1960-66 foreign policy was politically and economically aligned”.
To so assert implies a high degree of agreement on
assumptions, evidence and arguments. It further implies that beyond
the presumably universalized meaning of non-alignment Nigerian
scholars have adopted, there could be no other; that no other and
contradictory evidence can be adduced; and that no other verdict is
possible. The consequence is dire: having finalized the debate, no
further questioning is possible, even permissible. Future studies must
merely repeat the verdict. That is, whenever a study focuses on the
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problematic of non-alignment in Nigeria‟s external relations in the

future, no other verdict should or can be possible. The inevitable
conclusion should be that for that period, Nigeria was „aligned‟. No
other verdict should be possible otherwise such study would have gone
against the grain of rationality. It is therefore no longer necessary to
understand the assumptions or examine the evidential base. This is
because discourse is closed. But even before the commencement of
research, the findings are already known, making research truly
unnecessary.
When Roberts and Joywood (2007:195) describe dogmatism‟s
most telling aspect as the “disposition to respond irrationally to
oppositions to the belief: anomalies, objections, evidence to the
contrary, counterexamples, and the like”, the burden of closing
discourse is that of the interlocutor. But then, dogmatism truly exists
“whenever a speaker takes a position and the audience refrains from
resisting it” (Fuller and Collier, 2004:245). Discursive closure is not,
according to Deetz (1992:187), just about “the privileging of certain
discourses and the marginalization of others”, it is a situation
“whereby definitions are produced which then prevent consideration
of alternatives” (Bingham, 2010:6). The discourse on the fate of non-
alignment in Nigeria‟s foreign relations between 1960 and 1965 has
been laced with much dogmatism and threatened with closure. There is
no questioning the fact that the debate should be reopened; the
problem is identifying the instrument that must be deployed.
For the domain of inquiry generally referred to as history, the
currently non-existent nature of its object makes its findings radically
tentative, with the ever present possibility of being overturned or
modified in the light of new data. To regard its conclusions as claims
to knowledge to be validated by reference to extant evidence or traces
reinforces the dynamic character of historical knowledge. Here,
discourse never closes; history is being written and rewritten just as
earlier constructions are revised to reflect new data or interpretive
frameworks. These serve to “propose perspectives, correct definitions
and shed light on obscure areas of the past. This kind of revisionism is
irreproachable, and is part … of the historian‟s task” (Gracia,
2008:253). The development of the “science of historical criticism”,
Salmon (1929:56) has claimed, “is responsible for the constant
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necessity of rewriting history”. History may be naturally revisionist in

this sense, but this does not amount to historical revisionism. Neither
is it, in any technical sense, the “denial of historical events” or of
“historical liability”, associated, for example, with the Holocaust, or
the Turkish mass killing of Armenians (Iwasaki and Richter,
2008:510).
While the response of Balfour (2008:181) to the apparent
naturalness of revisionism to history to the effect that the “act of
revising or revision itself … is not the same as revisionism” is valid,
the insistence, as the defining characteristic of revisionism, on the
challenge of “existing doctrine or accepted interpretations with new
evidence or with a consideration of original evidence based either on
its supposed flaws or the appropriateness of its interpretation” by a
body of literature rather than by an individual work appears more like
revision rather than revisionism, a reconstructive rather than a critical
process. The preference for a body of literature rather than an
individual work as the challenging device merely establishes a
tradition of challenge, the basis of this conception of revisionism
remains evidence or its interpretation. For Gkotzaridis (2008:728),
revisionism defines “a moment when historians are abnormally
conscious of the implications and consequences of what they do and
go so far as to use their craft with the intensity of activism to produce
significant shifts in collective mentalities”. Such a definition lacks any
epistemological content, and hardly follows from the quite correct
precursory remark that revisionism “is a critical, logical, and scientific
procedure”.
From the above, and in spite of the weaknesses of these
definitions, it is clear that historical revisionism is a critical tool for the
examination of a tradition of analysis. Even if new data are presented
or new methods employed, these do not constitute the essence of
revisionism. Rather it is the critical examination of the fit between
judgments and their premises, between constructions and the
supportive evidence; a “provocative, controversial, nonconformist
questioning of entrenched beliefs” (Petrovic, 2008:18). This
conception is underpinned by a notion of truth deemed appropriate to
historical cognition which deemphasizes the correspondence between

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historical constructions and some objective past, and rather sees truth
as the relationship between evidence and the construction erected on it.
The claim that Nigeria‟s foreign policy between 1960 and
1965 was „aligned‟ is about a historical object. To assert that it is the
consensus of Nigerian scholars would appear correct since studies of
that foreign policy rarely reached any other verdict. The problem,
however, is that the verdict is taken for granted, and its mere
restatement has become a substitute for analysis. That is why this
study does not intend to problematise non-alignment in Nigeria‟s
international history as such. In a sense, the total body of evidence for
the study of this problem has remained fairly fixed. It is the way the
problem has been studied, the evidence adduced, the arguments
employed and the deduction of the verdict of „aligned‟ that constitute
the primary concern of the study. The ultimate question is: considering
available evidence is any other verdict possible?

Nigeria, 1960-1966: ‘Aligned’: The Tradition of Analysis

When Akinyemi (1979:150-151) asserted that Nigeria‟s
foreign policy under Balewa was „aligned‟, it was to the desire of
Nigeria‟s political leaders to maintain close ties with the West,
conservatism of Balewa and the fact that Nigeria traded more with
Western countries that he alluded. Yet, a rational, self-interested
foreign policy ought not to prejudge issues; it must maximize benefits
from the international environment and both defend and project the
national interest. If Nigeria was „aligned‟ in the sense in which
Akinyemi has used it, it means that Nigeria did not take advantage of
the resources available in the international environment to enhance its
relative position, and, worse still, subordinated itself to control by
other states. A realist policy must be derived from and respond to the
adversarial character of the international environment.
For focusing on the “assessment of national interests defined
as power”, and for being sensitive to the necessary interface between
“foreign policy objectives and control of the national resources needed
for their implementation”, Akinyemi, particularly in Foreign Policy
and Federalism: The Nigerian Experience published in 1974, has been
described by Abegunrin (2003:9) as a political realist. This description
would appear to fit considering the views by Akinyemi (n.d.:11) that
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the missing link in the calls by Nigerians for “an active and militant
foreign policy is an appreciation of the role of the armed forces in
providing effective credibility for such foreign policy”, on the
composition and purpose of a concert of medium powers, and,
intriguingly the pro-Balewa conception of non-alignment as
“evaluating issues on their merits” (Akinyemi, n.d.:17).
Even though Foreign Policy and Federalism is a work on
Nigeria‟s Africa policy rather than on its policy towards the Cold War
powers, certain conclusions reached have a bearing on his conclusion
that Nigeria between 1960 and 1966 was „aligned‟, particularly that a
significant source of this status was Balewa‟s conservatism. Akinyemi
(1974:191), for example, recognized the instrumentality of Nigeria in
creating the norms of inter-state behaviour spelt out in the Charter of
the Organization of African Unity, and therefore concluded that “a Pax
Nigeriana in Africa can be spoken of”. On the Congo, he recognized
the “consistent policy” of Nigeria to support “whatever authorities
constituted the Congolese central government, irrespective of how
they got to power or maintained themselves in power”. That this was a
demonstration of Nigeria‟s subscription to the principle of non-
interference in the affairs of other states does not appear controversial;
neither is the reasoning that this principle “was based on the national
interest of Nigeria: the need to preserve the Nigerian political system”
(Akinyemi, 1974:192). Such analysis is certainly realist. But to explain
this principle and its apparent exemplifications by reference to
northern conservatism begs for a connective logic. Even when he had
noted that contrary to northern expectations Nigeria maintained
neutrality in the Arab/Israeli issue, and Balewa resisted Ahmadu Bello
in the matter of economic relations with Israel (Akinyemi, 1974:193),
he still concluded that Balewa‟s understanding of Africa‟s problems
and of the appropriate solution to them was beset by “a lack of vision”
(Akinyemi, 1974:200), and ignorance of the fact that realism becomes
academic “because dreams and visions have a role to play as soporific
agents in defusing dangerous political situations” (Akinyemi,
1974:201).
Okolo (1975) completely missed the point when he claimed
that Akinyemi in Foreign Policy and Federalism contended that
Balewa was moralistic and idealistic. Even the response that Nigeria
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under Balewa was “perhaps, more realistic in fashioning its relations

with other states than is imagined” (Okolo, 1975:535), for which
political realism was suggested as “the proper theory on which to base
the explanation of Nigeria‟s foreign policy orientation” (Okolo and
Langley, 1973:309), he was to completely contradict with the
argument that “moral considerations” underpinned Nigeria‟s relations
with extra-African states, and with Britain in particular (Okolo,
1988:73).
It should not be imagined that Akinyemi or his works are
central to this revisionist study. Akinyemi is ordinarily not a scholar of
Nigeria‟s policy toward relations with the Cold War powers. Even
though his incursive analyses are typical, it is the generalizing and
audacious assertion that Nigerian scholars have agreed that Nigeria‟s
foreign policy between 1960 and 1966 was „aligned‟ which introduces
the element of finality and closure that has motivated the
problematisation of the study of Nigeria‟s attitude towards the Cold
War powers, rather than of the attitude itself. Otherwise, there is a
tendency for post-war studies of Nigeria‟s foreign policy of that
period, particularly of non-alignment and the question of its
actualization in Nigeria‟s foreign policy, to assume that an assessment
of Nigeria‟s aggregate relations with East and West amounted to a
study of non-alignment. These studies have deployed „pro-West‟ and
„anti-East‟ as covering labels, and these are apparently derived from
particular acts (of commission and omission) and statements of
Nigeria or of its rulers presuming that the mean represents the non-
aligned position. Non-alignment, for these scholars, was an art of
balancing relations with East and West (or of diversifying dependence)
such that the scale of relations does not tilt either way.
In explaining Nigeria‟s „alignment‟, the primary factor is
usually located in the conservatism of the government, which in some
cases reduced to the conservatism of the Northern Peoples Congress,
of northerners, or of Balewa. There would therefore seem to be a
general agreement amongst Nigerian scholars on the nature of the
problematic, the particular definition of the key concept, its
operationalisation, the method of study and findings. But for the
epistemological problems generated by this trajectory, it would have

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been possible to refer to a community of scholars and to a “tradition of

discourse” (Wolin, 2004:320).
Published in 1973, Idang‟s Nigeria: Internal Politics and
Foreign Policy, 1960-1966 would seem to be the first full-length study
of Nigeria‟s foreign policy since the end of the war in 1970. Like
Akinyemi‟s Foreign Policy and Federalism published a year after,
Idang‟s work aspires to explore the linkages between domestic politics
and foreign policy. In the sphere of Nigeria‟s relations with the Cold
War powers, although the operating principle was declared to be non-
alignment, “few of its actions were consonant with and predicated
upon this official policy”. Nigeria not only signed a defence agreement
with Britain, it established an “unbalanced pattern of diplomatic
relations with the outside world”. Moreover, there were restrictions on
travel to Soviet bloc countries and on the importation of Communist
literature (Idang, 1973:130). To demonstrate that Nigeria‟s foreign
policy was both pro-West and unbalanced, Idang referred to the fact
that four of the first five diplomatic missions established outside
Africa were in the West; a Soviet mission was established in Lagos
only in late 1961; and even by early 1965, while Nigeria had eleven
missions in countries of the West, it had only one in the East (Idang,
1973:136). Idang‟s position, like all the analyses that belong to this
tradition, is simple: to be pro-West is to be „aligned‟, and to be non-
aligned is to be equidistant from the powers.
Even though Idang asserted that Nigeria‟s foreign policy is “to
a very large extent” a consequence of “many domestic factors and
forces” (1), only one was actually fully explored, if not over-explored:
the man Balewa. Thus, that Nigeria‟s policy of non-alignment became
“a smokescreen for adherence to pro-West positions” was because of
the “tendency of Sir Abubakar to carry over the old intimacy of the
colonial tie into post-independence Nigerian foreign relations”, just
like his “naïve and unrealistic … conception of international politics
and the United Nations” (Idang, 1973:49) made Nigeria to
deemphasize the more relevant motivations of interest and power.
Balewa was “often more moralistic than realistic”, which made the
government to sometimes ignore the “vital interests of Nigeria and
Africa” (Idang, 1973:13), while his “conservative, hesitant, and
moralistic approach to African and world affairs” prevented him from
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using foreign policy as an “instrument of proclaiming Nigeria‟s

independence and non-alignment” (Idang, 1973:15). Yet, Idang
(1973:17) also referred to Balewa‟s “pragmatism and dislike of
slogans and emotionalism”. Could Balewa have been pragmatic and
unemotional and at the same time naïve, unrealistic and moralistic? To
be all these, Balewa must have had a dialectical personality!
If Idang‟s understanding of non-alignment, the instances of
„alignment‟ or of a pro-West orientation spread through the entire
period, and the character and attitude of Balewa were to be taken into
consideration, the verdict of „aligned‟ would seem justified. In other
words, Idang would argue that since non-alignment means the
maintenance of balanced relations between Nigeria and the Cold War
powers, and Nigeria‟s international behaviour between 1960 and 1966,
as indicated by several utterances and actions (and inactions too) was
pro-West, therefore Nigeria was „aligned‟. But then Idang does the
curious: he indicates that there were nevertheless instances of
disagreement with some countries of the West (particularly France),
agreement with the East, and instances when Nigeria took independent
positions. A new conclusion appears inevitable therefore:
Thus, toward the end of 1961, Nigeria began to move
slowly toward a more neutralist and nationalistic
foreign policy. This trend towards a less pro-Western
and more nationalist and assertive foreign policy was
manifested in many foreign policy decisions taken,
however, reluctantly and haltingly, between 1961 and
January 1966 (Idang, 1973:136).

So, for Idang, Nigeria‟s foreign policy between 1960 and 1966 was at
the same time pro-West and „aligned‟, and neutralist and nationalistic.
This presumably dialectical rather than temporally changing identity,
“the Balewa government‟s occasional shift from an openly pro-
Western position to that of dynamism and militant assertiveness”, he
explains by reference to the “verbal compromise between Northern
conservatism and Southern radicalism” (Idang, 1973:41). In the end,
dialectical Balewa generated a dialectical foreign policy!
If Idang and Akinyemi, being political scientists, had the
object of explaining the domestic political origins of Nigeria‟s foreign
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policy, Aluko, although a historian, did not depart from this

framework. Even though the search for patterns underpinned his
studies, this was to be done within the internal-external linkage
framework, examining the “crucial variables” of the domestic and
external environments (1981:5), already a characteristic of the
tradition of analysis. In addition, a language for studying that object
already existed, even if not generated by Idang and Akinyemi, and
students of Nigerian foreign policy, particularly of the independence
foreign policy, reflected it in their studies. In a sense, every writer is
influenced by earlier writers, even if the latter is a critic of the earlier.
In this sense, every writer therefore “finds himself in an inherited
situation with patterns of thought which are appropriate to this
situation” (Mannheim, 1991:3). However, from a historical revisionist
perspective, two questions become pertinent: How did the tradition of
analysis emerge? How valid are its epistemological pretensions?
Aluko was historical when he argued that the expression of
non-alignment in the foreign policies of Afro-Asian states was
dependent on its interpretation by the leaders of these countries “in the
light of the national interest, taking into account security, political,
ideological, economic and cultural considerations” (1976:172). In
other words, international relations are not conducted on the basis of
adherence to sterile theories and universal concepts; they are usually
localized and justified as variations. But he departed from this more
historical and viable framework for the study of non-alignment (as a
foreign policy principle of real and not ideal states) and embraced the
emerging tradition of analysis. “On almost all cold war issues”, Aluko,
like Idang that wrote before him, claimed afterward that “Nigeria
sided with the United States against the USSR”, and exemplified this
by reference to the comment made by Ahmadu Bello (the premier of
the Northern Region, not Nigeria‟s prime minister) while visiting West
Germany in 1962 to the effect that the Soviet Union was responsible
for the Berlin Wall (1976:22, n.168).
The degree of conformity with the prevalent tradition of
analysis is demonstrated in the article by Aluko (1976:127-141,
updated 1981) on Nigeria and the superpowers. From the historically
informed, self-interested and pro-realist conception of non-alignment
Aluko drifted to an idealist and other-interested notion. Non-aligned
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states therefore became those “which had chosen a neutralist line

between Washington and Moscow and which, while retaining their
independence, had in 1960 established diplomatic, economic and
cultural ties with both super-powers” (1981:103). Two intertwined
notions are in evidence here: non-alignment as the maintenance of
balanced relations with East and West, and as the diversification of
dependence; that is, since new states had had more to do with Western
powers (by virtue of colonialism), to be non-aligned, there should be a
movement towards the East.
It was this conception of non-alignment that Aluko applied in
the study of Nigeria‟s foreign policy. Applied to Nigeria‟s foreign
policy between 1960 and 1965, the trajectory of analysis is
predictable: “Nigeria‟s relations with Moscow under the Balewa
regime were on the whole distant, while those with Washington were
close”; “From independence in October 1960 to the coup of January
1966 Nigeria‟s policy of non-alignment exhibited a great deal of
partiality in favour of the United States … but against the USSR”. The
evidence: Nigeria placed restrictions on the number of diplomats in the
Soviet embassy but not also on the number of American diplomats;
Nigeria limited the circulation of Communist literature, but not also
American publications; Nigeria sought and received aid from
Washington, but not also from Moscow (104). As for the strand of
non-alignment that implies diversification of dependence, Aluko
claimed that Nigeria under Balewa, unlike Nkrumah‟s government,
“did not interpret the doctrine of non-alignment as implying the
reduction of its dependence on the Western powers, and the
diversification of its external links”, even when such diversification
would have opened up new markets and led to an improvement in
Nigeria‟s balance of payments position. “Consequently”, he
concluded, “Nigerian dependence on the Western powers and
especially on the United Kingdom, was almost as great in 1966 as it
was in 1961” (1977:173). Yet, in a later work, in spite of arguing that
Nigeria‟s non-alignment was deliberately in favour of the United
States and against the Soviet Union, implying thereby that Nigeria had
more in aggregate relations with the United States than with the Soviet
Union, he concluded rather curiously that “it has been one of the major
characteristics of Nigerian foreign policy since the early 1960s to
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reduce her dependence on the Western powers by adopting a policy of

non-alignment which involves the conscious diversification of the
country‟s external ties” (1981:4). Even if Nigeria progressively
broadened the scope of its external relations, none of its governments
would seem to have adopted non-alignment merely to achieve
diversification of dependence.
It was in the early 1970s that this tradition of analysis emerged
woven around a peculiarly defined research question: was Nigeria
„aligned‟ between 1960 and 1966?; a peculiar conception of non-
alignment: equidistance and the diversification of dependence; a
curious method: enumeration of instances or acts of friendship or
hostility towards East and West; a set of facile and speculative
evidence; and an emotionally satisfactory verdict: Nigeria, 1960-1965:
„aligned‟. Subsequent researches only had to follow this format to be
valid and acceptable. To this extent, the outcome of future researches
was pre-determined.
Thus, for Stremlau (1981:48), Nigeria‟s foreign policy
between 1960 and 1967 was politically and economically „aligned‟,
since its profession of non-alignment “never had much meaning with
regard to Nigeria‟s economic ties, which are overwhelmingly with the
West”, and “had little political content”. This conclusion is based on
the claims that Nigeria “usually supported Western positions in the
United Nations and was reluctant to extend even diplomatic ties to the
Soviet Union”. It was the perceived routine identification with the
West that Olusanya and Akindele (1986:2) tagged “pro-Westernism”,
a tendency that called into question the “sincerity of Nigeria‟s
commitment to … non-alignment in world politics”, and which,
according to Tijani (2006:139), was responsible for the success of “the
principle of non-neutralism in foreign relations”.
Okolo (1975:535), in his review of Nigeria: Internal Politics
and Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy and Federalism, had submitted
that the contention of their authors that Balewa was moralistic and
idealistic was unsubstantiated, arguing instead that Nigeria under
Balewa was “perhaps, more realistic in fashioning its relations with
other states than is imagined”. That Balewa was not moralistic or
idealistic but realistic appeared to be a challenge to the emerging

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tradition of analysis, a significant element of which has been a

condemnatory stance toward Balewa and the administration.
But when he had the opportunity to demonstrate his thesis in a
paper devoted to the study of morality and realism in Nigeria‟s foreign
policy, Okolo (1988:73-74) capitulated to the tradition. Instead of
reason and interest, he saw altruism and sentiment as the driving force
of Balewa‟s foreign policy. Because of Britain‟s colonization of
Nigeria, he argues, Nigeria‟s leaders on independence “perhaps, felt
morally committed to reserve for Britain and its Western allies some
special soft place in the nation‟s foreign policy”. The alleged feeling
of moral commitment by Nigeria‟s leaders was elevated to the status
of the explanation of Nigeria‟s pro-Westernism; but he was not too
sure, so he started off with “perhaps”. Under such a circumstance,
Nigeria‟s non-alignment “showed obvious Western leaning”. In the
end, not only was “Nigeria pro-West foreign policy … justified on
moral grounds”, but “the cold attitude towards the Soviet Union was
also justified on moral grounds” (Okolo, 1988:74). Balewa was
therefore a thoroughgoing moralist and not a realist at all!
It has already been noted that an obscuring aspect of this trend
is that mere repetition had taken the place of investigation. Of course,
the findings of earlier investigations usually provide the basis for later
researches. To this extent, what has been referred to as mere repetition
appears normal. But it is also a part of the process of accepting the
findings of earlier researches to, even if cursorily, check the fit
between the evidence or premises and conclusions. This is hardly
done, to the effect that so much has been erected on a very shaky
conceptual and evidential foundation. Thus, when apparently new
studies of non-alignment during the Balewa period conclude that
Nigeria “preferred to deal almost exclusively with the West and to
keep the Soviets and their allies at a safe distance” (Amechi Okolo,
1989:56); that “its relations displayed little balance … Its relations
with the socialist bloc were cool” (Wright, 1998:150); that “it
identified more with Western interests, while relations with Eastern
Europe were slow and cautious” (Falola, 1999:172); and that the
Balewa “regime exhibited an unveiled preference for pro-West
relations and a clear antipathy towards the Eastern bloc” (Okajare,

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2003:169), they have merely mimicked the conclusions of the studies

of the early 1970s rather than actually investigated the problem.
Even though the pioneering works of Idang and Akinyemi
came out in 1973 and 1974, respectively, the basal doctoral researches
having been concluded respectively in 1970 and 1969, in terms of
content and language, the tradition has a source unacknowledged in
the published works of Idang and Akinyemi referred to above.
Ohonbamu‟s The psychology of the Nigerian Revolution published in
1969 is not essentially a work on Nigeria‟s foreign policy, but its
Chapter 3 of about thirty-five pages is devoted to the foreign policy of
the Balewa administration. From Ohonbamu‟s rendering of the
meaning of non-alignment as “a wholesale involvement in
international politics with an independent and impartial approach to
matters of dispute whether military or otherwise on which the world
power blocs are divided” (Ohonbamu, 1969:60), he seemed to
understand the conceptual basis of Nigeria‟s non-alignment and
appreciated the distinction made between it and neutrality.
Yet, he turns to the acts of friendship towards the West and of
hostility towards the East to demonstrate how „aligned‟ Nigeria was:
Nigeria established diplomatic missions in the West and made it
difficult for the East; accepted aid from the West but rejected aid from
the Soviet Union; Nigeria‟s leaders paid numerous official visits to the
West, but not as many to the East; and while Balewa was in support of
the American decision to resume nuclear tests, Nigeria rejected the
Soviet-inspired Troika principle for the administration of the United
Nations “simply because our friends of the West opposed it”
(Ohonbamu, 1969:61-62). But Nigeria, he submitted, “cannot afford to
be other than non-aligned in fact as well as in theory”. To do this,
Nigeria must “befriend both East and West for our mutual benefit”
(Ohonbamu, 1969:64).
If in terms of the conception of non-alignment, evidence
adduced, arguments proffered and the conclusions reached, the work
of Ohonbamu and those of Idang and Akinyemi are substantially in
agreement to the extent that they could be said to belong to the same
tradition of analysis, and yet there is no evidence of the influence of
the earlier on the latter two, how then could the similarities be
explained? The explanation would seem to be that they relied on the
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same set of sources: the contemporary criticisms, particularly by

Action Group and radical National Council of Nigerian Citizens
members of Parliament, of Balewa‟s foreign policy.

Contemporary Criticisms and Studies of Balewa’s Foreign Policy

Aminu Kano had complained in 1962 that while Western and
Latin American countries were included in Nigerian passports, “all
countries behind the so-called Iron Curtain are excluded. And yet our
policy is one of non-alignment!” (House of Representatives, Debates,
hereafter HR Debates, 27.3.1962:168) E.O. Araka was not less
skeptical about the sincerity of Nigeria‟s non-alignment and wondered
“whether Soviet and American Embassies in Nigeria are given the
same facilities in this country” (HR Debates, 28.3.1962:243). J.S.
Tarka claimed that the Balewa government “had given N.A.T.O.
exclusive concession for the use of secret radio frequency in certain
parts of Nigeria”, and asked whether Nigeria was “actually practicing
the honest non-alignment policy which our Government professes?”
(HR Debates, 3.4.1962:399).
Other apparently conclusive indications of Nigeria‟s
„alignment‟ were given in Parliament. Balewa was said to always
consult with the British leadership before any major decision was
taken by his government (HR Debates, 3.4.1962:419). The foreign
minister is said to have sought advice from the British prime minister
before proceeding to a conference in Geneva, and reported back to him
even before being debriefed in Lagos; and that the United States‟ £80
million loan to Nigeria was made contingent upon Nigeria‟s
endorsement of the Western position on the question of China‟s
representation at the United Nations. I.A. Brown, responsible for most
of these allegations, contributed yet another the premise of which was
quite glaringly illogical, and calls into question the veracity of his
other allegations. For the singular reason that Nigeria‟s ambassador to
the United States named his son after the American president, he
surmised that the ambassador had “become a staff of the State
Department in that country” (HR Debates, 14.4.1962:866)
These criticisms were given wide publicity by the media, and
they became the source of the knowledge Nigerians had of their
country‟s foreign policy. That academic studies did not go beyond, or
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examine and verify these political criticisms of the government of the

day is the source of the superficial and depthless nature of the studies
of that period. Yet there was an earlier, more analytical and less
condemnatory tradition of analysis of Nigeria‟s non-alignment that
was contemporaneous with the Balewa administration and also had
access to the political criticisms of Balewa‟s foreign policy.
If non-alignment had to do with the conservation of
sovereignty, and if sovereignty pertains to the individual state, how
could the Non-Aligned Movement have been the highest expression of
non-alignment? Nigeria‟s non-attendance at the first conference of the
Movement in Belgrade in 1961, since all non-aligned states were
supposed to be members of the Movement, was therefore because
Nigeria was not non-aligned. For the latter tradition, this is not an
unusual explanation, even though it is hardly an explanation. Nigeria
refused to attend, it has been claimed by Ogunbadejo (1986:253)
because of “the underlying American nervousness about non-
alignment as a foreign policy principle in the early 1960s, when the
cold war between the superpowers was in high gear”; and since the
conference “gave advance promise of anti-Western proposals”,
Nigeria refused to attend, its non-attendance “designed to convince the
West that Nigeria could be relied on, and that it represented a safe
place for foreign investment” (Emeka and Langley, 1973:318). If these
explanations are valid, why then did Nigeria attend the Cairo
conference in 1964? Even though the explanation for non-attendance
hinged on the deprecation of blocs can be so questioned, since Balewa
did not later turn round to like the idea of blocs, the employment of the
official explanation by Coleman (1963:399) relative to the object of
explanation is more logically relevant and probable than that which
sees Nigeria as a defender of American interests.
A significant difficulty for studies of the foreign policy of new
states in the 1950s and 1960s is the conflation of the strictly bilateral
(as between Nigeria and the Soviet Union, for example) and relations
within the framework of the Cold War (as between Nigeria and the
two superpowers within the framework of their rivalry). That Nigeria
had more in aggregate relations with Western countries did not imply
hostility toward the Soviet Union. Could Nigeria have been both pro-
West and non-aligned? The earlier tradition would answer in the
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affirmative. “On Cold War issues involving East-West tensions”,

Coleman (1963:397) writes, “Nigeria has pursued quite an
independent line”. Yet, “direct relationships between Nigeria and
countries of the Eastern bloc have been marked by a coolness and
restraint … that is all the more pointed because of its contrast to the
more relaxed and extensive relations … with Western countries”
(Coleman, 1963:399). Gray (1965:339) admits readily that in practice,
“Nigeria‟s non-alignment has had a pro-Western orientation”, not
because of any political decision or diplomatic act of the government,
but because of commitment to Western political values by Nigeria‟s
leaders and its economic realities. Yet,
The policy of non-alignment which Nigeria has been
following is primarily designed to permit her to avoid
participation in the Cold War and at the same time to
retain her old friendships in the West. … In this
pattern the relationships with the West remain warm
and human while the new ones with the Communist
bloc are formal and institutional (Gray, 1965:345).

Anglin‟s object is to determine the extent to which Nigeria‟s

economic dependence influenced its international behaviour. Even
though Nigeria was so intricately tied economically to the West, he
argues, it did not follow therefore that Nigeria lost the capacity for
independent international political action: “Nigeria‟s economic needs
have never been a decisive factor in determining her foreign policy,
there has been rare occasions when their impact has been significant”
(1964:258). What then was the decisive factor that motivated Nigeria‟s
international behaviour? Anglin suggests the personal factor. It is his
conclusion on Nigeria‟s non-alignment that is however more relevant
here. He already deemed it a “somewhat unfashionable view” because
of the popular and widespread beliefs that were influenced by political
criticisms of the government:
… in most cases, Nigerian leaders pursue the policies
they do because, rightly or wrongly, they happened to
believe in them. Non-alignment is not neutralism; and
if the Nigerian Government, after careful
consideration of the merits of a particular question
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leans to one side or the other, there is no need always

to assume that it does so because it has succumbed to
some sinister outside pressure. Nor should there be
anything particularly mysterious about Nigeria
sometimes having a preference for the west. After all,
Nigerian leaders are ideologically, though not
politically, committed to many of the same ideals the
west professes, and opposed to many of the practices
of communism (Anglin, 1964:263).

On the question of the political consequences of economic dependence

or „alignment‟, contrary to the direction of the critique by Ate
(1988:285), Anglin did not argue generally or theoretically, but
historically. If Ate is correct with regard to Nigeria that “it is correct to
argue that the country‟s underdevelopment and fundamental
dependence produce veritably the basis for political alignment with her
major economic partners, such as the United States”, why did this
economic „alignment‟ not in fact translate into political „alignment‟
between 1960 and 1965? Why was it the case that Nigeria
demonstrated a significant level of independence in its international
behaviour in spite of economic dependence?
Arguably the most influential work on Nigeria‟s foreign
policy under Balewa published in the early 1960s, described by
Gambari (1980:2) as “the first comprehensive study of Nigerian
foreign policy”, is that of Claude S. Phillips, Jr. On Nigeria‟s relations
with the power blocs within the context of their rivalry, Phillips, Jr.
(1964:101) recounted those statements, decisions and actions of the
government and its officials that had “strengthened the hands of those
who charge the Government with being pro-West”. These include the
conclusion of the defense agreement with Britain, Balewa‟s support of
the American decision to resume nuclear testing, Nigeria‟s rejection of
the Troika principle for the administration of the United Nations
proposed by the Soviet Union, the continued existence of the ban on
Communist literature, restriction on Nigerians wishing to study in
Eastern bloc countries, the non-existence of diplomatic missions in
Communist countries, and Nigeria‟s non-attendance at the conference
of non-aligned countries at Belgrade in 1961. These were the elements
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of the political criticisms of the Balewa administration already alluded

to, and the evidence for Nigeria‟s „alignment‟ in works that have been
claimed belong to the tradition of analysis that emerged in the early
1970s. For these works, to be pro-West is to be anti-East, and the
equation between pro-Westernism and „alignment‟ is taken for
granted. But Phillips, Jr., in spite of the seeming pro-West/anti-East
acts, not only concludes that Nigeria was non-aligned, but also that its
“policy of non-alignment is a pragmatic one, with no chance of an
open blanket identification with either bloc, but with a strong tendency
to give the Western bloc the benefit of any doubt except on questions
of colonialism” (Phillips, Jr., 1964:107).

Conclusion
The paper aspired to uncover a tradition of analyzing Nigeria‟s
policy toward, and relations with the super-powers between 1960 and
1965, and to delineate its features. That Nigeria between 1960 and
1965 was „aligned‟ is an inference of a historical character, the
premise of which ought to inhere in the interconnection among
concept, method and evidence. It was to examine the fit among these
dimensions that recourse was made to the tool of historical
revisionism.
What could now be labelled the post-war tradition of analysis
of Nigeria‟s non-alignment under the Balewa administration is sourced
from a common pool of evidence that is but the epistemic elevation of
the political criticisms of that administration, and then its subsequent
unverified universalisation. No new contrary evidence, it would
appear, is discoverable. When it is asserted that pro-Westernism (and
presumably anti-Easternism) characterized Balewa‟s foreign policy,
and that “Nigeria‟s external trade, positions taken in international
organizations, such as the United Nations, political and military ties
clearly show this” (Aworawo, 2003:402), is it a consequence of an
encounter with the sources or a mere rehash of the popular intellectual
opinion?
From the perspective of method, the comparison of the
quantity and quality of relations between Nigeria and the super-powers
for that period, and the discovery of a disequilibrium and partiality, a
skewdness in favour of the West have become normative. Yet, as
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advertised, non-alignment represents, or ought to represent the mean,

the ideal and morally acceptable position. It is the inequity, partiality
and hence immorality of Nigeria‟s so-called non-alignment that has
irked scholars of this tradition and made the language of their studies
so condemnatory that they ended up being political or ideological
critiques than analytical studies or even academic investigations.
The most telling weakness of the tradition is that it merely
appropriated the pool of evidence of the political critics of Balewa‟s
foreign policy, their conception of non-alignment, and their mode of
analysis. Yet, Balewa did not define non-alignment in terms of
equidistance, or balancing of relations between East and West or “the
conscious diversification of the country‟s external ties” (Aluko,
1981:4). Balewa, in the first official statement on the foreign policy of
independent Nigeria, clearly stated that Nigeria “shall not blindly
follow the lead of anyone; so far as it is possible the policy on each
occasion will be selected with proper independent objectivity in
Nigeria‟s national interest”, and that it would be wrong for Nigeria to
“associate itself as a matter of routine with any of the power blocs”
(HR Debates, 20.8.1960:196). By this, he meant that Nigeria did not
intend to “join either the Western or the Eastern, or any other bloc, but
Nigeria will follow an independent line” (24.11.1960:196). This was
how the administration understood non-alignment.
Although non-alignment was never so thoroughly theorized as
to eliminate ambiguities and contradictions, theorizing it from the
point of view of neutrality, and, in effect, of equidistance has been a
weak tendency in the analysis of non-alignment. The classical analyses
of non-alignment are quite supportive of Balewa‟s conception.
According to Said (1968:133), for example,
A non-aligned state is one that has no binding
military, political, or economic ties to a power centre
outside its borders. It formulates its foreign and
domestic policies, insofar as it can, independently of
any outside considerations of allies or bloc leaders. It
has no obligations other than to its own definitions of
its national interest, though it may carefully consider
the effects of its actions on other states if it chooses to
do so.
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The logic of non-alignment inheres in the motivation for its

adoption. For states that just emerged from colonial and other forms of
domination after the Second World War, alliance with one or the other
Cold War power bloc implied the re-enthronement of the yoke they
had just cast off, since being in treaty alliance with a stronger power
does limit the freedom of action of a weaker state. Yet, they did not
want to be neutral in the imperialist struggle for world domination
between the Soviet Union and the United States. The adoption of non-
alignment was therefore motivated by a desire to defend and conserve
sovereignty in the face of contrary pressures. When a state
coincidentally identified with a super-power or bloc on an issue, it did
so because its interests were thereby being better served. If, on
aggregate, such a state had more instances of association with a
particular bloc, could this amount to a negation of non-alignment? The
practice of passing a verdict of „pro-West‟ or „anti-East‟ is a limiting
approach that interprets relations with the power blocs from the
viewpoint of what the East or West, and not what the professors of
non-alignment have gained or lost. If non-alignment was an instrument
for the defense and preservation of sovereignty, its negation must
erode that sovereignty. To therefore conclude that a state is „aligned‟
does not necessarily imply that the state is not non-aligned;
„alignment‟ and non-alignment are not contradictories (the reason why
its use in this paper has been within single quotation marks). Alliance,
however, when with a stronger state contains a significant element of
subservience and loss of sovereignty. It is alliance with the power
blocs that negated non-alignment, not „alignment‟.
This is not the first critique of the post-war tradition of
analysis of Nigeria‟s non-alignment between 1960 and 1965. Ojo
(1981:31) had criticized writers who “imputed to government their
own conceptions of what non-alignment meant or ought to mean –
equidistance between the Eastern and Western blocs,” and “proceeded
to fault government of betrayal and „blatant hypocrisy‟”. Yet, he
argued, the equidistance conception of non-alignment “would entail
either the dismantling of both the economic infra- and political super-
structures and the building of new ones that are neither East nor West
or the establishment of equality in the scope and quality of relations
with both the East and West on all major values, political, economic,
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military and ideological”, neither of which “seemed feasible or even

desirable” (Ojo, 1981:32). In the end, Ojo 1981:49) concluded that
under the Balewa government, non-alignment
was scrupulously practiced, its scope, salience and
rate of success being limited only by the configuration
of economic, political and military power and, in
respect of the Soviet bloc, by the additional problem
of Soviet attitude to Nigeria based on Soviet ideology.

The explanation for the „aligned‟ verdict by the earlier

scholars of the tradition (not the replicative orientation of later studies)
is certainly not the deployment of the equidistance notion of non-
alignment. Idang, Akinyemi and Aluko were not oblivious of the fact
that Balewa did not conceive of non-alignment in terms of
equidistance. Moreover, they could not have been unfamiliar with the
conclusions of the scholars of the early 1960s, at least the study by
Phillips, Jr. was known to them. Why then did they reach a different
conclusion from that of Phillips, Jr.? A hasty response would be that
the likes of Phillips, Jr., Coleman, Anglin and Gray were non-Nigerian
scholars and therefore wrote about Nigeria‟s foreign policy from the
„outside‟. But Ojo is a Nigerian, and he wrote like Phillips, Jr. and
others. Nigerians, both before and immediately after independence,
had great expectations about nationhood; nationhood did not only
connote freedom and emancipation, but was also perceived as the
engine of modernization (Ajayi, 1982:1-9). Political developments in
the 1960s did not indicate that Nigeria was moving in the right
direction; then came the civil war. Nigeria had failed its advertisers,
and the source of the failure was Balewa, with his administration, his
acts of omission or commission, his region and party. For Nigerian
foreign policy studies, that Nigeria did not attain the projected and
expected power status in Africa made Balewa‟s failure even more
visible. To reflect this, the methodology and conclusions of Phillips,
Jr. were inutile. It was the political criticisms of the Balewa
administration that could provide both the methodology of and
evidence for demonstrating the source of the failure of the earliest
conception of the Nigeria project. The post-war tradition was the
consequence of this engagement with Nigeria‟s past. But should it
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signal the end of debate on Nigeria‟s foreign policy between 1960 and
1965?

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