Bilateral relations between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the United States of America were formally inaugurated when Nigeria attained its independence from Britain in 1960. In the 21st century, they have entailed an important, if occasionally uneasy, alliance, following a more chequered diplomatic past. Nigeria has traditionally been among the United States's most important partners in Africa, and together the countries' populations account for more than half a billion people.
Although Nigeria entered its independence with a broadly, though informally, pro-Western and anti-Soviet orientation, its early relations with the United States were significantly strained by the U.S. government's official neutral stance during the Nigerian Civil War and its refusal to send weapons to the Nigerian military government led by Yakubu Gowon, the U.S. government authorizing sending humanitarian aid to Biafra during the Biafran airlift, and by Cold War dynamics elsewhere in Africa. Under the administration of American President Gerald Ford, tensions were piqued by the countries' support for opposing sides in the Angolan Civil War, and by the United States's ongoing cordiality with the apartheid government in South Africa, which remained a sticking point throughout the 1980s. Relations improved considerably in the mid-1970s, both because of the foreign policy initiatives of Jimmy Carter's administration and because of the increased importance of Nigerian oil for the United States in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. Carter's visit to Lagos in 1978 was the first ever state visit of a U.S. president to Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the 1980s, ongoing trade and investment links were accompanied by simmering diplomatic tensions over the Nigerian government's failure to curb cross-border crime and drug trafficking, and over increased reports of human rights abuses inside Nigeria. Although the United States had rarely objected to Nigerian military rule in the past, its tolerance expired under the regime of General Sani Abacha, who took power during a 1993 military coup d'état. For the next five years, Nigeria faced escalating sanctions and the near dissolution of diplomatic relations. However, following the death of Abacha, the U.S. was quick to welcome Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999. Under Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, trade and aid links intensified, and the relationship between the countries regained its erstwhile warmth. Bilateral relations are increasingly centred around military, security, and counterterrorism cooperation in West Africa, particularly multilateral initiatives in the Gulf of Guinea and on ISIS and Boko Haram. During the course of these initiatives, tensions and mistrust between the United States military and Nigerian military have sometimes spilled over into diplomatic discord.
Emerging from an earlier tradition of bilateral oil diplomacy, both countries have diversified their oil trades over the last decade, but the United States remains a major market for Nigerian exports, almost entirely in crude oil. The United States is also the primary foreign investor in Nigeria and a significant source of foreign aid. Over a million Nigerians and Nigerian Americans live, study, and work in the United States, while over 25,000 Americans live and work in Nigeria. There are many Nigerian Diaspora organizations in the United States that help the political and economic empowerment of the people of Nigerian descent outside of Nigeria. Complementing these formal economic links are a large volume of family remittances from the United States's large Nigerian American population. Yet Nigeria's oil resources and importance for regional stability have tended to counteract any strong dependence on the United States, reducing the latter's leverage and necessitating a relationship built on mutual respect and pragmatic mutual advantage.
History
1960–1966: Early diplomatic relations Formal diplomatic relations were established with the opening of the American Embassy in Lagos and of the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, both on 1 October 1960, the same day which Nigeria acquired its independence from British rule. American president Dwight D. Eisenhower was represented at the independence ceremonies by Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York. In his message to the new government on 2 October, Eisenhower promised Nigeria American support, but also warned about possible threats from outside its borders – understood as a veiled reference to the Soviet Union, and therefore a harbinger of the Cold War dynamics that were to shape Nigeria–U.S. relations in this early period. Upon Nigeria's admission to the United Nations (UN) later in 1960, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa announced that, as a matter of policy, Nigeria would remain neutral of the Cold War power blocs, and would not sacrifice its independence to East–West rivalries. However, although the civilian administration of the Nigerian First Republic was formally non-aligned, it was also "openly, though not slavishly, pro-West". This was partly a matter of diplomatic and economic orientation, as a result of Nigeria's continued closeness with Britain, but it also involved ideological affinities. As Balewa reflected in a 1961 speech to Nigerian parliamentarians, "We admire the American way of life, and we respect the people of the United States for their love of freedom".
Apart from containing the spread of Soviet communism, another of the U.S.'s early objectives in Nigeria was to strengthen bilateral economic ties. It had demonstrated its interest in Nigeria's economic development prior to 1960, providing development assistance through Britain and, by 1958, committing $700,000 to fund ten projects in Nigeria, mostly in agriculture. Shortly after Nigerian independence, a five-man special economic mission was sent to study Nigeria's development plan and inquire into possible areas of economic cooperation. At the mission's recommendation, the U.S. committed to provide $225 million in development assistance over five years, beginning in 1962 with $25 million in loans and grants.
In 1964, a U.S. State Department policy document explained, "The primary interest of the U.S. in Nigeria is to see it grow and prosper, within the Free World, as a leader and good example for other African countries." However, this programme was disrupted in 1966, when a military coup and counter-coup in Nigeria overturned its relative political stability. In the chaos of the aftermath, the U.S. Peace Corps was expelled en masse from Nigeria.
1967–1970: Nigerian Civil War
In July 1967, civil war broke out in Nigeria, fuelled by the attempted secession of Biafra. The U.S. quickly assumed "a dubious neutral posture", though both the Biafran secessionists and General Yakubu Gowon's federal military government sought U.S. military and diplomatic support. Four days after the outbreak of hostilities, the U.S. announced that it would not sell or supply arms to either side, "in order not to deepen the conflict". Traditionally deferent to the role of the former colonial powers in Africa, and thoroughly entangled in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson considered the war a "British affair" from which American interests were largely insulated. Although this policy enraged Nigerian officials, the Nigerian federal government made a conciliatory statement, reaffirming its non-aligned stance in the Cold War and expressing that the U.S. and Britain "still remain[ed] Nigeria's first choice for the purchases of arms for many reasons" – though also warning that it expected "its friends, particularly in the West" not to obstruct its war effort. Without American support, the federal government requested, and received, Soviet military assistance. However, the U.S. did not view this alliance as particularly threatening to its own interests – partly because Soviet participation was neutralised by Britain's participation, and partly because Nigerian elites had demonstrated a resilient conservatism: in Oye Ogunbadejo's summation, "General Gowon was hardly a Bolshevik". This estimation proved correct: even at the height of Soviet assistance, and although Nigeria continued to maintain aid and trade links with the Soviet Union after the end of the war, Nigerian leaders were never greatly enraptured by Soviet ideology.
When U.S. President Richard Nixon entered office in 1969, he supported direct intervention in Nigeria to support the Biafran cause. This support waned, however – possibly because Henry Kissinger and other State Department officials vociferously supported the federal government, and possibly, as in Kissinger's recollection, because British Prime Minister Harold Wilson swayed Nixon's views. Nevertheless, even without a direct intervention, the U.S. failed in its attempts to maintain a "low profile". At the exhortation of a powerful pro-Biafran lobby in Washington, the U.S. provided significant relief, estimated at more than $9 million, to address the humanitarian crisis that had arisen from the prolonged blockade of Biafra. Simultaneously, in an attempt to appease the federal government, it declared its political support for the federalists and for the "One Nigeria" concept: Joseph Palmer II, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and formerly the first U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, said in a statement that the U.S. hoped to see a "united and indivisible" Nigeria. However, the federal military government was offended by U.S. support for Biafra, which had been unavoidably political in its indirect recognition of the Biafran government's authority. It also resented the U.S. for permitting – and even, some Nigerian officials suspected, conniving – the pro-Biafran propaganda campaign in the West. The Secretary of State acknowledged in a 1971 report that the arms embargo and Biafran relief efforts had "seriously strained" Nigeria–U.S. relations.
1970–1977: Disagreement over Southern Africa When Biafra collapsed in January 1970, Nixon was among the first world leaders to congratulate the federal military government on its victory. His Secretary of State, William Rogers, visited Nigeria on 19 to 20 February, and delivered a personal letter from Nixon expressing admiration of Gowon's leadership. However, when Gowon visited the U.S. for five days in 1973, he did not meet with Nixon. More generally, U.S.–Nigeria relations remained "decidedly cool" for most of the 1970s, and included a period of "estrangement" under the administration of U.S. President Gerald Ford (1974–1977). This was due not only to the resentment left over from the Nigerian Civil War, but also to increasingly vigorous disagreements between the countries about the proper approach to conflicts in Southern African countries under white minority rule.