CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

The relationship between Nigeria and China has been cooperative and cordial, especially between 1999 and 2009. At independence, Nigeria adopted a broadly prowestern policy and did little to establish diplomatic relations with China. Formal diplomatic ties between the two countries came into being in 1971, barely a year after the end of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). However, following China‟s economic growth in the 1980s, Nigerian leaders began to look forward to a more serious economic engagement with China.

During the military regime of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria turned to China for military assistance and training of the Nigeria Army; perhaps to help the government suppress the domestic opposition to autocratic rule in Nigeria. By the time of 1999, when Nigeria experienced political transition from military rule to democratic administration, there has been renewed content and context in Nigeria-China relations. The details of such expanded relationship are the contents of chapter four (4) of this study. Overall, after a lull in Nigeria‟s relations with it‟s outside world; as a result of the hostility and paranoid (Fawole, 1999 cited in Ojo, 2005) that characterized the country‟s foreign affairs, the 1999 political change over marked the beginning of a renewed relationship with other nations of the world. It is within this context that the Nigeria-China relation is considered in the study.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Despite the benefit, which the two countries derived from their bilateral relationship, analysts have argued that the relationship between Nigeria and China was complex and was never going to be straightforward. But is this relationship the tale of two giants, as (Alaba Ogunsanwo, 2008 cited in Gregory, 2009), the distinguished Nigerian academic and former diplomat would has alleged it, or rather, employing the phrase of the Chinese periodical Chinafrica, a more parochial story of a global „elephant‟ and just one of many Third World „ants‟? The two tales converge concerning China‟s status, which both views correctly characterize as weighty, but diverge in Nigeria. Nigerian officials have noted that there is an unbalanced system in Nigeria-China relations in which the Chinese world become the dominant power while Nigeria would lack the capacity to exert her influence in political dealings (Gregory, 2009). Similar short comings existed in the area of technology transfer and job creation for Nigerian citizen-public officials outside the foreign affairs sectors complained that although Chinese business men were more attractive partners because the development gap is less daunting than with the west actual technological transfer and job creation was low because the Chinese imported their own labour to Nigeria (Utomi, 2009:42). This created a debate among the public officials about how Nigerian‟s relation with China could be better managed. From the foregoing, it appears that Abuja-Beijing bilateral relations were cordial between 1999 and 2009 except for a few instances where Nigerians complained about poor Chinese labour policy and Chinese substandard goods.

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