Bilateral relations between Senegal and Nigeria, 1960-1980: cooperation and conflicts

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Periodical article

Title:	Bilateral relations between Senegal and Nigeria, 1960-1980: cooperation and conflicts
Author:	Omole, Bamitale
Year:	1987
Periodical:	Genève-Afrique: acta africana
Volume:	25
Issue:	2
Pages:	79-102
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Senegal Nigeria
Subject:	foreign policy
Abstract:	This article examines the sociocultural, political and economic factors which influenced bilateral relations between Senegal and Nigeria. It argues that the civil war in Nigeria marked the end of friendly relations, and heralded the beginning of an antagonistic and competing relation between the two States. This development was mainly a consequence of Senegal's perception that Nigeria, as a result of her oil wealth in the 1970s, was pursuing an expansionist and hegemonistic regional foreign policy, which threatened to undermine Senegal's political influence amongst the francophone States of West Africa. The ensuing regional rivalry prompted the two countries, amongst other things, to promote the establishement of two competing regional organizations, the CEAO and the ECOWAS respectively. It was the simultaneous, but coincidental, change of political leadership in Dakar and Lagos in 1980 that eventually led to the improvement of bilateral relations between Nigeria and Senegal. Notes, ref., sum. also in French and German.