The Action Group, Ideology and Nigeria’s Foreign Policy 1951-1966: A Re-assessment

The study examines the impact of the colonial economic realities on the emerging Nigerian middle class, Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s nationalist ambition to empower them within these realities, his struggle to articulate his perception of the way to move the nation forward in ideological postulations as reflected in the Action Group’s foreign policy perspectives. Motivated by political and electoral exigencies, the party’s foreign policy platforms suffered from contradictions and inconsistency, opening the party to charges of political opportunism. The party’s electoral debacle in the 1959 federal elections and its impatience with the Balewa administration’s conservative outlook led to further radicalism by the AG. Using Chief Awolowo’s own definition of socialism, albeit incongruous, as opposed to the classical definition, the study takes the position, contrary to Gordon Idang’s claim, that there are enough salient determinants of AG’s foreign policy within the political and economic structure of the pre- and post-colonial Nigerian state to explain the twists and turns of the party’s foreign policy perspectives than dwelling on Chief Awolowo’s childhood ‘deprivations’.