^{Page 623 note 1} Hence the advertising campaign for the privatisation of British Steel: ‘It fries, it flies, it lifts, it shifts, it holds, it folds, it makes, it breaks, it swings, it rings, it drills, it mills, it scans, it cans, it cuts, it shuts, it shines’. The Times (London), 17 09 1988.Google Scholar

^{Page 623 note 2} Nigeria imported ferrous metals (including, presumably, metal-related products) to the value of 9,000 million between 1970 and 1980, according to the Weekly Echo (Lagos), 27 08 1983.Google Scholar

^{Page 623 note 3} New Nigerian (Kaduna), 3 09 1982.Google Scholar

^{Page 623 note 4} Dolgov, Mikhail, The Birth of Ajaokuta (Moscow, 1983), p. 12, quotes the former Soviet Ambassador to Nigeria, Vladimir Snegirev, as having told a press conference that ‘We agreed to build this project for your country at a time when no other country in the world wanted to’.Google Scholar

^{Page 624 note 1} Some have argued that the Soviets recommended the blast furnace system because this was the only technology that they had or wanted to sell. See, for example, New Nigerian, 6 March 1982.

^{Page 624 note 2} Sunday Times (Lagos), 29 06 1980.Google Scholar

^{Page 624 note 3} According to Ofoegbu, Ray, ‘Foreign Policy and Military Rule’, in Oyediran, Oyeleye (ed.), Nigerian Government and Military Rule, 1966–1979 (London, 1979), p. 139, some cases of Soviet rifles were flown to Nigeria during the course of the civil war, while their ammunition magazines came much later by sea.Google Scholar

^{Page 624 note 4} African Concord (Lagos), 10 10 1988.Google Scholar

^{Page 624 note 5} National Concord (Lagos), 5 01 1987.Google Scholar

^{Page 625 note 1} As might be expected, Soviet technical assistance was earmarked for the expansion of the state sector. For an insight into the skilful use of phraseology designed to appeal to the sentiments of new colonial graduates by suggesting that their national goal should be economic ‘liberation’ rather than ‘development’, see Valkeiner, Elizabeth Kridl, The Soviet Union and the Third World: an economic bind (New York, 1983), p. 3.Google Scholar

^{Page 625 note 2} Although the Soviets had furnished assistance on a small scale to e.g. Persia (Iran), Turkey, and Afghanistan before World War II, Stalin's death in 1953 marked a watershed, because they now started calculating the tremendous political dividends that could be derived from technical aid. See Ajayi, E. A., ‘Nigeria-Soviet Aid Relations, 1960–1968’, in Nigeria: Bulletin on Foreign Affairs (Lagos), 1, 3, 01 1972, p. 1.Google Scholar

^{Page 625 note 3} See Valkeiner, op. cit. p. 2.

^{Page 625 note 4} For an assessment of technical assistance offered to developing nations, especially after Stalin's death, see Goldman, Marshall, Soviet Foreign Aid New York, 1967).Google Scholar

^{Page 625 note 5} Valkeiner, op. cit. p. 4.

^{Page 626 note 1} Wachuku, Jaja, Balewa's Minister of Foreign Affairs, ‘confessed to Parliament in 1962 that decisions on some important international matters were left by the cabinet to the Prime Minister’;Google Scholar see Aluko, Olajide (ed.), The Foreign Policies of African States (London, 1977), p. 179.Google Scholar

^{Page 626 note 2} Epelle, Same (ed.), Nigeria Speaks: speeches of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Lagos, 1964), p. 10.Google Scholar

^{Page 626 note 3} For details, see House of Representatives Debates (Lagos), Vol. 2, 1957–1958, pp. 251–2.Google Scholar

^{Page 627 note 1} It was Fashionable in the 1960s for the newly independent states to join the Non-Aligned Movement. By establishing diplomatic relations in Europe with only London and Bonn, the eastern bloc was to be ignored. In any case, there was nothing non-aligned in either the domestic or foreign policy of Nigeria at that time.

^{Page 627 note 2} Ajayi, loc. cit. p. 3.

^{Page 627 note 3} Legvold, Robert, Soviet Policy in West Africa (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{Page 627 note 4} Quoted by Ajayi, loc. cit. p. 3.

^{Page 627 note 5} Okotie-Eboh's ‘just any source’ was clearly a reference to Eastern Europe. The ten countries that had by then given financial assistance to Nigeria were all ‘western’ in either location or outlook: Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, United States, and West Germany. See Alli-Balogun, Gbolahan, ‘Nigeria and Eastern Europe’, in Olusanya, G. O. and Akindele, R. A. (eds.), Nigeria's External Relations: the first twenty-five years (Ibadan, 1986), p. 340.Google Scholar

^{Page 628 note 1} New Times (Lagos), 26, 1962, p. 9.Google Scholar

^{Page 628 note 2} For a breakdown of actual offers from foreign governments and international financial institutions, see Federal Ministry of Economic Development, National Development Plan Progress Report (Lagos, 1964), p. 31.Google Scholar

^{Page 628 note 3} The overtures made towards Eastern Europe did not result in a decline in economic relations with the West; as a matter of fact, these improved tremendously during this period. See US AID Economic Data Book. Africa (Washington, D.C.), Revision No. 257, 04 1971, p. 6.Google Scholar

^{Page 628 note 4} Bruce, D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet arms and diplomacy in local wars, 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 90.Google Scholar

^{Page 628 note 5} Legvold, op. cit. 325.

^{Page 629 note 1} The refusal of the United States to sell arms to the Federal Government so soon after agreeing to supply them to Congo/Zaïre shocked Nigerian officials, not least at a time when commercial links between the two countries were being improved.

^{Page 629 note 2} Rusk, Dean, U.S. Secretary of State during the Johnson Administration; Daily Times (Lagos), 13 07 1967.Google Scholar

^{Page 629 note 3} Legvold, op. cit. p. 325.

^{Page 629 note 4} Stremlau, John J., The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton, 1977), p. 66.Google Scholar

^{Page 630 note 1} Awe, Olumuyiwa, ‘Steel Development in Nigeria: problems and prospects’, Nigerian Academy of Science Lecture at the Ogun State Polytechnic, Abeokuta, 8 January 1983.Google Scholar

^{Page 630 note 2} Ibid. p. 5.

^{Page 630 note 3} Dolgov, Mikhail, The Birth of Ajaokuta (Moscow, 1983), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

^{Page 630 note 4} Daily Times, 29 January 1982.

^{Page 631 note 1} See Federal Government of Nigeria, ‘Nigerian Steel Development Authority Decree No. 19 of 14 April 1971’, pp. A75–82. For details of the responsibilities and activities of the N.S.D.A., see Ali Makele, ‘Steel Development: the Nigerian experience’, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs Lecture, 1 December 1982.

^{Page 631 note 2} Development Outlook (Lagos), I, 8, 01–02 1987, p. 9.Google Scholar

^{Page 631 note 3} Makele, op. cit. p. 18.

^{Page 631 note 4} As Paul Unongo, Minister of Steel in the Shagari Administration, explained: ‘When a negotiation starts off, say at 10.00 a.m., it will drag on until 3.00 a.m. [the next morning]. Everything that you have agreed upon at about 1.00 a.m., by 2.00 a.m. or 3.00 a.m. the Russians would again say no. They would repeat this many times and you will continue for one month. It is in their culture. It is not that they do not like you… But you go with your own result-oriented capitalist system whereby you feel “here is my money, give me what I want”. No, it is not like that.’ Nigerian Institute of International Affairs Lecture, Lagos, p. 53.

^{Page 631 note 5} Unongo, , reported in the Nigerian Herald (Ilorin), 22 07 1980.Google Scholar

^{Page 632 note 1} Nigeria: Bulletin on Foreign Affairs, 11 May 1981, pp. 104–5.

^{Page 632 note 2} Olumuyiwa Awe, op. cit. p. 11.

^{Page 632 note 3} Cf. Afonja, Adeniyi, ‘On the Development of the Iron and Steel Industry in Nigeria’, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs Seminar, Lagos, 25 July 1980.Google Scholar

^{Page 632 note 4} Manners, Gerald, The Changing World Market for Iron Ore, 1950–1980 (Baltimore and London, 1979), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

^{Page 632 note 5} See the report in the Daily Times, 23 February 1982, about the admissions made by officials of the Steel Development Authority to Senators as regards the likely expensiveness of Nigerian steel.

^{Page 632 note 6} Unongo, op. cit. pp. 32–3.

^{Page 633 note 1} Editorial, Nigerian Tribune (Ibadan), 15 12 1983.Google Scholar

^{Page 633 note 2} The details of one incredible fraud at Ajaokuta were painstakingly chronicled in the Sunday Punch (Lagos), 11 12 1983.Google Scholar

^{Page 633 note 3} See Financial Times (London), 10 11 1983, and Daily Times, 12 May 1984, p. 5.Google Scholar

^{Page 633 note 4} Sunday Observer (Benin City), 8 01 1981.Google Scholar

^{Page 633 note 5} Nigerian Herald, 27 February 1982. The Minister of Mines, Power, and Steel made an appeal that these deliveries should be ‘stepped up’ when I. A. Alikhanov, Deputy Chairman of the U.S.S.R. State Committee on Foreign Economic Relations, visited Nigeria in March 1982. See Department of Information, Executive Office of the President, Press Release No. 514, Lagos, 26 March 1982.

^{Page 633 note 6} There were already as many as 7,000 Soviet technicians and their families living in Abuja. According to The Guardian (Lagos), 2 08 1987, a Soviet official admitted that some people think ‘there are too many of us here’.Google Scholar

^{Page 634 note 1} Ojo, Olatunde J. B., ‘The Soviet Union and Nigeria: the quest for influence’, in Afrika Spectrum (Pfaffenhofen), 2, 1985, p. 186.Google Scholar

^{Page 634 note 2} For a through assessment of this view, see R. A. Akindele, ‘Africa and the Great Powers, with Particular Reference to the United States, the Soviet Union and China’, in Ibid. pp. 134–9.

^{Page 635 note 1} Unongo, op. cit. pp. 49 and 53.

^{Page 635 note 2} After returning from one of his trips to Moscow, Paul Unongo declared: ‘I have no doubt in my mind that we are going to have a showdown with the Russians and should there be a crisis, the Government would seek other sources for the completion of the project’; Sunday Times, 29 June 1980, p. 1.

^{Page 635 note 3} Cf. Nwagboso, Maxwell, ‘Development or Fiasco?’, in West Africa (London), 12–1809 1988.Google Scholar