CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- Background to the Study
Nigeria, being the most populous country in Africa, has been described as “the giant of Africa, benevolent hegemony”. Besides, Nigeria gained independence in October 1st 1960. By the time of her independence, Nigeria‟s foreign policy guidelines had been formulated by the departing colonial power. These were embodied in a maiden foreign policy statement made by the first civilian prime minister on 20 August 1960 just a few months before formal independence. According to him, Nigeria would follow an independent policy founded on Nigeria‟s interest and consistent with the moral and democratic principles on which our constitution is based.
Paradoxically, it is Nigeria‟s own dominant position in the region and the implication of her leader‟s commitment to the western model of development in circumstances (National as well as Global) hostile to such a course that may well be the most formidable obstacle to the emergence of the community. Indeed, it can be argued that ECOWAS drew considerable strength from the successful negotiation which had been concluded by the EEC with the combined representatives of African, Caribbean and Pacific states as contained in the Lome convention. This unity in the face of a strong and equality United Europe (not withstanding some minor differences within the EEC) impressed, Nigerian leaders in a way that an Economic Community of West Africa, modeled after the European Economic Community, was an immediate imperative.
This conviction led Nigeria to expand a lot of her resources in the campaign for the
establishment of ECOWAS. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Resolutions 142 (viii) and 145 (vii) passed at its seventh session held in Nairobi, Kenya in February, 1965
recommended that member-states of the commission should establish, as soon as possible on sub- regional basis, an inter-governmental machinery for harmonizing their economic and social development. The relative success of the integrative process in other sub-regions of Africa especially in the East African Sub-region with its East African Community provided the stimulus to the countries in the West African Sub-region to evolve their own form of economic co-operation. The arguments for an economic integration always appear overwhelming