Nigeria’s Bilateral Relations with the United States: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Dynamics

This study provides a professional historical and contemporary analysis of Nigeria-United States bilateral relations from Nigeria's independence in 1960 to the present, examining the foundations, patterns, and evolution of the relationship across political, economic, security, and cultural dimensions. Nigeria-US relations have oscillated between close partnership and periods of significant tension, shaped by Cold War alignments, human rights concerns during military rule, oil trade dynamics, and more recently counterterrorism cooperation. Using a professional documentary analysis design, the study reviews US State Department country reports, Congressional Research Service analyses of Nigeria policy, bilateral treaty texts, and secondary academic literature published between 2020 and 2024. The Bilateral Relations Theory and the Neoclassical Realism Framework provide the analytical lenses. Findings reveal that the US-Nigeria relationship is characterised by structural asymmetry, with the United States exercising far greater leverage through conditionality attached to security assistance, AGOA trade preferences, and multilateral loan guarantees than Nigeria can exercise in return. The Leahy Law, which restricts US military assistance to forces credibly accused of human rights abuses, has created persistent tensions in security cooperation, particularly with respect to counter-insurgency support in the North East. The study recommends that Nigeria diversify its external security partnerships to reduce strategic dependency on US assistance conditionality. Keywords: Nigeria-US relations, bilateral diplomacy, security cooperation, AGOA, counterterrorism.