9jaRealist:



In fact, Nigeria did economic harm to itself in the course of Africa’s COLLECTIVE struggle for South African liberation - expelling/nationalizing UK and US businesses in Nigeria (Barclays, Standard, Chase, BP, Esso, etc.), blocking direct investment into a Nigeria by several Western companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa, and refusing to sell crude oil to or trade with nations deemed friendly with the Apartheid regime. All of these had a long-lasting (and some would argue, probably still has a) residual effect on the Nigerian economy.

This was in addition to military and non-military support for the ANC and other freedom fighters, material support in form of cash and supplies (including the Southern African Relief Fund, which mandated the deduction of a certain percentage of the wages/earnings of every working Nigerian towards the acquisition/distribution of relief material/supplies to South African exiles), educational and capacity-building support in the form of university scholarships and so on, diplomatic support in the form of the standing UN Committee Against Apartheid that was championed and chaired throughout its existence (bar a couple of years) by Nigeria, as well as accommodating South African exiles in Nigeria (including Thambo Mbeki and, in the initial days of the anti-Apartheid struggle, the late great Madiba Nelson Mandela).

Even though these events occurred well before my time, I do not believe that Nigeria did it with any expectation of reciprocity, but rather for what Nigerians believed was their “manifest destiny” (with a population at the time that amounted to 1 in every 4 Africans and 1 in about every 5 black persons being Nigerian) underpinned by a philosophy that injustice and oppression of black people anywhere is the oppression of all of us. That’s why Nigeria paid the salaries of Antiguan civil servants in the West Indies, endowed HBCUs in the US, supplied crude oil to several African nations at a significant price discount, and donated to minority communities after the Brixton Riots in the UK, among others.
>