ABSTRACT
In the late 1950s, many important contacts were established between Nigerian and Israeli officials through their joint participation in meetings of the labor and socialist movements. Following Nigeria's independence Israel established formal relations and opened a mission in Lagos. Throughout the 1960s Nigeria enjoyed technical assistance from Israel in the form of training Nigerian personnel in Israel and the dispatch of Israeli experts to work in Nigeria. The military coup d'etat of January 1966, and the subsequent civil war that engulfed the country for about thirty months between 1967 and 1970, had a profound impact on Nigerian-Israeli relations. The outbreak of another round of hostilities in the Middle East in October 1973 further complicated Nigerian-Israeli relations. Apart from the Israeli-South African links which continued to remain a complicating factor in Nigerian-Israeli relations, the government was cautious, since the eventual shape of the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations was not yet predictable.
