Contrary to global trends, Nigerians love America

The US's image has declined worldwide since 2000, even among its allies, but polls in Nigeria show climbing approval rates.

from the February 28, 2007 edition

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In America, "unless you are a lazy somebody and you don't work, you can improve yourself. Here in Nigeria you work for 24 hours a day and for what?" he asks. "You die young."

In Nigeria, passenger buses are painted with the American flag. People wear kerchiefs with a red-white-and-blue banner on their heads as they work, and in a country where basic government services such as electricity are in short supply, the vaunted American work ethic is king.

Most West African countries wrested independence from French and British colonizers around 1960, but many have seen real incomes, standards of living, and even life expectancy drop since then.

Paris and London have large West African immigrant populations, and tales of life in Britain have made their way back to Nigeria. Oladimeji, who has never traveled abroad, mimes walking down a London street – head bowed but on the alert for police, who are everywhere, he says.

But in America he would walk tall, he says, as he throws his shoulders back and marches smiling down his imaginary American boulevard, "Like a big man," he says.

For many Nigerians, Uncle Sam is the ultimate "Big Man" – someone with influence and of course, money. In Lagos, everyone has an Oga or master, someone 'bigger' than they are. It's born of a corrupt system wracked with patronage, where connections with a more powerful person are often seen as the only way to get ahead.

While surveys by the Pew Global Attitudes Project say that the US war in Iraq is a "continuing drag on opinions of the United States," many Nigerians are very accepting of the US's muscle flexing.

Furthermore, many others – particularly in the predominantly Christian south of a country nearly evenly split between Muslims and Christians – approve of what Oladimeji describes as America's fight to "civilize" Iraq.

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For further information:
•	Is the US a positive influence in the world? Globescan.com
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