The Anglo-Nigerian Defence Agreement signed at Lagos on 5 January 1961 by Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the British High Commissioner Lord Head granted the UK air-staging rights at Kano and Lagos, training rights for the Nigerian Army (then commanded by British officers until 1965), and a consultative mechanism in the event of external attack — terms identical to the agreements signed with Ghana (which Nkrumah had refused) and Sierra Leone.
The University College Ibadan Students' Union, led by Wole Soyinka, Tunji Aboaba and the future Awolowo lieutenant Bisi Onabanjo, denounced the Agreement as 'a neocolonial servitude' and organised the first nationwide student demonstration in independent Nigeria — converging on the National Assembly at Tafawa Balewa Square on 18 January 1961. Mass arrests at the University of Ibadan, the University College Nsukka and Yaba Technical College followed. Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group in opposition pressed the issue in Parliament.
On 21 January 1962 Balewa unilaterally abrogated the Agreement — the only case in Nigerian history of a federal government tearing up a signed defence treaty in response to student pressure. The episode established the University of Ibadan as the political conscience of the Republic, a role consolidated through the 1962 Western Region crisis (in which Awolowo's prosecution radicalised the campus), the 1978 'Ali Must Go' protests, and the 1989 anti-SAP demonstrations. The defence vacuum the Agreement was meant to fill was never replaced; Nigeria has had no formal mutual-defence treaty with any external power since.