Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations by Aka Philip;

Author:Aka, Philip; [Aka, Philip C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Redesigning Peacekeeping to Make It More Human Rights Compliant

The chapter advances proposals on how to redesign or revamp Nigeria’s peacekeeping initiatives to render this policy tool more human rights compliant. It is the third of six issues—after reconstruction of Nigerian national interest and increased human rights at home to impinge on Nigeria’s external relations—and the first of four pillars in the temple of Nigeria’s human rights foreign policy. Peacekeeping is the lifeblood of Nigerian foreign policy. More than any other, it is the tool, spanning the gamut of the three concentric circles of West Africa, Africa, and the globe (discussed in chapter 4), that personifies Nigeria’s external relations. Peacekeeping was the issue with which, at independence in 1960, Nigeria used to cut its teeth in foreign affairs.1

Post-independence, the country has participated consistently in these missions—with the exception, notably, of a hiatus totaling 17 years, first for 12 years in between the Indian-Pakistan conflict of 1965–1966 and Lebanon from 1978–1983, and second for 5 years in between the conflict in Chad from 1982–1983 and the Iran-Iraq war from 1988–1991 (see table 7.1). More on these gaps later in the chapter. In the more than 50 years since its independence, Nigeria has contributed over 150,000 troops—made up of soldiers, police officers, and civilian experts—to United Nations and Organization of African Unity (OAU, later the African Union) peace operations,2 6 of which missions it commanded. These operations, whose Nigerian leaders we identify later in this discussion, are Angola, Congo, Liberia (two times), Sierra Leone, and South Sudan. In human and material terms, Nigeria has expended over $10 billion of its hard-earned money on peacekeeping missions and sacrificed over 2,000 of its nationals, who lost their lives while participating in these operations.3 Key highlights of Nigeria’s peacekeeping experience include the OAU mission in Chad which cost Nigeria $82 million,4 as well as its participation in the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone which cost about $8 billion and claimed the lives of about 1,500 peacekeepers.5 “Although Nigeria’s positions on various issues have changed over the years, its level of activity in international organizations has increased.”6 The sustained activism is due in no small part to peacekeeping.

It is for the foregoing reasons that this work, appropriately, gets its title from that activity. Specifically, the title of the book comes from an address that William J. Clinton, then-president of the United States, gave in August 2000 to a joint session of the Nigerian National Assembly.7 Clinton praised Nigeria for the “extraordinary extent of [its] leadership for peace in West Africa and around the world,” crystallized in “its commitment to peacekeeping.”8 He added instructively, for the punchline here,

I hope our members of Congress who are here today will tell them to their colleagues back home. Over the past decade, with all its problems, Nigeria has spent $10 billion and sacrificed hundreds of its soldiers’ lives for peace in West Africa. . . . In these ways, you are building the record of a moral superpower.

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