Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations

Building the Record of a Moral Superpower

Philip Aka

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9798216336327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is a broad-ranging argument for thorough reforms at home and abroad in Nigeria as the only antidote to the nation-building dilemmas Nigeria confronts in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Because of its enormous material and human endowments, Nigeria is dubbed the "Giant of Africa." It is a moniker many of its leaders take seriously. Yet, Nigeria is a state rife with instability, some of it periodically erupting into violence. Given still-ongoing national security challenges in the land that notoriously includes a bloody religion-oriented terrorism, the Fourth Republic since 1999, the longest period of continuous democratic rule since independence—key to the timeline of this book—has not been insulated from the spell of instability.

The main argument of this work is that internationally agreed-upon ethical standards embedded in human rights can save Nigeria. This book is a methodologically and theoretically-grounded, seminal discourse on Nigerian foreign relations that spells out the human rights or lack thereof in those relations, including underlying and impinging domestic forces.

This work is set around six issues of application embedded in a temple of Nigeria's human rights foreign policy, comprising two steps and four pillars: reconstructed national interest, increased human rights at home, redesigned peacekeeping, reshaped foreign policy machinery, increased bilateralism in foreign relations, and the use of ECOWAS as human rights tool. Although focused on the period since independence, for proper understanding of events from the past that shape the current patterns of politics in the land, this book also embodies a historical background chapter that overviews the pre-colonial and colonial eras.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter One. Introduction
• Part I. STARTING POINTS
• Chapter Two. Conceptual Framework
• Chapter Three. Theoretical Framework
• Chapter Four. Activities That Shape the Current Patterns of Politics: Historical Backdrop on Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations
• Part II. TEMPLE OF NIGERIA’S HUMAN RIGHTS FOREIGN POLICY (SIX KEY ISSUES RELATING TO THE APPLICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN NIGERIA’S FOREIGN POLICY)
• Chapter Five. Reconstructing Nigeria’s National Interest in a More Human Rights–Sensitive Direction
• Chapter Six. Charity Begins at Home: Increased Respect for Human Rights in Nigeria
• Chapter Seven. Redesigning Peacekeeping to Make It More Human Rights Compliant
• Chapter Eight. Reshaping Nigeria’s Foreign Policy Machinery in a More Human Rights–Sensitive Direction
• Chapter Nine. The Need for More Symmetry Between Multilateral and Bilateral Activities in Nigeria’s External Relations
• Chapter Ten. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations
• Part III. CONCLUSIONS
• Chapter Eleven. Enacting Serious Reforms at Home and Abroad
• Chapter Twelve. But So What? Two Possible Objections to the Argument in This Work and Two Rebuttals to Those Objections
• Appendix. Biblical Passages Related to Human Rights
• References
• Index
• About the Author