NIGERIA’S QUEST FOR UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL’S SEAT: A MYTH
ABSTRACT:
The United Nations was founded at the end of World War 11 with five major organs, including the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful organ. However, since 1955, there has been a growing demand for the UN Security Council, which is regarded by many as a prominent exclusive club. The paper argued that Nigeria’s disregard for the United Nations’ principles of equity, justice, and fair play precludes her interest in a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, despite her role in World War 1 (WW1) and after World War 11 (WW11) (WW11).
Nigeria joined the international machinery for conflict prevention, management, and resolution under the UN status quo when it gained independence. Nigeria has participated in more than half of all UN, AU, ECOWAS, and other bilateral security operations since 1960.
Nigeria has made enormous sacrifices in all of these operations to ensure global peace and to gain international relevance as a means of securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This military professionalism has elevated the Nigerian military above their regional counterparts.
Nonetheless, the paper dissected the proposal to make the UN more democratic and representative of the world’s diverse people. In light of Africa’s contribution to global security, particularly Nigeria’s efforts, the paper is set to give Nigeria a permanent seat as indicated for, while taking a holistic view of
Nigeria’s prospects for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, as well as analyzing the challenges confronting Nigeria’s hope in obtaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. According to the paper, Africa should strongly support Nigeria’s bid for a permanent seat.
INTRODUCTION:
The United Nations has been described as a vast and striking theater of conflict, interests, value contestation, and mutual aid in the pursuit of solutions to common problems (Akindele, 1999:17). Given the potentially lawless nature of the global society in which it operates, as well as the independent equality of its major and dominant State actors, the United Nations is arguably the most sophisticated political technology ever constructed and developed to maintain international peace and security.
However, the organization’s member states have varying perceptions of it. The few powerful states that designed it from time memorial to demonstrated a determination to preserve the status quo, which historically has been in their favor, the vast majority of member-states, largely concentrated in the southern hemisphere.
The importance of the United Nations has never been questioned in Nigeria. The apparent prominence of the global body in the conduct of the country’s diplomacy is based on the principle of multilateralism, to which the Nigerian state has historically attached great importance. As a weak state with a developing economy, Nigerian decision-makers believed that identifying with other countries through multilateral organizations was the best way for the country to protect its independence and sovereignty.
We recognized that in any State, the military is a significant tool for the pursuit of Foreign Policy (FP), as it provides a background of assurance and stability for diplomacy. As a result, the international system is compelled to respond by devising a variety of strategies to safeguard global peace and security.
International organizations, such as the Concert of Europe, the League of Nations, the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU), and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), are one such means of ensuring global peace. Efforts have also been made at the international and state levels. Nigeria has become relevant in terms of her role in global peace at these levels.
For nearly six decades, Nigeria’s military, among others, has kept the peace and protected the world from the scourge of war. Nigeria attempted to achieve some important elements of her FP objectives under the auspices of the UN, the AU, and ECOWAS, as well as on a few occasions under bilateral arrangements.
These include the protection of Nigeria’s national interests, the promotion of international friendship and cooperation, and the preservation of international peace and security. Fortunately, Nigeria’s participation in various peacekeeping missions is consistent with her bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council (Gbor, 2004: 227).
Nigeria’s prospects for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council were founded on her role in peacekeeping operations even before independence, when the Nigerian Army was dispatched to Ghana in March 1948 to quell a widespread uprising by the Ex-Service Union in Accra (Gbor, Ed al). Nigeria played a prominent role both before and after independence, both on the international stage and, in particular, in the West African sub-region.
Nigeria has participated in all of these operations, either fully or as an observer (Adesina, 2004). With Nigeria’s admission to the United Nations, formal contributions to peacekeeping began during the First Republic. Between her experience in Congo peacekeeping operations in the early 1960s and the year 2007, Nigeria’s Armed Forces kept the peace in over thirty (30) countries and in twenty-five (25) of fifty-one (51) UN peacekeeping efforts to maintain global peace and security (Ogomudia, 2007: 258).
At the continental level, Nigeria participated in the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) now African Union’s (AU) only peacekeeping mission to Chad between 1981 and 1982. Nigeria has participated in sub-regional peacekeeping operations in Liberia as part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Between 1990 and 1997, this effort resulted in the formation of the ECOWAS monitoring group (ECOMOG), which maintained and later enforced peace in Liberia (Ogomudia, 2007:258).
Nigerian contingents were deployed under the auspices of the UN to Congo (ONUC) in 1960-64, Lebanon in 1978-82, Iraq-Iran (UNIMOG) in 1988-91, Iraq-Kuwait (UNIKOM) in 1991-till date, Angola (UNAVEM) in 1991-95, Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR) in 1992-96, Somalia (UNOSOM) in 1993-95, and Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) On a bilateral level, Nigeria has participated in peacekeeping missions in friendly countries, one of which was Tanzania (Tanganyika) in 1964.
Overall, Nigeria’s success in Liberia laid the groundwork for subsequent ECOMOG-led PSOs in Sierra Leone and other troubled areas around the world, including Rwanda, Cote D’Ivoire, and the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (Ogomudia, 2007:259).
Nigeria provides leadership at various levels of the various operations, such as Peacekeeping Force Commanders and Chief Military Observers. In terms of manpower, Nigeria deployed over a thousand (12,000) officers and men to Liberia at the height of the Liberian operation in March 1998.
In terms of costs, over one hundred million naira was spent in Chad and over nine billion dollars in Liberia and Sierra Leone for the maintenance of peace and security (Pogoson, 2007 259). In the last fifty years, Nigeria has committed more material and personnel to global peace in Africa and beyond, with the hope of obtaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Nigeria is now able to play a critical and proactive role in various African conflicts because it is regarded as a functioning democracy. We must now translate our growing African stature into irrefutable grounds for seeking and obtaining a permanent seat on a reformed and expanded United Nations Security Council.
However, as we attempt to accelerate our country’s globalization through the promotion of socioeconomic development, it is clear that charity must begin at home. We must fulfill domestic peace, security, and prosperity aspirations.
If there are pockets of agitation today, political or otherwise, they can be traced back to the real or imagined perception that the leadership has not done everything possible to uplift Nigerians. And when I say leadership, I am not referring to the current government, which is just one of many that have ruled our country since its independence in 1960.
As a nation, we are currently confronted with more challenges than we have previously encountered. Our population has grown from 55 million at the time of independence to nearly 130 million today. Nonetheless, we are told that in our country, children still go to bed hungry, and the majority of families live on less than a dollar a day.
As a result, it is not glib to state that we have a problem in every household, community, and state in this country where the top hierarchies of human needs are not being met. We cannot escape our responsibility in a world rife with affluence but rife with poverty and hunger. This is especially true in Nigeria, which once boasted that agriculture was its primary industry.
Aside from the fundamental challenges that many nations face, new challenges and threats emerge on a daily basis. Most of these are also trans-boundary, and thus have implications for how we interact with other countries. Whereas earlier threats included the fight against poverty and disease, as well as inter-state conflicts,
we now face pandemics of enormous proportions, such as HIV/AIDS, terrorism, which could become a scourge if left unchecked, and growing religious intolerance. It will almost certainly have an impact on Nigeria’s chances of obtaining a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
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NIGERIA’S QUEST FOR UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL’S SEAT: A MYTH
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