Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa: Blueprints for the Midcentury 3031481305, 9783031481307

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Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa Blueprints for the Midcentury Philip C. Aka

Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa

Philip C. Aka

Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and SelfDetermination in Postcolonial Africa Blueprints for the Midcentury

Philip C. Aka Global Academics Coalition, LLC Gainesville, FL, USA Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Indianapolis, IN, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-48130-7 ISBN 978-3-031-48131-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

For my family. For victims in the ghastly conflicts for self-determination in postcolonial Africa, including the 3.5 million Igbo who perished in Nigeria’s war over Biafra from 1967–1970.

Preface and Acknowledgments

In state after state, a major problem Africa confronts in the first quarter of the 21st century is insurgencies against a central government. Many of these insurgencies are rooted in struggles for self-determination, either internally for devolution of powers or externally as a separate country. Yet, compared to other world regions, chances for peaceful, nonviolent selfdetermination campaigns are slim in Africa. Of the 40 countries admitted as members of the UN since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, only three, Namibia, Eritrea, and South Sudan, are from Africa—each preceded by protracted and violent campaigns for independence. Change is the only permanent feature of human life, including international relations. Yet in postcolonial Africa, it is practically impossible to change borders without wars. In the light of this unsettling development, this book proposes smallsteps-to-peace blueprints, including constitutional means, for navigating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa. By so doing, the book contributes to existing knowledge on the meaning, process, and effects of the self-determination doctrine, in its intersection with sovereignty. This book comprises eight chapters, broken into three parts, two chapters in Part I and three each in Parts II and III. Part I is dedicated to threshold matters, including the argument of the book and its organization, conceptual framework, and delineation of the shape of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, vivified with examples drawn from six regional and global human rights

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

instruments. Part II comprises detailed case studies of three scenes across three subregions of Africa engulfed in self-determination struggles: Ethiopia in East Africa where the right to self-determination is constitutionalized; Nigeria in West Africa, involving the longest struggle for self-determination where, still, for some reason, that right is not constitutionalized; and Cameroon, straddling West Africa and Central Africa, where recently a longstanding issue of power devolution metamorphosed into a campaign for the right to self-determination. Between them, the case studies embody five self-determination campaigns: Eritrea and Tigray in Ethiopia; Biafra 1 and Biafra 2 in Nigeria; and Ambazonia in Cameroon. In Biafra 1, the self-determination struggle overlapped a civil war and the entity that conducted that campaign was a bona fide government, the same way it was in Tigray more than half a century later. As this book goes to press, three of the campaigns, Eritrea, Tigray, and Biafra 1, are concluded, leaving two, Biafra 2 and Ambazonia, still ongoing. However, except for Eritrea, where not properly addressed, supposedly concluded campaigns can recur in the future—as Biafra 2, the unresolved agitation of the Igbo nearly 30 years after Biafra 1, demonstrates. Part II also uncovers the proposition of this book anchored on the necessity of constitutionalizing the group human right of selfdetermination as a point of departure in resolving the conflict between sovereignty and self-determination. Part III complements and completes the previous two parts. It embodies the projected solutions to the tension between sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of this book, including six object lessons from the case studies, and fourteen blueprints. Every nonfiction book is a collective project embodying a culmination of activities in the lead-up to the work. This book is no different. First the activities. Earlier incarnations of this book were presented at two conferences in 2021. The first was as “Selected Practical Measures for Reconciling the International Law Doctrines of Sovereign Independence and Self-Determination in Africa: Case Study of Nigeria and the Cameroon” at an International Conference on Peace and Justice, held at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, MA, from September 30-October 1, 2021. The second was as “State Practice on the Right to Self-Determination in Africa: Evidence from the Cameroon and Nigeria” at the 7th School of Social Sciences International Conference, held November 3–4, 2021, at the College of Humanities of the University of Ghana. The third, which I was unavoidably unable to attend, was as

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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“Valorizing the Right to Self-Determination in Africa: Strategies for the 21st Century,” at the 79th Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), held April 7–10, 2022, at Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL. I appreciate my listeners at the first two meetings for feedbacks which helped shape the ideas that gave birth to this book. Next on the collectivity of academic work, this book is the net result of contributions from several groups of persons that I am duty-bound to acknowledge in this preface. The first group are all the thinkers whose work products I have drawn upon to build my argument in this book. The depth of my appreciation goes well beyond my acknowledgment of their ideas in the text of the work and footnotes. Another group comprises the peer reviewers of the proposal for this book. I appreciate their suggestions on how to improve the manuscript, and their overall contribution to the peer review system. I also appreciate Anca Pusca, Executive Editor, Palgrave Macmillan in New York, Lucy Everitt, Commissioning Editor for International Studies in London, along with their assistants, Geetha Chockalingam, and Matthew Savin, for timely review of the proposal, for the opportunity to publish with Palgrave Macmillan, and for competently shepherding this manuscript all the way through publication. Last but no means least are friends over the years, nwanne di na mba, in the best tradition of Igbo worldview and thank-you-ness,1 whose solid encouragement over the years has kept me going, some of whom I have encountered in previous stations as colleagues or coauthors: Firas AlDouri, A. B. Assensoh, Joseph Balogun, Chris Botanga, Agber Dimah, Virginia Ejindu, Denis Ekwerike, Richard Ibe, Emmanuel Iheukwumere, Francisca Nzeke, Joel Ogbonna, K. K. Odeluga, Obasi Okafor-Obasi, Felix Onyeise, Nnanna Uma, and Sencer Yeralan, among numerous others. I especially thank Hassan Wahab for numerous acts of generous assistance and support spanning more than two decades. Hassan facilitated the permission from the University of Ghana at Legon where he teaches, for the map used in this book. Consistent with the time-tested canons of academic practice, no one but myself takes the blame for any errors of analysis and interpretation in this work. I gratefully acknowledge

1 Among the Igbo of present-day Nigeria, nwanne di na mba is an eureka expression, one of the most celebratory, for “I found a sibling abroad.”

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the permission of the Department of Geography and Resource Development at the University of Ghana at Legon for the map of Africa, appended below, pinpointing the three project countries at the cynosure of examination in this book. Homewood, USA

Philip C. Aka

Table of National and International Laws Pertaining to this Book

African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights. Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire. Comm. No. 75/92, Eighth Annual Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1994–1995). ACHPR/RPT/ 8th, Annex VI. 1995. Attorney-General of the Federation vs. Attorney-General of Abia State. 4 NILR 5, 2002. CMI256. Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon, 1996. Adopted January 18. Amendment to the Constitution of June 2, 1972. International Labor Organization. Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon, 1985. Adopted May 20, 1972. Promulgated June 2, 1972. Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments. Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961. Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995. Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1987. Proclamation No. 1 of 1987. Negarit Gazetta, 47(1). September 12, 1987. Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1963. Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria, 1960. Corfu Channel (U.K. v. Alb.). Judgment, I.C.J. Rep. 4. April 9, 1945. Ethiopian Constitution of 1931. London: The Government of Ethiopia, 1969. I.C.J. Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo. Advisory Opinion. I.C.J. 403. July 22, 2010. I.C.J. 2002. Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and xi

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TABLE OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAWS …

Nigeria (Cameroon v. Nigeria: Equatorial Guinea Intervening). October 10, 2002. I.C.J. The Frontier Dispute Case (Burkina Faso v. Mali). I.C.J. 544. December 22, 1986. Organization of African Unity (OAU). African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter). CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58. June 27, 1981. Organization of African Unity [OAU], Border Disputes Among African States. AHG/Res 16(I). July 17–21, 1964. Nigeria (Constitution) Order in Council, 1954. Statutory Instrument 1954. No. 1146. August 30, 1954. Organization of African Unity (OAU). Charter of the Organization of African Unity. May 25, 1963. Organization of African Unity (OAU). Constitutive Act of the African Union. July 1, 2000. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869). UN General Assembly. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. UN Treaty Series 999. December 16, 1966. UN General Assembly. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. UN Treaty Series 993. December 16, 1966. UN General Assembly. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Resolution No. A/RES/61/295. October 2, 2007. UN General Assembly. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 217 A (III). December 10, 1948. UN General Assembly. Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. G.A.O.R., 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/ 4684. December 14, 1960. United Nations. Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945).

Map of Africa with the Three Countries Featured in the Book Europe

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Fig. 1 This map is reproduced with grateful permission from the Department of Geography and Resource Development at the University of Ghana at Legon

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Contents

Part I Starting Points 1

Argument Introduction Rifeness of Self-Determination Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa Significances of the Book Troublesome Tension Statecraft in Africa and Contradictory Messages from Global Institutions Debate Against Absolutizing Sovereignty Juxtaposing the Three Countries on a Set of Key Indicators Caveat: Identification of the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination Does Not by Itself Exhaust the Merit of This Book The Kanu Saga from Nigeria as a Textbook Example of the Problem This Book Addresses Extraordinary Rendition of Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021 Opinion of the UN Working Group Related to Kanu Latest Denouement Related to the Kanu Trial Takeaways from the Kanu Saga Intersection of International Law, Constitutional Law, and Conflict Resolution from the Prism of the Three Case Studies

3 3 5 8 8 10 13 16

23 26 27 28 30 32

32 xv

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CONTENTS

Need for More Constitutional Law in Discussions Relating to Sovereignty and Self-Determination Importance of Constitutional Law as a Conflict Resolution Mechanism The Three Case Studies Organization of This Book Appendix A to Chapter 1: Loci of Separatist Movements in Africa Appendix B to Chapter 1: New States Admitted to UN Membership Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 2

Conceptual Framework Introduction Indicators of the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination: Survey of Six Global and Regional Instruments Foundational Role of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Relating to the Six Instruments UN Charter The ICCPR and ICESCR The UNDRIP OAU Charter The CAAU Norm of Sovereignty Defining Sovereignty Rise of the Sovereign State Circumscription of the Sovereign State The Right to Self-Determination Relationship Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination Conclusion Appendix to Chapter 2: Fundamental Freedoms Embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Part II Constitutional Law and the Right to Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa: Three Case Studies

33 34 35 38 44 47 51 51

53 56 57 58 60 63 67 69 69 71 76 78 83 88 90

CONTENTS

3

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Constitutionalized Setting: Ethiopia in Comparative Perspective Introduction Ethiopia, Land of the Blue Nile: Basic Facts Related to the Country Etymology of Ethiopia Geopolitical Features and Demographic Profile Mainstay of Ethiopia’s Economy Social Revolution and Popular Upheaval in Ethiopia After Selassie Justifying the Portraiture of Ethiopia as Land of the Blue Nile Ethiopian Constitutionalism from 1931 to 1995 Pre-1931 The 1931 Constitution The 1955 Constitution The 1987 Constitution The 1995 Constitution Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution Multiple Accomplishments of Article 39 Two Unavailing Criticisms of Article 39 The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Ethiopia Self-Determination Struggles in Ethiopia Before 1995: Eritrea Basic Facts on Eritrea Three Key Events in Eritrea’s Self-Determination Campaign Collapse of the Federation Experiment Between Ethiopia and Eritrea The Eritrean War of Independence The Referendum on Eritrean Independence Gauging the Status of the Right to Self-Determination in Ethiopia Since 1995: Critique of the Theory of Ethnic Federalism The Civil War in Ethiopia from November 2020 to November 2022 The Trouble With the Theory of Ethnic Federalism Conclusion

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97 97 98 98 101 105 108 113 115 115 117 119 122 126 130 130 133 135 138 139 142 144 146 152

155 155 164 169

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CONTENTS

Key dates in Ethiopian constitutional and self-determination histories 4

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Non-constitutionalized Setting: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective Introduction Basic Facts Related to Nigeria, “Giant of Africa” Etymology: From “Amalgamation” to British Crown Colony Navigating Native Resistance Through a Semblance of Constitutional Reforms Independence, Republicanism, and the Experience of Federalism Since Independence Demographic Features and Profile Mainstay of Nigeria’s Economy Justifying the Giant of Africa Moniker Nigerian Constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999 The 1960 Constitution The 1963 Constitution The 1979 Constitution The 1999 Constitution The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Nigeria Biafra 1: 1967–1970 Causes and Courses of the War A “Cruel War” Two Silver Linings from the Biafra War Immediate Aftermaths of Nigeria’s War Over Biafra Biafra 2: The Period Since 1999 under the Fourth Republic Igbo Self-Determination Initiatives under MASSOB from 1999 until 2011 Igbo Self-Determination Initiatives under IPOB Since 2012 Matters Arising: Two Lingering Questions Begging for Answers The Coterminous-ness of Igbo as an Ethnic Group and Biafra Why Nigeria Did Not Precede Ethiopia in Constitutionalizing the Right to Self-Determination Conclusion

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173 173 175 175 178 180 186 190 196 199 199 201 203 206 208 211 213 219 222 227 231 236 237 240 240 245 250

CONTENTS

Appendix A to Chapter 4: Key Dates in Nigerian Constitutional and Self-Determination Histories Appendix B to Chapter 4: Text of “The Kaduna Declaration” Preamble Observations Our Stand Prelude to Final Separation Conclusion 5

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Non-Constitutionalized Setting: Cameroon in Comparative Perspective Introduction Cameroon, “Africa in Miniature”: Basic Facts Related to the Country Etymology of Cameroon Geopolitical Feature and Demographic Profile Cameroon’s Political History from Precolonial Through Colonial to the Period Since Independence and After Mainstay of Cameroon’s Economy Portraiture of Cameroon as “Africa in Miniature” in Analytical Perspective Cameroonian Constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008: A Tale of Three High(er) Laws The Constitution of 1961 The 1972 Constitution The 1996 Constitution The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Cameroon The South Cameroon Problem: Demands for Restoration of Federalism Negating the Proposition that Abolishing Federalism Affirmed the Political Maturity of Cameroonians: Multiple Voices Individuals Separatist Organizations Political Parties All-Anglophone Conferences A Disconcerting New Phase in Cameroon’s “Anglophone Problem”

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253 255 256 256 258 258 260

261 261 262 262 264 268 274 276 278 281 284 289 294 297

297 299 301 301 302 304

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Government Crackdown on Peaceful Demonstrations The South Cameroon Problem: Crossover into Demand for Separate State Declaration of Independence by Southern Cameroonians as Federal Republic of Ambazonia The Cameroonian National Government’s Response to the Declaration Conclusion: Now What? Appendix: Key Dates in Cameroonian Constitutional and Self-Determination Histories

307 309 309 312 318 321

Part III Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self Determination in Postcolonial Africa 6

7

Object Lessons from the Case Studies Introduction Recapitulation of Case Study Materials from Chapters 3 to 5 Collage of Six Object Lessons from the Case Studies The Privilege of Sovereignty Over Self-Determination to the Point of Reification Failure of Power Devolution Indicative of a Love of Concentrated Powers Failure of Social Justice Bad Structure The Need to Go Beyond Constitutionalization of Self-Determination The Counterproductivity of Cracking Down on the Free Exercise of Self-Determination Conclusion

325 325 327 329

Blueprints for the Midcentury Introduction Tale of Three Parties Central Governments Agitators for Self-Determination International Community Collage of Fourteen Blueprints For Central Governments Blueprint No. 1: Respect the International Law Doctrine of Self-Determination

353 353 355 356 356 356 360 364

331 334 340 343 346 347 350

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CONTENTS

Blueprint No. 2: Don’t Use Force Against the Legitimate Exercise of the Right to Self-Determination Blueprint No. 3: Address the Legitimate Concerns of Agitators for Self-Determination Blueprint No. 4: Respond Appropriately to Agitations for Self-Determination Blueprint No. 5: Take Power Devolution Seriously Blueprint No. 6: Take Social Justice Seriously Blueprint No. 7: Put More Quality in Civil-Democratic Rule Self-Determination Agitators Blueprint No. 8: Conduct Your Campaign with Maturity and Responsibility Blueprint No. 9: Commit Yourselves to the Pursuit of a Qualitatively Different State and Society Blueprint No. 10: Practice Internal Democracy and Accountability Blueprint No. 11: Don’t Expect Quick Results Blueprint No. 12: Be Realistic The International Community Blueprint No. 13: Place the Right to Self-Determination on the Same or Near Footing as Sovereignty Blueprint No. 14: Don’t Intervene For the Midcentury Changing Demography in Africa Ameliorating the Tension in the Interest of International Peace and Security Conclusion 8

Conclusions and Prospects for the Future Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa Factors Which Lent Urgency and Exigency to the Proposals in This Book Achievements of the Book Prospects for the Future Analysis of Three Voices on the Recognition of the Right to Self-Determination as a Matter of International Law

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365 366 367 368 369 370 372 372 374 375 376 377 379 379 380 383 383 384 386 391 391 393 394 399 399

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CONTENTS

Timothy W. Waters Stephen Tierney Dapo Akande Final Word

400 402 403 404

References

407

Index

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Abbreviations

ACHPR ACS ADP AU CAAU CACSC CNU CPDM DRC ECA ECCAS ECOWAS ELF ELM ENDF EPLF EPRDF FDRE IBRD ICCPR ICESCR ICJ IMF IPOB

African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Banjul Charter) American Colonization Society Amhara Democratic Party African Union (formerly Organization of African Unity, OAU) Constitutive Act of the African Union Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium Cameroon National Union (Union Nationale Camerounaise, UNC, in French). Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement. Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Economic Community of Central African States Economic Community of West African States Eritrean Liberation Front Eritrean Liberation Movement Ethiopian National Defense Force Eritrean People’s Liberation Front Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights International Court of Justice (World Court) International Monetary Fund Indigenous People of Biafra xxiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

MASSOB NRS OAU OIC OLF OPDP PDRE PMAC PP SCACUF SCNC SDF SEPDM SSS TGE TPLF UK UN UNDESA UNDR UNDRIP UNOVER UNPO UPC US(A) WCIP WPE

Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra National regional state(s) Organization of African Unity (now African Union, AU) Organization of the Islamic Conference Oromo Liberation Front (Shene) Oromo People’s Democratic Party People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Provisional Military Administrative Council Prosperity Party (Ethiopia) Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front Southern Cameroons National Council Social Democratic Front Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement State Security Service (Nigeria’s secret police) Transitional Government of Ethiopia Tigray People’s Liberation Front United Kingdom or Britain (more formally the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). United Nations United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Universal Declaration of Human Rights Unite Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples UN Observer Mission to Verify the Referendum in Eritrea Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization Union des Populations du Cameroun United States of America World Conference on Indigenous Peoples Workers’ Party of Ethiopia

List of Tables

Table 1.1

Table 2.1 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table Table Table Table

4.4 5.1 5.2 6.1

Table 6.2 Table 7.1

Juxtaposition of the three countries on selected indicators embedded in the intersection of sovereignty, self-determination, constitutional law, and conflict resolution Six human rights instruments matched against Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon Major ethnic groups of Ethiopia Ethiopia’s eleven national regional states (NRS) List of Ethiopian leaders and the constitutions they are associated with Nigerian states and federal capital territory Major ethnic groups of Nigeria Parade of Nigerian leaders and the constitutions they are associated with Igbo states of Nigeria Ten regions of Cameroon (in order of population) Major ethnic groups of Cameroon Recap in graphics of case study materials from Chapters 3 to 5 Recap of the object lessons Recap of the blueprints for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination

17 54 103 104 136 184 188 209 241 267 267 327 330 361

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PART I

Starting Points

CHAPTER 1

Argument

Introduction The United Nations (UN) was founded after World War II, as a successor to the League of Nations, to promote international peace and security, including the use of “effective collective measures” for settling international disputes or situations that might lead to a breach of peace.1 Taking this pacific, nay pacifist, goal as a starting point,2 this book formulates and presents small-steps-to-peace proposals, dressed up as blueprints, for harmonizing two complementary doctrines of International Law, namely: the principle of sovereignty, and the group right to self-determination. The blueprints are distilled from an exhaustive study of five self-determination campaigns from three countries, each scene of conflicts between claimants of sovereignty and self-determination, and 1 United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945) [hereinafter UN Charter], art. 1(1), https://treaties.un.org/doc/pub lication/ctc/uncharter.pdf. To achieve this, the UN holds itself ready to take “effective collective measures” to prevent and remove threats to peace, suppress breaches of the peace like aggression, and settle international disputes or situations that might lead to a breach of peace. Ibid. 2 See ibid., preamble (expressing the determination of “We the peoples of the United Nations” “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_1

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each clothed in material amply extensive and coherent to inform the blueprint. Each case study is preceded by a sketch of basic facts related to each country organized around a distinctive moniker, although, in each instance, save for one country, more apparent than real. In due tribute to the emerging role of Constitutional Law as a tool for moderating the tension between the complementary doctrines, each of the case studies is drenched in constitutional analysis unique to each country, including the politics of constitutional engineering. This chapter is both an entrance into the book and its argument. Excluding this brief statement of introduction, the following discussion comprises five sections and two attachments. The five sections are: rifeness of conflicts in postcolonial Africa, evident in numerous campaigns for self-determination, that belie the contrarian claim of a “secessionist deficit” in the region; significances of the book, including its delineation of the troublesome tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa, comment on statecraft in Africa and contradictory messages from global institutions bearing on the tension, the debate against absolutizing sovereignty doctrine in Africa, and a caveat that identification of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination does not by itself exhaust the merit of this book; the Kanu saga from Nigeria as a textbook example of the hydra-headed nature of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of this study, but also the need for policy measures at the domestic and global levels embedded in conflict resolution as a possible viable way out; a preliminary commentary on the intersection among International law, Constitutional law, and conflict resolution, subsequently fleshed out by the case studies of struggles in self-determination in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, elaborated in Chapters 3–5; and a word on the organization of the book. The two attachments are Appendix A on the widespread loci of separatist movements in Africa and Appendix B on the roster of new states admitted into the UN since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which marked the end of the Cold War between the worlds of capitalism and socialism.

1

ARGUMENT

5

Rifeness of Self-Determination Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa When two elephants tangle, the grass suffers.3 So, not that it justifies it, during the Cold War from 1945 to 1991 between East and West, exemplified by the world’s then two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union,4 Africa suffered. Coincidentally, many African countries gained independence within this period.5 However, in the post-Cold War, Africa continues to be a region rife with conflicts.6 “Ever since most of the region became independent in the 1960s[,] there has been no point in time that a major war is not going on somewhere in Africa. No single country in the continent has collapsed entirely from violence [...] but then

3 John Simpson and Jennifer Speake, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 5th Ed. (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2008). 4 Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017); Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007); Joseph Smith, The Cold War, Second Edition, 1945– 1991 (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998). See also Spencer C. Tucker, The Encyclopedia of the Cold War, 5 Vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007) (an integrated history of the geopolitical rivalry in five volumes); and Geir Lundestad, East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Relations Since 1945 (London, UK, and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005). 5 See notes 64–65 below and accompanying texts. See also Piero Gleijeses, “Africa in the Cold War,” Oxford Bibliographies (last modified October 27, 2021); Jay Dee, “The Cold War in Independent Africa,” Writing Anthology, Central College, Pella, Iowa, USA (July 2, 2019), https://central.edu/writing-anthology/2019/07/02/the-cold-war-in-ind ependent-africa/; and US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960,” https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asiaand-africa. 6 See Philip C. Aka, “Human Rights as Conflict Resolution in Africa in the New Century,” Tulsa Journal of Comparative and International Law, 11(1) (2003), 179–183.

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not one country has also totally escaped periods of militant or subversive strife.”7 Such is the poverty and elusiveness of political cohesion in Africa.8 Many conflicts in the contemporary world are linked to struggles for self-determination9 ; the bulk of these struggles occurs in postcolonial Africa (see Appendix A at the end of this chapter). Based on the diagram, 23 out of the 55 countries in Africa,10 are scenes of separatist movements. These states are Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Comoros, Republic of the Congo (Congo Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo Kinshasa or former Zaire), Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Libya, and Mali. Others are Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somaliland, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Thirty-two states relatively free from separatist activities are Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Gabon, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, and Lesotho. Others are Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, and Tunisia. Because big states like Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are loci of insurgency, overall, in aggregate land area, more countries have these separatist movements than lack them. 7 Philip C. Aka, “The Military, Globalization, and Human Rights in Africa,” New York Law School Journal of Human Rights, 18(3) (2002), 361, 388. See also Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh, Jr., eds., Civil Wars in Africa (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022) (blaming the outbreak of these intrastate conflicts on the fact that many governments in postcolonial African states failed to build inclusive societies that cater to the political and socioeconomic needs of the citizenry, among other deficiencies and inadequacies). 8 The widespread-ness calls to mind the complaint in the Bible that the Prophet Habakkuk lodged to God: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? […] Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.” Holy Bible, New International Version, Habakkuk 1:1–2. 9 Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander, “Introduction,” in Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), xiv. 10 See African Union, “Member States,” https://au.int/en/member_states/countrypr ofiles2 (broken down into 15 states in West Africa, 14 states in East Africa, 10 states in Southern Africa, 9 states in Central Africa, and 7 states in North Africa).

1

ARGUMENT

7

Testament to the rifeness of conflict and violence in Africa is a crisis of homelessness signified by refugeehood.11 About 30 million people, representing one-third of the world’s refugee population, including internally displaced persons seeking asylum, are from Africa12 ; about 18 million of these homeless persons come from sub-Saharan Africa alone.13 Africa is also the world region where droves of youth flee from in search of the greener pastures of better economic futures abroad that they cannot find in their birth countries.14 This speaks volumes for a continent preeminently rich in natural resources, including arable land, water, oil and natural gas, minerals, forests, and wildlife.15 There are studies on conflict resolution in Africa that point to a “secessionist deficit,” evident in a supposed agreement to “stick together.”16 However, the reality on the ground is a rifeness of conflicts in postcolonial Africa, many due to struggles for self-determination arrayed against claims to sovereignty, anchored on territorial integrity, by a remote central government in state after state. Upon closer examination, some aspects of the secessionist deficit thesis lack plausibility. Take the proposition of Englebert and Hummel to the effect that Africa has experienced relatively 11 See generally Toyin Falola and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, African Refugees (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2023). 12 See UNHCR USA, “Africa,” https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/africa.html#:~:text=Aro und%2030%20million%20internally%20displaced,of%20the%20world’s%20refugee%20popu lation. 13 Aderanti Adepoju, “Migration Dynamics, Refugees[,] and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa,” United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/migrat ion-dynamics-refugees-and-internally-displaced-persons-africa#:~:text=According%20to% 20the%20United%20Nations,Nigeria%2C%20South%20Sudan%20and%20Burundi. 14 See UNICEF, Harrowing Journeys (New York: UNICEF, September 2017), https://www.unicef.org/media/49046/file/Harrowing_Journeys_Children_and_youth_ on_the_move_across_the_Mediterranean-ENG.pdf. 15 See UN Environment Program, “Our Work in Africa,” https://www.unep.org/reg ions/africa/our-work-africa#:~:text=The%20continent%20has%2040%20percent,internal% 20renewable%20fresh%20water%20source (elaborating that Africa is home to a huge proportion of the world’s renewable and non-renewal natural resources, including 65 percent of arable lands, about 30 percent of mineral reserves, 8 percent of natural gas, 12 percent of oil reserves, 40 percent of gold, about 90 percent of chromium and platinum, the largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum, and uranium, as well as 10 percent of internal renewable fresh water source). 16 See Pierre Englebert and Rebecca Hummel, “Let’s Stick Together: Understanding Africa’s Secessionist Deficit,” African Affairs, 104(416) (July 2005), 399–427 (commenting on a “secessionist deficit” in postcolonial Africa).

8

P. C. AKA

fewer secessionist conflicts than other world regions, even though it is otherwise plagued with political violence and its countries tend to display a higher prevalence of the factors usually associated with separatism.17 The statement is a contradictory proposition that ties into separatism, rather than rules it out.18

Significances of the Book Three significances of this book are its statement delineating the troublesome tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa that it tackles, its comments on statecraft in Africa and contradictory messages from especially global institutions bearing on the tension, and the contribution that it makes to the debate against absolutizing sovereignty in Africa. Two other highpoints, on grounds of their importance, listed here as significances, are a caveat to the effect that identifying the tension between sovereignty and self-determination that the book makes does not by itself exhaust the merit of the work, and a juxtaposition of the three countries under examination in the study on a set of key indicators, many of which are used as reference points in subsequent chapters of the book. Troublesome Tension This book tackles a troublesome issue at the intersection of sovereignty, self-determination, International Law, Constitutional Law, and conflict resolution in Africa. The issue revolves around the tension that exists in postcolonial Africa between sovereignty, á la claim of territorial integrity by a central government, on the one hand, and oppressed or marginalized

17 See ibid. 18 The postulation of a secessionist deficit in the face of the widespread insurgen-

cies that postcolonial Africa confronts calls to mind the wisdom of the New York Times commentator, David Leonhardt, building on the aphorism of the American astronomist and planetary scientist, Carl Sagan (1934–1996), to the effect that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” David Leonhardt, “The Phone in the Room,” New York Times, The Morning (February 27, 2023). According to Leonhardt, decision makers faced with life-and-death situations must make real-life judgments that academic studies subsequently unambiguously validate. For given the reality that some questions do not lend themselves easily to elegant experiments, making decisions based on the totality of available evidence is better than dependence on correlations of artificial experiments. Ibid.

1

ARGUMENT

9

groups impacted by such claim who seek to exercise the right to selfdetermination on the other hand.19 The tension has skewed the balance between the two complementary doctrines of International Law to the point of enervation, evisceration, and near-negation of the right to selfdetermination. Thus, a challenge the international community faces today, one no less pressing and momentous in International Relations as to “why nations go to war,”20 is how to redress the perpetuated imbalance in statecraft pertaining to the two complementary doctrines of International Law in many countries in postcolonial Africa. Using three countries from three key subregions of Africa, all scenes of active conflict, as window into the world, this book outlines proposals embedded in conflict resolution for redressing the tension between the two doctrines. The three countries mapped out for microscopic attention are Ethiopia from East Africa, Nigeria from West Africa, and Cameroon, straddling West Africa and Central Africa.21 Because it is the fountainhead for the securement and enjoyment of individual or personal rights, the right to self-determination arguably ranks as the mother of all human rights.22 Yet, in state after state in 19 Tension means a state of imbalance or latent disagreement between two phenomena. See “Tension,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Indicators of this tension are elaborated in Chapter 2 devoted to conceptual framework. 20 See John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, 10th Ed. (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2007). See also Luc Reychler, “Challenges of Peace Research,” International Journal of Peace Studies, 11(1) (Spring/Summer 2006), 1–16 (“Since the end of the Second World War, many scholars have been engaged in the study of war and peace”). The expression “international community” is elaborated in Chapter 7 which sets forth proposals for ameliorating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination. 21 For a selection of works on the geopolitical importance of the three subregions, see, for East Africa: Christian Jennings, “Eastern Africa: Regional Survey,” in Encyclopedia of African History, ed. Kevin Shillington (Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005), 649– 659; and Sandra Fullerton Joireman, Institutional Change in the Horn of Africa (Irvine, CA: Universal Publishers, 1997); West Africa: Eleanor Scerri, The Stone Age Archaeology of West Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Themes in West Africa’s History (Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers, 2006); and Anthony G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); and Central Africa: Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), https://web.archive.org/web/20071214034859/http://www. africa-union.org/root/au/recs/eccas.htm. 22 See Philip C. Aka, “Human Rights as Conflict Resolution in Africa in the New Century,” note 6, 205–206 (“[T]o promote human rights and reduce conflicts in Africa in the new century, attention needs to be paid to both individual and group rights

10

P. C. AKA

postcolonial Africa, the attempt to use this right is frustrated by insecure governments which invoke the mantra of territorial integrity, replete with negative ramifications for the enjoyment of the corresponding right to self-determination. This creates avoidable dilemmas, such as scenarios where ethnic groups “utilize self-determination to escape oppressive colonial regimes[,] but must live with subsequent, homespun, oppression.”23 These scenarios raise questions regarding the extent to which domestic autonomy sufficiently guarantees the rights of minority groups.24 Because self-determination is a critical genre of human rights, invocation by a central government of sovereignty—and its corollary of territorial integrity—rings thin in the face of egregious and systematic violations of the human rights of a group. Statecraft in Africa and Contradictory Messages from Global Institutions A second significance of this book relates to its comment on statecraft in Africa and contradictory messages from especially global institutions bearing on the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa. It is necessary that we pause here to explain the accent on global institutions. That explanation takes the form that, although the African Union (AU) (formerly the Organization of African Unity, OAU), an association of independent African states, arguably ranks among those

and due recognition given to the relationship between the two rights. Group rights need attention in the continent because […] abusive state policies put groups at risk […]. Proper attention to human rights in the continent requires that the two rights go together […]. No strategy for human rights promotion in the continent will succeed that does not pay strong attention to group rights” like the right to self-determination). See also UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, No. ST/ESA/328 (New York: United Nations), 192 (“Charter VI: Human Rights”), https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP/en/SOWIP_web. pdf (“Human rights and fundamental freedoms can only exist truly and fully when selfdetermination also exists”; “[s]uch is the fundamental importance of self-determination as a human right and a prerequisite for the enjoyment of all the other rights and freedoms”). 23 Joshua Dilk, “Reevaluating Self-Determination in a Post-Colonial World,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, 16 (2010), 289, 300. 24 See Duncan French, ed., Statehood and Self-Determination: Reconciling Tradition and Modernity in International Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

1

ARGUMENT

11

institutions, as an intergovernmental entity, the AU follows UN leadership on many key issues of international relations, an occurrence which renders its role secondary. The disharmony between the two complementary doctrines of International Law taking place in Africa arises because of statecraft domestically in African states and inconsistent application of the right to self-determination in global institutions.25 Inconsistent application is where the UN comes in. Time and again, messages emanating from the organization privilege sovereignty-cum-territorial integrity over selfdetermination. During the Nigerian civil war, elaborated upon in the case study on Nigeria in Chapter 4, the UN took the position that selfdetermination is only applicable to the entire population of a State, not a section of it.26 UN Secretariat insists the door to future statehood remains open, yet maintains that “if every ethnic, religious or linguistic group claimed statehood, there would be no limit to fragmentation, and peace, security and economic well-being for all would become ever more difficult to achieve.”27 Preceding this statement, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or World Court), a key UN organ, ruled, in a border dispute between Burkina Faso and Mali, that the “obvious purpose” of uti possidetis juris, the principle mandating maintenance of artificial colonial boundaries,28 “is to prevent the independence and stability of new states being endangered by fratricidal struggles provoked by the changing of frontiers following the withdrawal of the administering power.”29 Rather than break “the cycle of warfare and degradation that plague[d]” postcolonial Africa,30 the ready defense of territorial integrity 25 Chapter 7, containing blueprints for ameliorating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, sheds more light on this line of argument. 26 Dilk, note 23, p. 301. 27 Language of then UN Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali, in “The Secretary-

General, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-Keeping,” Delivered to the Security Council and the General Assembly, U.N. Doc. A/47/277, S/ 241 11 (June 17, 1992), 17. 28 Malcom N. Shaw, “The Heritage of States: The Principle of Uti Possidetis Juris

Today,” British Year Book of International Law, 67 (1996), 75, 97 (defining uti possidetis juris as meaning that “new States will come to independence with the same boundaries that they had when they were administrative units within the territory or territories of a colonial power”). 29 The Frontier Dispute Case (Burkina Faso v. Mali), I.C.J. 544 (December 22, 1986). 30 Dilk, note 23, p. 289.

12

P. C. AKA

in the guise of sovereignty has, instead, created “disaster across [the region] in the form of corrupt authoritarian regimes, genocide, starvation, and the continuance of the same basic failures of human existence,” reminiscent of the colonial era.31 Groups who need the protection of self-determination do not have “to choose the certainty of post-selfdetermination confusion and conflict over the other equally unpalatable option of doing nothing at all.”32 In its denouement in postcolonial Africa, International Law prohibits states from undermining the territorial integrity of fellow states, but where a secessionist movement is successful, International Law grudgingly accepts it.33 Paradoxically, this perpetuated abridgment of the right to self-determination takes place in an Information Age where, enduring human rights atrocities at home that in some cases include genocide, proponents of the right to self-determination hold themselves out as nations who deserve to use the tool that right affords to determine their political fate.34 In sum, although “the potential for splitting is highest in” postcolonial Africa, statecraft in the region remains “most firmly [stuck] against secession.”35 Because it is still imbued with the baggage of “attitudes and strategies toward self-determination that were developed before and during the Cold War,” the international community has not responded

31 Ibid., p. 290. 32 Ibid., p. 291. 33 Alex de Waal and Sarah M.H. Nouwen, “The Necessary Indeterminacy of Self-

Determination: Politics, Law and Conflict in the Horn of Africa,” Nations and Nationalism, 27 (2021), 41, 47. 34 See Patricia Carley, Self-Determination: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Right to Secession, Report from a Roundtable Held in Conjunction with the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, March 1, 1996), ix, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks7.pdf. (In the era of the Information Age, “peoples around the globe have an increased awareness of the state system’s seemingly permanent configuration and of their place in it. Some of these groups […], are now seeking to exercise what they see as their right to self-determination, which they assume includes the right to independent statehood”). On the Information Age and Society, see, for example, Frank Webster, Theories of the Information Society, 3d. Ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 8–32, 263–273 (sections devoted to the Information Society); and James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 1986). 35 Crawford Young, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 82.

1

ARGUMENT

13

effectively, expeditiously, and innovatively to contemporary claims to selfdetermination.36 A dilemma of modern international relations theory and diplomacy, nothing of its kind before now, that Africa confronts is how to harmonize the imbalance between sovereignty and self-determination. Given the interdependent world we live in, the problem raises the question for the international community regarding at what point the negative consequences of absolutizing sovereignty outweighs any potential benefits,37 as well as for a more efficient and painless way—propounded by this study—around the dilemma. Debate Against Absolutizing Sovereignty A third significance of this book lies in its contribution to the literature on conflict resolution in Africa in the post-Cold War period,38 anchored on the debate against the absolutization of sovereignty in postcolonial Africa.39 To the minimization or near-exclusion of other social forces in society, many regimes in postcolonial Africa hold themselves out as the state40 ; little different from the colonial regimes of the past, they have constituted themselves into “an apparatus of violence,” who

36 Wolfgang Danspeckgruber and Anne-Marie Gardner, “Self-Determination,” Encyclopedia Princetoniensis, https://pesd.princeton.edu/node/656. 37 See Dilk, note 23, p. 304. 38 Philip C. Aka, “Human Rights as Conflict Resolution in Africa in the New Century,”

note 6, pp. 179–209 (2003). 39 See, for example, Francis M. Deng et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996), 1–33 (mapping out the “Normative Framework of Sovereignty”). An imagery that springs to mind is King Louis XIV of France who, in an address to the French Parliament on April 13, 1655, declared “I am the state.” Achyut Wagle, “I am the State,” The Kathmandu Post (Kathmandu, Nepal) (May 8, 2017), https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2017/ 05/08/i-am-the-state. 40 Social forces are “any human created ways of doing things that influence, pressure, or force people to behave, interact with others, and think in specified ways.” “Social Forces,” Sociology Guide, https://www.sociologyguide.com/socio-short-notes/soc ial-force.php. They are elements within a society capable of changing the direction of that society. John Spacey, “[Forty-Five] Examples of Social Forces,” Simplicable (April 18, 2022), https://simplicable.com/en/social-forces. Examples of these forces include the educational system, families, and organizations like the media, firms, markets, industries, and technology, especially entities not controlled by the government. See ibid.

14

P. C. AKA

rely on “compliance [embedded in] coercion rather than authority.”41 Because action begets reaction, this occurrence coincides with arguments for the tie of sovereignty with responsibility, specifically, as Francis M. Deng posited, ability “to perform the tasks expected of an effective government,” vis-à-vis the needs of its citizens: Sovereignty is not merely the right to be undisturbed from without, but the responsibility to perform the tasks expected of an effective government [...]. The obligation of the state to preserve life-sustaining standards for its citizens must be recognized as a necessary condition of sovereignty [...]. The state has the right to conduct its activities undisturbed from the outside when it acts as the original agent to meet the needs of its citizens [...]. If the obligation is not performed, the right to inviolability should be regarded as lost […].42

Deng explained that a government should not claim sovereignty if it is not able to establish legitimacy by meeting minimal standards of good governance and responsibility for the security and general welfare of its citizens.43 The debate reached a high point in 1999, on the eve of the new century, with then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s enunciation of a concept of two sovereignties. In the speech, Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the UN and the first Black African to hold the position, matched state sovereignty against individual sovereignty.44 He defined “individual sovereignty” as “the fundamental freedom of each

41 Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996), 3. 42 Deng et al., note 39, p. xviii. 43 Francis M. Deng, “Reconciling Sovereignty with Responsibility: Basis for Interna-

tional Humanitarian Action,” in Africa in World Politics: The African State System in Flux, 3rd Ed., eds. John W. Harbeson and Donald Rothchild (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 353, 357. 44 Kofi Annan, “Two Concepts of Sovereignty,” United Nations (September 18, 1999), https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/articles/1999-09-18/two-conceptssovereignty. Boutros-Boutros Ghali (1922–2016), sixth Secretary-General of the UN from 1992 to 1996 was from Egypt, North Africa.

1

ARGUMENT

15

individual, enshrined in the charter of the UN and subsequently international treaties,” instructively adding that individual sovereignty “has been enhanced by a renewed and spreading consciousness of individual rights,” such that “[w]hen we read the charter today, we are more than ever conscious that its aim is to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them.”45 Consistent with this repositioning of individual sovereignty, Annan posited that state sovereignty, “in its most basic sense, is being redefined,” such that “[s]tates are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa.”46 In the light of this sovereignty-as-responsibility redefinition, given the numerous challenges of the modern era that humanity faces, Annan urged states to embrace a broader definition of their national interests, one which induces them “to find greater unity in the pursuit of common goals and values,” specifically collective interest as national interest.47 Comprehensive examination of the doctrine of self-determination, including its “new role and meaning in the emerging global system” is an idea whose time has come.48 This book is designed as a less contentious contribution in the search for a harmonious relationship between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, in an era of democratic decline in the region, in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic.49 It is a response to clarion calls for new approaches for comprehending the contours of post-Cold War international politics, including the role of the international community, amidst lingering 45 Annan, note 44. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 36. 49 See Peter Mwai, “Gabon Coup: The Latest in a Series of Military Takeovers on

the Continent,” BBC News (August 30, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-afr ica-46783600; Nana Amoateng, Military Coups in Africa: A Continuation of Politics by Other Means?” Accord (August 19, 2022), https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-tre nds/military-coups-in-africa-a-continuation-of-politics-by-other-means/; and John Campbell and Nolan Smith, “What’s Happening to Democracy in Africa,” Council on Foreign Relations (May 26, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/article/whats-happening-democr acy-africa (counting Ethiopia and Nigeria among countries where the relapse in democracy is taking place).

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barriers that impede legitimate exercise of the right to self-determination in postcolonial Africa, that some commentators analogize to underdevelopment of the doctrine in this world region50 ; and enlightened statecraft in African states, joined with equally enlightened techniques of implementation globally, designed to address the constraints that impede enjoyment of this group human right. Juxtaposing the Three Countries on a Set of Key Indicators A fourth mark of importance from which this work draws its significance lies in the juxtaposition here of the three countries under examination, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, on a set of key indicators referred to repeatedly, as a baseline, in subsequent chapters of the book, including Chapters 3–5 which provide extensive treatments on the trio. Table 1.1 juxtaposes the countries on selected indicators embedded in the intersection of sovereignty, self-determination, constitutional law, and conflict resolution at the heart of this book. The information anticipates the more detailed material on each country presented in Chapters 3–5. Contrary to the popular adage, few things speak for themselves. Therefore, in no order, the ranking of the countries on some of the indicators need brief elaboration. The first indicator relates to date of independence. Although Ethiopia is broadly listed as never colonized, the country came under colonial rule by Italy from 1935 until 1941.51 Such was the overriding influence of European rule on African lives that, save perhaps for Liberia, no African

50 See M. Ya’Kub Aiyub Kadir, “Application of the Law of Self-Determination in a Postcolonial Context: A Guideline,” Journal of East Asia and International Law, 9(1) (May 2016), 7–8. 51 See Alberto Sbacchi, Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935–1941 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1997).

Date of independence

Population (estimate as of 2022) Population growth rate (estimate as of 2022) Area (including land and water)

1.

2. 3.

Over 29 m 2.75 percent

Over 225 m54 2.53 percent 923,768 sq. km

1,104,300 sq. km55

(continued)

475,440 sq. km

Jan. 1, 1960

Cameroon

Oct. 1, 1960

Nigeria

June 26, 1945 (never colonized)52 Approx. 114 m53 2.46 percent

Ethiopia

ARGUMENT

CIA World Factbook, note 51.

55 The figure for Ethiopia is an estimate, given that a large portion of the country’s border with Somalia is undefined. “Ethiopia,”

fourth most-populous country after China, India, and the US, see “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated February 21, 2023), if it remains together then as one country.

54 Based on its demographic profile, Nigeria is projected to hit a population mark of 392 million by 2050, making it the world’s

ronmental degradation, and raising vulnerability to food shortages.” “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 51 (“Demographic Profile”).

53 CIA data point up that “Ethiopia’s rapid population growth is putting increasing pressure on land resources, expanding envi-

of the UN in San Francisco in 1945,” Africa Renewal (October 28, 2020), https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/october2020/africa-countries-founding-un-san-francisco-1945. Ethiopia is one of four countries in Africa who were founding members of the UN. The other three are Egypt, Liberia, and South Africa. Ibid. Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa and one of the oldest in the world, with a history of uninterrupted existence that goes back at least 2000 years. See “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated February 21, 2023).

52 That was the date Ethiopia was admitted to the United Nations. See Frank Kuwonu, “Four African Countries at the Founding

4.

Selected indicator

Item no.

Table 1.1 Juxtaposition of the three countries on selected indicators embedded in the intersection of sovereignty, self-determination, constitutional law, and conflict resolution

1

17

Comparison

Three largest ethnic groups

Mainstay of the economy

Type of government

Legal system

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Federal parliamentary republic Civil law

Agriculture

Oromo, Amhara, and Somali56

Slightly less than twice the size of TX in the US

Ethiopia

Mixture of English common law, Islamic law,59 and customary law

Petroleum products (crude oil) Federal presidential republic

Six times the size of GA or slightly more than twice the size of CA in the US Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba57

Nigeria

Unitary presidential republic Mixture of English common law, French civil law, and customary law

Slightly larger than CA or about 4 times the size of PA in the US Bamileke-Bamu; Beti/ Bassa, Mbam; and Biu-Mandara58 Agriculture

Cameroon

Watch, “’Political Shari’a?’: Human Rights and Islamic Law in Northern Nigeria” (September 21, 2004), https://www.hrw.org/rep ort/2004/09/21/political-sharia/human-rights-and-islamic-law-northern-nigeria. The twelve states, in alphabetical order (not order of adoption), are Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. See Human Rights Watch, “The Extension of Shari’a to Criminal Law in Nigeria” (2004), https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/nigeria0904/4. htm#:~:text=By%202002%2C%20twelve%20states%20had,jurisdiction%20to%20try%20criminal%20cases.

59 Since 2000, twelve states in northern Nigeria have adopted Islamic law as their constitutional and legal codes. See Human Rights

World Factbook (Last updated February 10, 2023).

58 Based on CIA estimate as of 2018, these three ethnic groups made up 60.5 percent of the population. See “Cameroon,” CIA

Factbook, note 53.

57 Based on CIA estimate as of 2018, these three ethnic groups made up 66.7 percent of the population. See “Nigeria,” CIA World

56 Based on CIA estimate as of 2022, the three ethnic groups made up 67.1 percent of the population. See ibid.

Selected indicator

(continued)

Item no.

Table 1.1

18 P. C. AKA

18.

17.

16.

15.

14.

13.

12.

Labor force (estimate as of 2021) Labor force by occupation in percentage

10. 11.

Ethiopia

56,664 m 72.7 agric., 7.4 industry, and 19.9 services (estimate as of 2013) Rate of unemployment (estimate as 3.6 percent of 2021) Rate of youth unemployment 5.7 percent (15–24 years, male and female combined) (estimate as of 2021) Share of population below poverty 23.5 percent (estimate as line of 2015) Real GDP per capita estimate as of $2,300 2021 (in US dollars in 2017) Life expectancy at birth (male and 68 years female combined) (estimate as of 2022) Literacy (male and female 15 and Approx. 51.8 percent (as above who can read and write) of 2017) Education expenditures (share of 4.5 percent (estimate as of GDP) 2019)

Selected indicator

Item no.

0.5 percent (as of 2013)

62 percent (as of 2018)

Over 61 years

40.1 percent (estimate as of 2018) $4,900

19.6 percent

9.79 percent

65.116 m 70 agric., 10 industry, and 20 services (estimate as of 1999)

Nigeria

(continued)

Over 71 percent (as of 2018) 3.2 percent (estimate as of 2020)

Over 63 years

37.5 percent (estimate as of 2014) $3,700

6.6 percent

11.81 m 70 agric., 13 industry, and 17 services (estimate as of 2001) 3.87 percent

Cameroon

1 ARGUMENT

19

Health expenditures (share of GDP as of 2020) Military expenditures (estimate as of 2021) Portion of population using the Internet (estimate as of 2020) Refugee population

Internally displaced persons (IDPs)

19.

23.

874,909 (as of 2022 and 2023)60 2.72 million (as of 2022)

24 percent

0.5 percent

3.8 percent

Ethiopia

983,281 (as of 2022)

471,340 (as of 2022)62

86,731 (as of 2022)61 3.12 million (as of 2023)

38 percent

1 percent

3.5 percent

Cameroon

36 percent

0.7 percent

3.4 percent

Nigeria

Factbook, note 57.

62 The figure breaks down into 124,651 refugees from Nigeria, and 346,689 from Central African Republic. “Cameroon,” CIA World

World Factbook, note 51. The remainder were from South Sudan. and Somalia in 2003, 410,727 from South Sudan, and 252,496 from Somalia. Ibid. 61 These refugees came from Cameroon. “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook, note 53.

60 Of the number, 211,686 came from Eritrea and Sudan in 2022, 162,993 from Eritrea and 48,693 from Sudan. “Ethiopia,” CIA

Sources “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated February 21, 2023); “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated February 21, 2023); “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated February 10, 2023); “Economy of Nigeria,” Britannica; WWF, “WWF Cameroon Strategic Vision on Food and Agriculture,” https://cameroon.panda.org/our_work/food_and_agriculture/#:~:text=Agriculture%20is%20the%20mainstay%20ofcontribution% 20to%20the%20country’s%20GDP; and USAID, “Agriculture and Food Security,” https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/agriculture-and-food-security#:~: text=Ethiopia’s%20economy%20is%20dependent%20on,farms%20are%20below%20regional%20averages

22.

21.

20.

Selected indicator

(continued)

Item no.

Table 1.1

20 P. C. AKA

1

ARGUMENT

21

country escaped the experience.63 In this sense, the reference to postcolonial Africa in this book applies no less to Ethiopia than it does to the two other countries on our study list. Still on this indicator, both Nigeria and Cameroon became independent in 1960, the famed “Year of Africa” when seventeen African countries achieved independence from European colonial rule.64 In 1961, eighteen other countries followed suit, with thirteen others doing so by the end of the 1960s.65 The second indicator pertains to the rapid growth of population in each of the three countries, more

63 Although Liberia was founded in 1847, long before the Berlin Conference (1883– 1885), the US held a colony in the country. See US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Founding of Liberia, 1847,” https://history.state.gov/milestones/18301860/liberia#:~:text=In%201816%2C%20a%20group%20of,the%20world%20at%20that% 20time. The colonization of the country originated in 1816, when “a group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) to deal with the ‘problem’ of the growing number of free blacks in the United States by resettling them in Africa,” making Liberia “the second (after Haiti) black republic in the world at that time.” Ibid. In short, the creation of Liberia as US colony “was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests.” Ibid. Moving forward, although the US did not acquire colonies from its participation in the Berlin Conference from November 1884 to February 1885, nonetheless, its role was not that of a disinterested observer. Instead, the US sought to protect perceived actual and potential interests in Africa. For one thing, the US helped validate the claims of King Leopold II of Belgium on the Congo. G. Macharia Munene, “The United States and the Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa, 1884–1885,” Transafrican Journal of History, 19 (1990), 73–79, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24328676 (abstract). 64 Katherine Everett et al., “The Year of Africa,” Origins (Ohio State University) (December 2020), https://origins.osu.edu/article/year-of-africa-1960-rumba-pan-afr icanism-Kariba?language_content_entity=en#:~:text=The%20year%201960%20is%20know n,the%20global%20process%20of%20decolonization. The seventeen, in order of their independences, are Cameroon on January 1 from France, Togo on January 27 from France, Madagascar on June 26 from France, Democratic Republic of the Congo (later Zaire) on June 30 from Belgium, Somalia on July 1 from Britain, Benin on August 1 from France, Niger on August 3 from France, Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso) on August 5 from France, Ivory Coast (later Côte d’Ivoire) on August 7 from France, and Chad on August 11 from France. “1960: The Year of Independence,” France 24 (February 16, 2010), https://www.france24.com/en/20100214-1960-year-indepe ndence. Others are Central African Republic on August 13 from France, Republic of the Congo on August 15 from France, Gabon on August 17 from France, Senegal on August 20 from France, Mali on September 22 from France, Nigeria on October 1 from Britain, and Mauritania on November 28 from France. Ibid. 65 Everett et al., note 64.

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so Nigeria and Ethiopia, within economic systems largely steeped in agriculture in a postindustrial age,66 with negative ramifications for provision of social services like education and healthcare.67 In all three countries, these services are currently minimally funded, with large swathes of the population living below poverty line, more so for Nigeria, for all its vast human and material resources, compared to the other two. The third pertains to the governmental system. Although Ethiopia and Nigeria are both federal republics, Ethiopia has a parliamentary system of government while Nigeria has a presidential system, like the US from which it copied its presidentialism on a federal system whose introduction predated the country’s independence in 1960. Like these two countries, Cameroon has a presidential system that, unlike its two counterparts, is embedded in a unitary republic. As the discussions on the constitutional arrangements in these countries make clear, these differences in governmental systems have ramifications for the legitimate exercise and enjoyment of the human right to self-determination by citizens. Ethiopia’s federalism is still steep in infancy, Nigerian federalism is still mostly so in name, and Cameroon superimposes a presidential system of government in a unitary format shorn of the decentralized structure in France, from which it borrowed its governmental model. We will return to these differences in governmental system and their significations related to power devolution at more length in Chapter 6 dealing with the object lessons from the case studies.

66 Understanding a postindustrial society requires us to break a modern economy into agriculture, industry (or industrialization), and services. A postindustrial society would be one where the economy has moved successfully from agriculture and industrialization toward mostly services. Examples of these societies would be the US and Japan. See Ashley Crossman, “Post-Industrial Society in Sociology,” ThoughtCo (Updated May 30, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/post-industrial-society-3026457. Nigeria’s economy is still in the non-postindustrial mode since it simply replaced its economy at independence embedded in agriculture with one based on export of crude oil into the world market. See Philip C. Aka and Joseph Abiodun Balogun, Healthcare and Economic Restructuring: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective (Gateway East, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 40–41. 67 See Philip C. Aka et al., The Political Economy of Universal Healthcare in Africa:

Evidence from Ghana (London and New York: Routledge, 2022), 92–93 (“Rapid Population Growth Inconsonant with Supply of Healthcare Services”) (quoting the wisdom of one Nigerian demographer to the effect that “If you don’t take care of population, schools can’t cope, hospitals can’t cope, there’s not enough housing—there’s nothing you can do to have economic development”).

1

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The fourth and last relates to the campaign for self-determination. The low spending on defense for all three countries is beside the point since African law enforcement personnel need much less competence to suppress dissent, including campaigns for self-determination, within their mostly impoverished populace than they need to secure their borders and maintain a semblance of domestic tranquility. In this respect, under the circumstances, a more reliable indicator is the large number of refugees and internally displaced persons in each country. Caveat: Identification of the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination Does Not by Itself Exhaust the Merit of This Book Although important, identification of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa that this book embodies does not by itself exhaust the message of the work or its merit. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, signifying the end of the Cold War between the worlds of capitalism and socialism with the developing world straddled in-between the two opposing political and ideological systems,68 forty territories have gained independent statehood, each of which has been admitted into UN membership (see Appendix B at the end of this chapter). Of the number, only 3, namely, Namibia, Eritrea, and South Sudan, representing 7.5 percent of the total, came from Africa. Each of the new African states came after arduous and bloody struggles for self-determination, some like Eritrea and South Sudan, raging for one whole generation and beyond, leaving the unmistakable impression that, compared to other world regions, peaceful, nonviolent, campaigns for self-determination are practically impossible in Africa. Put differently, self-determination struggles in the world generally end nonviolently—except in Africa, where it is practically impossible to move borders without wars. For the region, even under a new world order

68 The Berlin Wall, in place from August 13, 1961, to November 9, 1989 was “one

of the most powerful and enduring symbols” of the Cold War between East and West. “Berlin Wall,” History (Updated March 3, 2021), https://www.history.com/topics/ cold-war/berlin-wall#:~:text=at%20high%20speeds.-,The%20Berlin%20Wall%3A%20The% 20Fall%20of%20the%20Wall,to%20cross%20the%20country’s%20borders. For more on the Cold War, see notes 4–5 and accompanying texts.

24

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relatively shorn of the ideological rivalry between East and West, International Law prohibits states from undermining the territorial integrity of fellow states, only to reluctantly accept it where a secessionist struggle is successful.69 In a world still dominated by Whites, the whole atmosphere smacks of racism in international relations under the new world order after World War II embedded in the UN.70 An interlocuter could respond that Africa already has many states. The answer to such criticism is that Africa is the second-largest continent in

69 See note 33 and accompanying text. 70 Somdeep Sen, “Race, Racism, and the Teaching of International Relations,” Interna-

tional Studies (January 28, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626. 013.666; Kelebogile Zvobgo and Meredith Loken, “Why Race Matters in International Relations,” Foreign Policy (June 19, 2020), https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/ why-race-matters-international-relations-ir/ (arguing that the time has come to change the atmosphere of Western dominance and white privilege that permeates the International Relations field); and Alexander Anievas et al., eds., Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Color Line (London: Routledge, 2014) (seeking to position International Relations as an intellectual and strategic tool through which to confront the global color line, by articulating the central importance of race and racism in the field, thereby repairing the failure of International Relations to grant race and racism explanatory agency in its conventional analyses). Going beyond theory, commentaries abound about the inherently “racist character of the contemporary international system,” indicated by multiple issues, such as “the deeply unjust historical foundations of the present system,” economic disparity between the industrialized North and the developing South, responses to humanitarian suffering, and refugees, among others. Katie Lockwood, “Is the International System Racist?” E-International Relations (March 3, 2019), https://www. e-ir.info/2019/03/03/is-the-international-system-racist; and Tilden J. Le Melle, “Race in International Relations,” International Studies Perspectives, 10(77–83) (2009) (arguing that, for all the important changes that have taken place in world politics, including the emergence of China and India, two non-European countries, as major powers, “[t]he international system remains still a white dominant racially stratified system”).

1

ARGUMENT

25

the world, next after Asia.71 Next also to Asia, it is populous.72 Moreover, for the most part, states in the region are artificial countries, with boundaries not guided by natural features, created by European powers, who met at the Berlin Conference in Germany (1884–1885) to harmonize their “scramble for Africa.”73 Following its formation in May 1963, the then OAU committed itself to respect boundaries drawn arbitrarily by European colonial overlords.74 Yet, there is no major state in Africa since decolonization that does not enclose within its borders a disgruntled minority with a complaint of exclusion that in some places goes beyond marginalization to include genocide.75 This is despite the stipulation in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) forbidding

71 Africa has a land area of 11.6 million square miles, compared to 17.2 million square miles for Asia. See Matt Rosenberg, “The [Seven] Continents Ranked by Size and Population,” ThoughtCo (Updated April 11, 2020), https://www.thoughtco.com/ continents-ranked-by-size-and-population-4163436. Comparatively, the continent has an area more than three times that of the US. “Continent,” National Geographic, https:// education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/Continent. To frame the comparison differently, Africa has enough land space to fit in the landmasses of China, the US, Europe, India, and Japan. Edward Paice, “By 2050, a Quarter of the World’s People Will Be African—This Will Shape Our Future,” Guardian (London) (January 20, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/20/by-2050-a-qua rter-of-the-worlds-people-will-be-african-this-will-shape-our-future. 72 Africa is home to 1.3 billion people, versus 4.6 billion people for Asia. Rosenberg, note 71. 73 See Matt Rosenberg, “The Berlin Conference to Divide Africa,” ThoughtCo (Updated June 30, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/berlin-conference-1884-1885-divide-africa1433556. For more on the conference, see Chapter 2, notes 188–197 and accompanying texts. 74 See Organization of African Unity [OAU], Border Disputes Among African States,

AHG/Res 16(I) (July 17–21, 1964). 75 See Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Brilliant Mhlanga, eds., Bondage of Boundaries and Identity Politics in Postcolonial Africa (Pretoria, South Africa: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2013). See particularly, Eric George and Nazar Hilal, “Africa in Search of (In)security: Beyond the Bondage of Boundary,” 45–60; Aleksi Ylonen, ¨ “The State and the ‘Southern Problem’ in Sudan: Marginalization, Self-Determination[,] and Secession,” 130–147; Eric Ebola Elong, “The Anglophone Problem and the Secession Option in Cameroon,” 148–162; Frederick Kisekka-Ntale, “Colonialism, Postcolonial Violence[,] and Repression: Reflections on the Northern Question in Uganda,” 237–256; and Olayode Kehinde Olusola. “Sovereignty, Self-Determination[,] and the Challenge of Nation Building in Contemporary Africa,” 290–304.

26

P. C. AKA

“the domination of [one] people by another.”76 In short, argument about “secessionist deficit” in postcolonial Africa does not fly in the light of the groundswell of separatist activities in numerous countries, summarized in Appendix A, three of which states, identified above, we use in this book.

The Kanu Saga from Nigeria as a Textbook Example of the Problem This Book Addresses On July 20, 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (hereinafter the UN Working Group, Working Group, or Group) published a report pertaining to the disharmonious relationship between sovereignty and self-determination in present-day Africa at the heart of this book. The Group is an offspring—and offshoot—of the United Nations Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental agency tasked with responsibility for protecting and promoting human rights across the world.77 For its part, the UN Working Group investigates cases of arbitrary detention and other denials or abridgements of liberty, inconsistent with the international standards embedded in global human rights instruments.78 Among other roles, the Working Group also conducts field missions designed to better comprehend latent forces on the ground in 76 See African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter), Organization of African Unity (OAU), CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (June 27, 1981) [hereinafter Banjul Charter], art. 19, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3630.html. 77 Formed in 1991 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, before March 2006, the Human Rights Council used to be known as the Commission on Human Rights. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis, 13 from Africa, 13 from Asia-Pacific, 8 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 7 from Western Europe, and 6 from Eastern Europe. See Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Welcome to the Human Rights Council,” https://www.ohchr.org/ en/hr-bodies/hrc/about-council; and Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Membership of the Human Rights Council,” https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bod ies/hrc/membership. Based on the ordinary dictionary definition of the term, to protect human rights is to preserve or guarantee these rights, using formal or legal measures, to keep them safe from harm or injury. See “Protect,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Similarly, based on the ordinary dictionary definition of the term, to promote human rights is to further the progress of these rights through support or active encouragement. See “Promote,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 78 See “Methods of Work of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” U.N. Doc. A/HRC/36/38 (July 13, 2017), ¶ 7, https://documents-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/ GEN/G17/190/80/PDF/G1719080.pdf?OpenElement. The Working Group’s most powerful tool in addressing the problem of arbitrary detention is investigating individual

1

ARGUMENT

27

countries that give vent to arbitrary detentions and related denials of liberty.79 Extraordinary Rendition of Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021 The report here in question is related to Nnamdi Kanu, a key figure in the Igbo self-determination movement in Nigeria in the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) that has received new impetus under the country’s Fourth Republic since 1999.80 Kanu, a dual-citizen of Nigeria and Britain, who lived in the UK before his rendition from Kenya to Nigeria in June 2021,81 is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a nongovernmental organization which campaigns for Igbo separation from Nigeria through peaceful and nonviolent means.82 The Nigerian government is prosecuting Kanu for treason (which it complaints. An investigation proceeds in four distinct steps: (i) a source, such as an individual or non-government organization, brings a claim; (ii) the accused government has an opportunity to reply; (iii) the source may respond; and (iv) an opinion may be issued. David S. Weissbrodt and Brittany Mitchell, “The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Procedures and Summary of Jurisprudence,” Human Rights Quarterly, 38(3) (August 2016), 655, 667. 79 “Methods of Works of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” note 78. 80 See Chapter 4 detailing the dynamics of the self-determination struggles in Nigeria,

embodying two campaigns, denominated Biafra 1, and Biafra 2. 81 “Rendition,” more formally known as “Extraordinary Rendition” “is the practice of kidnapping or capturing” an accused person and transporting that individual to a country location where he or she faces “a high risk of torture or abuse [during] interrogations.” ACLU, “Extraordinary Rendition,” https://www.aclu.org/issues/nat ional-security/torture/extraordinary-rendition#:~:text=Extraordinary%20rendition%20is% 20the%20practice,torture%20or%20abuse%20in%20interrogations. The term originated from the intelligence-gathering techniques of US law enforcement agencies, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where domestic American and international legal safeguards do not apply. In the notorious colloquialism of former CIA agent Robert Baer: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.” ACLU, “Fact Sheet: Extraordinary Rendition,” https://www.aclu.org/other/fact-sheet-extraordi nary-rendition. 82 See Benjamin Maiangwa, “What Drives the Indigenous People of Biafra’s Relentless Efforts for Secession,” Conversation (July 12, 2021), https://theconversation.com/whatdrives-the-indigenous-people-of-biafras-relentless-efforts-for-secession-163984.

28

P. C. AKA

analogizes to “levying war” against Nigeria), as well as for terrorism.83 Chapter 4 of this book focuses on IPOB and other groups agitating for Igbo separation from Nigeria in the name of Biafra. Opinion of the UN Working Group Related to Kanu The UN Working Group gave an opinion related to the prosecutions of Kanu since June 2021, including his arrest in and rendition from Kenya, torture, and indefinite detention in Nigeria by the Nigerian secret police.84 Through its 16-page report, adopted on April 4, 2022, at its 93rd session, held March 30 and April 8, 2022, the Working Group criticized both the Nigerian and Kenyan governments for engaging in these violations, contrary to their international human rights obligations, including those emanating from their ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).85 It ruled that Kanu is “being persecuted for the peaceful exercise of his rights, most notably his freedom of opinion and expression,” a guarantee necessary for the full development of the individual within the meaning of the ICCPR.86 The Nigerian government charged Kanu of “levying war” against it and the country.87 However, the Working Group observed that the same government failed to provide evidence of any action implicating Kanu in the contemplation, planning, or incitement of war against Nigeria.88 To the contrary, Kanu advocated nonviolently for a referendum to determine the fate of Biafrans.89

83 “Nigerian Court Upholds Treason Charges against Nnamdi Kanu,” Africa News (January 20, 2022), https://www.africanews.com/2022/01/20/nigerian-court-uph olds-treason-charges-against-nnamdi-kanu//; and Timothy Obiezu, “Nigerian Separatist Leader Arrested, Faces Trial,” VOA Africa (June 30, 2021), https://www.voanews.com/ a/africa_nigerian-separatist-leader-arrested-faces-trial/6207665.html. 84 Absent the text of the opinion here in question, the following discussion draws on an extensive reporting, including excerpts of the decision from “UN Orders Immediate Release of Nnamdi Kanu from Detention,” The Will (July 23, 2022), https://thewillni geria.com/news/un-orders-immediate-release-of-nnamdi-kanu-from-detention/. 85 See ibid. 86 “UN Orders Immediate Release of Nnamdi Kanu from Detention,” note 84. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid.

1

ARGUMENT

29

Given these findings, the UN Working Group advised the Nigerian government to “immediately release Kanu unconditionally” and compensate him for perpetuated arbitrary violation of his fundamental human rights; recommended that government officials responsible for the torture meted out to him be investigated and punished; and gave the government six months to report back to it regarding steps it has taken to comply with the Group’s recommendations.90 And given the “collusion between the Governments of Kenya and Nigeria in the rendition of Mr. Kanu,” it said, “both Governments bear joint responsibility for” the perpetuated violations of Kanu’s rights which took place in Kenya and Nigeria.91 The UN Working Group referred the case to the Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment for further determination related to Kanu’s torture.92 In support of its finding of arbitrary detention anchored on illegal arrest, rendition, torture, and nominal judicial proceedings against Nnamdi Kanu, the Working Group reasoned severally as follows. First, pre-trial detention “should be the exception rather than the rule, and […] for the shortest time possible,” during which timeframe an accused person has the right to challenge the lawfulness of his or her detention before a court.93 Instead, here, the Working Group finds no legitimate grounds for the delays in Kanu’s prosecution.94 An accused person under detention pending trial is entitled to trial within a reasonable time, failing which he or she should be set free.95 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. Created in 1985, in the leadup to the formation of the UN Working Group in 1991, the Special Rapporteur on torture and related persecutions, has a key role in upholding the UN’s absolute prohibition of torture, by responding to torture complaints, overseeing conditions of detention throughout the world, and hammering out standards and recommendations designed to promote accountability and prevent torture. In July 2022, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Alice Jill Edwards, an Australian national, as the seventh occupant of this office. The first woman to come to this position, Edwards assumed office on August 1, 2022. See “Special Rapporteur on Torture,” United Nations Human Rights Special Procedures, https://www.ohchr.org/en/specialprocedures/sr-torture#:~:text=Current%20mandate%20holder,-Dr.&text=Alice%20Jill%20E dwards%20(Australia)%20is,tenure%20begins%20on%201%20August. 93 “UN Orders Immediate Release of Nnamdi Kanu from Detention,” note 84. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid.

30

P. C. AKA

Second, a detainee has the right to legal assistance by counsel of his or her choice, which right the accused must be promptly informed of upon apprehension.96 This right to effective counsel should not be unreasonably curtailed.97 However, “by failing to allow Mr. Kanu to be represented by lawyers of his choice, including an international counsel, the [Nigerian] Government denied Mr. Kanu’s right to legal assistance at all times.”98 Third, the rule relating to presuming an accused person innocent until proven guilty was also violated. During Kanu’s arraignment in court, the State Security Service (SSS), Nigeria’s secret police, “surrounded the court complex with an array of armed forces, creating an atmosphere of intimidation and danger.”99 Similarly, accused persons “should not be presented to the court in a manner indicating that they may be dangerous criminals, as this also undermines the presumption of innocence.”100 This violation occurred in Kanu’s case. Fourth, following his rendition from Kenya to Nigeria, Kanu had been held in solitary confinement at the SSS headquarters in Abuja in a small cell where he was exposed to daily psychological and mental torture, without access to other inmates or any other person, except SSS officers.101 And although there is indication that he suffers from a serious heart condition, the Nigerian government has refused Kanu access to medical care.102 Fifth, detention without trial and related abridgments of personal liberty must be subject to effective oversight and control by the judiciary which, here again, did not take place.103 Latest Denouement Related to the Kanu Trial On October 12, 2022, in the latest denouement related to the Kanu trial, a three-member panel of Nigeria’s Appeals Court based in Abuja 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. The Working Group assessed untoward treatment of Kanu’s lawyers as “entirely unacceptable” and a violation of international human rights standards. Ibid. 99 “UN Orders Immediate Release of Nnamdi Kanu from Detention,” note 84. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid.

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threw out the charges against the separatist leader, on the ground that his arrest through extraordinary rendition was unlawful.104 For this reason, the panel reasoned, the Federal High Court, which all along handled the case, lacked the jurisdiction to try Kanu, to begin with.105 The charges the three-member panel threw out were the seven remaining out of the initial fifteen preferred against him.106 The Nigerian national government quickly indicated it would not release Kanu, on the ground that “Kanu was only discharged and not acquitted.”107

104 See Ishaq Khalid and Cecilia Macaulay, “Nnamdi Kanu: Nigerian Court Drops

Charges against Separatist IPOB Leader,” BBC News (October 14, 2022), https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63241555. See also Ameh Ejekwonyilo, “Appeal Court Ends Nnamdi Kanu’s Trial, Orders IPOB Leader’s Release,” Premium Times (Abuja) (October 13, 2022), https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/hea dlines/559458-appeal-court-ends-nnamdi-kanus-trial-orders-ipob-leaders-release.html. For the text of the judgment, see Bridget Edokwe, “The Charges Against Nnamdi Kanu Are Terminated and Struck Out—Court of Appeal,” Barrister NG (October 18, 2022), https://barristerng.com/download-enrollment-order-just-in-thecharges-against-nnamdi-kanu-are-terminated-and-struck-out-court-of-appeal/. The three judges involved are Justices Jummai Hanatu Sankey, Oludotun Adefope-Okojie, and Ebiowei Tobi. Ibid. 105 Khalid and Macaulay, note 104. See also Eric Ikhilae, “Appeal Court Ends Nnamdi Kanu’s Trial, Orders IPOB Leader’s Release,” Nation (Lagos) (October 14, 2022), https://thenationonlineng.net/appeal-court-ends-nnamdi-kanus-trial-orders-ipobleaders-release/. 106 Klalid and Macaulay, note 104. 107 Ibid. See also Vincent Ufuoma,

“Nnamdi Kanu: FG Speaks on Appeal Court Ruling, Says It Will Consider Other Legal Options,” ICIR (October 14, 2022), https://www.icirnigeria.org/nnamdi-kanu-fg-speaks-on-appeal-court-ruling-says-itwill-consider-other-legal-options/.

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Takeaways from the Kanu Saga It takes several to tango.108 The Kanu saga is a textbook example of the hydra-head nature of the tension between sovereignty and selfdetermination in postcolonial Africa, involving multiple parties, that this book tackles. It also spells out the need to resolve this issue through measures at the domestic and international levels embedded in conflict resolution. The multiple parties, elaborated in Chapter 7 on the blueprints for ameliorating the tension, are ethnic leaders and their foot soldiers of supporters spoiling to use the right of self-determination; aloof central government authorities working overdrive to curtail or block such usage, in the guise of territorial integrity; and a variegated species of the international community of differentiated disinterestedness in-between these two contenders.

Intersection of International Law, Constitutional Law, and Conflict Resolution from the Prism of the Three Case Studies This section builds on and amplifies the foregoing discussion pertaining to the argument of this book. It covers three points: (i) the need for more Constitutional Law, which this book fills, in discussions relating to sovereignty and self-determination; (ii) the relevance and importance of Constitutional Law as a tool for conflict resolution; and (iii) justification for the three case studies.

108 Parody of “it takes two to tango,” an idiomatic expression denoting parties inextricably paired in a palatable or unpalatable relationship. See Eric Donald Hirsch, Jr., et al., The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 52 (“Certain activities cannot be performed alone—such as quarreling, making love, and dancing the tango”). The saying originated from the scene of a real-time dance where two partners move in relation to each other, sometimes in tandem, sometimes in opposition. See Wolfgang Mieder, Proverbs: A Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004), 233; and Wolfgang Mieder, The Politics of Proverbs: From Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes, Vol. 10 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 125.

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Need for More Constitutional Law in Discussions Relating to Sovereignty and Self-Determination International Law refers to the “rules and principles governing the relations and dealings of [states] with each other, as well as the relations between states and individuals, and relations between international organizations.”109 For its part, Constitutional Law refers to “the process by which people constitute themselves and their values in a binding legal document adaptive to new conditions not present when the document was written.”110 Sovereignty and self-determination are doctrines of International Law. The two doctrines are analyzed within the prism of International Law, but rarely so through the perspective of Constitutional Law, a hole in the literature that this book seeks to fill. Many studies on the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination pay insufficient attention to “the broader set of possible constitutional arrangements that can impact secession,” oblivious to the reality that, although they “hinge on high power politics, [secessionist disputes] also have an important constitutional dimension.”111 This lack is despite the fact that going back to the early days of US constitutionalism, sovereignty and self-determination have deep roots in constitutional law.112 In sum, secession, a topic often tied to international law, “is not merely about rights but also implicates questions of constitutional structure and other

109 “International Law,” Legal Information Institute (LII), Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/international_law. 110 Philip C. Aka, Bosnia as Civil State and Global Citizen: Alternative Futures Outside the EU (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), ix, 200. 111 Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg, “From Catalonia to California: Secession in

Constitutional Law,” Alabama Law Review, 70(4) (2019), 923, 933. 112 Michael Kirby, “International Law—The Impact on National Constitutions,” American University International Law Review, 21(3) (2006), 327–364 (statement on the influence of International Law on Constitutional Law); Peter J. Spiro, “Treaties, International Law, and Constitutional Rights,” Stanford Law Review, 55(5) (2003), 1999–2028 (statement on how International Law limits the dangers of behaviors outside the constitutional purview); Kristen L. Walker, “International Law as a Tool of Constitutional Interpretation,” SSRN (July 24, 2002), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abs tract_id=319921 (commenting on the decision of Justice Michael D. Kirby, Justice of the High Court of Australia from 1996 to 2009, to use International Law in interpreting the Australian Constitution).

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constitutional provisions.”113 This reason, along with the reality that constitutional arrangements on secession sometimes impact the prospects of secession,114 justifies the application of constitutional law to such analysis. As Professors Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg point out, “when the constitution creates a legal avenue to secede, it reduces the need for violence to advance secessionist claims.”115 This book joins the attempts to redress the imbalance in the tools of inquiry by bringing in Constitutional Law. Importance of Constitutional Law as a Conflict Resolution Mechanism In addition to the first point above, the importance is indicated by the depiction in this book of constitutional provisions for self-determination as a necessary but not sufficient condition for dousing some of the fire in the campaign for self-determination. It is a focus on international and comparative analysis not inconsistent with the role of constitutional law at the domestic level. For example, in holding two defendants for murders related to their role in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City leading to the death of 168 people, a US trial judge also sentenced the duo for “crime[s] against the Constitution of the United States” in that persons killed and the offices destroyed during the attack on the building were engaged in the constitutional functions of providing for a common defense, establishing justice, promoting the general welfare, and ensuring domestic tranquility listed in the preamble of the US Constitution.116

113 Ginsburg and Versteeg, note 111, p. 928. 114 See ibid. generally. 115 Ibid. (abstract). Emphasis added. 116 See “Richard P. Matsch, 88, Judge in Oklahoma Bombing Case, Is Dead,” New

York Times (May 29, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/obituaries/richardp-matsch-dead.html.

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The Three Case Studies As indicated earlier in this chapter, the three countries this book explores are Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon.117 These countries, given detailed treatment in Chapters 3–5, are scenes of self-determination that illuminate the argument about absolutization of sovereignty at the expense of the complementary doctrine of self-determination made in this book. Table 1.1 laid down the performance of each country on a list of selected indicators pertaining to sovereignty, self-determination, constitutional law, and conflict resolution, with accompanying explanatory statements on some of those indicators. The discussion in this section next follows through with two points bearing on the need for more Constitutional Law in discussions relating to sovereignty and self-determination, and the significance of Constitutional Law as a conflict resolution mechanism. The only remaining element necessary to complete the discussion here is the constitutional provision (or lack thereof) of each of the three countries related to self-determination. The conversation begins with Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution guaranteed the right to selfdetermination for eligible ethnic groups. The document stipulates that “[e]very Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.”118 In contrast, Nigeria’s 1999 constitution, the legal framework governing the Fourth Republic since 1999, lacks such provision. Instead, the document provides, “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria […] firmly and solemnly resolve[] […] to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God […].”119 Reinforcing this provision, the same constitution contained, within its very first articles, the statement to the effect that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble Sovereign State to be known by the name of the Federal Republic

117 See Table 1.1 (Juxtaposing the three countries on selected indicators at the intersection of sovereignty, self-determination, constitutional law, and conflict resolution). 118 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, reprinted in Ref World https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b5a84.html, art. 39(1). 119 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, Constitute Project, https:// www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Nigeria_2011.pdf?lang=en, preamble.

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of Nigeria.”120 The 1979 Constitution provided similarly.121 The major difference between these two constitutions though is that, whereas the 1979 Constitution underwent the approval of a Constituent Assembly, after the Constitution Drafting Committee completed its work, the 1999 Constitution lacks these popular imprimaturs.122 Like Nigeria’s, Cameroon’s constitution precludes secession. The country’s 1996 constitution provides, “We, the people of Cameroon […] solemnly declare that we constitute one and the same nation, bound by the same destiny, and assert our firm determination to build the Cameroonian Fatherland on the basis of the ideals of fraternity, justice, and progress.”123 More specifically, the document stipulates that “The Republic of Cameroon shall be […] one and indivisible[.]”124 In sum, of the three countries used as case studies in this book, only post-socialist Ethiopia entrenched the right to self-determination in its constitution. In contrast, Nigeria and Cameroon lack such provision in their respective constitutions. Instead, as indicated above, the constitution of Nigeria stipulates that the country is “indivisible and indissoluble,” while that of Cameroon proclaims that the country is “one and indivisible.” Vis-à-vis Ethiopia, these pro-sovereignty commandments from Nigeria and Cameroon call to mind one proposition, based on a reading of US jurisprudence relating to secession, to the effect that the American Constitution gave citizens “the right to change [their] national government […] but [it] did not provide a right to walk away from it.”125 120 Ibid., art. 2(1). 121 See Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, Constitution Net

https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/nig_const_79.pdf, preamble; and art. 2(1) (indivisibility and indissolubility clause). 122 See Philip C. Aka, “Why Nigeria Needs Restructuring Now and How It Can Peacefully Do It,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, 46(2) (Winter 2018), 123–157. 123 Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon (adopted January 18, 1996), amendment to the Constitution of June 2, 1972 (International Labor Organization), preamble, http://ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/43107/977788/F-210347 6279/CMR43107%20Eng.pdf. 124 Ibid., art. 1(2). 125 Farah Mohammed, “The Recipe for Secession: What Makes Nations Leave,” JSTOR

Daily (March 23, 2017), https://daily.jstor.org/the-recipe-for-secession-what-makes-nat ions-leave/. In Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), decided after the US civil war (1861– 1865), the US Supreme Court ruled that there was no right to secession under the US

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From the point of loose convergence, each country interjects diversity that spices up the analysis in this book related to the intersection between sovereignty and self-determination: Ethiopia on its agelong insecurity with respect to Eritrea pertaining to the landlock-ness of Ethiopia; Nigeria on its vast human and natural resources, which analysts liken to a giant and key to its status as home to the largest economy in Nigeria which it stands to lose if the Igbo, a powerhouse of commerce and entrepreneurship but also persistent advocate for Biafra, leaves; and Cameroon for its status as Africa in miniature which, like Nigeria, Cameroon could lose if English-speaking Cameroon, seeking separate existence in the name of Ambazonia, leaves. As we show with the case studies and recapitulate in Chapter 7 devoted to blueprints, it is counterproductive to use force to subdue a group legitimately seeking to exit a state. Thus, for each of these groups, including the Oromo and Tigray peoples lately in Ethiopia, constitutionalization of the right to self-determination kicks in because of the conflict resolution dynamics it introduces into the equation in the search for durable means to harmonize sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa.

Constitution. The case involved a claim by the Reconstruction government of Texas that US bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American Civil War. In White, the Court held that, because there is no right to unilateral secession under the US Constitution, Texas and the ten other states, which seceded to form the Confederate States of America, never left the Union during the civil war. The ten states, with Texas, nicknamed Dixie, in alphabetical order, were: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. See Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). Accordingly, US Treasury bond sales by Texas during the war, originally owned by pre-war Texas, were invalid, and the bonds were therefore still owned by the postwar state. The Court reasoned, with one justice dissenting, that the US “never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation.” 74 U.S. 700, p. 726. “When […] Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, […] attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.” Ibid.

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Organization of This Book In state after state, the major problem Africa faces in the first quarter of the twenty-first century is insurgencies against a central government. Many of these insurgencies are rooted in struggles for self-determination, either internally for devolution of powers or externally as a separate country. Yet, compared to other world regions, chances for peaceful, nonviolent self-determination campaigns are slim in Africa. Of the 40 countries admitted as members of the UN since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, only three, representing over 7 percent of the total, are from Africa—each preceded by protracted and violent campaigns for independence. Thus, this book proposes blueprints, embedded in conflict resolution, including constitutional means, for navigating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa; by so doing, it contributes to existing knowledge on “the meaning, process, and effects” of the self-determination doctrine, in its intersection with sovereignty.126 This book comprises eight chapters, broken into three parts, two chapters in Part I and three each in Parts II and III. First the parts followed by the chapter-to-chapter descriptions. Part I is dedicated to threshold matters, including the argument of the book and its organization, conceptual framework, and delineation of the intricacies of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, illustrated with examples drawn from six regional and global human rights instruments. Part II collects the case studies of three scenes across three subregions of Africa engulfed in self-determination struggles: Ethiopia in East Africa where the right to self-determination is constitutionalized; Nigeria in West Africa, involving the longest struggle for self-determination where, still, for some reason, that right is not constitutionalized; and Cameroon, straddling West Africa and Central Africa, where a longstanding issue of power devolution metamorphosed into campaign for the right to self-determination. Between them, the case studies embody five self-determination campaigns: Eritrea and Tigray in Ethiopia; Biafra 1 and Biafra 2 in Nigeria; and Ambazonia in Cameroon. In Biafra 1, the self-determination struggle overlapped a civil war and the entity that conducted that campaign was a bona fide government, the same way it was in Tigray more than half a century later. As this book goes to press, three of 126 See Alexander and Friedlander, note 9, p. xiv.

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the campaigns, Eritrea, Tigray, and Biafra 1, are concluded, leaving two, Biafra 2 and Ambazonia, still ongoing. However, except for Eritrea, where not properly addressed, supposedly concluded campaigns can recur in the future—as Biafra 2, the unresolved agitation of the Igbo nearly 30 years after Biafra 1, demonstrates.127 Part II unearths the proposition of this book anchored on the necessity of constitutionalizing the group human right of self-determination as a point of departure in resolving the conflict between sovereignty and self-determination. Part III complements and completes the previous two parts. It embodies the projected solutions to the tension between sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of this book, including object lessons from the case studies, and the blueprints. Next chapter by chapter, this chapter, the foregoing, embodies the argument of the book, including the evidence of the rifeness of selfdetermination conflicts in Africa of a magnitude that contradicts the claim of a “secessionist deficit” in the academic literature; the case from Nigeria involving the extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention of the leader of a secessionist movement in that country for using the right to self-determination presented as a textbook example of the problem this book addresses; the intersection of International Law, Constitutional Law, and conflict resolution from the prism of the three case studies of the book; and the plan of the book summarized here. With respect to the argument, topics covered include the troublesome tension between sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of the book and a caveat that the overall merit of the book does not singularly hinge on this strand of argument; statement on statecraft in postcolonial Africa pertaining to the right to self-determination in its interaction with sovereignty and inconsistent application of that right in global institutions; contribution of the work revolved around the debate against absolutizing sovereignty in Africa; and juxtaposition of the three countries that form the case study in this book on a set of key indicators bearing on the intersection among sovereignty, self-determination, and conflict resolution.

127 An idea from US jurisprudence that springs to mind here would be cases “capable

of repetition, yet evading review,” a recognized exception to the doctrine of mootness in the US judicial system. An example of this exception would be a pregnant woman’s constitutional challenge to an abortion regulation. In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), the US Supreme Court stated that “pregnancy provides a classic justification for a conclusion of non-mootness.” Ibid.

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Chapter 2 sketches the conceptual framework of the book comprising two main elements, namely, indicators of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination tied to the three countries under examination in this book and elaborated by six human rights instruments; and the nature of the relationship between sovereignty and self-determination, the complementary doctrines of International Law that form the center of gravity of the work. There are two takeaways from the chapter. One, going to the argument of this book delineated in this chapter, is that, although important, identification of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa that this book embodies does not by itself exhaust the message of this book separate from proposals designed to navigate the tension or its overall merit. The second, anticipating the peaceful resolutions formulated in Chapter 7 is that, in its early evolution, sovereignty assumed a more harmonious relationship with selfdetermination than its strict application today in Africa focused exclusively on territorial integrity makes out. Tracking the relationship between International Law and Constitutional Law, laced in conflict resolution, central to this book, Chapter 3 focuses on Ethiopia, the state whose constitution, adopted in the aftermath of the demise of military-rule socialism in the land and the independence of Eritrea, entrenched the right to self-determination. Chapters 4–5 shift the searchlight to Nigeria and Cameroon, respectively, two countries whose constitutions lack such entrenchment. Between the two countries, Nigeria should have led the way, but failed to, in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination due to its experience with Biafra from 1967 to 1970. Ethiopia institutionalized the right immediately after its civil war. Why did Nigeria fail to do so after its own civil war? These are among the issues explored in Chapter 4, the case study on Nigeria. Meanwhile, the determination to use the right of self-determination in these two countries, joined with the equally strong commitment of central governments to territorial integrity shows the level of unfinished business, in the light of the constitutionalization of the right to self-determination in Ethiopia the international community confronts. Beginning the search for answers that form the thrust of this book, Chapter 6 assembles the object lessons gleanable from the case studies of the three countries. The lessons inform and complement the blueprints in Chapter 7. One lesson is the privilege of sovereignty at the expense of the right to self-determination, whether self-determination was entrenched as a right in a constitution or not. The lesson raises a question regarding

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the utility of constitutionalization. The answer to that question, anticipating the resolutions by midcentury of Chapter 7 is that, based on the lone experience with post-socialist Ethiopia since 1995, constitutionalization of the right to self-determination is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for the enjoyment of that right. Ethiopia also shows the possible influence of unforeseen forces embedded in the shifting dynamics of ethnic power relations in the period following constitutional entrenchment of the right to self-determinization.128 Chapter 7 assembles small-steps-to-peace proposals,129 denominated blueprints, aimed at harmonizing the two complementary doctrines of sovereignty and self-determination by midcentury. Three entities to whom those blueprints are addressed are groups spoiling to use the right to self-determination, an aloof central government determined to curtail or stop such usage, and a variegated international community (made up of the UN and its agencies, former colonial overlords, and major Western and non-Western powers) caught in the crossfire. The book provides a reasoned explanation to the intriguing question as to why, despite entrenching the right to self-determination in its post-socialist constitution, the conflict between sovereignty and self-determination remains as real in Ethiopia as in Nigeria and Cameroon. By propounding proposals for redressing the troublesome disharmony between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, this book simultaneously contributes to four distinct genres of academic literatures, each imbued with immense comparative significance in the light of the teachable lessons it holds for regions beyond Africa: 128 See Felix Bethke, “Civil War in Ethiopia. The Instrumentalization and Politicization of Identity,” PRIF [Peace Research Institute Frankfurt] Blog (December 23, 2021), https://blog.prif.org/2021/12/23/civil-war-in-ethiopia-the-instrumentaliza tion-and-politicization-of-identity/. 129 See Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Simon J. A. Mason, Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts: Small Steps to Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019) (promoting inclusive and effective conflict responses that manage shocks peacefully by bridging short-term mediation with medium-term peace committee structures and longterm peace policy work). The approach here is deliberately contrasted from grand theories, highly abstract formulations where, supposedly, every phenomenon under investigation is slotted into “a wider theoretical scheme,” such that everything is explained and nothing is left out. See C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959); and Derek Gregory, “Grand Theory,” in The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th Ed., eds. D. Gregory et al. (London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2009), 315–316.

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• the debate on the ever-evolving nature of sovereignty, • the debate related to continuing barriers in Africa and globally to legitimate exercise of the right to self-determination that some commentators rightly equate to underdevelopment of the doctrine in this world region, • studies on the constitutionalization of the right to selfdetermination, and • broad-ranging, garden-variety, studies on conflict resolution in the post-Cold War era. Two factors lend urgency and exigency to the proposals it makes. First, barring harmonization in Africa of the International Law doctrines of sovereignty and self-determination, the talk about moving the world from declaring human rights to implementing these rights, from international norms to local reality in the enjoyment of human rights,130 and, overall, from translating numerous national and international human rights laws into operational policies that work for citizens within the context of finite budgetary allocations,131 will remain mere talk. This is especially true given the economic vulnerability of many African countries in an interdependent world.132 Second, in their seminal work on the intersection of international law and constitutional law, Ginsburg and Versteeg observed that “there [is] a dearth of theory on how different constitutional design choices affect secessionist disputes.”133 This book contributes to knowledge on the influence of different design choices on secessionist disputes,

130 See discussion in Chapter 7 on the small-steps-to-peace blueprints. 131 See Aka et al., The Political Economy of Universal Healthcare in Africa, note 67,

p. 5 (citing Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health from 2002 to 2008). 132 During a face-to-face meeting on September 16, 2022, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi expressed concerns regarding the negative impacts of the war between Russia and Ukraine on global food and energy security. He reportedly stated, “Today’s era isn’t of war and I have spoken to you about it on the call. Today we’ll get the opportunity to talk about how we can progress on the path of peace.” See “‘Today’s Era is Not of War,’ PM Modi Tells Putin During Bilateral Meeting,” Siasat Daily (Telangana, India) (September 16, 2022), https://www.siasat.com/todays-era-is-not-of-war-pm-modi-tells-putin-duringbilateral-meeting-2414503/. 133 Ginsburg and Versteeg, note 111, p. 928.

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using as window into the world one country in Africa which entrenches the right to self-determination in its constitution and two which do not. Chapter 8, the book’s conclusion, ties together the achievements of the work, coupled with a statement on prospects for the future pertaining to this topic. This includes introspective inquiries by international lawyers on the doctrinal state of the right to self-determination in the wake of the referendum on independence in South Sudan in July 2011, eighteen years after an earlier one in Eritrea, both arrived at after protracted bloody struggles.134

134 See Timothy Waters, “Let His People Go: Sudan’s Lesson for Secession,” EJIL: Talk! (Blog of the European Journal of International Law) (January 24, 2011), https:// www.ejiltalk.org/let-his-people-go-sudans-lesson-for-secession/ (arguing for recognition of the right to self-determination as a matter of International Law doctrine); Stephen Tierney, “Referendums Today: Self-determination as Constituent Power?” EJIL: Talk! (February 9, 2011), https://www.ejiltalk.org/sudans-lesson-for-secession-a-comment/ (arguing mostly similarly, particularly in the light of “a subtle re-balancing of emphasis away from the inevitable default of territorial integrity” toward self-determination observable today); and Dapo Akande, “The Newly Independent State of South Sudan—Should We Rethink the Right to Secession?” EJIL: Talk! (July 15, 2011), https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-newly-ind ependent-state-of-south-sudan/ (taking the position that the 1964 resolution by the then Organization of African Unity, committing member states of the organization to respect colonial boundaries, see note 74 and accompanying text, did not rule out the possibility of changes in those colonial boundaries, achieved through inter-State adjustments or through the granting of independence by States to particular parts of the State).

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Appendix A to Chapter 1: Loci of Separatist Movements in Africa Item Country no.

Name of separatist movement

Ethnic group or related entity

Timeframe Goal

1.

Algeria

Movement for the autonomy of Kabylie (MAK)

Berber or Kabyle people

Since 2001

Internal self-determination (autonomist)

2.

Angola

Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC); Independent Movement of Cabinda (MIC); União dos Cabindenses para a Independência (UCI) Ambazonia;

Bakongo

Since about 1963

Independence

Bakongo

Since 2018

Independence

Bakongo

Since 2018

Independence

Multiple Since ethnic groups 2017 in Southern Cameroon; Oron Since 2006

Independence

Central African Republic (CAR) Comoros Anjouan People’s (pop. 869,601 Movement; in 2020) Mohéli

CAR Muslims

Circa 2012

Probably independence

Anjouan

Since 1997

Independence

Mohéli

Independence

6.

Republic of the Congo

Republic of Congo Central

Since 1997 Circa 2012

7.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire)

Katanga

Bakongo (Alliance of the Bakongo) Baluba (or Circa Luba people) 1977

3.

4.

5.

Cameroon

Bakassi Movement for Self-Determination (BAMOSD) Dar El Kuti (Séléka)

Independence

Independence

Independence

(continued)

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(continued) Item Country no.

Name of separatist movement

Ethnic group or related entity

Timeframe Goal

8.

Equatorial Guinea

Bubi

1993

9.

Ethiopia

Movement for the Self-Determination of Bioko Island Afar; Ogaden; Tigray;

Afar Somali Tigray

Oromo

Oromo

Western Togoland Restoration Front Cyrenaica Transitional Council (CTC) Azawad National Liberation Movement Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) Biafra (1967–1970); Biafra (post-1970);

Ewe

1993 Independence Post-2015 Independence 2020 Probably autonomist 2020 Probably autonomist 2019 Independence

Cyrenaica

2012

Independence

Tuareg

2011

Independence

Lozi

1994

Independence

Igbo

Independence

Oduduwa; and

Yoruba

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) Association for the Promotion of Batwa Casamance Orania Movement; Cape Republic; and Zululand, respectively Cape Republic; and Zululand, respectively Sudanese Liberation Front (and Army);

Ijaw

1967– 1970 Since 1999 Since 1999 Since 1999

Twa

1993

Autonomist

Diola Afrikaners

1982 1991

Independence Independence

Afrikaners Zulu

2007 1994

Independence Independence

Fur, Masalit, 2002 and Zaghawa

Independence

10. Ghana 11. Libya

12. Mali

13. Namibia 14. Nigeria

15. Rwanda

16. Senegal 17. South Africa

18. Sudan

Igbo

Independence

Independence Independence Autonomist (“resource control”)

(continued)

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(continued) Item Country no.

Name of separatist movement

Ethnic group or related entity

Timeframe Goal

Nuba, and Kordofan Nilotic Islamic militant group Acholi

2011

Probably autonomist

19. Somali

Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North Al-Shabaab

Circa 2004

Independence

1981

Independence

Sahrawi

1973

Independence

Lozi

Circa 2010 Circa 1983/84

Independence

20. Uganda 21. Western Sahara

22. Zambia 23. Zimbabwe

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Maghreb region in-between Morocco and Mauritania (owned by Spain) Barotse Mthwakazi Liberation Front (MLF)

Shona and Ndebele (Matabeleland)

Autonomist

Sources Adapted from multiple sources, including Oyewole Oginni, “The Rise of Separatism in Africa: Possible Consequence of Russia’s Recognition of Separatist Regions in Eastern Ukraine,” OWP: The Organization for World Peace (February 26, 2022), https://theowp.org/reports/the-rise-of-separatism-in-africa-possible-consequenceof-russias-recognition-of-separatist-regions-in-eastern-ukraine/; Nkasi Wode, “The U.S. Should Not Designate Nigeria’s IPOB a Terrorist Group,” Council of Foreign Relations (February 10, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-should-not-designate-nigeriasipob-terrorist-group; John Campbell and Nolan Quinn, “What’s Behind Growing Separatism in Nigeria?” Council on Foreign Relations (August 3, 2021), https://www. cfr.org/article/whats-behind-growing-separatism-nigeria; “[Ten] Separatist Movements in Africa,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-separatist-movementsfrom-africa.html; “Separatism in Africa: Exploring Colonial Legacies,” DW (December 3, 2020), https://www.dw.com/en/separatism-in-africa-exploring-colonial-legacies/a-558 05551; Oluwatosin Adeshokan, “Slouching Toward Secession in Nigeria,” Foreign Policy (February 15, 2019), https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/15/slouching-towardsecession-in-nigeria; John Campbell, “Secession Movements Raise Tensions in Nigeria and Cameroon,” Council on Foreign Relations (last updated October 12, 2017), https://www.cfr.org/blog/secession-movements-raise-tensions-nigeria-and-cameroon; and Eric Hoff, “Is Africa’s Oldest Country Falling Apart,” The Perspective (December 15, 2016), https://www.theperspective.se/2016/12/15/uncategorized/is-africas-oldestcountry-falling-apart/

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Appendix B to Chapter 1: New States Admitted to UN Membership Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Item No.

Country

Former colonial overlord or name of former country

Date of UN UN admission resolution

Whether independence was achieved peacefully or violently

1.

Namibia

South Africa

April 29, 1990

Violently

2.

Liechtenstein

3.

Ukraine

Not applicable Soviet Union

4.

Not applicable Not applicable Spain and Germany

7.

Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) Republic of Korea (South Korea) Federated States of Micronesia (Micronesia) Marshall Islands

Sept. 18, 1990 Aug. 24, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991

Spain

8.

Belarus

Soviet Union

9.

Estonia

Soviet Union

10.

Latvia

Soviet Union

11.

Lithuania

Soviet Union

12.

Kazakhstan

Soviet Union

13.

Armenia

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

14.

Kyrgyzstan

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

5. 6.

SCR 652, GAR S-18/ 1 SCR 663, GAR 45/1

Peacefully Peacefully

SCR 702, GAR 46/1

Peacefully

Sept. 17, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991

SCR 702, GAR 46/1 SCR 703, GAR 46/2

Peacefully

Sept. 17, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991 Sept. 17, 1991 Mar. 2, 1992

SCR 704, GAR 46/3

Peacefully

Peacefully

Peacefully SCR 709, GAR 46/4 SCR 710, GAR 46/5 SCR 711, GAR 46/6 SCR 732, GAR 46(224) SCR 722, GAR 46(227) SCR 736, GAR 46(225)

Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully

Peacefully

Peacefully

(continued)

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(continued) Item No.

Country

Former colonial overlord or name of former country

Date of UN UN admission resolution

Whether independence was achieved peacefully or violently

15.

Uzbekistan

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

Peacefully

16.

Tajikistan

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

17.

Moldova

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

18.

Turkmenistan

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

19.

Azerbaijan

Soviet Union

Mar. 2, 1992

20.

San Marino

Not applicable

Mar. 2, 1992

21.

Croatia

Yugoslavia

May 22, 1992

22.

Slovenia

Yugoslavia

May 22, 1992

23.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Yugoslavia

My 22, 1992

24.

Georgia

Soviet Union

July 31, 1992

25.

Czech Republic

Not applicable

Jan. 19, 1993

26.

Slovakia

Not applicable

Jan. 19, 1993

27.

Former Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Rep. of Macedonia (North Macedonia)

April 8, 1993

SCR 737, GAR 46/ 226 SCR 738, GAR 46/ 228 SCR 739, GAR 46/ 223 SCR 741, GAR 46/ 229 SCR 742, GAR 46// 230 SCR 744, GAR 46/ 231 SCR 753, GAR 46/ 238 SCR 754, GAR 46/ 236 SCR 755, GAR 46/ 237 SCR 763, GAR 46/ 241 SCR 801, GAR 47/ 221 SCR 800, GAR 47/ 222 SCR 817, GAR 47/ 225

Peacefully

Peacefully

Peaceful

Peacefully

Peacefully

Violently

Peacefully

Violently

Peacefully

Peacefully

Peacefully

Peacefully

(continued)

1

ARGUMENT

49

(continued) Item No.

Country

Former colonial overlord or name of former country

Date of UN UN admission resolution

Whether independence was achieved peacefully or violently

28.

Eritrea

Ethiopia

May 28, 1993

Violently

29.

Monaco

France

May 28, 1993

30.

Andorra

31.

Palau

32.

Kiribati

France and Spain Not applicable UK

33.

Nauru

UK

34.

Tonga

UK

35.

Tuvala

UK

36.

Yugoslavia

37.

Fed. Rep. of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Switzerland

July 28, 1993 Dec. 15, 1994 Sept. 14, 1999 Sept. 14, 1999 Sept. 14, 1999 Sept. 5, 2000 Successor state

SCR 828, GAR 47/ 230 SCR 829, GAR 47/ 231 SCR 848, GA 47/232 SCR 963, GAR 49/63 SCR 1248, GAR 51/4 SCR 1249, GAR 54/2 SCR 1253, GAR 54/3 SCR 1290, GAR 55/1 SCR 1326, GAR 55/12

East Timor

Sept. 10, 2020 Sept. 27, 2002

SCR 1426, GAR 57/1 SCR 1414, GAR 57/3

Peacefully

38.

39.

Montenegro

Not applicable Portugal (1975) and Indonesia (2002) Yugoslavia

June 28, 2006

Peacefully

40.

South Sudan

Sudan

July 14, 2011

SCR 1691, GAR 60/ 264 SCR 1999, GAR 65/ 308

Peacefully

Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully Peacefully

Violently

Violently

CHAPTER 2

Conceptual Framework

Introduction Concepts are “abstract mental images”1 that, by their nature, are “fuzzy and imprecise.”2 This is why definition of key terms is critical in a study, such as the one this book conducts. Concern for conceptual precision and boundaries was what the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 B.C.) had in mind when he postulated that the beginning of investigatory wisdom was to call things by their proper names.3 From a public policy standpoint, the significance of drawing such boundary, as he elaborated, is that “[i]f language be not in accordance with the truth of things, [public] affairs cannot be carried on to success.”4 Given his belief that

1 Michael G. Maxfield and Earl R. Babbie, Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology, 7th Ed. (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015), 110–111. 2 Ibid., p. 112 (under definition of “conceptualization”); see also ibid., p. 239 (“there are no ultimately true meanings for any of the concepts we typically study in social science”). 3 “The Reification of Names,” Cultural China, http://www.cultural-china.com/chi naWH/History/en/165History878.html. 4 James Legge, Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1971), 263–264 (translating Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, Verses 4–7).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_2

51

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social disorder stemmed from failure to call things by their right names,5 Confucius advised office holders and bureaucrats who worked under these officials to act in ways appropriate to those names.6 “What the superior man [meaning ruler] requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.”7 This chapter sketches the conceptual framework of this book set around two complementary issues at the heart of the work, plus an appendix. The two issues are the indicators of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination wrapped around the three countries which provide the case study for this book and vivified with a survey of six global and regional human rights instruments; and an explication of the nature of the relationship between the two contending doctrines of modern International Relations. Key terms that, consistent with the injunction of Confucius, need to be called by their proper names, all by explanation rather than definitions per se, are an elaboration of the indicators of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, embedded in a survey of six global and regional human rights instruments, with a preface on the foundational role of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR); the norm of sovereignty; the right to self-determination; and a separate commentary on the relationship between the two doctrines. The appendix to the chapter encapsulates the fundamental freedoms embedded in the UDHR, a foremost global charter of human rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly at the dawn of the intergovernmental organization in 1948.

5 He stated:

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. […]

6 “Rectification of Names,” note 3. 7 Legge, note 4.

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Indicators of the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination: Survey of Six Global and Regional Instruments In the sense it is used in this book, tension means a state of imbalance or latent disagreement between sovereignty and self-determination.8 Such imbalance exists when there is a mixture or commingling of sovereignty and self-determination within the four corners of an instrument, whether in favor of sovereignty or self-determination. Six human rights documents identified in Table 2.1 are used to illuminate and illustrate the tension. Wrapped against the three countries used as case studies in this book, the six instruments are the UN Charter9 ; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)10 ; the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)11 ; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)12 ; the Charter of the Organization of African Unity13 ; and the Constitutive Act of the African Union14 (Table 2.1). The first four are global instruments, while the remaining two are African regional instruments. Before delving into the analysis of these instruments, several caveats need to be entered. First, the six documents are sample instruments not exhaustive of all possible options. Second, in the natural order of things,

8 See Chapter 1, note 19, and accompanying text. 9 See Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice

(1945) [hereinafter UN Charter], https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter. pdf. 10 UN General Assembly, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Treaty Series 999 (December 16, 1966), 171 [hereinafter ICCPR], https://www.refworld. org/docid/3ae6b3aa0.html. 11 UN General Assembly, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, United Nations Treaty Series 993 (December 16, 1966), 3 [hereinafter ICESCR], https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c0.html. 12 UN General Assembly, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UN General Assembly Resolution No. A/RES/61/295 (October 2, 2007) [hereinafter UNDRIP], https://www.refworld.org/docid/471355a82.html. 13 Organization of African Unity (OAU), Charter of the Organization of African Unity (May 25, 1963) [hereinafter OAU Charter], https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3 6024.html. 14 Organization of African Unity (OAU), Constitutive Act of the African Union (July 1, 2000) [hereinafter CAAU], https://www.refworld.org/docid/4937e0142.html.

ICCPR

ICESCR

UNDRIP

OAU Charter

CAAU (replaced the OAU Charter)

3.

4.

5.

6.

July 11, 2000

May 25, 1963

Sept. 13, 2007

Dec. 16, 1966

Dec. 16, 1966

May 26, 2001

Sept. 13, 1963

Not applicable

Jan. 3, 1976

Mar. 24, 1976

Oct. 24, 1945

May 16, 2001

Oct. 4, 1963

Abstained

June 11, 1993

June 11, 1993

Nov. 13, 1945

Not applicable

Textual orientation of instrument

More sovereignty than self-determination July 29, 1993 June 27, 1984 Mix of sovereignty and self-determination July 29, 1993 June 27, 1984 Mix of sovereignty and self-determination Abstained Sept. 13, 2007 More (voted yes) self-determination than sovereignty Nov. 14, Aug. 25, 1963 More sovereignty 1963 than self-determination April 26, No indication Mix of 2001 on ratification sovereignty and self-determination

Not applicable

Date Cameroon ratified

2.

June 26, 1945

Date Nigeria ratified

UN Charter

Date Ethiopia ratified

1.

Date instrument took effect

Instrument

Item No.

Date instrument was signed or adopted

Six human rights instruments matched against Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon

Table 2.1

54 P. C. AKA

2

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

55

some of the instruments generate more discussion than others. That occurrence does not make them more important than those others. Third, the distinction between global and regional instruments is fluid, rather than sharp, because African regional instruments draw upon their UN global counterparts. Thus, in addition to citing human rights instruments like the UN Charter, and UDHR (commented upon shortly), OAU (and African Union) instruments and, at times, even policies, track those of the UN. For example, compared to the four other regions of the world, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) plays an oversized role in Africa’s economic development.15 Fourth, there are interlocutors or critics who could see little point spelling out the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in any detail as we do in this book, given that such tension is inherent in the relationship between the two doctrines. However, there was more complementariness, currently lacking, between the two International Law doctrines, including the effect of the lack on decolonized Africa, which need to be more carefully spelled out. At any rate, going to the argument of this book laid out in Chapter 1, although important, specification of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa conducted in this book does not by itself exhaust the merit and message of the work built on solutions, including the blueprints assembled together in Chapter 7 for navigating the imbalance.

15 See, for example, Ekei Umo Ekpenyong, The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Development in Africa, Ph.D. Dissertation in Economics, London School of Economics (August 1989), http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1210/1/U050306.pdf (covering the 30-year period from 1958 to 1988). The four other regional commissions are the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

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Foundational Role of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Relating to the Six Instruments Human rights are freedom guarantees of various descriptions, that “ideally, individuals and groups everywhere have equally free of invidious discrimination, by virtue of the fact that they are human beings who need these rights to live a life of dignity.”16 The human rights instrument which, more than any other, popularized these rights is the UDHR,17 whose contents are summarized in the Appendix of this chapter.18 The UDHR was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, “in the aftermath of a bloody global war hallmarked by denial of every measure of basic rights, including the right to life, and of access to food.”19 Traceable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s doctrine of four freedoms,20 the document established the idea of human rights “as the ideology of our times” by, among other means, providing that idea “with a universally acceptable foundation.”21 Arguably, it is the wellspring of the six instruments analyzed in this section.

16 Philip C. Aka, “Fidel Castro and Socioeconomic Human Rights in Africa: A MultiLevel Analysis,” Fordham International Law Journal, 43(1) (2019), 41, 47. 17 UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 217 A (III) (December 10, 1948) [hereinafter UDHR], https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3 712c.html. 18 See Kenneth Roth, “Human Rights Organizations: A New Force for Social Change,” in Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact, eds. Samantha Power and Graham Alison (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 230–231 (stating that persons “who live in countries that respect the Universal Declaration in all its dimensions enjoy the freedom and means to live life to its fullest[,]” given that “[t]hey are able to speak their minds, practice the religions of their cho[ice], meet with their compatriots, be treated fairly by their government[s], and enjoy access to the necessities of life”). 19 Aka, “Fidel Castro and Socioeconomic Human Rights in Africa,” note 16, p. 48. 20 The four are freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from

want, and freedom from fear. See Louis Henkin, “Human Rights: Ideology and Aspiration, Reality and Prospect,” in Realizing Human Rights, note 18, p. 4. 21 Ibid., p. 11.

2

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

57

UN Charter Ethiopia was one of only four independent African countries when the United Nations was set up in 1945.22 The other three were Liberia, independent since 1847, white minority-ruled South Africa since 1910, and Egypt since 1922.23 With the exception of Liberia, all these African countries signed the UN Charter in 1945.24 This explains why, of the three countries under examination in this book, indicated in Table 2.1, only Ethiopia ratified the UN Charter in 1945. Table 2.1 ranks this instrument as more sovereignty than selfdetermination in textual orientation precisely because more of its provisions border on sovereignty, á la territorial integrity, than on selfdetermination. Going beyond quantity, these provisions are textually more meaningful, compared to the tone of tangentiality interpretable from the provisions on self-determination. The sovereignty-driven provisions include Articles 2.1, 2.4, and 2.7. Article 2.1 stipulates that the UN “is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members,”25 while Article 2.4 provides that “[a]ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”26 Article 2.7 stipulates that “[n]othing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the” UN Charter.27 Next to self-determination, the provisions pertaining to this doctrine arguably include the reaffirmation of “faith in fundamental human rights, [including] in the dignity and worth of the human person,” but also “in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small[.]”28 22 See Alistar Boddy-Evans, “Chronological List of African Independence,” ThoughtCo (Updated January 25, 2020), https://www.thoughtco.com/chronological-list-of-africanindependence-4070467; and Chapter 1, note 51. 23 Boddy-Evans, note 22. 24 See UN Charter, note 9. 25 Ibid., art. 2.1. 26 Ibid., art. 2.4. 27 Ibid., art. 2.7. 28 Ibid., preamble.

58

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This is an objective in priority second only to “sav[ing] succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our life-time has brought untold sorrow to mankind[.]”29 However, in substantiveness, none of these matches the primacy accorded to sovereignty in this foundational document. In a word, the foregoing justifies the assessment of the textual trajectory of this key human right instrument as privileging sovereignty over self-determination. The ICCPR and ICESCR Along with the UDHR, these two instruments form the cornerstone of the contemporary international human rights regime.30 Conceived as a singular instrument, they were split in 1952 into the two human rights covenants we have today.31 These instruments share a common analysis here because, true to their origins, their provisions are common down to the very organization of some articles. For example, the very first article of both instruments, sometimes referred to as Common Article 1, provides in identical language that: All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.32 All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.33 29 Ibid. 30 See Christopher N.J. Roberts, “William H. Fitzpatrick’s Editorials on Human

Rights (1949),” Quellen Zur Geschichte Der Menschenrechte [Sources on the History of Human Rights ] (June 2017), https://www.geschichte-menschenrechte.de/schluesselte xte/william-h-fitzpatricks-editorials-on-human-rights-1949/. 31 Ibid. 32 ICCPR, note 10, art. 1(1); ICESCR, note 11, art. 1(1). 33 ICCPR, note 10, art. 1(2); ICESCR, note 11, art. 1(2). Subsection 3 of the

Common Article 1 in both instruments, mandates state parties to each covenant, including parties administering dependent territories, to “promote the realization of the right of selfdetermination, and […] respect that right,” consistent with the UN Charter. The clause

2

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

59

As we will see soon in the rest of this book, subsequent human right documents mimic these languages. Provisions outside Common Article 1 in each instrument reinforce the content of Common Article 1(2). One is the stipulation that “[n]othing in the present Covenant shall be interpreted as impairing the inherent right of all peoples to enjoy and utilize fully and freely their natural wealth and resources.”34 A preceding instrument, which the ICCPR and ICESCR lent treaty imprimatur, was the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted in 1960.35 While reaffirming the UN’s commitment to territorial integrity,36 the Declaration also stated that “all peoples have the right to self-determination [...] [to] freely determine their political status and […] pursue their economic [and] social […] development.”37 Because the UDHR focused heavily on individual personal rights to the relative neglect of group rights (see the last column of Appendix to this chapter titled “texture of guarantee”), most especially the right to self-determination, the feeling evolved, pressed upon by an ascendant developing world, that subsequent human rights instruments binding on states should correct the imbalance.38 Common Article 1 of the ICCPR and ICESCR filled that hole.39 We rank this instrument in textual orientation as a mix of sovereignty and self-determination, neither skewed in favor nor against any of the two doctrines of international law at issue here. It is not hard to see. Beyond the degree necessary to balance the on administration of dependent territories harks back to the decolonization era and is one that does not apply to any of the three countries—Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon—that form the geographic(al) canvas of this book. 34 ICCPR, note 10, art. 47; ICESCR, note 11, art. 25. 35 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,

G.A.O.R., 15th Sess., Supp. No. 16, U.N. Doc. A/4684 (December 14, 1960) [hereinafter UN Declaration on Independence of 1960], https://www.refworld.org/docid/ 3b00f06e2f.html. 36 Ibid., p. 67 (stating that “[a]ny attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”). 37 Ibid. 38 See Henkin, note 20, p. 22 (commenting on the contribution of the Third World

to contemporary human rights ideology). 39 See ibid.

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overfocus on individual personal rights embedded in the UDHR, each instrument lacks a clear option either in the direction of sovereignty or of self-determination. The UNDRIP At its 107th plenary meeting held on September 13, 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.40 The Declaration stipulates that nothing within its content “may be construed as diminishing or extinguishing the rights indigenous peoples have now or may acquire in the future.”41 This is as it should be, no surprise, for an instrument designed to promote the rights of indigenous people—even though, like the UDHR, its provisions are legally nonbinding, with nothing close to the legal aging and authoritativeness rising to the level of customary international law of the UDHR.42 Moreover, the instrument embeds in its pages the contending doctrines of sovereignty and self-determination. We begin with self-determination. The preamble of the instrument indicates that “noting in this Declaration may be used to deny any peoples their right to self-determination, exercised in conformity with international law[.]”43 Getting into the terrain

40 UNDRIP, note 12, art. 45. 41 Ibid. 42 Customary international law “refers to international obligations arising from established international practices, as opposed to obligations arising from formal written conventions and treaties.” Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute, “Customary International Law,” https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/customary_international_law. It is a genre of international law that “results from a general and consistent practice of states that they follow from a sense of legal obligation.” Ibid. 43 UNDRIP, note 12, preamble. While, from the standpoint of constitutional law, a preamble by itself does not confer rights (something the substantive provisions in the main body of the treaty does), the purposes, motivations, and related considerations for concluding the treaty, embedded in a preamble, can assist in understanding, interpreting, and applying the specific powers listed in the articles, if nothing else, because the treaty may not be interpreted in a manner that defeats its purposes. See Erwin Chemerinsky and Michael Stokes Paulsen, “Common Interpretation: The Preamble,” Interactive Constitution, https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpret ation/preamble-ic/interps/37 (commenting on the U.S. Constitution); and Makane Moïse Mbengue, “Preamble,” Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

2

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

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of the main document, tracking the language of Common Article 1 in the ICESCR and ICCPR, the UNDRIP provides, “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination[,] [b]y virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social[,] and cultural development.”44 And in exercising this right, indigenous peoples “have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions.”45 In what we consider a score for sovereignty, the UNDRIP stipulates that Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, people, group or person[,] any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act contrary to the Charter of the United Nations or construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States.46

How does one reconcile this train of apparently contradictory provisions within one human rights instrument?47 One secret lies in the formulation in the document’s preamble to the effect that the provisions of the Declaration “shall be interpreted in accordance with the principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, equality, nondiscrimination, good governance[,] and good faith.”48 We will return to this dilemma in Chapters 6–7 of the book, Chapter 6 on the object lessons from the case studies of the three countries (Chapters 3–5), and Chapter 7 on the blueprints that mark a main achievement of the work. Between them, the two chapters set forth proposals for relieving the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa this book spotlights. For starters, given the status of the UNDRIP as a

44 UNDRIP, note 12, art. 3. 45 Ibid., art. 4. 46 UNDRIP, note 12, art. 46, §1. 47 This calls to mind the “double consciousness” or “twoness” W.E.B. du Bois (1868–

1963), once stated that African Americans experience, the result of the racial oppression they face(d) in white-dominated America. See John P. Pittman, “Double Consciousness,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 21, 2016). 48 UNDRIP, note 12, art. 46, §3.

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Declaration, its language of rights carries less weight than a multilateral treaty binding on state parties. This said, none of the foregoing observations takes away from the UNDRIP. On the eve of its adoption, proponents of indigenous peoples’ rights worthily praised the document as “a tool for peace and justice, based upon mutual recognition and mutual respect.”49 In itself, the Declaration culminates activities for indigenous peoples that predate the very formation of the UN.50 This explains why, in spite of its weak authoritativeness compared, for example, to the UDHR and the lack of support it commands from major powers,51 Table 2.1 ranks the instrument as more self-determination than sovereignty in textual orientation.

49 International Forum on Globalization, “UN Adopts Historic Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Grassroots International (September 14, 2007), https:// grassrootsonline.org/pt/in-the-news/newsarticlesun-adopts-historic-declaration-rights-ind igenous-peoples/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw_viWBhD8ARIsAH1mCd6iHsEG6fTMOLb9xymKL 3HZBvOm49IxEavL9_NSRz62E6wpH7mdlFMaApayEALw_wcB (quoting Les Malezer, Chair of the Global Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus). 50 See “Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations,” UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs [hereinafter Indigenous Peoples at the UN], https://www.un.org/ development/desa/indigenouspeoples/about-us.html (listing 1923–1925 as the period of the first international involvement relating to indigenous peoples). That first period involved Haudenosaunee Chief Deskaheh who, in 1923, traveled to Geneva to speak to the League of Nations and defend the right of his people to live under their own laws, on their own land, and under their own faith. Ibid. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) is a UN Secretariat charged with norm-setting, analysis, and capacity-building, which works closely with governments and stakeholders to help countries around the world meet their economic, social, and environmental goals. “UN DESA: Department of Economic and Social Affairs,” United Nations, https://www. un.org/youthenvoy/2013/09/undesa-youth-focal-point/#:~:text=The%20United%20N ations%20Department%20of,economic%2C%20social%20and%20environmental%20goals. One of its primary responsibilities is providing policy research and analysis for member governments to use in their deliberations and decision-making. Ibid. 51 Four major countries which voted against the Declaration, alphabetically, were

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. Russian Federation, another major power, was among eleven countries that abstained from voting. The ten others, alphabetically, were Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burundi, Colombia, Georgia, Kenya, Nigeria, Samoa, and Ukraine. As Table 2.1 indicates, of the three countries used as case studies in this book, only Cameroon voted yes.

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OAU Charter Table 2.1 ranked the OAU Charter as more sovereignty than selfdetermination in textual orientation. There is much in the facts to support this general assessment. Some of the values underlying the establishment of the OAU included a “[d]etermin[ation] to safeguard and consolidate the hard-won independence as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our States.”52 This is despite a comment in the document, in retrospect, more formulaic than substantive, professing adherence to the principles of the UN Charter and the UDHR.53 A review of the purposes and principles of the organization bears out the proposition regarding the privilege of sovereignty over selfdetermination. The purposes of the organization include “to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity[,] and independence[,]”54 as well as “[t]o promote the unity and solidarity of […] African States.”55 To realize these purposes, OAU member states pledge their adherence to a set of principles, not markedly different from the aforementioned purposes, that includes adherence to a set of principles like “[r]espect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State and for its inalienable right to independent existence,”56 “sovereign equality of all Member States,”57 and “[n]on-interference in the[ir] internal affairs.”58 A proper understanding of the OAU Charter demands that we probe a bit into the OAU’s personality. That personality is one built on the inviolability of colonial borders that goes back in time to the early years of African independence. At a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, in 1964, the OAU adopted a document, the Cairo Declaration, in turn, based on the UN Declaration on Independence of 1960.59 The document embodied the commitment of OAU member states “to respect the borders existing on

52 OAU Charter, note 13, preamble. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., art. II.1.c. 55 Ibid., art. II.1.a. 56 Ibid., art. III.3. 57 Ibid., art. III.1. 58 Ibid., art. III.2. 59 See note 35 and accompanying text.

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their achievement of national independence.”60 A train of developments with negative ramifications for self-determination in its interplay with sovereignty took place within this inauspicious environment of unquestioned commitment to colonial boundaries. One of these was Katanga Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire (1992).61 There, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, a quasi-judicial entity created under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, discussed soon below, ruled that Katanga has the right to self-determination within Zaire’s territory, but no right to break away, consistent with the OAU’s position related to Biafra.62 We will return to this case later in this conversation. In the lead-up to the case, Africa became the scene of systematic human rights violations, including war crimes and genocide, that many African leaders chose not to speak up against under the mantra of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference in the internal affairs of sister countries. In the apt observation from one study of that period, for the OAU, “[t]he rights of black Africans inside the borders of independent African states appear[ed] to be of little real concern[.]”63 All of this gave the organization the look—and notoriety—of a “dictators’ club.”64 This inability or unwillingness to act in the face of human right evils led to the OAU’s replacement in 2001, as a new century unfolded, with an organization avowedly more sensitive to human rights.65 In 1981, in the lead-up to that replacement, the OAU adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), otherwise known as Banjul Charter (after the capital city of The Gambia where 60 Organization of African Unity [OAU], Border Disputes Among African States, AHG/Res 16(I) (July 17–21, 1964). 61 Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire, Comm. No. 75/92, Eighth Annual Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1994–1995), ACHPR/RPT/8th, Annex VI (African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1995) [hereinafter Katangese Peoples’ Congress ]. 62 Ibid. On the status of the African Commission as a quasi-judicial body, rather than a court, see art. 45 of the Banjul Charter, note 66 below, which laid out the mandates of the Commission. 63 Rhoda E. Howard, Human Rights in Commonwealth Africa (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1986), 5. 64 See Paul Reynolds, “African Union Replaces Dictators’ Club,” BBC News (July 8, 2002), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2115736.stm. 65 See Rachel L. Swarns, “African Leaders Dropped Group for One That Has Power,” New York Times (July 14, 2002), A3.

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the final draft of the document was produced).66 Tracking the vocabulary of Common Article 1 of the two human rights covenants, the Charter was couched in language suggestive of sympathy toward the right to self-determination. These include that: “[a]ll peoples” “shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination,” which it tied to the “right to existence”67 ; that they “shall freely determine their political status and shall pursue their economic and social development according to the policy they have freely chosen”68 ; and that they “shall freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources,”69 doing so, where possible, “with a view to strengthening African Unity and solidarity.”70 Other self-determination-friendly provisions in the document include the statement to the effect that “[a]ll peoples shall have the right to their economic, social and cultural development with due regard to their freedom and identity and in the equal enjoyment of the common heritage of mankind”71 ; and that “[a]ll peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favorable to their development”72 ; all the way down to a provision prohibiting “the domination of [one] people by another.”73 In 2011, on the eve of the 30th birthday anniversary of the Banjul Charter, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, found reasons enough for celebration.74 These include: that the Banjul Charter “helped to steer Africa from the age of human wrongs into a new age of human rights[,]” that helped open up the region to “supra-national

66 Organization of African Unity (OAU), African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (June 27, 1981), CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (1982) [hereinafter the Banjul Charter], https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3630.html. 67 Ibid., art. 20(1). 68 Ibid., art. 20(1). 69 Ibid., art. 21(1). 70 Ibid., art. 21(4). 71 Ibid., art. 22(1). 72 Ibid., art. 24. 73 Ibid., art. 19. 74 African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, “The Charter Is 30 Years Old!”

https://www.achpr.org/chcel.

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accountability[,]” that it established standards and laid the “groundwork for” promoting and protecting human rights in Africa,75 and most directly to the point here, that it “dealt a blow to state sovereignty by emphasizing that human rights violations could no longer be swept under the carpet of ‘internal affairs.’”76 These insights are well taken, but implementation is key. The jury is still out concerning the realization of human rights in postcolonial Africa, including enlightened recognition of the group right of selfdetermination at the heart of this book. The Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights itself conceded the long list of “human rights catastrophes of extreme proportions” that have taken place under the Banjul Charter over the three decades of its stock-taking, including massive abject poverty, the HIV and AIDS epidemic, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the crisis in Darfur region of Sudan, as well as civil wars in Somalia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Liberia.77 Take Katangese Peoples’ Congress for example. The case was a landmark decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, its first since its foundation in 1987 to directly address the right to selfdetermination in the postcolonial context.78 There the Commission ruled that, under the Banjul Charter, the right to self-determination may not be achieved in a manner inconsistent with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Zaire, later the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).79 To its credit, the Banjul Charter ranks as the regional human rights instrument that permits the right of self-determination to be the subject matter of communications submitted by entities other than states.80 While some legal scholars nurse the hope that “the legacy of [the Commission’s] holding” in the case will facilitate realization of the right to self-determination in the years after the ruling,81 such hope has yet to materialize, given

75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. 78 Mtendeweka Owen Mhango, “Recognizing a Right to Autonomy for Ethnic Groups

under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire,” Human Rights Brief , 14(2) (2007), 11–15. 79 Katangese Peoples’ Congress, note 61. 80 See Mhango, note 78. 81 See ibid.

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that no group has claimed the right to self-determination based on that holding.82 Therefore, although important, none of these supposed improvements rise to the level of changing the assessment of the OAU Charter in Table 2.1 as more sovereignty than self-determination in textual orientation. In retrospect, this is not surprising. For notwithstanding the lofty objectives set up in its Charter, the mission of the OAU remained a modest one revolved around “an alliance of independent African” states which worked to foster “cooperation [among] the newly decolonized African governments,” drawing on a pan-Africanist philosophy which “encourage[d] the unity of all peoples of African ancestry,” within the heady context of the decolonization struggles “in the early 1960s.”83 The CAAU Table 2.1 ranked the Constitutive Act of the African Union (CAAU) as an amorphous mixture of sovereignty and self-determination.84 Here is why. Not particularly different from the OAU that it was meant to replace, the objectives of the AU include “[t]o defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity[,] and independence of its Member States,”85 as well as “[t]o achieve greater unity, cohesion and solidarity between the African countries and African nations.”86 Not done yet, the principles the instrument indicated the AU will use to realize these objectives sound very much like a privilege of sovereignty over self-determination. They include: “sovereign equality and interdependence among Member States

82 See ibid. 83 Alys Beverton, “Organization of African Unity (1963–2002),” Black Past (May

10, 2009), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/organization-african-unity1963-2002/. 84 For an extended analysis on the institutional structure of the AU, see Nsongurua J. Udombana, “The Institutional Structure of the African Union: A Legal Analysis,” California Western International Law Journal, 33(1) (2002), 69–135. 85 CAAU, note 14, art. 3(b). 86 Ibid. art. 3(a).

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of the Union,”87 “respect of borders existing on achievement of independence,”88 “non-interference by any Member State in the internal affairs of another,”89 and “prohibition of the use of force or threat to use force among Member States of the Union.”90 To be sure, there are rights trending away from sovereignty, perhaps lessons from the era of egregious human rights abuses, if not exactly in the direction of self-determination. These include: “the right of Member States to request intervention from the Union […] to restore peace and security,”91 “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State […] in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,”92 and prohibition against “unconstitutional changes of governments.”93 Others are a commitment to “promote and protect human and peoples’ rights[,] in accordance with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other relevant human rights instruments,”94 “respect for democratic principles, human rights, the rule of law and good governance,”95 and “promotion of social justice to ensure balanced economic development.”96 However, for all the replacement of the OAU Charter at the turn of a new century that it signifies, these marks of improvement in the Constitutive Act are not enough to change the basic character and tenor of the instrument as an ambiguous mixture of sovereignty and self-determination, with no clear option of a privilege of self-determination.

87 Ibid., art. 4(a). 88 Ibid., art. 4(b). 89 Ibid., 4(g). 90 Ibid., 4(f). 91 Ibid., 4(j). 92 Ibid., 4(h). 93 Ibid., art. 4(p). 94 Ibid., art. 3(h). 95 Ibid., art. 4(m). 96 Ibid., art. 4(n).

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Norm of Sovereignty A sovereign state is a “nonphysical juridical body that is led and governed by a single government, which has control over a geographical region.”97 There are three interlinked elements to the discussion related to this doctrine: definition of the term; rise of the sovereign state, including the US’ approach to sovereignty; and circumscription of the sovereign state. Defining Sovereignty At its core, sovereignty is “supreme authority within a territory” embedded in the political institution of a state.98 The term stands for equality of states embedded in a “uniform legal personality,” irrespective of size.99 It is a tool of political authority in the contemporary era that may be analyzed and understood in terms of two critical and interrelated features: the locus of sovereignty, and its scope.100 Beginning with locus, sovereignty takes its root from a sovereign, a natural person who, theoretically, may exercise power without limitation.101 But this is just one source of legitimacy. Over time, other sources evolved, such as natural law, a divine mandate, hereditary law, a constitution, some body of law, and international law.102 Dating back to the Treaty of Westphalia

97 “Which Countries Are Not Members of the United Nations?” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-are-not-members-of-the-uni ted-nations.html (“Member States”). 98 See “Sovereignty,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (May 31, 2003; updated June 22, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/. In International Law, a state is an institution made up of a population, territory, and a government. James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007); Clyde W. Barrow, Critical Theories of State: Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993). 99 Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 6th Ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 287. 100 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 101 Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute, “Sovereignty,” https://www.law.

cornell.edu/wex/sovereignty. 102 “Sovereignty,” note 98.

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of 1648, marking the creation of the modern state system and international relations, the state has been the chief holder of sovereignty,103 backed in certain cases with some body of law, including the constitution as “higher law.” Next to scope, sovereignty breaks down into internal and external categories, both of which are mutually inclusive.104 Whether de facto or in law, sovereignty grants its holder “both internal and external autonomy.”105 There are two terms oftentimes tied to sovereignty, especially by state politicians and other hardline supporters of sovereignty. The first is territorial integrity, defined as “territorial oneness or wholeness” of a state.106 The principle gives states the right to defend their borders against other states. It is a principle enshrined in the UN Charter. Article 2(4) of the document mandates all UN members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”107 Some scholars ascribe this principle the status of customary international law.108 The principle is so inextricably tied to sovereignty some authors refer to it as territorial sovereignty.109 The second term linked to sovereignty is non-intervention. Sovereignty is power free of interference that places its holder “beyond the power of

103 Ibid. For more on the Treaty of Westphalia, see Steven Patton, “The Peace of

Westphalia and it[s] [E]ffects on International Relations, Diplomacy and Foreign Policy,” Histories, 10 (1) (2019), 91–99. 104 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 105 “Sovereignty, Doctrine of,” Encyclopedia, https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/

dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/sovereignty-doctrine. 106 See Samuel K.N. Blay, “Territorial Integrity and Political Independence,” Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Updated March 2010), https://opil. ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e1116#:~: text=Territorial%20integrity%20refers%20to%20the,of%20the%20sovereignty%20of%20S tates. 107 UN Charter, note 9. Emphasis added. 108 See Olivier Corten, “Territorial Integrity Narrowly Interpreted: Reasserting the

Classical Inter-State Paradigm of International Law,” Leiden Journal of International Law, 24(1) (2011), 87–94. 109 See, for example, Anna Stilz, Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford, UK, and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

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others to interfere.”110 Conceptually as well as from a practical standpoint, “[a] sovereign is not subject to the control of any other individual or entity and has the right to control all those who fall within its power and jurisdiction.”111 Here, like with territorial integrity, the term finds support in the UN Charter. The document forbids the UN or its member states from “interven[ing] in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state” or a member state against its will.112 Similarly, in the Corfu Channel Case (1945), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that “[b]etween independent States, respect for territorial sovereignty is an essential foundation of international relations.”113 The court defined sovereignty to mean “the whole body of rights and attributes which a state possesses in its territory, to the exclusion of all other states, and also in its relations with other states.”114 Rise of the Sovereign State Like many other doctrines, sovereignty is a contested term. Over the past 500 years, claims against sovereignty have taken many forms, key for our purpose here, involving the assertion of independence from mother states. Such is “the resilience and flexibility of the sovereign state that it has accommodated such diverse sorts of authority.”115 Two parallel movements, wrapped in political thought and praxis, mark the legal history of sovereignty, namely: the rise of the sovereign state and the circumscription of that state.116 This first movement culminated in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which formalized the end of the long wars in Europe and marked the 110 “Sovereignty, Doctrine of,” note 105. 111 Ibid. 112 UN Charter, note 9, art. 2.7. 113 Corfu Channel (U.K. v. Alb.), Judgment, I.C.J. Rep. 4 (April 9, 1945), 35 [here-

inafter Corfu Channel Case] (dealt with state responsibility for damages at sea, as well as the doctrine of innocent passage). The full name of the case is Corfu Channel (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. People’s Republic of Albania). See also Ersun N. Kurtulus, State Sovereignty: Concept, Phenomenon, and Ramifications (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–10 (“Introduction”). 114 Corfu Channel Case, note 113, pp. 39, 43. 115 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 116 Ibid.

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inception of the modern state system.117 The rise of the sovereign state marks “one of the most formidable and successful political trends in modern times.”118 Four main works of political theory associated with this movement are the writings of the Italian Renaissance diplomat, philosopher, and historian Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527); the German theologian Martin Luther (1483–1546); the French jurist and political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–1596); and the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).119 In his manual, The Prince, published in 1532, Machiavelli systematically laid down steps the leader, whom he denominated the prince, should follow to promote a flourishing republic in terms that conferred on the prince supreme authority within his territory.120 He counseled that, manifestly, the prince was not to be bound by norms of Christendom that could curtail his authority, such as natural law, canon law, or precepts from the Gospel.121 Rather than subject himself to these norms, the prince should be prepared “not to be good,” and to be ready to perform evil necessary to promote the strength and well-ordering of the state.122 For Machiavelli, the obligation of the prince was raison d’état: He was supreme within the state’s territory and responsible for the well-being of this singular, unitary body.123 Luther posited that the Holy Roman Emperor should no longer legitimately enforce Catholic uniformity, and that the Roman Catholic Church and those who acted in its name should no longer exercise political or economic authority.124 For him, the entity that should take up these relinquished powers would be territorial princes.125 In the assessment of one political philosopher, “The unity and universality and essential rightness of the sovereign territorial State, and the denial of every extra-territorial

117 Patton, note 103. 118 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 119 Ibid. 120 See ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid.

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or independent communal form of life, are Luther’s lasting contribution to politics.”126 Bodin was the first European philosopher to treat sovereignty, souveraineté in France, extensively.127 The term featured majorly in his work, De la république, published in 1576, during a time a civil war raged in France between Calvinist Huguenots and the Catholic monarchy.128 Bodin viewed the problem of order as central in the conflict and one capable of resolution only through the integration of rulers and the ruled into a single, unitary body politic above any other human law and the source of human law embedded in sovereignty.129 In his view, only a supreme authority within a territory could strengthen a fractured community.130 The genius of Bodin’s contribution was that the conflict in France between rulers and the ruled could be solved only through the establishment of a body not subject to any external authority within its territory, yet not an absolute ruler free to disregard all and every rule.131 The way he achieved this balance or middle ground was via a statement of sovereignty which founded both the legality of this power and the wisdom of observing the limitations which hedged its proper use upon the nature of the body politic as a political society comprising both ruler and the ruled.132 Bodin’s theory of sovereignty is praised as the first systematic one in modern European philosophy.133 Like Bodin, Hobbes argued for sovereignty as supreme authority.134 There are other similarities between the two theories of sovereignty. Like Bodin, Hobbes’ theory emerged during a time of civil war and, like Bodin, his theory arrived at the notion of sovereignty

126 Ibid., citing John Neville Figgis, Studies of Political Thought: From Gerson to Grotius (1414–1625)—The Political and Religious Philosophy of European Renaissance Literature, 2nd Ed. (Paris, France: Adasonia Press, 1916 [1907]), 91. 127 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 F.H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2nd Ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986

[1966]), 124–125. 133 See “Sovereignty,” note 98. 134 Ibid. The rest of this paragraph is paraphrased from “Sovereignty,” note 98.

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as a possible solution. For Hobbes, the people established sovereign authority through a “natural contract” where they transferred all their rights to the Leviathan, his abstraction and model of the state, big term for the sovereign in Bodin’s theory. The will of the Leviathan reigned supreme and represented the will of all those who had transferred their rights to it. Like Bodin’s sovereign, Hobbes’ Leviathan was above the law, a mortal god unbound by any constitution or contractual obligations with any external party. Yet, like the sovereign in Bodin’s theory, to some extent, the Leviathan in Hobbes’ theory is accountable to God and natural law. Outside this limitation, the law was the command of the sovereign ruler, emanating from his will, and the obligation by the citizenry to obey it was absolute. Sovereignty has an important role in US legal history and constitutionalism. It is a role built on yet one that departs instructively from the UK monarchism which lodges supreme power in a “sovereign.”135 This is because, in the US, sovereignty is wrapped around the concept of a republic, embedded in the consent of the people.136 Here, ultimate sovereignty resides in “we, the people,” the American public.137 “[L]ike a king in a monarchy,” Americans constituting themselves into a republic, “exercise[] plenary authority as the sovereign.”138 But the picture is much more complicated. Following the ratification of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1791, the American system of government metamorphosed into two levels of government,

135 See Lord Irvine of Laira, “Sovereignty in Comparative Perspective: Constitutionalism in Britain and America,” New York University Law Review, 76(1) (April 2001), 1–22. 136 A republic is an indirect democracy where the citizens elect representatives who form the government and represent their interests. See “Democracy vs. Republic,” Diffen, https://www.diffen.com/difference/Democracy_vs_Republic. 137 See Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America’s Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 7. 138 Ibid.

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national and state, with complementary sovereignties.139 The Amendment stipulates that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”140 Last of the ten laws that constitute the US Bill of Rights, the Amendment was inserted into the Constitution “largely to relieve tension and to assuage the fears of states’ rights advocates, who believed that the newly[-]adopted Constitution would enable the federal government to run roughshod over the states and their citizens.”141 Yet, there are limits to the US’s concept of sovereignty. In America, states “have no external sovereignty, either as to other nations or as to other states. There are likewise important limits on their internal sovereignty. Important sovereign powers have been delegated to the federal government and denied the states.”142 Take, for example, treason, designated as a crime against sovereignty. Citizens of the US “owe paramount allegiance to the [national] government[,]” and only that government, not the states, “can punish for treason.”143 This occurrence bears juxtaposition with the UK.144 There the operative sovereignty is that of Parliament.145 Put differently, in the UK, Parliament, unlike the US Congress, is the supreme legal authority empowered to “create or

139 See “Federalism, State Sovereignty, and the Constitution: Basis and Limits of

Congressional Power,” EveryCRSReport (RL30315) (September 23, 2013) (“Summary”) (pointing out that in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), and Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), the US Supreme Court found that, “under the Tenth Amendment, Congress cannot ‘commandeer’ either the legislative process of a state or the services of state executive branch officials”). 140 See ACLU, “Tenth Amendment,” in United States Bill of Rights: First 10

Amendments to the Constitution, https://www.aclu.org/united-states-bill-rights-first-10amendments-constitution. 141 Brian P. Smentkowski, “Tenth Amendment,” Encyclopedia Britannica (February 7, 2019). 142 Hugh Evander Willis, “The Doctrine of Sovereignty Under the United States Constitution,” Virginia Law Review, 15(1929), 437, 457. 143 Ibid. 144 Lord Irvine of Laira, note 135. 145 See ibid.; and Joaquín Varela Suanzes-Carpegna, “Sovereignty in British Legal

Doctrine,” Historia Constitucional (revista electrónica), 4 (2003).

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end any law.”146 There, the courts cannot overrule a law passed by the legislature and no parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.147 Circumscription of the Sovereign State Complementing the rise of the sovereign state is a parallel movement related to the circumscription of that state. This second movement began earnestly after World War II. It is a limitation achieved through human right norms, and supranational institutions in the form of European integration. Most specifically, dating back to the early days of its evolution, the doctrine of sovereignty “has also met with both doubters and qualified supporters, many of whom have regarded any […] claim to sovereign status as a form of idolatry, sometimes as a carapace behind which rulers carry out cruelties and injustices free from legitimate outside scrutiny.”148 Therefore, although philosophers like the Dutch statesman and jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), the Italian jurist Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), and the Spanish philosopher Francisco Suarez (1548– 1617), viewed the state as a legitimate institution, at the same time, these thinkers espoused limitation of state authority.149 Criticisms of sovereignty and simultaneous arguments for its circumscription reached a high point after the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. The curtailments in the doctrine that have taken place in the doctrine occurred after the Holocaust. Two of the most prominent modern critics of sovereignty are the French philosophers Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903– 1987), and Jacques Maritain (1882–1973). Both thinkers wrote during the 1950s.

146 UK Parliament, “Parliamentary Sovereignty,” https://www.parliament.uk/site-inf ormation/glossary/parliamentary-sovereignty/. 147 Ibid. 148 “Sovereignty,” note 98. 149 Ibid. Grotius is noted for the advice that individuals subject their passions to reason:

“A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.” See “Hugo Grotius Quotes and Sayings—Page 1,” Inspiring Quotes, https://www.inspiringqutes.us/author/ 6290-hugo-grotius.

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In his book, Sovereignty: An Enquiry into the Political Good, published in 1957, Jouvenel criticized the modern concept of sovereignty for creating a power above the rules whose decrees are to be considered legitimate simply because they emanate from his will. He did not call for abrogation of the doctrine but instead held that sovereign authority be kept within legitimate boundary. In his work, Man and the State, published in1951, Maritain, who was a Roman Catholic philosopher, portrayed sovereignty even more negatively than Jouvenel. He argued for the abolition and discontinuation of the term, not just because of the “insuperable difficulties and theoretical entanglements” its usage creates in International Law, but also because the term “is intrinsically wrong and bound to mislead us if we keep on using it.”150 Maritain belonged in the class of Christian philosophers of early modern Europe who criticized absolute sovereignty, borne out of a concern for limits on the power and authority of the state, in the name of human rights, fearful of temptations for possible abuse of such powers.151 Maritain posited that sovereignty gives rise to three dysfunctionalities. First, external sovereignty is inconsistent with International Law. Second, internal sovereignty centralizes power, rather than promotes pluralism. Third, the supreme power of the sovereign state works against the democratic notion of accountability. In short, because he viewed the validity of a government as rooted in its relationship to natural law, like Jouvenel, Maritain considers exaltation and absolutization of the sovereign’s will as idolatry. Instructively, until today, the case for circumscribing sovereignty remains strong in the Catholic and other Christian traditions. A case in point was the formulation of Pope Benedict XVI related to the Responsibility to Protect in his 2008 speech to the United Nations.152 Within the liberal tradition, other notable examples include political philosophers 150 “Sovereignty,” note 98, citing Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of American Press, 1998 [1951]), 28–53 (“The Concept of Sovereignty”). 151 “Sovereignty,” note 98 (“They are the ancestors of those who now demand limits on the state’s authority in the name of human rights, of the right to quell genocide and disaster and deliver relief from the outside, of an international criminal court, and of a supranational entity that assumes power of governance over economic, and now, maybe, military affairs”). 152 Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to Members of the UN General Assembly (April 18, 2008), https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/ 2008/april/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080418_un-visit.html.

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like Allen Buchanan and Thomas Pogge.153 Both accord sovereignty an important but tempered moral status, seeking to make room for possibilities, such as humanitarian intervention under UN imprimatur, and the equally high-minded issue related to creating and using international institutions to fight poverty.154

The Right to Self-Determination Colloquially, self-determination is the process by which an individual exercises control over his or her own life.155 It is the ability or right of a person to make that person’s decision without interference from others, say, something as pedestrian as the decision to run a marathon free of the necessity to seek anyone’s opinion.156 Self-determination is the right to choose, free from external compulsion.157 More momentously, such as the group level at issue in this book, it is the right of a group united by attributes like ethnicity, language, geography, or common history,158 to

153 See Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Thomas W. Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” Ethics, 103(1) (October 1992), 48–75. 154 See ibid.; and “Sovereignty,” note 98. 155 See “Self-Determination,” Oxford Languages Dictionary, https://www.google.

com/search?q=definition+of+self-determination&oq=definition+of+self-determination& aqs=chrome.69i57j0i512l3j0i22i30l5j0i15i22i30.10887j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF8#bsht=CgRmYnNtEgIIBA. 156 “Self-Determination,” Your Dictionary, https://www.yourdictionary.com/self-det ermination. 157 “Self-Determination,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/self-determination. 158 “How Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World,” Council for Foreign Relations, https://world101.cfr.org/how-world-works-and-sometimes-doesnt/buildingblocks/how-self-determination-shaped-modern-world. This explains why some political scientists and legal scholars denominate self-determination the doctrine of national self-determination. See, for example, Benyamin Neuberger, “National Self-Determination: A Theoretical Discussion,” Nationalities Papers: Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 29(3) (2001), 391–418; and Eisuke Suzuki, “Self-Determination and World Public Order: Community Response to Territorial Separation,” Virginia Journal of International Law, 16(4) (1976), 779, 794–795 (stating that self-determination is “increasingly gaining recognition as a fundamental human right, particularly as a collective right, pertaining to all people and all nations”) (internal quotes omitted).

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shape its own socioeconomic, political, and cultural destinies,159 whether externally as a separate entity or internally within the setting of a larger political union.160 No less than sovereignty, self-determination is a contested term. There is still no agreement regarding the “self” entitled to determination,161 or recognized legal definition of “peoples” in International Law.162 And, similarly, no different from sovereignty, there is no agreement regarding the scope of the right163 : whether entrenchment of fundamental rights, power devolution in a unitary state, federation, or a combination of these “spaces,” or outright independence. With its emphasis on conflict resolution, this book seeks to answer some of these questions. Under the doctrine of flux or “everything flows,” everything changes and nothing stands still.164 As the Ionian philosopher, Heraclitus (535– 475 B.C.) famously stated, “[n]o man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”165 Selfdetermination is no different. Three discernable eras mark the evolution of self-determination. The first era began in the nineteenth century and lasted through the Wilsonian period, ending approximately in 1945. The second began in 1945 with the establishment of the UN. The third era began with the end of decolonization in the late 1970s and continues to the present day.166 During the first era, the right to self-determination featured essentially as a political principle, in the sense of autonomy for ethnic or

159 Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander, “Introduction,” in Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), xiii. 160 See Ray S. Cline, “Foreword,” in ibid., p. xi. 161 See Wolfgang Danspeckgruber and Anne-Marie Gardner, “Self-Determination,”

Encyclopedia Princetoniensis, https://pesd.princeton.edu/node/656; and Betty Miller Unterberger, “Self-Determination,” Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (2002). 162 Duncan French, ed. Statehood and Self-Determination Reconciling Tradition and Modernity in International Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 98. 163 See Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 161. 164 Tim Rayner, “Heraclitus, Change, and Flow,” Phil. For Change (April 7, 2008),

https://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/heraclitus-on-change/. 165 Socrates, “Heraclitus (535–475 BCE),” Classical Wisdom Weekly (July 17, 2013), http://classicalwisdom.com/heraclitus-535-475-bce/. 166 See Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 161.

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national groups per se, rather than statehood. As a political concept, self-determination served “as a tool for maintaining order and spreading democratic ideals.”167 This was the era of the American and French revolutions when nationalism gave echo to the right to self-determination.168 During this period, classic nationalist movements focused on unifying territories, such as Germany and Italy, rather than per se on the breakup of empires. It was only after the disintegration of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires that self-determination became a rallying cry of smaller national groups for dividing, rather than unifying, territories. President Woodrow Wilson’s famous contributions to selfdetermination fell within this period. Wilson’s main emphasis was on a state’s internal politics, specifically, protection of a minority’s cultural and linguistic rights; his motivation was to do away with multinational empires and replace them with nation-states.169 The term “self-determination” did not appear in Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech, which, instead, primarily focused on autonomy and respect for minority rights.170 More about this later in the next section on Wilson’s contribution to self-determination. Next the second era. As shown earlier in this chapter, the UN Charter referred to self-determination, albeit feebly, alongside sovereignty.171 This is in contradistinction to the Covenant of the League of Nations.172 During this period, self-determination applied to states, not to peoples or ethnic groups. Instead, the doctrine appeared to stand only for decolonization. A UN proclamation which signified this orientation was the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples of 1960.173 167 Ibid. 168 “Self-Determination,” Encyclopedia Britannica (August 13, 2019), https://www.

britannica.com/topic/self-determination. 169 Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 161. 170 Ibid. 171 See notes 25–29 and accompanying texts. 172 See Navdeep Kour Sasan, “League of Nations and Self-Determination,” GNLU

[Gujarat National Law University] Journal of Law, Development and Politics, 3(2) (2013), 139, abstract (opining that, although its mandate system seems to paint a different picture, “[t]he right to self-determination was not directly established under the aegis of the League of Nations”). 173 UN Declaration on Independence of 1960, note 35.

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In sum, during this second era, four principles came to characterize self-determination. First, self-determination referred only to decolonization. Second, it applied only to territories, not peoples. Third, unlike the first era, self-determination congealed into a relatively absolute right that, again, stood for colonies only. Finally, to the extent that it related to boundaries, self-determination did not allow for secession; instead, the territorial integrity of existing states and most colonial territories was assumed. In a word, during this era, the essential quality of selfdetermination was that all colonies had the right to be independent, rather than all peoples. Some observers call the third era the most problematic of all the three. Here is why. This stage is characterized by the attempt in recent decades to fuse the first two eras; that is, to combine the ethnic and cultural rights of minorities that Wilson championed with the territorial absolutism of decolonization. The result has been a tendency to redefine self-determination to mean that every distinctive ethnic or national group has a right to independence. But though self-determination has taken on this new meaning in a popular sense, it has yet to find acceptance in International Law, certainly not in decolonized Africa. “With time, it became apparent that existing states had no appetite to extend the right in such a manner.”174 In a border dispute between Burkina Faso and Mali that it decided in 1986, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or the World Court) held that the right to self-determination was a right to “upgrade[] former [...] delimitations, established during the colonial period, to international frontiers,” rather than a right of people within these frontiers to declare independence.175 Thus, while self-determination applied to decolonization, “it was less clear whether [the doctrine] also entailed a right of peoples within those countries to become independent.”176 This is despite the fact that the UN based its adoption of the Declaration on Independence of 1960 on the “continued subjugation and denial of

174 Diane F. Orentlicher, “Separation Anxiety: International Responses to EthnoSeparatist Claims,” Yale Journal of International Law, 23(1) (1998), 1, 39–41. 175 The Frontier Dispute Case (Burkina Faso v. Mali), I.C.J. 544 (December 22, 1986). 176 Orentlicher, note 174. See also “How Self-Determination Shaped the Modern

World,” note 158 (“[a] road to self-determination still remains, but it is far trickier in a world in which empires no longer control colonies oceans away”).

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human rights” which it held out as “an impediment to world peace and cooperation.”177 It is at this third juncture that this book comes in. Although a collage of nonobligatory formulations, nevertheless the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007,178 marks a milestone occurrence in the right to self-determination. In the aftermath of this Declaration, the UN has engaged in other activities designed to promote the welfare of indigenous peoples. One such notable activity was the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) held September 22–23, 2014, in New York, under the auspices of the UN General Assembly.179 First of its kind, the meeting was an opportunity to share perspectives and best practices on the realization of the rights of indigenous peoples, consistent with the objectives of the Declaration.180 Other notable events are the setting aside of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages and 2022 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.181 Facially, perhaps deliberately, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People does not include any definition of indigenous people.182 However, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) provides the following description which arguably contains a definition of the term or is by way of a definition: Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment. They have retained social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. Despite their cultural differences, indigenous peoples from around the world share common problems related to the protection of their rights as distinct peoples.183

177 UN Declaration on Independence of 1960, note 35. 178 See notes 40–51 and accompanying texts. 179 Indigenous Peoples at the UN, note 50. For the role of the UNDESA in the UN system, see note 50. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid. 182 This is consistent with the rule of construction that leaves room for the court to define a term in the light of changing circumstances. See Stephen Adams, “Listing the Canons of Construction” (list of 37 canons of statutory construction, together with case citations), https://isb.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/canons_w_commentary.pdf. 183 Indigenous Peoples at the UN, note 50.

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Instructively, UNDESA observed: that Indigenous peoples rank “among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of people in the world”184 ; that “throughout history,” the rights of Indigenous peoples “have always been violated,” even though these communities for years “have sought recognition of their identities, way of life and their right to traditional lands, territories and natural resources”185 ; and that, for the foregoing reasons, the “international community now recognizes that special measures are required to protect their rights and maintain their distinct cultures and way of life.”186 It is hoped that the UNDRIP will build on and consolidate the campaign for the right to self-determination across countries in Africa, including a growth in the pace of the constitutionalization of that right. This book will return to this issue in Chapters 6–7, which, respectively, explores the object lessons from the three case studies, and draws up blueprints for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa.

Relationship Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination The norm of sovereignty came to the fore in modern international law and relations following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.187 Until 1884, that influence was confined to Europe. The situation arguably changed in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885.188 The get-together reconciled and formalized the “scramble for Africa,” the competing claims by various European countries over the territories

184 Ibid. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid. 187 “Peace of Westphalia,” Encyclopedia Britannica (January 23, 2022), https://www.

britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia (counting recognition of “the full territorial sovereignty of the member states of the empire” among other constitutional benefits). 188 See, for example, Matthew Craven, “Between Law and History: The Berlin Confer-

ence of 1884–1885 and the Logic of Free Trade,” London Review of International Law, 3(1) (March 2015), 31–59; Sybil E. Crowe, The Berlin West African Conference, 1884–1885 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1981 [1942]); and Stig Förster et al., eds., Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

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of Africa.189 At the instigation of Portugal, then German Chancellor Otto von Bismark convened a meeting of major European powers at the time to facilitate the partition of Africa to ward off possible quarrels among European powers for control of the continent.190 Germany itched to expand its sphere of influence into Africa191 ; this is a crave for what Bismark’s successors subsequently dubbed “a place in the sun.”192 Fourteen countries participated in the Berlin conference, namely: Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814 to 1905), Turkey, the UK, and the US.193 Of the number, seven—Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the UK—held colonies in

189 Matt Rosenberg, “The Berlin Conference to Divide Africa,” ThoughtCo (Updated

June 30, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/berlin-conference-1884-1885-divide-africa1433556. 190 Bismarck acquired a reputation as German’s “Iron Chancellor” signified by his willingness to resort to war where necessary to promote the unification of Germany and expand its powers within and beyond Europe. Priyanka Sharma, “Blood and Iron Policy—Synonymous to Cruelty,” History Flame (August 23, 2021), https://historyflame. com/blood-and-iron-policy/. Here is the context. In September 1862, when the Prussian House of Representatives was refusing to support an increase in military spending sought by King Wilhelm I, the monarch appointed Bismarck Minister-President and Foreign Minister. A few days later, Bismarck appeared before the House’s Budget Committee and stressed the need for military preparedness to solve the “German Question.” He concluded his speech with the averment that: “The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power […] Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided […] but by iron and blood (Eisen und Blut ).” Ibid. The phrase became the symbolic of Bismarckian Machtpolitik or power politics. 191 Rosenberg, note 189. 192 The phrase is attributed to Bernhard von Bülow (1849–1929), who, as German

foreign minister in 1897, told the Reichstag (his listeners at a historic building in Berlin which houses the Bundestag, the lower house of Germany’s parliament), “We do not want to put anyone into the shade, but we demand a place for ourselves in the sun.” See James Holmes, “Mahan, A ‘Place in the Sun,’ and Germany’s Quest for Sea Power,” Comparative Strategy, 23(1) (2004), 27–61. Von Bülow was German Chancellor from 1900 to 1909. 193 Rosenberg, note 189.

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Africa,194 the direct result of that conference.195 The bulk of the territories went to the UK and France; the two countries also took over the colonies owned by Germany after the latter’s defeat in World War I. At the time of the conference in 1884–1885, about four-fifths of Africa remained under traditional and local control. By 1914, these major powers had mostly completed the process of “pacification” involving the division of Africa into over 50 countries with mostly artificial boundaries—in “a new map of the continent […] superimposed over 1,000 indigenous cultures and regions of Africa. The new countries lacked rhyme or reason and divided coherent groups of people and merged disparate groups who really did not get along.”196 In the apt assessment of one scholar, “[t]he colonial powers superimposed their domains on” Africa such that “[b]y the time independence returned to [the continent] in 1950, the realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily.”197 Following two world wars, the doctrine of self-determination came into play. It emerged as a brake to European sovereignty blamed as cause for these conflagrations. The League of Nations was not big on selfdetermination.198 Instead, its closest association with the concept came from the thoughts of US President Woodrow Wilson, even though within this same period Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin also

194 British colonies included Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), and Botswana, as well as Nigeria and the Gold Coast (later Ghana). French colonies included much of West Africa from Mauritania to Chad (French West Africa), as well as Gabon and the Republic of Congo (French Equatorial Africa). In the name of King Leopold II, Belgium colonized Belgian Congo (today the Democratic Republic of Congo). Portugal colonized Angola and Mozambique. Italy colonized Somalia (formerly known as Italian Somaliland) and Eritrea (later part of Ethiopia). Germany colonized Namibia (German Southwest Africa) and Tanzania (German East Africa), whose two colonies it lost to Britain after Germany’s defeat in World War I. Finally, Spain colonized Equatorial Guinea (then known as Rio Muni). Ibid. 195 For an observation related to the US colony in Liberia, see Chapter 1, note 63. 196 Rosenberg, note 189. 197 H.J. De Blij et al., Geography Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 16th Ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014). 198 Sasan, note 172.

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espoused the principle.199 Wilson posited, without explicitly using the expression self-determination, that No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. […] [H]enceforth, inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.200

Yet, despite this Wilsonian formulation, “self-determination occupies an uneasy place in the history of US foreign relations. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have claimed self-determination as a peculiarly American idea, embodied in the United States’ anticolonial heritage and democratic politics.”201 As Brad Simpson elaborates, successive US governments feel uneasy regarding the spread of selfdetermination claims, because they view such claims as potentially disruptive, in the sense that it could stimulate secessionist movements, and conflict between major powers that can impede the integrity of the current international order.202

199 See U.O. Umozurike, Self-Determination in International Law (Hamden, CT: Archon Book Publishers, 1972), 167. For a subsequent robust presentation of the Soviet theory and praxis related to self-determination, see Ilya Levkov, “Self-Determination in Soviet Politics,” in Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friendlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), 133–190. 200 Woodrow Wilson, “Peace Without Victory,” Address to the United States Senate (January 22, 1917), reprinted in Digital History, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_ textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3898. Wilson cited as example Poland, of which he indicated that “statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland.” Ibid. 201 Brad Simpson, “The United States and the Curious History of Self-Determination,” Diplomatic History, 36(4) (September 2012), 675–694. 202 Ibid.

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UN behavior seems to reflect such ambivalence. For starters, the organization aims to “unite [the world’s] strength to maintain international peace and security,” such that “armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest.”203 It replaced the League of Nations, to the point of inheriting some of its institutions, most notably its mandate system. It was under its watch that many African countries, along with their counterparts in other parts of the developing world, became independent under the theory of decolonization.204 Such is how these two doctrines of International Law, each important, came to contend. The point is that the gap between sovereignty and self-determination is less dichotomous than some scholars and diplomats make out. Selfdetermination evolved to temper sovereignty and its corollary doctrine of territorial integrity because territorial wholeness does not translate into territorial wholesomeness. Put differently, in the interest of international peace and security, territorial unity and wholeness need to be complemented by the happiness of inmates of a particular territory which takes place when territorial wholesomeness is present. This is the essence of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s contention, embodied in his concept of “two sovereignties,” state and individual, summarized in Chapter 1.205 Annan carved out an expanding swath of individual sovereignty under the UN Charter and subsequent treaties that moved the focus of attention from states, known to abuse those rights, to individual human beings, needing the protection that the proper use of sovereign authority provides.206 The repositioning requires governments to broaden their definition of the national interest to embrace collective interests needed for the international community 203 UN Charter, note 9, preamble. 204 For a sample of the numerous works pertaining to this topic, see John D. Harg-

reaves, Decolonization in Africa, 2nd Ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2014 [1996]); John Springhall, Decolonization since 1945: The Collapse of European Overseas Empires (New York: Palgrave, 2001); William Roger Louis, The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization, 1940–1960 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Henri Grimal, Decolonization: The British, Dutch, and Belgian Empires, 1919–1963, translated by Stephen Devos (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978); and John Hatch, Africa: The Rebirth of Self-Rule (London: Methuen, 1967). See also James D. Le Sueur, ed., The Decolonization Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2003); and UN Declaration on Independence of 1960, note 35. 205 See Chapter 1, notes 44–47, and accompanying texts. 206 Ibid.

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to better respond to humanitarian emergencies, some of which emanate from conflicts in the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination (like Biafra 1, covered in Chapter 4 on Nigeria).207 It is in the face of the utilitarianism that Annan and other thinkers talk about that human rights emerge as an “erosion of state sovereignty.”208 As we state repeatedly in this study, this includes the group right to selfdetermination.209 In its seeming unsteadiness, sometimes UN practice moves in that direction. In its advisory opinion on Kosovo’s declaration of independence, the World Court, a UN organ, ruled that, in International Law, territorial integrity is not violated solely by unilateral declaration of independence.210 This appears to be a marked departure from the 1986 border dispute between Burkina Faso and Mali, referred to above, where the Court took a legal position that denied people in supposed “international frontiers,” the right to independence.211 The key is for the international community to socialize this broader mindset.

Conclusion This chapter set forth the conceptual framework of the book. There were four parts to the conversation. The first revolves around the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, wrapped around Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, and illustrated by a survey of six human rights instruments. A tension, a state of imbalance between sovereignty and self-determination exists when there is a mixture or commingling of

207 Ibid. 208 Bruce Russett et al., World Politics: The Menu for Choice, 6th Ed. (Belmont, CA:

Wadsworth Publishing, 1999). See also Joshua S. Goldstein, International Relations, 3rd. Ed. (New York and Harlow: Longman, 1999), 329–330 (“The very idea of human rights flies in the face of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states”); Kathryn Sikkink, “Transnational Politics, International Relations Theory, and Human Rights,” PS: Political Science & Politics, 31(3) (September 1998), 517 (“[H]uman rights issues offer particularly potent challenges to the central logic of a system of sovereign states”); Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Red Globe Press, 1977), 146 (“Carried to its logical extreme, the doctrine of human rights and duties under international law is subversive of the whole principle” of sovereignty). 209 See Chapter 1, note 22, and accompanying text. 210 International Court of Justice, Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral

Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo (Advisory Opinion) (July 22, 2010). 211 See note 175 and accompanying text.

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sovereignty and self-determination within the four corners of a human rights document, whether in favor of sovereignty or self-determination. The discussion includes a preface on the foundational role of the UDHR. The second issue relates to the norm of sovereignty, including its definition and association with territorial integrity and non-intervention; the rise of the sovereign state, a contributory factor of which was the Peace of Westphalia of 1648; and its circumscription, almost from the point of its rise, due to concerns pertaining to abuses that reached a high point with the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. These abuses include cruelties and injustices not amenable to legitimate public scrutiny as well as dysfunctionalities like nonaccountability. The third issue covered in this chapter relates to the right to self-determination dissected in three eras. The fourth is the relationship between sovereignty and self-determination from the Treaty of Westphalia in the seventeenth century through the Berlin Conference in the nineteenth century. One takeaway from this last issue is a plasticity in the texture of sovereignty in its intercourse with self-determination: the gap between sovereignty and self-determination is less dichotomous than some scholars and diplomats make out. This last point is not surprising, given the reality that, as one study points up, the history of self-determination “is bound up with the history of the doctrine of popular sovereignty proclaimed by the French Revolution.”212 These and related considerations may have been a factor in the advisory opinion of the World Court in 2010 to the effect that the universal declaration of independence by Kosovo did not automatically violate the norm of territorial integrity in International Law.213 The attempt to redress the imbalance against self-determination reached a high point with the adoption in 2007 of the UNDRIP, earlier elaborated in this chapter.214 Chapter 1 presents the argument of this book, which this chapter, focused on conceptual framework, complements. The two constitute Part I, the starting points of the book, based on the organization of the work. In turn, Part II explores the relationship between constitutional law and the right to self-determination in Africa represented by the case studies of

212 A. Rigo Sureda, The Evolution of the Right of Self-Determination: A Study of United Nations Practice (Leiden, Netherlands: Sijthoff, 1973), 17. 213 See note 210 and accompanying text. 214 See notes 40–51 and accompanying texts.

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three countries in the region that are live scenes of self-determination struggles: Ethiopia covered in Chapter 3, Nigeria in Chapter 4, and Cameroon in Chapter 5. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thus, the three countries lend context and vivification to the broad theme of disharmony between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa that animates this book, over and above the level achieved by the introductory materials in Chapters 1–2. The story begins logically with Ethiopia because of its bellwether status as the only country among the trio, and the only one in Africa so far, to constitutionalize the right to self-determination.

Appendix to Chapter 2: Fundamental Freedoms Embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Item no.

Right

UDHR article no.

Textual orientation of guarantee

1.

Life, liberty, and security of person

3

2.

Education

26

3.

Work and free choice of employment, including the right to the right to form and to join trade unions to protect his or her interests

23

4.

Adequate standard of living

25

5.

Property

17

6.

Rest and leisure

24

More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group (continued)

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(continued) Item no.

Right

UDHR article no.

Textual orientation of guarantee

7.

Social security

22

8.

Freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude

4

9.

Freedom from torture and related treatment or punishment

5

10.

Freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile

9

11.

Equality before the law and equal protection of the law

7

12.

Recognition as a person before the law

6

13.

Freedom and equality in dignity and rights

1

14.

Right to nondiscrimination, without distinction on any grounds, including status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether dependent or independent Fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in criminal trials

2

16.

Presumption of innocent until proven guilty in criminal proceedings

11(1)

17.

Freedom from ex post facto laws and punishments

11(2)

More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group Mixture of individual and group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group

15.

10

(continued)

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(continued) Item no.

Right

UDHR article no.

Textual orientation of guarantee

18.

Privacy

12

19.

Right of individuals of “full age” to marry and found a family 16

20.

Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

18

21.

Freedom of opinion and expression

19

22.

Freedom of peaceful assembly and association

20

23.

Movement and residence within his or her own country, including the right to leave and to return to his country

13

24.

Nationality, including the right to change his or her nationality 15

25.

Right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries

14

26.

Participation in the cultural life of the community

27

More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group More individual than group (continued)

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(continued) Item no.

Right

UDHR article no.

Textual orientation of guarantee

27.

Duties to the community

29

28.

Participation in government, including the right to stand for election or elect people in government

21

29.

Effective remedy when governmental authorities violate fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law

8

30.

Social and international order

28

More individual than group215 More individual than group More individual than group Mixture of individual and group

215 This notion of duties was later fleshed out in subsequent human rights instrument. Thus, for example, both the ICCPR and ICESCR provide that “the individual, having duties to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the […] Covenant.” ICCPR, note 10, preamble; and ICESCR, note 11, preamble.

PART II

Constitutional Law and the Right to Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa: Three Case Studies

CHAPTER 3

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Constitutionalized Setting: Ethiopia in Comparative Perspective

Introduction The modern history of Ethiopia is strewn with challenges against the central government by one ethnic group after another.1 Dating back to the emperor-ship of Haile Selassie until his dethronement in 1974, the Ethiopian army expended more energy “combating domestic insurgency and unrest” than it did in protecting the country against external threats.2

1 Ahnednasir M. Abdullahi, “Article 39 of the Ethiopian Constitution on Secession and Self-Determination: A Panacea to the Nationality Question in Africa?” Verfassung und Recht in Übersee/Law and Politics in Africa, Asia[,] and Latin America, 31(4) (Quartal 1998), 440, 440–455 (“Almost all the major ethnic nationalities in Ethiopia have challenged the central government at one point in time”). See also Appendix A to Chapter 1 (loci of separatist movements in Africa) (listing four separatist movements since the independence of Eritrea). 2 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. E–5, Part 1, Documents on Sub-Saharan Africa, 1969–1972, National Intelligence Estimate 75/ 76–70 (May 21, 1970; declassified April 21, 2005), ¶ 6, https://history.state.gov/histor icaldocuments/frus1969-76ve05p1/d287.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_3

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This is ironic for a country often viewed as a “linchpin of regional security” in the Horn of Africa,3 an “inherently unstable” subregion marked by tensions of all types, including clan, ethnic, and interstate.4 This chapter covers six illustrative issues pertaining to Ethiopia based on the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination at the thrust of this book. In addition to this introduction, the conclusion at the end of the chapter, and an appendix, these selected issues are basic facts on Ethiopia, revolved around a portraiture of the country as land of the Blue Nile; the modern constitutional history of the country from 1931 to 1995 in the lead up to the constitutionalization of the right to selfdetermination in the country; a complementary separate statement on Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution, which constitutionalized the right to self-determination; the politics of constitutional engineering in the country; struggles for self-determination in the land before 1995, exemplified by Eritrea; and self-determination events since 1995 revolved around the implementation of Article 39 that, in its complicatedness, some scholars blame on “ethnic federalism.” The appendix to this chapter embodies key dates in Ethiopian constitutional and self-determination histories. Like for the other two countries used as case studies in this book, the basic facts on Ethiopia and its constitutional history analyzed in this chapter amplify and solidify the selected indicators laid out in Table 1.1 of Chapter 1.

Ethiopia, Land of the Blue Nile: Basic Facts Related to the Country Etymology of Ethiopia Ethiopia took its name from the Greek word “Aethiopia,” a term in ancient times generically used to designate and demarcate lands south of Egypt in the Upper Nile region.5 With a history stretching back more than 2000 years, Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa

3 “Why Is Ethiopia at War with Itself?” New York Times (March 16, 2022), https:// www.nytimes.com/article/ethiopia-tigray-conflict-explained.html. For more on the Horn of Africa, see note 24 below and accompanying text. 4 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note 2, ¶ 1. 5 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022).

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and one of the oldest in the world.6 There is widespread belief that humans evolved from present-day Ethiopia from whence they spread out to the Near East and elsewhere during the era of the Middle Paleolithic.7 Other marks of this agedness shrouded in antiquity include archeological diggings, such as the discovery in the country’s Awash Valley of the oldest remains of a human ancestor, dating back over five million years8 ; ancient writings, referring to ancient Ethiopia, such as those of the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century BC9 ; and Biblical account about the visit of Makeba, Queen of Sheba, to Jerusalem where personally she experienced the wisdom of King Solomon.10 As legend goes, that visit gave rise to Menelik I, son of Queen Makeba and King Solomon,11 progenitor of the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia.12

6 Ibid.; “List of Ethiopian Presidents,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/art icles/presidents-of-ethiopia-through-history.html. See also Chapter 1, note 51. 7 “About Ethiopia,” Embassy of Ethiopia, Washington, D.C., https://ethiopianemb assy.org/overview-about-ethiopia/. 8 See “Earliest Human Ancestors Discovered in Ethiopia; Discovery of Bones and Teeth Date Fossils Back More Than 5.2 Million Years,” Science News (July 12, 2001), https:// www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010712080134.htm. 9 “About Ethiopia,” note 7. Venerated as “father of history,” Herodotus (484 BC–425 BC) is reputed for chronicling some of the most important events of ancient history, such as the wars between Greece and Persia, and the rise of the Persian Empire (modernday Iran). In tracing these and other events, Herodotus aimed “to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time.” See, for example, John L. Myres, Herodotus: Father of History (Chicago: Henry Regnrey, 1971). 10 See Holy Bible, New International Version, 1 Kings 10:1–12 (“The Queen of Sheba Visits Solomon”); Holy Bible, New International Version, 2 Chronicles 9:13 (“The Queen of Sheba Visits Solomon”). 11 See, for example, David Allan Hubbard, “The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast,” Ph.D. diss., University of St. Andrews (1957), 352; and Anonymous, The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek … A Complete Translation of the Kebra Nagast, E. A. Wallis Budge, translator, 2nd Ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1932). The name Menelik is Amharic laced in two meanings: “Son of the wise man,” and “What will he send?” Ibid. The term Kebra Nagast is explained in the section below on Ethiopian constitutionalism. 12 Archeological diggings have turned up remains of the Queen of Sheba’s palace in Axum, in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. “About Ethiopia,” note 7. Axum is also the locus of many other historical sites, including the home of the Ark of the Covenant, believed to have been brought there from Jerusalem by Menelik. Ibid. The Ark of the Covenant or the Ark of God is a wooden chest, covered in pure gold, with an elaborately designed lid, the mercy seat, believed to be the most sacred relic of the Israelites. Created by Moses, the Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40-year wandering in the desert. See, for

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Other figures credited with founding modern-day Ethiopia are Menelik II (1844–1913), born as Sahle Maryam, and emperor from 1889 until his death in 191313 ; and Haile Selassie (1892–1975), born as Täfäri Mäkonnän, and emperor from 1930 until his overthrow in a military coup in September 1974 and his death, subsequently, in detention on August 26, 1975.14 Menelik II undertook large-scale modernization, including (re)introduction of a national currency, building schools and government offices, constructing a railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, and building telecommunication systems, the first of its kind in the country.15 Under him, Addis Ababa, previously known as Finfinne, became the new capital of Ethiopia in 1892.16 It was also under his reign that Ethiopia defeated Italy in March 1896 in the famed Battle of Adwa.17 However, this victory was reversed in 1935 when Italy defeated Ethiopia.18 From this period until 1941, Italy annexed Ethiopia with Eritrea and Somaliland to form Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana).19 Another downside, beginning the story of droughts and famines in Ethiopia, was the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888–1892, involving the death of an estimated one-third of the population.20

example, Susan Ackerman, in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, ed. David Noel Freedman (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), 102–103. 13 See Euell A. Nielsen, “Emperor Menelik II (Sahle Miriam) (1844–1913),” Black Past (May 6, 2019), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/emperor-menelikii-sahle-miriam-1844-1913/. 14 Julianna Tesfu, “Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia (1892–1975),” Black Past (May 23, 2008), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/selassie-haile-1892-1975/. 15 Nielsen, note 13. 16 Caelen Anacker, “Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (1886–),” Black Past (March 16, 2010),

https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/addis-ababa-1886/#:~:text=Addis%20A baba%20came%20into%20existence,he%20constructed%20his%20palace%20there. 17 Nielsen, note 13. 18 Ephrem Yared, “The Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–1936),” Black Past (March

8, 2016), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/second-italo-abyssinian-war1935-1936/ (After Italy’s defeat in 1896, Italian troops “remained in neighboring Eritrea and Somalia, and it was only a matter of time before [Italy and Ethiopia] would clash again”). 19 Ibid.; and “Italian East Africa,” World Statesmen (accessed May 5, 2023), https:// www.worldstatesmen.org/Ethiopia.html#Italian-East-Africa. 20 See Richard Pankhurst, “The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888–1892: A New Assessment,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 21(2) (1966), 95–124.

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For his part, Selassie unveiled a program of modernization and reform that included gaining admission for Ethiopia into the League of Nations in 1923, abolishing slavery (necessary for membership in the League of Nations), establishing educational institutions, developing modern infrastructure, founding the Bank of Ethiopia in 1931, and promoting the creation of newspapers.21 His other achievements were the adoption, in 1931, of Ethiopia’s first-ever Constitution, commented upon later below, and an instrumental role in the decolonization process in Africa signified by active participation in the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1964.22 Selassie’s overthrow and removal from office in 1974 arguably marked the formal end of the Solomonic dynasty. Geopolitical Features and Demographic Profile Ethiopia is located in East Africa, west of Somalia.23 The country shares boundaries with six countries in the Horn of Africa24 : Somalia to the east and northeast, Djibouti to the northeast, South Sudan to the west, Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the northwest, and Kenya to the south.25 Of these six countries, the ones with which Ethiopia shares the most land boundaries are Somali (1640 km), South Sudan (1299 km), and Eritrea (1033 km).26 In 2022, Ethiopia had a population of approximately 114 million

21 Crown Council of Ethiopia, “A Brief Biography of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I, 23 July 1892–27 August 1975,” https://ethiopiancrown.org/biographyemperor-haile-selassie-i/. 22 Tesfu, note 14. 23 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. 24 The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in the easternmost point of Africa. Stretching

hundreds of kilometers into the Gulf of Aden, Somalia Seas, and Guardafui Channel near the southern limit of the Red Seas, the peninsula takes its name from its land formation shaped like a horn on the map. See Sundus Ahmed, “The Horn of Africa,” Black Past (August 11, 2021), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/the-horn-ofafrica/. 25 See “Map of Ethiopia, Eastern Africa,” Nations Online, https://www.nationsonline. org/oneworld/map/ethiopia-political-map.htm. 26 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5.

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people,27 on an area (land and water) of 1,104,300 square km,28 placing it No. 27 among the largest countries in the world by area,29 in comparative terms, about twice the size of Texas in the United States.30 Ethiopia is the second most-populous country in Africa after Nigeria, and the 12th most-populous country in the world,31 with potential for rapid population growth beyond this number.32 Ethiopia’s population is unevenly distributed with the highest density found in the highlands of the north and middle areas of the country, particularly around the central location of Addis Ababa, vis-à-vis the sparsely populated far east and southeast.33 Like many other countries in Africa, youths make up the bulk of Ethiopia’s population. In 2020, over 59 percent of Ethiopians were below 25 years of age, with approximately 40 percent in the 0–14 age bracket; only approximately 8 percent of Ethiopians were 55 and above.34 Chapter 6, which pulls together the object lessons from the case studies in this book, comments on the matter of high youth unemployment which Ethiopia shares with Nigeria and Cameroon.

27 See Table 1.1, Item 2, in Chapter 1. 28 See Table 1.1, Item 4, in Chapter 1. As indicated before in Chapter 1, note 54, the

figure is an estimate, given that a large portion of the country’s border with Somalia is undefined. 29 See “Largest Countries in the World (by Area),” Worldometer, https://www.wor ldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/. This makes it the 27th-largest country in the world by area. Ibid. “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. 30 Table 1.1, Item No. 5, in Chapter 1; see also “Ethiopia,” Nations Online, https://

www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ethiopia.htm. 31 See “Ethiopia Population (Live),” Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/ world-population/ethiopia-population/. 32 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. The country’s current growth rate of 2.46 percent places it at No. 25 in the world. Ibid. As indicated in Chapter 1, note 52, Ethiopia’s rapid population growth piles pressure on land resources, worsens environmental degradation, and increases food shortages and insecurity. Consider this too. Residents of Oromia surround Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, which also doubles as capital city of the regional state of Oromia. There a conflict broke out in 2015 when national government officials in Addis Ababa sought to annex surrounding Oromo lands to make way for the country’s booming population. David Ottaway, “Ethiopia Faces Dire Consequences of Ethnic Federalism,” Wilson Center Blog Post (July 28, 2021), https:// www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ethiopia-faces-dire-consequences-ethnic-federalism. 33 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. 34 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5 (“Age Structure”).

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Table 3.1 Major ethnic groups of Ethiopia Item No.

Ethnic group

Share of total population (in percentage)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Oromo Amhara Somali Tigray Sidama Guragie Welaita Afar Silte Kefficho Others

35.8 24.1 7.2 5.7 4.1 2.6 2.3 2.2 1.3 1.2 13.5

Source “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022) (estimate as of 2022 based on a pop. of over 113 million people)

Ethiopia is home to an estimated 100 ethnic groups.35 Table 3.1 sets forth ten major ethnic groups in Ethiopia, three of which, Oromo, Amhara, and Somali, make up two-thirds of the country.36 Like Nigeria, although somewhat differently, religion has a major influence on Ethiopian life.37 The two major religions in the country are Christianity and Islam, with Christians forming nearly 70 percent and Muslims a little over 30 percent.38 35 See “Ethiopia—Ethnic Groups,” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.org/mil itary/world/ethiopia/people-ethnic.htm (putting the number of ethnic groups as between 70 to 100). An ethnic group is “a named social category of people based on subjective perceptions of shared attributes, such as common ancestry or heritage, history, homeland, and language that set its people apart from other groups.” James People and Garrick Bailey, Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 9th Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2012), 389. Unlike other cleavages, such as religion, ethnicity “cut[s] across socioeconomic class differences, drawing members from all strata of the population.” Ibid. 36 See also Table 1.1, Item 6, Chapter 1. 37 The key difference is that both during the era of Emperor Haile Selassie and in the

period since after, the self-image of Ethiopia is as a “bastion” of Christianity matched against a sea of Moslems within the vicinity of the Horn of Africa. See US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note 2, ¶ 27. 38 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. The breakdown is as follows: persons affiliated to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church 43.8 percent, Protestants 22.8 percent, Catholics 0.7 percent, Muslims 31.3 percent, adherents of traditional religions 0.6 percent, and

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Table 3.2 Ethiopia’s eleven national regional states (NRS) Item No.

Region

Capital city

1. 2.

Afar Amhara

3. 4. 5. 6.

Benishangul-Gumuz Gambela Hizboch (Gambela Peoples) Hareri Hizb (Harari Peoples) Oromiya (Oromia)

7. 8. 9. 10.

Sidama Sumale (Somali) YeDebub M’irab Ityop’iya Hizboch (Southwest Ethiopia Peoples) YeDebub Biheroch Bihereseboch na Hizboch (Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples) Tigray

Semera Bahir Dar Asosa Gambela Harar Addis Ababa Hawassa Jijiga Bonga Hawassa

11.

Mek’ele

Sources “Ethiopia to Create 11th Regional State,” APA News (October 11, 2021), http://apanews. net/en/news/ethiopia-to-establish-11th-regional-state; and Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, reprinted in Ref World, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b5a84. html

Like Nigeria, Ethiopia is a federation of one national government based in Addis Ababa and thirteen federating units made up of eleven national regional states (NRS), based on “settlement patterns, language, identity[,] and consent of the people concerned,”39 and two chartered cities (or administrative councils), see Table 3.2, in turn, subdivided into 62 zones and 523 woredas.40 The chartered cities, accorded the status of national regional states, are Addis Ababa, and Dire Dawa. Although the history of federalism in the country dates to its failed political union with Eritrea, federalism formally came to Ethiopia in 1995. Moreover, unlike

others 0.8 percent. Ibid (2016 estimates based on a population of over 113 million people). 39 See note 193 below and accompanying text. 40 See Zemelak Ayetenew Ayele, “Local Government in Ethiopia: Design Problems and

Their Implications,” Decentralization and Localization (April 21, 2023), https://decent ralization.net/2023/04/local-government-in-ethiopia/

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Nigeria, which (just like the United States that it mimics), has a presidential system of government, Ethiopian federalism is embedded in a parliamentary system of government.41 Mainstay of Ethiopia’s Economy Ethiopia is a predominantly rural country,42 with an economy based mostly on agriculture.43 This is despite a topography marked “by vast complex mountains, dissecting plateaus, lowlands, semi-desert, and tropical forests.”44 This feature has negative ramifications for agricultural production, given that only a little more than 14 percent of the country’s total area is arable.45 At any rate, agricultural products from Ethiopian farms include coffee, barley, sorghum, maize, cereals, wheat, grains, and livestock.46 As of 2013, the agricultural sector constituted about 73 percent of the labor force, with industry and services contributing over 7 percent

41 See Table 1.1, Item No. 8, in Chapter 1. For more on federalism, see Chapter 4, notes 35–40 and accompanying texts. 42 See “Ethiopia’s Rural-Urban Transformation Process,” OECDiLibrary, https:// www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/8f129f69-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/8f1 29f69-en#:~:text=Ethiopia%20is%20today%20a%20predominantly,population%20residing% 20in%20rural%20areas. In 2012, about 80 percent of Ethiopia’s population lived in rural areas. “Ethiopia: Land of Contrasts, Nation in Transformation,” Frontlines ( May/ June 2012), https://2012-2017.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/child-survivalethiopia-edition/ethiopia-land-contrasts-nation#:~:text=Over%2080%20percent%20of%20t he,Texas%2C%20Oklahoma%20and%20New%20Mexico. 43 See Table 1.1, Item No. 7, in Chapter 1. 44 John Misachi, “Major Rivers of Ethiopia,” World Atlas (April 25, 2017), https://

www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-major-rivers-of-ethiopia.html. See also “Ethiopia— Topography,” Nations Encyclopedia, https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Eth iopia-TOPOGRAPHY.html (portraying Ethiopia as “a country of geographical contrasts”). 45 See “Ethiopia: Arable Land, Percent of Land Area,” The Global Economy, https:// www.theglobaleconomy.com/Ethiopia/arable_land_percent/#:~:text=Arable%20land%2C% 20percent%20of%20total%20land%20area&text=The%20average%20value%20for%20Ethi opia,192%20countries%20is%2014.2%20percent. See also “Ethiopia Geography,” Country Reports, https://www.countryreports.org/country/Ethiopia/geography.htm (putting the number at about 12 percent). 46 See International Trade Administration, “Ethiopia—Country Commercial Guide” (July 21, 2022), https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/ethiopia-agro-pro cessing#:~:text=In%20Africa%2C%20Ethiopia%20is%20a,number%20of%20livestock%20in% 20Africa.

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and approximately 20 percent, respectively.47 Because the three sectors overlap considerably, these numbers are guesswork that, on a note of caution, should not be read rigidly. Here is why. In addition to construction, manufacturing, resources and energy, tourism, and food processing, major industries of Ethiopia include agriculture.48 Moreover, agro-based industries, meaning manufacturing ventures embedded in agriculture, such as beverages, livestock products like eggs, milk, and meat, leather and textile materials, apparel, leather goods, and finished meat products for domestic consumption and export, contribute over 50 percent of Ethiopia’s GDP.49 Other products within this category include cash crops like coffee, tea, spices, cut flowers, honey, cotton, wheat, oilseeds, khat, beeswax, vegetables, fruits, and pulses.50 Because most of its raw materials are farm products, the food processing industry is closely tied to agro-industry.51 Popular food factory products include meat, butter, pasteurized milk, frozen food, fresh fruits, bakery products, sugar, and cheese.52 Lastly, in agriculture, by some estimate, the share of this sector adds up to about 85 percent when animal husbandry is factored in.53 Next to services and industry, over the years, the Ethiopian Airline has been an important earner of foreign exchange for the country, followed by coffee exports, in an economy where, due to diversification, commodities like gold, sesame, khat, and horticultural products have also chalked up in importance.54

47 See Table 1.1, Item No. 11, in Chapter 1. Agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of exports, but contributes only about 40 percent of the GDP. See USAID, “Agriculture and Food Security,” https://www.usaid.gov/ethiopia/agriculture-and-foodsecurity#:~:text=Ethiopia’s%20economy%20is%20dependent%20on,percent%20of%20the% 20country’s%20workforce. 48 Sharon Omondi, “What Are the Major Industries in Ethiopia?” World Atlas (September 11, 2019), https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-biggest-indust ries-in-ethiopia.html. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 See “Ethiopia Geography,” note 45. 54 “Country Info: Ethiopia,” African Growth and Opportunity Act: AGOA Info,

https://agoa.info/profiles/ethiopia.html.

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One variable that amplifies the complexity of demarcating the sectors is government intervention into the economy. Decades after the shift away from Marxist–Leninist socialism, the Ethiopian economy retains features of a centrally planned economy marked by large-scale governmental intervention.55 Key sectors of the economy heavily controlled or regulated by the government include telecommunications, banking and finance and insurance, and power (energy) supply.56 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank) ranks Ethiopia among the fastest growing economies in the world.57 Since 2007, for the last 15 years, the country’s economy has grown at an average of 9.5 percent per annum.58 Major factors powering this growth are government investment in infrastructure,59 and foreign direct investment in billions of US dollars,60 mostly from China, the European Union, India, Turkey, and the US, and in various fields that, additional to infrastructure, also include construction, agriculture and horticulture, agricultural processing, textiles, and leather products.61

55 See “Ethiopia,” World Factbook, note 5 (“Economy”). This is still largely the case even though, since 1992, Ethiopian leaders chose a new economic orientation patterned after the developmental state model in South Asia. Old habits die hard. See Francisco Pérez, “East Asia Has Delinked—Can Ethiopia Delink Too?” Review of African Political Economy, 48(167) (2021), 102–118; and Semahagn Abebe, “The Developmental State Model in Ethiopia: A Path to Economic Prosperity or Political Repression”? Social Evolution and History, 17(1) (March 2018), 123–139. 56 See “Country Info: Ethiopia,” note 54; and “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. Add to this the fact that under Ethiopia’s constitution, the state owns all lands, from which ownership it then provides long-term leases to tenants. For this reason or despite it, title rights in Addis Ababa and other urban areas remain poorly regulated and amenable to irregularities like corruption. Ibid. 57 The World Bank in Ethiopia, “Overview,” https://www.worldbank.org/en/cou ntry/ethiopia/overview#:~:text=Over%20the%20past%2015%20years,particular%20thro ugh%20public%20infrastructure%20investments. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 See Zewdu Eskezia Gelaye et al., “The Effect of Foreign Direct Investment on Ethiopian Economic Growth,” Journal of Positive School Psychology, 6(4) (2022), 9284– 9294. 61 See “Country Info: Ethiopia,” note 54; and Ottaway, note 32.

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Yet, with an accumulation of dismal statistics that include a per capita gross national income of only $960 in 2021,62 nearly one-quarter of residents below the poverty line in 2015,63 relatively high unemployment within its labor force with nearly three-quarters of workers in that force still steeped in agriculture,64 Ethiopia is an economically poor country. Other indicators of suboptimal human development include a literacy rate of approximately 52 percent in 2017 (broken down into male at 57.2 percent and female at 44.4 percent)65 ; life expectancy in 2022 of 68.25 years (male 66.12 years and women 70.44 years), which places it at No. 183 in the world66 ; and modest spending on social services like healthcare and education.67 Social Revolution and Popular Upheaval in Ethiopia After Selassie The dethronement of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 marked an important juncture in the annals of Ethiopian history. His overthrow was preceded by mass nationwide protests,68 climaxed years of “chronic and widespread” discontent within the army that went back to an abortive coup in 196069 and marked the beginning of a civil war in the country 62 The World Bank in Ethiopia, “Overview,” note 57. 63 See Table 1.1, Item 14, in Chapter 1 (putting the number at 23.5 percent of the

population). See also “Ethiopia Poverty Rate 1995–2023,” Macrotrends, https://www. macrotrends.net/countries/ETH/ethiopia/poverty-rate. 64 See Table 1.1, Item 12, in Chapter 1 (putting the number at 3.6 as of 2021). 65 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. Literacy rate is measured based on the

portion of the population 15 years and above able to read and write. See also ARAHA, “Ethiopia,” https://araha.org/where-we-work-old/ethiopia?gclid=CjwKCAiAzKqdBhA nEiwAePEjkvWODmsWoK2kCWnpd16-PGwUJ5_uKGiCJr7qbx--IraU4T7w7gpPPho CNhAQAvD_BwE. 66 “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5. 67 See ibid. On healthcare, the spending was 3.2 percent of the GDP in 2019, with

ratio of physicians in the country (physician density) being 0.11 to 1000 population in 2020, and ratio of hospital beds (hospital bed density) at 0.3 per 1000 people in 2016. Ibid. On education, the spending was estimated to be 4.5 percent of GDP in 2019, which makes the country No. 98 in the world. Ibid. 68 See, for example, John Young, Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Vijay Gupta, “The Ethiopian Revolution: Causes and Results,” Indian Quarterly, 34(2) (April–June 1978), 158–174. 69 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note 2,

¶ 8.

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that raged until May 1991.70 The overthrow ranks as one of the bloodiest changes of government in Ethiopian history.71 By March 1975, the military junta, colloquially known as the Dergue, meaning committee in Amharic, and officially as the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), abolished the monarchy and replaced it with a Marxist–Leninist, one-party, state.72 Upon assuming office, the issues the junta gave its priority attention included abolishing feudalism, promoting increased literacy, nationalizing private property, pursuing widespread land reform, and undertaking villagization.73 Given that Ethiopia under Selassie was steeped in feudalism, the depth of change matched the classic definition of a social revolution.74 Mengistu became the head of this group in 1977. Before him, a succession of military officers headed the committee: first Aman Andom; later Tafari Benti in November 1974, following the execution of 60 former government and military officials, including Aman; and finally, Mengistu in November 1977, following internal bickering and clashes that resulted

70 See “Ethiopian Civil War[,] 1974–1991,” Armed Conflict Events Data (Last updated December 16, 2000), https://web.archive.org/web/20061103042417/http:// www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr70/fethiopia1974.htm. 71 Fifty-nine members of the Royal Family, along with ministers and generals from the Imperial Government were summarily executed. Haile Selassie himself was strangled in the basement of his palace in August 1975. See “1974: Black Saturday in Ethiopia,” Executed Today (November 23, 2009), http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/11/23/1974-blacksaturday-in-ethiopia/; “Ethiopian Emperor Was Strangled,” Tampa Bay Times (December 15, 1994; updated October 8, 2005), https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/12/ 15/ethiopian-ruler-was-strangled/; and Andargachew Tiruneh, The Ethiopian Revolution 1974–1987: A Transformation from an Aristocratic to a Totalitarian Autocracy (New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 327. 72 See “The Derg/Dergue,” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/ethiopia/history-dergue.htm. With an orientation many analysts perceived as socialist in name but military in style, the Dergue started its governmental journey in June 1974 as the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army, by officers of the Ethiopian Army and Police led initially by Aman Andom as chairman. See Andrew Marshall, What Was the Ethiopian Revolution (1974) and the Derg, Boot Camp and Military Fitness Institute (April 14, 2021), https://bootcampmilitaryfitnessinst itute.com/2021/04/14/what-was-the-ethiopian-revolution-1974-the-derg/. 73 See ibid. 74 See, for example, Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Anal-

ysis and France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). See also Marina Ottaway and David Ottaway, Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution (Accra, Ghana: Africana Publishing Company, 1978).

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in the execution of Tafari and several of his supporters in February 1977, along with Vice-Chairman Atnatfu Abate subsequently. In the wake of these proverbial dress rehearsals, Mengistu undertook a “Red Terror,” nothing like it before in bloodbath, involving the death of about half a million people.75 This was atop numerous problems with attendant hardships to the masses of the Ethiopian people, including the Eritrean War of Independence (September 1961 to May 1991),76 the Ogaden War with Somali (July 1977–March 1978),77 as well as droughts and associated famine (1983–1985) which claimed the lives of more than a million people,78 all within a climate of economic decline and dependence on foreign aid.79 Due to the lessons in alliances within the context of great-power competition between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War that the conflict exemplifies, some brief comments are warranted here on

75 See Tom McGhee, “Red Terror in Ethiopia Killed Thousands Between 1976 and 1978,” Denver Post (July 11, 2013), https://www.denverpost.com/2013/07/11/redterror-in-ethiopia-killed-thousands-between-1976-and-1978/; Human Rights Watch, The Red Terror (August 19, 2022), https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/e/ethiopia/ethiopia. 919/c6terror.pdf. See also Jacob Wiebe, “Atrocities in Revolutionary Ethiopia, 1974–79: Toward a Comparative Analysis,” Journal of Genocide Research, 24(1) (2022), 134–147. 76 See “Eritrean War of Independence,” New World Encyclopedia, https://www.newwor ldencyclopedia.org/entry/Eritrean_War_of_Independence. 77 See Ephrem Yared, “Ethiopian-Somali War Over the Ogaden Region (1977–1978),” Black Past (March 21, 2016), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/ethiop ian-somali-war-over-ogaden-region-1977-1978/; and Joseph K. Nkaisserry, Ogaden War: An Analysis of Its Causes and Its Impact on Regional Peace on the Horn of Africa (Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, April 8, 1997), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA 326941.pdf. 78 See, for example, Kathryn Reid, “1980s Ethiopia Famine: Facts, What’s Changed, and How to Help,” World Vision (Updated November 3, 2022), https://www.worldv ision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/1980s-ethiopia-famine-facts#:~:text=The%201980s% 20Ethiopia%20famine%20was,according%20to%20the%20United%20Nations; and Peter Cutler, “The Political Economy of Famine in Ethiopia and Sudan,” Environmental Security, 20(5) (August 1991), 176–178. 79 See Paul B. Henze, Ethiopia: Crisis of a Marxist Economy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, April 1989), 10–18 (delineating political and economic situation in the 1980s), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R3677.pdf; and Ethiopia—Economy in the 1980s and Framework for Accelerated Growth, Report No. 8062ET (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, March 14, 1990).

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the Ogaden War with Somalia.80 The war began in 1977 when Somalia conducted an invasion that captured part of the Ogaden region, using Soviet military assistance.81 Ethiopia pushed back successfully after the Soviet Union switched around its military support massively to Ethiopia, away from Somalia, complemented with about 15,000 Cuban troops.82 In a nutshell, Mengistu ran a totalitarian government, maintained by extensive military supplies by the Soviet Union and Cuban personnel assistance.83 However, Soviet military, assistance along with political and economic support, started drying up when, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union focused on domestic reforms, backed by new foreign policy approaches.84 By 1990, the Soviet Union stopped all military and economic aid to Ethiopia.85 Faced with the necessity to legitimize his rule less on sheer military autocracy, by 1987 Mengistu abolished the Dergue and replaced it with the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE), under a constitution patterned on the Soviet Union.86 Although still dominated by

80 See Sam Wilkins, “Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden: Lessons from an Obscure Cold War Flashpoint in Africa,” War on the Rock (September 6, 2019), https://war ontherocks.com/2019/09/buried-in-the-sands-of-the-ogaden-lessons-from-an-obscurecold-war-flashpoint-in-africa/; and Don Oberdorfer, “The Superpowers and the Ogaden War,” Washington Post (March 5, 1978), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/pol itics/1978/03/05/the-superpowers-and-the-ogaden-war/00f60ef2-01b4-4cd3-8c5f-e54 5df388def/. 81 See Yared, note 77, and Wilkins, note 80. 82 Wilkins, note 80. 83 Ibid.; and “Ethiopia: The Derg, the Soviet Union, and the Communist World,” Photius, https://photius.com/countries/ethiopia/government/ethiopia_govern ment_the_derg_the_soviet~224.html. 84 See “The Derg, the Soviet Union, and the Communist World,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, eds. Thomas P. Ofcansky and LaVerle Berry (Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991), https://countrystudies.us/ethiopia/137.htm. 85 “Ethiopia: The Derg, the Soviet Union, and the Communist World,” note 83. 86 See Bruce Berry, “People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1987–1991),”

CRW Flags (last modified February 16, 2018), https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/ flags/et-dpre.html; Saheed Adejumobi, “Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937–),” Black Past (February 21, 2008), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/mariam-lt-colmengistu-haile-1937. See also Temesgen Gebeyehu, “The Genesis and Evolution of the Ethiopian Revolution and the Derg: A Note on Publications by Participant in Events,” History in Africa, 37 (2010), 321–327.

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former Dergue members, the new regime also included civilians.87 But it turned out too little, too late. With troubles from all fronts, some of them self-inflicted, the Mengistu regime sowed the seed for its downfall. That Waterloo moment came in 1991 when it was toppled by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of insurgency groups, made up of four political parties: Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), Oromo People’s Democratic Party (OPDP), Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM), and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).88 When EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa in May 1991, the Soviet Union did not intervene to save the regime. Thus, Mengistu fled into exile in Zimbabwe where he received asylum.89 In the immediate aftermath of the EPRDF’s victory, political power in Ethiopia remained in the hands of a transitional government, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), guided by a temporary constitution, denominated the National Charter, and an 87-member assembly known as the State Council.90 Meles Zenawi Asres led the TGE as President, along with Tamrat Layne as Prime Minister.91 The TGE endorsed the secession of Eritrea,92 and undertook other far-reaching initiatives that, besides demobilizing the armed forces, included realignment of provincial boundaries along ethnic identities.93 The Federal

87 See, for example, Stefan Brüe, “Ideology, Government[,] and Development—The People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,” Northeast African Studies, 12(2/3) (1990), 189–199. 88 See “Ethiopia,” World Factbook, note 5; and Theodore Vestal, Ethiopia: A Post-Cold War African State (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999), 63–64. 89 Michael A. Hiltzik, “Ethiopia’s President Mengistu Resigns, Flees: Africa: His Harsh 14-Year Rule Ends with Two Rebel Groups Pressing Their Advance and Peace Talks Near,” Los Angeles Times (May 22, 1991), https://www.latimes.com/archives/laxpm-1991-05-22-mn-2054-story.html; and Jennifer Parmelee, “Ethiopian President Flees Country,” Washington Post (May 22, 1991), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ politics/1991/05/22/ethiopian-president-flees-country/a67cdbd6-4fd0-4978-bf5e-6a3 f9da5159d/. 90 See Transitional Period Charter of Ethiopia, Negarit Gazeta, 50(1) (July 22, 1991), 1–5, reprinted in NATLEX, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/natlex4.detail?p_lang=en& p_isn=27666. 91 See “History,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 92 See Hamdesa Tuso, “Ethiopia: New Political Order: Ethnic Conflict in the Post[-

]Cold War Era,” Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Orient, 52(3) (1997), 343–364. 93 Ibid.

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Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), set up by the 1995 constitution, replaced the TGE.94 For 20 years from 1991 until 2019, the EPRDF dominated Ethiopian politics.95 That domination came to an end in November 2019 when the coalition was dissolved.96 It was out of these groups, minus the TPLF (which refused to join), that Abiy Ahmed Ali, EPDRP leader and recently elected Prime Minister, on December 1, 2019, created his Prosperity Party.97 Justifying the Portraiture of Ethiopia as Land of the Blue Nile The Blue Nile is Ethiopia’s most famous river.98 With a tinge of reverence, Ethiopians call it the Abay River.99 Originating at Lake Tana in northwestern Ethiopia, the river travels for about 1450 km through Ethiopia and Sudan.100 Ethiopia’s linkage to the Blue Nile dates to Biblical times, down to the Garden of Eden in the Old Testament at the dawn of creation.101

94 “Ethiopia,” ional-framework.

Britannica,

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiopia/Constitut

95 See Vestal, note 88, pp. 63–64. 96 See “About: Ethiopian People’s

Revolutionary Democratic Front,” DBpedia, https://dbpedia.org/page/Ethiopian_People’s_Revolutionary_Democratic_Front. 97 Ibid. 98 Misachi, note 44. The Blue Nile is one of 10 major rivers in Ethiopia, in length

second only to River Nile, which Ethiopia shares with 10 other countries (see embedded map). The Blue Nile contributes approximately 59 percent of the steam flow of River Nile and supports the livelihood of communities living along its banks. Ibid. To promote these activities to the overall benefit of economic development in the country, the Ethiopian government built a dam denominated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Ibid. 99 See “Blue Nile River, Abay River,” Action Tours Ethiopia, https://actiontourethio pia.com/blue-nile-river-abay-river/; Misachi, note 44 (“The upper course of the Blue Nile called Abby in Ethiopia is regarded as holy”). 100 “Blue Nile,” New World Encyclopedia, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ entry/Blue_Nile#:~:text=The%20Blue%20Nile%20flows%20generally,kilometers%20(250% 20miles)%20long. 101 Holy Bible, New Int’l Version, Genesis 2: 10 (identifying the river, then called Gihon,

as one of four “headwaters” associated with the Garden of Eden); Genesis 2:13 (“The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush”). Cush is a geographical location traced to modern-day Ethiopia. For extended, more or less secular, conversations on the Garden of Eden, see Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); and Brook

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The basic facts of Ethiopia this chapter chronicles are organized around the thrust and theme of the land of the Blue Nile. However, Ethiopia is landlocked, with no access to a seaport.102 Ethiopia had access to the Red Sea through Eritrea (via the latter’s two ports at Massawa and Assab) for the duration of its political union with Eritrea from September 1952 until the latter’s independence in May 1993.103 Ethiopia is the only one among the three case studies in this book that is landlocked. Nigeria surveyed next chapter has an 853 km coastline,104 and Cameroon, an object of Chapter 5, has a coastline of 360 kms, extending from its borders with Equatorial Guinea, south of the Campo River estuary to the Nigerian border north of the Akwayafe River.105 Indeed, Ethiopia has a record as the most-populous landlocked country in the world.106 Access to a seaport to minimize the worst effects of landlock-ness may have been a major factor in Ethiopia’s interest in Eritrea that predates the political union in 1952 between the two countries. However, although true, none of these considerations takes away from the portraiture of Ethiopia as the land of the Blue Nile. Many things in life are relative. First, an independent Eritrea remains Ethiopia’s neighbor. “Ethiopia is the natural hinterland of Eritrea, just as the latter is the natural outlet of Ethiopia.”107 That aside, as indicated earlier, Ethiopia Wilensky-Lanford, Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (New York: Grove Press, 2012). 102 Ethiopia Country Handbook (Marine Corps Intelligence Activity), 6, https://info. publicintelligence.net/MCIA-EthiopiaHandbook.pdf. 103 See US Department of State, Office of the Historian, “Memorandum by the Under

Secretary of State (Webb) to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Lay),” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, The Near East and Africa, Vol. V (April 30, 1951), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1951v05/d701 [hereinafter “Memorandum of Under Secretary Webb”]; and “Ethiopia,” Nations Online, note 30. 104 See Shilavadra Bhattacharjee, “[Six] Major Ports in Nigeria,” Marine Insight (May 30, 2022), www.marineinsight.com/know-more/ports-in-nigeria/. 105 See “Cameroon,” Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Updated March 2018), http://www.focac.org/eng/ltjj_3/ltffcy/kml/. 106 “Landlocked Countries, 2023,” World Population Review, https://worldpopulation review.com/country-rankings/landlocked-countries. 107 Patrick Gilkes, “The Effects of Secession on Ethiopia and Somalia,” in The Horn of Africa, ed. Charles Gurdon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 1, 4. Ethiopia shares with Eritrea 1033 kilometers of borders, third after Somalia at 1640 kilometers, and South Sudan at 1299 kilometers. “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5.

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also shares borders with Djibouti, whose seaport provides the conduit for a large part of Ethiopia’s trading activities.108 Overall, Ethiopia’s strategic location in the Horn of Africa lends it immense geopolitical advantages. Due to its strategic proximity to the Middle East and Europe, along with the easy access to the major ports of the regions that proximity makes possible, Ethiopia is the gateway to the Middle East and Europe.109 This condition reduces some of the keenness from its landlock-ness indicated by a lack of immediate access to the Red Sea.

Ethiopian Constitutionalism from 1931 to 1995 Pre-1931 Constitutional law “is the process by which people constitute themselves and their values in a binding legal document adaptive to new conditions not present when the document was created.”110 Before 1931, Ethiopia was not governed by a constitution in the sense we understand the term today. During that long stretch of time in the past, the Kebra Nagast and Fetha Nagast emerged as two complementary sources for legitimizing the government. Kebra Nagast is Ge’ez for “the Glory of the Kings of Ethiopia”; it is a medieval re-chronicle and re-narrative of the story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon by Nebure Id Ishaq of Axun, written down in 1321.111 The text embodies an account of how Makeda, Queen of Sheba, met King Solomon and how Menelik I (Menyelek), son of the duo, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia.112 It traces the genealogy of the Solomonic dynasty, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church 108 Omondi, note 48. 109 See “About Ethiopia,” note 7. See also Constitution of the People’s Democratic

Republic of Ethiopia, note 159 below, preamble (portraying Ethiopia as strategically located “at the cross-roads linking the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe”). 110 Philip C. Aka, Bosnia as Civic State and Global Citizen: Alternative Futures Outside the EU (London, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), ix. 111 Hubbard, note 11, p. 352. 112 See note 12. See also “Solomonid Dynasty: Ethiopian History,” Britannica,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Solomonid-dynasty; and Paul Raffaele, “Keepers of the Lost Ark?” Smithsonian Magazine (December 2007), https://www.smithsonianmag. com/travel/keepers-of-the-lost-ark-179998820/#:~:text=%22Queen%20Sheba%20visited% 20King%20Solomon,been%20in%20Ethiopia%20ever%20since.%22.

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(known as Tewahdo in Ethiopia), and a narrative on the conversion of Ethiopians from the worship of the Sun, Moon, and stars to that of the “Lord God of Israel.”113 In a word, the Kebra Nagast built its concept of government on the notion that the legitimacy of the emperor was based on an asserted descent traceable to King Solomon in ancient Israel.114 The work read much like a legend,115 but many Ethiopian Christians nonetheless consider it to be authentic and historically reliable.116 As the writer Edward Ullendorff pointed out in 1967, rather than merely a literary work, the Kebra Nagast is “the repository of Ethiopian national and religious feelings.”117 Fetha Nagast is Ge’ez for “the law of the Kings”118 ; it is a legal code laced with Christian religious principles and existing legal literature down to Byzantine times, including a definition of the rights and duties of the monarch toward subjects within the tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.119 It was compiled in Arabic circa 1240 by the Coptic Egyptian Christian writer, Abul Fada’il Ibn al-Assal, and subsequently translated into Ge’ez and expanded upon with numerous customary laws.120 From the Middle Ages until 1931, the Fetha Nagast served as the supreme law

113 “Solomonid Dynasty,” note 112. 114 See sources cited in footnote 11. 115 Edward Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible: The Schweich Lectures (London: British Academy Press, 1988), 141 (pointing up its narrative as “a gigantic conflation of legendary cycles”). 116 See Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson, The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400–1400 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2012). 117 Ullendorff, note 115, p. 75. 118 Ge’ez is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language, which originates from what is

present-day northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. It features today as the main liturgical language of several churches in Ethiopia and Eritrea, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Ethiopian Catholic Church, the Eritrean Catholic Church, and the Beta Israel Jewish community. See Josef Tropper, Classical Ethiopic: A Grammar of Ge’ez, translated by Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021). 119 See A. Paulos Tzadua, “Foreword,” in The Fetha Nagast: The Law of the Kings, translated from the Ge’ez by Abba Paulos Tzadua and edited by Peter L. Strauss (Addis Ababa: Faculty of Law, Haile Selassié I University, June 1968), xv–xxix, http://www.eth iopianorthodox.org/biography/01thelawofkings.pdf. 120 Ibid.

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of Ethiopia.121 Since 1931, Ethiopia has adopted—and Ethiopians have lived under—four constitutions: those of 1931, 1955, 1987, and 1995. The following discussion analyzes each of these four high(er) laws. The 1931 Constitution This high law, which came into effect on July 16, 1931, was the first modern constitution of Ethiopia as an empire.122 It was designed to officially replace the Fetha Nagast, which, as indicated in the previous paragraph, functioned as supreme law since the Middle Ages. This constitution was patterned after the Meiji Constitution of Imperial Japan, a country that Ethiopian elites then considered a model for the successful adaptation of Western learning and technology to the framework of a non-Western culture.123 But unlike the more complicated Japanese model, the Ethiopian Constitution was a simple document of fiftyfive articles organized into seven chapters.124 Chapter I, dealing with threshold matters revolved mostly around succession to the throne, contains five articles; Chapter II, delineating the powers and prerogatives of the Emperor, comprises twelve articles; Chapter III, focusing on the rights and duties of subjects, contains twelve articles; Chapter IV, dealing with the two-chamber legislature, is made up of eighteen articles; Chapter V, dealing with ministers, contains two articles; Chapter VI, focusing on

121 See ibid., p. xxix (commenting on the enormous influence of this legal code in legal science both as a source of learning and inspiration for existing law). 122 See “Ethiopia’s Revised Constitution,” Middle East Journal, 10(2) (1956), 194, 194–199 JSTOR (stating that, together with the Constitution of 1955, the document “marks further advance of the Ethiopian Government toward the center stage of the modern world”); and “The Constitutional Experience of Ethiopia: Pre and Post 1931,” Wachemo University E-Learning Platform, https://wachemo-elearning.net/cou rses/moral-and-citizenship-education-mced-1011/lessons/chapter-five-constitution-dem ocracy-and-human-rights/topic/the-constitutional-experience-of-ethiopia-pre-and-post1931/ (stating that, for imperial Ethiopia, the document signified the era of unwritten constitutions). For a text of the document, see Ethiopian Constitution of 1931 (London: The Government of Ethiopia, 1969). 123 See Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia: 1855–1991, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: James Currey, 2001), 110. 124 See text of Ethiopian Constitution of 1931, note 122.

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the court system, comprises five articles; and Chapter VII, dealing with the budget of the imperial government, embodies one article.125 The document created anything but a representative democracy. A sample of four articles out of many makes this clear. Article 3 proclaims that “imperial dignity shall remain perpetually attached to the line of His Majesty Haile Selassie I [….]”126 Article 5 provides that “[b]y virtue of his imperial blood, as well as by the anointing which he has received, the person of the Emperor is sacred, his dignity is inviolable and his power indisputable [….] [A]nyone so bold as to seek to injure the Emperor will be punished.”127 Article 6, under Chapter II of the Constitution spelling out “the powers and prerogatives of the Emperor,” provides that “supreme power rests in the hands of the Emperor.”128 Consistent with these expansive powers, Article 7 permits the Emperor to “institute the Chamber of the Senate […] and the Chamber of Deputies […] and the laws prepared by [these two chambers] become executory by imperial promulgation.”129 Members of the Chamber of the Senate, the upper house, were to be appointed by the Emperor,130 while the Chamber of Deputies were to be chosen by putative “dignitaries” and local chiefs, “[a]s a temporary measure until the people are capable of electing themselves.”131 Speaking to the expansive powers of the Emperor, the rights and duties of subjects spelled out in Chapter II of the Constitution were exercisable subject to his “supreme power” “in the event of war or public misfortunes.”132 In sum, this constitution attempted to provide a legal basis in modern times outside the setting of the Fetha Nagast for the feudal powers of the Ethiopian emperor.133

125 Ibid. 126 Ethiopian Constitution of 1931, note 122, art. 3. 127 Ibid., art. 5. 128 Ibid., art. 6. 129 Ibid., art. 7. 130 Ibid., art. 31. 131 Ibid., art. 32. 132 Ibid., art. 29. 133 See Harold G. Marcus, Haile Sellassie I: The Formative Years (Lawrenceville: Red

Sea Press, 1996), 116 (pointing out that the document was promulgated in “an impressive ceremony” held July 16, 1931, in the presence of Emperor Haile Selassie, who had long desired to adopt a constitution that will legitimize and modernize his rule); and “The

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The 1955 Constitution Adopted on November 4, 1955,134 this constitution repealed and replaced the 1931 constitution. Its adoption coincided with the 25th anniversary that year of Emperor Haile Selassie’s coronation as emperor on April 2, 1930.135 The document consisted of 131 articles organized into eight chapters.136 Chapter I, dealing with issues revolved around succession to the throne, contains twenty-five articles; Chapter II, focusing on the powers and prerogatives of the emperor, comprises eleven articles; Chapter III, dealing with the rights of the people, not subjects as in 1931, contains twenty-nine articles; Chapter IV, focusing on ministers of the empire, is made up of ten articles; and Chapter V, dealing with the legislative branch, contains thirty-two articles.137 Members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected for a four-year term, subject to reelection for subsequent terms.138 Members of the Senate (not Chamber of the Senate in the 1931 Constitution) are appointed by the emperor for six-year terms.139 Chapter VI, dealing with judicial powers, embodies five articles; Chapter VII, focusing on finances, contains nine articles; and Chapter VIII, dealing with general provisions, the material which separates this constitution from the 1931 constitution in organization, comprises ten articles.140 Otherwise, down to organization, the provisions of this constitution tracked those of its 1931 predecessor which, by its very language, it

Constitutional Experience of Ethiopia: Pre and Post 1931,” note 122 (stating that, for imperial Ethiopia, the document signified the era of unwritten constitutions). 134 See Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/590fb2 1de3df2845838424fc/t/593789b829687ff200b4980f/1496811962692/The+1955+Eth iopian+constitution+%28English+version%29.pdf. 135 See “Apr. 2, 1930 CE: Haile Selassie Becomes Emperor of Ethiopia,” National Geographic, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/haile-selassiebecomes-emperor-ethiopia. 136 For text of the document, see Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955, note 134. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid., art. 97. 139 Ibid., arts. 101–102. 140 See Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955, note 134.

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“revised,”141 “after many years of searching study and reflection.”142 Unlike the 1931 constitution, patterned after the constitution of Imperial Japan, this constitution has features of US constitutionalism, such as separation of powers among the three branches of government, and emphasis on “rights and duties of the people” (as opposed to subjects), to which the document devoted twenty-nine articles, compared to twelve articles under the 1931 constitution.143 The American influence is not surprising, given that three American advisors—A.H. Garretson, John Spencer, and Edgar Burlington—helped draft the document.144 Despite these influences from the US, the constitution was no mirror image of the US political and constitutional system.145 No different from its 1931 predecessor, Art. 2 of the document stipulates that “The Imperial Dignity shall remain perpetually attached to the line of Haile Selassie I […], whose line descends without interruption from the dynasty of Menelik I, son of the Queen of Ethiopia, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Jerusalem.”146 Another language from the 1931 constitution is the provision which proclaims: By virtue of His Imperial Blood, as well as by the anointing which He received, the person of the Emperor is sacred, His dignity is inviolable and His Powers indisputable. He is consequently entitled to all the honors due to Him in accordance with tradition and the present Constitution. Any one so bold as to seek to injure the Emperor will be punished.147

141 See ibid. From the standpoint of organization, the only variation is the addition of Chapter VIII dealing with general provisions. The current constitution also embodies a preamble, lacking in the 1931 constitution. 142 Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955, note 134, preamble. 143 See notes 125 and 137, along with accompanying texts. 144 Between April 1948 to March 1955, the U.S. government provided about $9 million in economic assistance to Ethiopia. See Department of Political Science, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, “Ethiopia (1942-Present),” https://uca.edu/political science/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/ethiopia-1942-present/. 145 See Edmond J. Keller, Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People’s Republic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 84. 146 Constitution of Ethiopia, 1955, note 134, art. 2. 147 Ibid., art. 4.

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Due to this very provision, one scholar viewed the new constitution as little more than “a legal charter for the consolidation of absolutism.”148 Similarly, US intelligence portrayed Ethiopia under Emperor Selassie as “a centralized authoritarian regime in which a minority of Coptic Christian Amharas hold a predominance of power over a heterogenous collection of peoples.”149 Given these uncomplimentary assessments, it is fair to conclude that, from the standpoint of constitutional reform, along with the Constitution of 1931, this new document little more than “mark[ed] further advance of the Ethiopian Government toward the center stage of the modern world.”150 This constitution came to an end on September 15, 1974, when it was suspended by the Dergue, following the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie and his removal from office. Although revered by millions at home and abroad, some of whom adored him as a messianic figure,151 resistance built over time against Emperor Haile Selassie, due to a host of popular grievances that included inflation and high energy prices, little progress in educational reform indicated by retrogressive school curriculum and low teachers’ salaries, poor working conditions for teachers and other workers, political corruption, drought and famine in the northeastern provinces of the country, and little progress on land reform.152 For all his attempts to modernize, the Emperor failed

148 Zewde, note 123, p. 206. 149 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note

2. 150 “Ethiopia’s Revised Constitution,” note 122, p. 194. 151 One such point of veneration came from Rastafarians. Rastafari or Rastafarianism is

a nonhierarchical religion, developed in Jamaica during the 1930s, that religion scholars classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement. Rastafari was intrinsically linked with Emperor Haile Selassie whom many Rastafarians believed to be the Second Coming of Jesus. See Charles Price, Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica (New York: New York University Press, 2009). For an argument against veneration of the emperor, see Yohannes Woldemariam, “The Romantic Rewriting of Haile Selassie’s Legacy Must Stop,” LSE Blog (February 4, 2019), https://blogs.lse.ac. uk/africaatlse/2019/02/04/the-romantic-rewriting-of-haile-selassies-legacy-must-stop/. 152 See “Anatomy of an Overthrow: How an African Leader was Toppled,” ADST: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (October 3, 2016), https://adst.org/ 2016/10/anatomy-overthrow-revered-african-leader-toppled/. One notable event that turned public opinion against the emperor was the oil crisis in 1973 that resulted in a sharp increase in gasoline prices beginning February 13, 1974. The high gasoline prices motivated motor drivers, teachers, other workers, and students to go on strike in February 1974. See “1974: Ethiopian General Strike,” Libcom (January

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“to break[] the medieval feudalism of an overwhelmingly rural society [where] a handful of aristocrats and other wealthy landowners […] exact[ed] tithes from millions of destitute peasants.”153 The failure to undertake meaningful and sufficient reforms provided the proverbial perfect storm for military unrest that spread quickly to the civilian population and snowballed into a nationwide revolution.154 Perhaps as a last-ditch effort to head off disaster, the imperial government floated a proposal for revision of the 1955 constitution,155 which, if implemented, would make the emperor a constitutional monarch in the mode of the UK, with a premier elected by Parliament and accountable to it in a multiparty system.156 However, things fell apart too quickly and the proposal for a new constitution was soon overtaken by the more momentous events that followed the dethronement of Emperor Selassie.157 The 1987 Constitution This document came into effect on February 22, 1987, following a referendum on February 1 of the same year.158 This high law inaugurated the PDRE,159 designated in the document as a state of “working people 17, 2017), https://libcom.org/article/1974-ethiopian-general-strike#:~:text=On%20Febr uary%2018%2C%20the%20capital’s,a%20decrease%20in%20gas%20prices. 153 Paul Hofmann, “The Lion at Sunset,” New York Times (September 13, 1974), https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/13/archives/the-lion-at-sunset-haile-sel assie-lion-at-sunset-haile-selassies.html. 154 See “Anatomy of an Overthrow,” note 152. 155 See “Ethiopia Studies New Constitution,”

New York Times (August 12, 1974), https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/12/archives/t10-reports-indicate-emperorwould-lose-powers-religion-is.html; “Selassie Accepts Ethiopia Cabinet,” New York Times (August 4, 1974), https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/04/archives/selassie-accepts-eth iopia-cabinet-political-parties-foreseen.html. 156 “Selassie Accepts Ethiopia Cabinet,” note 155. 157 See “Ethiopia Studies New Constitution,” note 155 (pointing out that “[t]wo

members of the commission that drafted the constitution—Yilma Diresse and Abebe Retta, crown counselors—are being held by the armed forces pending an investigation of charges of corruption”). 158 “The 1987 Constitution,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 159 For a text of the document, see Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic

of Ethiopia, Proclamation No. 1 of 1987, Negarit Gazetta, 47(1) (September 12, 1987). Reprinted in Review of Socialist Law, 14(2) (1988), 181–208, https://chilot.files.wor dpress.com/2011/04/1987-ethiopian-constitution1.pdf. For critical analyses of the document, see Amare Tekle, “The New Constitution of Ethiopia,” Journal of African Studies

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founded on the alliance of workers and peasants and the participation of the intelligentsia, the revolutionary army, artisans[,] and other democratic sections of society.”160 The document was drafted by a 343-member Constitutional Commission, drawn from all walks of life, including religious leaders, traditional leaders, athletes, physicians, academicians, artists, writers, and workers, across ethnic groups, formed in March 1986 and charged with the responsibility to draft a new constitution based on the principles of scientific socialism.161 Of the number, 122 were members of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (WPE).162 The roots of the Constitutional Commission date back to March 1983 when the Dergue set up the Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities to propose solutions to challenges of ethnic diversity in Ethiopia.163 Many of the staff of the Institute were academicians from Addis Ababa University who served as advisers to the Constitutional Commission.164 The constitution comprised 119 articles and a preamble, grouped into seventeen chapters and broken up into four parts.165 Part 1 focuses on the social order, Part 2 on matters of citizenship, together with related freedom, rights, and duties, Part 3 on the structure and function of the state, and Part 4 on general provisions.166 The preamble of the document proclaimed, “We, the working people of Ethiopia […] are engaged in a great revolutionary struggle to extricate ourselves from our current state of backwardness, and to transform Ethiopia into a socialist society with a high level of development where justice, equality, and social prosperity prevail[s].”167 Equally, upon taking office, the President, a major

(UCLA), 15(3–4) (1988), 80–93; and Christopher Clapham, “The Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,” Journal of Communist Studies, 3(2) (1987), 192–195. 160 Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, note 159, art. 1(1). 161 “The 1987 Constitution,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid. 165 See generally Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, note

159. 166 See ibid. 167 Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 159, preamble.

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center of power in the post-imperial era, pledged “to faithfully and indefatigably strive for the construction of socialism.”168 The constitution designed Ethiopia as “a unitary state [where] all nationalities live in equality,”169 without prejudice to “regional autonomy,”170 and where foreign policy “is based on the principles of proletarian internationalism, peaceful coexistence[,] and nonalignment.”171 Under the charter, “power belongs to the working people,”172 who exercise that power through “the National Shengo and local shengoes which they establish by election,”173 and through referendum.174 Executive authority is shared between the President who is Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces,175 and a Prime Minister who heads the Council of Ministers.176 The document went into effect on February 22, 1987, following a referendum on February 1 of that year.177 Chapter 1, beginning Part 1, and dealing with the political system, contains eight articles; Chapter 2, focusing on the economic system, comprises ten articles; Chapter 3, dealing with social and cultural policy, contains five articles; Chapter 4, dealing with issues of defense of the country and protection of the people and the revolution, is made up of three articles; Chapter 5, focusing on foreign policy, contains four articles; Chapter 6, beginning Part 2 and dealing with citizenship, comprises four articles; Chapter 7, delineating the fundamental freedoms, rights, and duties of citizens, contains twenty-four articles, speaking to its supposed importance; Chapter 8, beginning Part 3 and dealing with the form of the state, embodies three articles; Chapter 9, focusing on the national shengo

168 Ibid., art. 88. 169 Ibid., art. 2(1). 170 Ibid., art. 2(4). See also ibid., art. 59 (stating that Ethiopia is “a unitary state

comprising administrative and autonomous regions”). 171 Ibid., art. 27. 172 Constitution of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, note 159, art. 3(1). 173 Ibid., art. 3(2). 174 Ibid., art. 3(3). 175 Ibid., art. 85. 176 Ibid., art. 89. 177 “The 1987 Constitution,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84.

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(i.e., national legislature), contains nineteen articles; and Chapter 10, dealing with the Council of State, comprises three articles.178 Other provisions are Chapter 11, focusing on the presidency, and containing five articles, a fewness that belies its preeminence in the governmental scheme; Chapter 12, dealing with the Council of Ministers, containing six articles; Chapter 13, captioned “organs of power and administration of administrative and autonomous regions,” containing five articles; Chapter 14, dealing with the judiciary, containing eight articles; Chapter 15, dealing with the procuracy (a watchdog of legality under the socialist system tasked with responsibility for ensuring strict observance of the constitution and laws by all government officials and citizens), comprising five articles; Chapter 16, beginning Part 4 and dealing with miscellanies like flag, emblem, national anthem, languages, and the capital city, containing five articles; as well as Chapter 17, dealing with legal force and amendment of the constitution, embodying two articles.179 The constitutions of 1931 and 1955, respectively, bore imprints of Japanese and US constitutionalism. Similarly, the constitution of 1987 bears influences from the then-Soviet Union. Indeed, some critics see the charter as little more than an abridged version of the Soviet constitution of 1977.180 There are, however, two notable differences. First, the constitution left too much power in the hands of the president,181 no less than its predecessors did in the hands of the emperor. The occurrence speaks volumes for a non-imperial political community in a more modern period. Second, unlike the Soviet Constitution, which created a union of republics, the Ethiopian Constitution made the country a unitary state.182 This preference for a unitary system over a federation for a multiethnic state like Ethiopia is intriguing, given the fact that the problem of nationalities was hotly debated in both the Constitutional Commission and the Central Committee of the WPE.183

178 See ibid. 179 See ibid. 180 See note 86 and accompanying texts. See also “The 1987 Constitution,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 181 “The 1987 Constitution,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 182 Ibid. 183 Ibid.

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The 1995 Constitution Written up by a Constituent Assembly elected in June 1994,184 this constitution entered into force on August 21, 1995, following a general election held in May–June 1995.185 Less elaborate than its 1987 predecessor, this high law comprises 106 articles, organized into eleven chapters, plus a preamble, just like in 1987.186 The preamble expressed the strong commitment of “[w]e the Nations, Nationalities and People[s] of Ethiopia,” to “build[] a political community founded on the rule of law and capable of ensuring a lasting peace,” among other values, “in full and free exercise of our right to self-determination.”187 Realizing this objective “requires full respect of individual and people’s fundamental freedoms and rights,” along with a willingness to live together in equality, free from discrimination on ethnicity, gender, and religion,188 guided by the necessity to “rectify[] historically unjust relationships[,]”189 taking advantage

184 In the lexicon of constitutional law, a Constituent Assembly is a body of elected and appointed persons tasked with the responsibility of writing a new constitution or revising an existing one. The logic underlying formation of this body is that as a fundamental law codifying the values of a people, a constitution should not, in the proper scheme of things, be modified through a state’s normal legislature procedure. A Constituent Assembly becomes dissolved once it completes its role of drafting a new constitution or revising an existing one. See Yash Ghai, “The Role of Constituent Assemblies in Constitution Making,” Constitution Net, https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/ 2017-08/the_role_of_constituent_assemblies_-_final_yg_-_200606.pdf. 185 See Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, reprinted in Ref World, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b5a84.html (editorial comments). 186 The official text of the document in both Amharic and English is available

at https://ethiopianembassy.be/wp-content/uploads/Constitution-of-the-FDRE.pdf. The version of the Constitution vested with “final legal authority” is the Amharic. Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, art. 106. Amharic, a Semitic language descended from Ge’ez, is one of five official languages of Ethiopia. The other four are: Afar, Oromo, Somali, and Tigrinya. The country also has several local sign languages. See “Languages in Ethiopia: Ethiopia Language Facts, Figures and More,” Tomedes (July 23, 2021), https://www.tomedes.com/translator-hub/languages-ethiopia#: ~:text=Ethiopia%20is%20home%20to%20five,has%20several%20local%20sign%20languages. 187 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, preamble. 188 Ibid. 189 Ibid.

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of “common interests” and “common outlook” from millennia of living together.190 Chapter 1, delineating “general provisions,” contains 7 articles; Chapter 2, laying out “fundamental principles of the constitution,” embeds five articles, including the provision under Art. 8 to the effect that sovereignty “resides in the Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of Ethiopia”191 ; and Chapter 3, detailing a catalog of “fundamental rights and freedoms,” broken down into “human rights” and “democratic rights,” embodies thirty-two articles, by far the most of any chapter. Instructively, these guarantees include the rights of women under Art. 35; punishment for “crimes against humanity,” such as genocide, under Art. 38; rights of “Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples,” under Art. 39, which, in the light of its importance in this chapter and the overall book, is accorded separate treatment below; the right to property under Art. 40, meaningful for a former socialist society; the right to development under Art. 43; and environmental rights under Art. 44, including the provision to the effect that “[a]ll persons have the right to a clean and healthy environment.”192 Chapter 4, dealing with state structures, contains five articles. These provisions notably include Art. 45, setting forth a parliamentary system of government for Ethiopia; Art. 46, dividing Ethiopia into states based on “settlement patterns, language, identity[,] and consent of the people concerned”; Art. 47, enumerating nine states, increased to eleven by 2021, each infused with “equal rights and powers”193 ; and Art. 49, which accorded Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, “a full measure of self-government.”194 The option for a parliamentary system over a presidential arrangement sets Ethiopia apart from major federations like the US and Nigeria with a presidential system of government.195 Chapter 5, tying structures to the division of governmental powers, contains three articles. These provisions notably include Art. 51, setting

190 Ibid. 191 Ibid., art. 8(1). 192 Ibid., art. 44(1). 193 See Table 3.2. The new states are Sidama, and South West Ethiopia Peoples. Ibid. 194 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, art.

49(2). 195 See Table 1.1, Item 8, in Chapter 1; and note 41 and accompanying text.

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forth the powers and functions of the national government; and Art. 52, spelling out the powers and functions of the states, including the stipulation, mimicry of, and throwback to US constitutionalism, consistent with the doctrine of “constitutional migration,” to the effect that “[a]ll powers not given expressly to the Federal Government alone, or concurrently to the Federal Government and the States[,] are reserved to the States.”196 Chapter 6, focusing on the legislative branch, broken down into the House of Peoples’ Representatives (lower house), and the House of Federation (upper house representing the equality of the federating states), comprises sixteen articles. Notable for the argument in this book related to the right to self-determination is the provision, under Art. 61, that the House of Federation, the upper house, “is composed of representatives of Nations, Nationalities[,] and Peoples,”197 elected by State Councils, who “may themselves elect representatives to the [upper house], or […] hold elections to have the representatives elected by the people directly.”198 Chapter 7, dealing with presidential powers, contains 3 articles. The constitution provides for a ceremonial president, elected by the House of Peoples’ Representatives for a six-year term, subject to a limit of two terms in office.199 Chapter 8, focusing on executive powers, contains six articles. Notable among these provisions, most of them speaking to the expansive powers of the Prime Minister, are Art. 72, vesting “[t]he highest powers of the Federal Government in the Prime Minister”200 ; Art. 73, stating that the Prime Minister “shall be elected from among members of the House of Peoples’ Representatives”201 ; and Art. 74, making the Prime Minister “the Chief Executive, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers[,] and the Commander-in-Chief of the national armed forces,”202 all 196 Ibid., art. 52(1). On the migration of constitutional ideas, see Vlad F. Perju, “The Migration of Constitutional Ideas,” Int’l Journal of Constitutional Law, 7(1) (January 2009), 170–174 (book review of Sujit Choudhry, ed., The Migration of Constitutional Ideas [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006]). 197 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, art. 61(1). 198 Ibid., art. 61(3). 199 Ibid., art. 70(4). 200 Ibid., art. 72(1). 201 Ibid., art. 73(1). 202 Ibid., art. 74(1).

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at once. Like fellow members of the House of Peoples’ Representatives, the Prime Minister is elected for a five-year term.203 Chapter 9, dealing with “structure and powers of the courts,” contains seven articles. Notable among these provisions is Art. 78, establishing an independent judiciary for Ethiopia,204 including making impermissible, tribunals outside the regular court system, such as special or ad hoc courts, “which do not follow legally prescribed procedures”205 ; Art. 79, vesting judicial powers at both national and state levels, in the courts; and Art. 82, establishing a Court of Constitutional Inquiry,206 made up of eleven members,207 tasked with responsibility, under Art. 84, for investigating constitutional disputes.208 Chapter 10, focusing on “national policy principles and objectives,” consists of eight articles. Notable among these provisions are Art. 85 which explains that objectives the chapter lays out are nonbinding guidelines that, nonetheless, both national and state institutions and officials implementing the constitution are advised to follow when they go about their jobs; Art. 86, pointing up those guidance principles in external relations; Art. 87, pointing up those guidance principles in national defense, including the provision that the Minister of Defense “shall be a civilian”209 ; Art. 88, pointing up those guidance principles in political objectives, including the provision, going to the right to selfdetermination, that the national government “shall promote and support the People’s self-rule at all levels,”210 and that it “shall respect the identity of Nations, Nationalities[,] and Peoples.”211 Chapter 11, dealing with “miscellaneous provisions,” contains fourteen articles, notably including the provisions under Art. 93, spelling out the procedures for national and

203 See ibid., art. 54(1). See also art. 72(3) (“Unless otherwise provided in [the] Constitution[,] the term of office of the Prime Minister is for the duration of the mandate of the House of Peoples’ Representatives”). 204 Ibid., art. 78(1). 205 Ibid., art. 78(4). 206 Ibid., art. 82(1). 207 Ibid., art. 82(2). 208 Ibid., art. 84(1). 209 Ibid., art. 87(2). 210 Ibid., art. 88(1). 211 Ibid., art. 88(2).

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state emergencies; Arts. 94–95, focusing on national and state revenues and expenditures; Arts. 96–97, related to national and state powers over taxation; Art. 101, dealing with the appointment of auditor-general; Art. 102, focused on the establishment of an Election Board; and Art. 103, dealing with the establishment of a Population Census Commission. No different from its predecessors, this constitution continued the habit of centralized powers begun in 1931 at the dawn of modern constitutionalism in Ethiopia, through the constitution of 1955, both in the imperial order, to the Marxist–Leninists constitution of 1987 which, absent the empire it abolished, centralized those powers in “a president of the republic.”212 The document provides for a federation of one national government and thirteen federating units (see Table 3.2), within the context of a bicameral national legislature, spelled out under Chapter 6. The choice of federalism over the unitary system was a practical one dictated by Ethiopia’s “unsettled political situation in the mid-1990s […] [which] favored federalism of some kind to keep the country’s main feuding ethnic groups together in one country.”213 But, departing from the 1987 document, it provides for a parliamentary system, with the President as a titular head of state and real executive power vested in the Prime Minister, rather than “a President of the Republic” under the 1987 constitution.

Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution Multiple Accomplishments of Article 39 This topic is an extension of the discussion of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution that is accorded separate treatment here because of the importance of Article 39 for this chapter and in the larger scheme of things in this book. Due to the constitutionalization of the right to self-determination in Ethiopia that it embodies, Article 39 arguably stands out singularly as the provision that gave the 1995 Constitution its badge of notability as a higher law. We could go so far as to dub the charter document after the article as the Article 39 Constitution.

212 See Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, Chap. 11, arts. 84–88. 213 Ottaway, note 32.

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Given the multiethnic character of Ethiopia recounted in the basic facts portion of this chapter after the introduction, post-imperial Ethiopian leaders of all ideological hues have striven to grapple with the challenges of ethnic diversity. In 1983, the military regime under Colonel Mengistu set up the Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities comprised of academicians from Addis Ababa University to advise the regime on promoting ethnic diversity.214 Upon taking office in 1991, the EPRDF, the alliance of insurgency groups which replaced Mengistu, realigned provincial boundaries along ethnic lines.215 These elites could have acted strategically to prevent “further fragmentation of Ethiopia after its loss of Eritrea in 1991,” by keeping groups like Tigray which also itched to leave, or they could have been “fervent Marxist–Leninists who embraced Soviet Communist thinking in calling different ethnic groups ‘nations’ and ‘nationalities’ endowed with the right to self-determination.”216 Whatever the reason, more than any other provision, Article 39 lends Ethiopia’s 1995 that birthed it, its mark of notability and importance. Captioned “Rights of Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples” and instructively placed under Chapter 3 of the Constitution dealing with “fundamental rights and freedoms,” Article 39 provides, unequivocally, that: “[e]very Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination,” all the way to secession217 ; including “the right to speak, to write and to develop its own language; to express, to develop and to promote its culture; and to preserve its history”218 ; and “a full measure of self-government,” encompassing “the right to establish institutions of government in the territory that it inhabits and to equitable representation in state and Federal governments.”219 The article defines a “nation, nationality or people” for the purpose of the

214 See notes 163–164 and accompanying texts. 215 Note 93 and accompanying text. 216 Ottaway, note 32. 217 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, art.

39(1). 218 Ibid., art. 39(2). 219 Ibid., art. 39(3).

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Constitution,220 and spells out the modalities for actualizing the right to self-determination.221 In sum, Article 39 did three things all at once: provides “an unconditional right to self-determination,” all the way to secession, provides a definition of the entities—Nation, Nationality, and People—who may use this right, and maps out the modalities for the exercise of this right. Little wonder that some commentators praise Ethiopia for having “probably the world’s most explicit Constitution regarding secession.”222 Departing from previous constitutions, Ethiopia’s 1995 established a federation of one national government and nine federating units, subsequently increased to eleven, of equal rights and powers, all of which entities “have the right to establish, at any time, their own States[.]” The only preconditions for the exercise of the right to self-determination are that an eligible group must win the approval of two-thirds of the House of Federation, Ethiopia’s upper house, as well as a majority of voters in a nationwide referendum. Such is the robustness of Article 39. We suggested earlier in this section that, along with the right to self-determination that it embodies, Article 39 gave birth to Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution. Although somewhat counter-intuitive, the proposition has strong merit, judging from the preamble of the Constitution and provisions outside the preamble. The preamble expressed the strong commitment of the eligible ethnic groups to build a political community founded on the rule of law, capable of ensuring a lasting peace, among other values, in the robust exercise of the

220 Ibid., art. 39(5) (defining a “nation, nationality, or people” as “a group of people who have or share a large measure of a common culture or similar customs, mutual intelligibility of language, belief in a common or related identities, a common psychological make-up, and who inhabit an identifiable predominantly contiguous territory”). 221 Ibid. art. 39(4) (listing five steps from approval by a third-thirds majority of the legislature of the entity in question, organization of a referendum by the national government, formal demand for secession supported by a majority vote in the referendum, transfer of powers by the national government to the legislature of the entity which voted to secede, to division of assets). 222 David Forniès, “Ten Countries that Grant the Right to Independence to (Some of) Their Territories—and France is one of them,” Nationalia (February 23, 2017), https://www.nationalia.info/new/10936/ten-countries-that-grant-the-rightto-independence-to-some-of-their-territories-and-france.

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right to self-determination, strongly convinced that realizing this objective dictates unstinted respect for individual and collective rights, guided by the need to rectify historically unjust relationships.223 Provisions outside the preamble complementing and shoring up the right to self-determination enshrined in Article 39 include: Art. 8 which located sovereignty in eligible ethnic groups, rather than vest it on individuals224 ; and Art. 47 enumerating nine of those groups,225 a number subsequently increased to eleven.226 Other provisions are Art. 61, which stipulates that the House of Federation, Ethiopia’s upper legislative chamber, comprises “representatives of Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples”227 ; and Art. 88 advising the national government to protect and promote peoples’ “self-rule at all levels,” as well as to “respect the identity of” ethnic groups eligible to receive the blessing of self-determination.228 Two Unavailing Criticisms of Article 39 There are two criticisms of Article 39, each of which is unavailing. The first is that it embodies preconditions which circumscribe the right to secession because they are not easy to meet.229 While keeping this debatable point in mind, the more limited trajectory here is constitutionalizing this right. The second is that it bears the footprint of the Soviet Union.230 One typical criticism is by Professor Mahmood Mandani, who claimed that, in adopting this provision and the constitution which embeds it, the

223 See notes 188–189 and accompanying texts. 224 See note 191 and accompanying text. 225 These nine entities were: Tigray; Afar; Amhara; Oromia; Somalia; Benshangul/

Gumuz; Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples; Gambela Peoples; and Harari People. Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 185, art. 47(1). 226 Table 3.2, and note 193 and accompanying text. 227 See note 197 and accompanying text. 228 See notes 210–211 and accompanying texts. 229 Ottaway, note 32. 230 See note 180 and accompanying text.

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ERPDF, Ethiopia’s then ruling party, “both Sovietized and Africanized Ethiopia.”231 There is no question that Article 39 was inspired by the Soviet Constitution. The Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities was established in 1983 by the Dergue to study options for restructuring the country in line with a Stalinist nationality policy.232 There is therefore more than a small chance that influences from the Soviet Union impacted the idea of and content of Article 39. After all, from 1974 until 1991, Ethiopia maintained ideological and political relations with the Soviet Union during which it received military and economic assistance from that country.233 But by itself this fact is not decisive: consistent with the doctrine of constitutional engineering,234 Ethiopian leaders have borrowed ideas from foreign countries to improve their constitutional and political system which this latest exercise simply complemented. The

231 Mahmood Mandani, “The Problem with Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism,” New York Times (January 3, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/opinion/eth iopia-abiy-ahmed-reforms-ethnic-conflict-ethnic-federalism.html. He contended that, “[a]s in the Soviet Union, every piece of land in Ethiopia was inscribed as the ethnic homeland of a particular group, constitutionally dividing the population into a permanent majority alongside permanent minorities with little stake in the system.” Ibid. 232 Sarah Vaughan, “Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia,” Ph.D. Thesis, College of Humanities and Social Science, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh (2003), 151. The Soviet constitution of 1918 recognized the right to secession by member republics, but (maybe deliberately) did not lay out modalities for exercise of the right. Ilya Levkov, “Self-Determination in Soviet Politics,” in Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), 141. Elements of Lenin’s position on self-determination include that secession is available but not advised, and that full democratic and linguistic rights should be extended to all ethnic groups and nationalities. Ibid., pp. 138–139. Faced with the risk of complete disintegration of the multinational empire they inherited, Vladimir Lenin and his comrades in the Bolshevik Revolution felt impelled to give self-determination a high priority. Ibid., p. 134. They implemented the principle in two stages, using the tool of federalism. First, by establishing Russia itself as a federation, and secondly, in 1922, by establishing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Ibid. Thus, the doctrine of self-determination is a core element of Soviet ideology, both domestically and in foreign affairs, although advocacy of true political independence fell short. Ibid. 233 See notes 82–83 and accompanying texts. 234 See note 196.

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country’s 1931 constitution was shaped by ideas from Imperial Japan.235 Similarly, the 1955 constitution bore tissues of influence from the US.236

The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Ethiopia Constitutional engineering may be defined as the process by which political elites within a country draft and adopt constitutions, designed to build the capacity of the government to provide for the wellbeing of the masses of citizens, within the hallowed traditions of the social contract.237 The process is inherently politically steeped as it is in the “who gets what, when, and how” embedded in the “authoritative allocation of values in a society.”238 This formulation raises the logical question regarding the major political figures involved in the drafting, adoption, and implementation of a constitution. Four such leaders in the Ethiopian setting are Emperor Haile Selassie I, Mengistu Haile Miriam, Meles Zenawi Asres, and Negasso Gidada (see Table 3.3). Of the four, the ones who played the most role, the result of their relative longevities in office, are Selassie and Mengistu.239 With the exception of the 6 years of Italian invasion and occupation from 1935 to 1941, Selassie remained emperor of Ethiopia for about 39 years before his overthrow in a military coup on September 12, 1974.240 Before making himself over in 1987 as a civilian president, Mengistu headed the Dergue

235 See note 123 and accompanying text. 236 See notes 143–144 and accompanying texts. 237 See, for example, Zachary Elkins, “Constitutional Engineering,” Britannica,

https://www.britannica.com/topic/constitutional-engineering; and Otive Igbuzor, “Constitutional Engineering as Tool for Democratic Reform,” Guardian (Lagos) (March 17, 2022), https://guardian.ng/politics/constitutional-engineering-as-tool-for-democratic-ref orm/. See also Celeste Friend, “Social Contract Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/. 238 See generally Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When[,] and How (Manhattan, NY: Peter Smith Pub. Inc., 1990); and David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), 30. 239 See notes 68–97 and accompanying texts. 240 Reuters, “Removal Is Quiet,” New York Times (September 13, 1974), https://

www.nytimes.com/1974/09/13/archives/removal-is-quiet.html.

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Table 3.3 List of Ethiopian leaders and the constitutions they are associated with Item No.

Name of leader

Period in office

Constitution(s) associated with

Extent of impact (i.e., Robustness)

1.

Haile Selassie I

1930–1974

Extensive

2.

Mengistu Haile Miriam Meles Zenawi (also spelled Zenawei) Negasso Gidada

1977–1991

1931 and 1955 constitutions 1987 constitution 1995 constitution 1995 constitution

Extensive

3.

4.

1991–2012

1995–2001

Extensive Extensive

from 1977 until 1987.241 His repressive rule spanning 14 turbulent years encompassed his period as General Secretary of the WPE, the only political party recognized in the country, from 1984 until 1991.242 Meles took office after Mengistu, and served as TGE President from 1991 to 1995 when he became Prime Minister.243 He remained in this office until his death in Brussels, Belgium, on August 20, 2012, while receiving treatment in a hospital there for an undisclosed illness.244 Altogether, Meles was in office for 21 years, during which period he “kept a tight grip on power.”245 Meles gets credit as “the main architect of” Article 39, and an

241 “List of Ethiopian Presidents,” note 6. 242 See “Mengistu Haile Miriam,” Dbpedia, https://dbpedia.org/page/Mengistu_

Haile_Mariam; and David B. Ottaway, “Ethiopia Forms Its First Party,” Washington Post (September 11, 1984), https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/ 09/11/ethiopia-forms-its-first-party/c013a22a-8d90-4947-ae2e-5651cc4fb6f1/. 243 “List of Ethiopian Presidents,” note 6. 244 Aaron Maasho, “Ethiopians Mourn Strongman Ruler Meles, Dead at 57,” Reuters

(August 20, 2012), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-meles-idUSBRE87K04 K20120821; and Selam Beyere, “The Cause of Meles Zenawi’s Death and Its Import,” Ethiopian Review (September 2, 2012), https://www.ethiopianreview.com/index/41171. 245 Aaron Maasho, “Ethiopia’s Ruling Coalition Completes Transition after Meles,” Reuters (March 26, 2013), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-coalition/ethiop ias-ruling-coalition-completes-transition-after-meles-idUSBRE92P10A20130326.

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“engineer of the peaceful secession of” Eritrea, which “put[] an end to a 30-year-old war for independence there.”246 Following his death, his deputy, Hailemariam Desalegn, succeeded Zewani as Prime Minister and head of the EPRDF.247 Hailemariam took office in a transfer of power that was praised as the most peaceful in Ethiopian modern history.248 He ruled for over five and a half years, from September 15, 2012, until February 15, 2018, when he resigned, the result of mass protests all across the country by publics disenchanted with his government, especially within the Oromo and Amhara, the country’s two most-populous ethnic groups.249 The protests began in 2015 about midway into his rule.250 Hailemariam was a protégé of Zenawi whose uneventful years, from the standpoint of constitutional engineering, could be viewed as in extension of his mentor Zenawi’s. Similarly, Negasso’s contribution was relatively unimpressive. Although Table 3.3. ranked his constitutional impact as extensive, his contributions lacked the depth of the other leaders on the diagram. Elected president

246 Ottaway, note 32. 247 See “Hailemariam

Desalegn Becomes New Ethiopian Leader,” VOA News (September 15, 2012), https://www.voanews.com/a/hailemariam-desalegn-becomesnew-ethiopia-leader/1508819.html; and Kumerra Gemechu, “Ethiopia Ruling Coalition Approves Hailemariam Desalegn as PM,” Reuters (September 15, 2012), https://www. reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-politics/ethiopia-ruling-coalition-approves-hailemariamdesalegn-as-pm-idUSBRE88E0FQ20120915. 248 See “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook, note 5 (stating that the transfer of power

“mark[ed] the first peaceful transition of power in decades”); and Maasho, “Ethiopia’s Ruling Coalition Completes Transition after Meles,” note 245. 249 See “Four Questions About the Ethiopian PM’s Resignation,” Monitor (February 16, 2018; updated January 25, 2021), https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/ Four-questions-about-Ethiopian-PM-s-resignation/688340-4307774-vbkcnrz/index.html. Hailemariam gets credit for being the first leader in the modern history of Ethiopia to step down voluntarily from power; previous rulers died in office or were overthrown. He indicated that he chose to resign to clear the way for needed reforms, rather than make himself part of the problem. See Zacharias Abubakar, “Ethiopians Protesting State of Emergency Shut Down Capital, Oromia Region,” France 24 (June 3, 2018), https://www.france24.com/en/20180306-ethiopia-state-emergency-protest-strike; and “Ethiopia[n] PM Hailemariam Desalegn in Surprise Resignation,” BBC News (February 15, 2018), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43073285. 250 See Aaron Maasho, “Facing Internal Splits and Popular Unrest, Ethiopia’s Ruling Coalition Appoints New PM,” Reuters (March 27, 2018), https://www.reuters.com/ article/uk-ethiopia-politics/facing-internal-splits-and-popular-unrest-ethiopias-ruling-coalit ion-appoints-new-pm-idUKKBN1H331R.

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on August 22, 1995, a position in post-socialist Ethiopia less powerful than the Prime Minister-ship, Negasso left office on October 8, 2001, at the expiration of his term.251 His assumption of office merely coincided with the adoption of the 1995 constitution and, of the four leaders surveyed here, he was by far the least consequential, from a constitutional engineering standpoint.

Self-Determination Struggles in Ethiopia Before 1995: Eritrea Eritrea illustrates self-determination struggles in Ethiopia in the period predating the 1995 constitution which entrenched the right to self-determination for eligible entities. This discussion covers selfdetermination activities between 1952 and 1993. The timeframe encompasses the dogged struggle by Eritreans for separation from Ethiopia from September 1, 1961, to May 29, 1992,252 a tussle denominated in the literature as the Eritrean War of Independence.253 It was an encounter driven by changes in the political and constitutional relationships between Ethiopia and Eritrea, gestures that many Eritreans perceived not only as a pursuit of annexation through federal means but also, in the same vein, as a replacement of Italian and British foreign rules with Ethiopian imperial suzerainty. The following discussion does not include relationships with

251 “List of Ethiopian Presidents,” note 6. 252 See note 76 and accompanying text. See also “Eritrean War of Independence[,]

1961–1993,” Wars of the World: Armed Conflict Events Data, https://web.archive. org/web/20110113020934/http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/eat/ethiopia/feritr ea1961.htm. Some studies date the beginning of the Eritrean struggle for independence to years before the federalization of Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952. See Ruth Ayob, The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941–1993 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) (penciling 1941 as starting point). 253 See ibid. See also Charles G. Thomas and Toyin Falola, Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa (Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2020), 115–156 (“The Anatomy of Eritrean Secession, 1961–1993”).

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Ethiopia after 1993,254 nor an exploration of how the Eritrean people have consummated their independence after 1993.255 Though important from the human rights standpoint that drives and informs this book, those issues are outside the scope of this study. In other words, due to space and time constraints, the struggle for self-determination analyzed in this section is confined to the war of independence through the referendum on independence to Eritrea’s admission into the UN as a sovereign state. But, first, some basic facts on Eritrea. Basic Facts on Eritrea Eritrea is a country in East Africa, sandwiched between Djibouti and Sudan, with an extensive coastline along the Red Sea.256 Etymologically, the name Eritrea is derived from Erythra Thalassa, the ancient 254 For a sample of works pertaining to this period, see, for example, Tekeste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll, Brothers at War: Making Sense of the Eritrean Ethiopia War (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001); Alexia Underwood, “The Sudden End of the EthiopiaEritrea War, Explained,” Vox (Updated July 31, 2018), https://www.vox.com/2018/ 7/31/17595988/ethiopia-eritrea-peace-abiy-ahmed; and Gérard Prunier, “The EthioEritrean Conflict: An Essay in Interpretation,” Write Net (November 1, 1998), https:// www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a6b74.html (focusing on the dispute in 1998 over the Badme border area in Tigray). 255 “Eritrea,” Freedom in the World (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2021), https://freedomhouse.org/country/eritrea/freedom-world/2021 (rating the country 3/ 100, not free, on global freedom; the report portrayed Eritrea as “a militarized authoritarian state that has not held a national election since independence from Ethiopia in 1993”); Human Rights Watch, “Eritrea: Events of 2020,” World Report 2021 (2021), https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/eritrea (stating that despite attempts to make peace with Ethiopia, “Eritrea’s government remains one of the world’s most repressive, subjecting its population to widespread forced labor and conscription, imposing restrictions on freedom of expression, opinion, and faith, and restricting independent scrutiny by international monitors”); “Eritrea,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022) (assessing Isaias Afwerki’s regime, in office for nearly 30 years since independence in a one-party system, as “highly autocratic and repressive[,]” and marked by the creation of “a highly militarized society”); and Bryan Bowman, “The Most Repressive State You May Have Never Heard Of,” Globe Post (August 2, 2019), https://theglo bepost.com/2019/08/02/martin-plaut-understanding-eritrea/. See also Laetitia Bader, “Young Eritreans Would Rather Risk Death at Sea Than Let Their Leaders Take Their Freedom,” Human Rights Watch (August 9, 2019), https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/ 08/09/young-eritreans-would-rather-risk-death-sea-let-their-leaders-take-their-freedom. 256 See “Map of Eritrea,” Nations Online, https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/ map/eritrea-political-map.htm#:~:text=Eritrea%20covers%20an%20area%20of,the%20US% 20state%20of%20Pennsylvania.

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Greek name for the Red Sea.257 Eritrea is bordered by Ethiopia to the south, Sudan to the west, and Djibouti to the southeast.258 Modernday Eritrea emerged from the incorporation and consolidation of two kingdoms, Medri Bahri, and the Sultanate of Aussa from the precolonial order.259 Like Ethiopia, Eritrea is an ancient civilization with a history that dates back to the dawn of creation.260 From 1890 until 1941, Eritrea came under Italian colonization,261 and from 1942 until 1952, under the United Kingdom (UK), which administered the territory for the UN as a trust territory, following the defeat of Italy in World War II and the loss of its colonies in Africa and elsewhere in the world, emanating from that defeat.262

257 See “Interesting Facts About Eritrea—Part 2,” Eritrea Madote, http://www.mad ote.com/2010/11/interesting-facts-about-eritrea-part-2.html. 258 “Map of Eritrea,” note 256. 259 See Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “III. Histor-

ical Background,” Doc. No. A/HRC/29/CRP.1 (November 6, 1991), ¶¶ 63– 64, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoI Eritrea/A_HRC_29_CRP-1_Chapter_III.pdf; “Eritrea: History,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Eritrea; and Stuart Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 1991). Although Italian presence in Eritrea goes back to 1869, when an Italian monk purchased land in Assab on behalf of an Italian shipping company, officially, Eritrea became an Italian colony on January 1, 1890. Embassy of the State of Eritrea, Washington, DC, “Our History,” https://us.embassyeritrea.org/our-history/#:~:text=Eritrea%20was%20offi cially%20declared%20an,Italian%20shipping%20company%20in%201869. 260 In 2003, archeologists discovered in Buya (or Buia), a locality in the northern of Eritrea, the remains of a woman believed to date from one and half million years ago. See “Historical Background,” note 259, ¶ 62. It is probably this ancient-ness, matched against resentment of Amhara domination in a non-federal state, given added keenness by Eritreans’ “greater exposure to Western ways,” that triggered the nearly 30-year war of independence against the Ethiopian national government. See US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note 2, ¶ 11. 261 “Our History,” note 259; and Tekeste Negash, Italian Colonialism in Eritrea, 1882–1941: Politics, Praxis, and Impact (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University Press, 1987). See also note 19 and accompanying text (commenting on Italy’s annexation of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland to form Italian East Africa). 262 See “Our History,” note 259; and “British Administration (1941–1950),” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/eritrea/history-3.htm.

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Eritrea had a population of 6.2 million people in 2022,263 on an area (land and water) of 117,600 square kms,264 with a coastline measuring 2234 square kms,265 plus 354 partially uninhabited islands in the open sea,266 among the sources of its attractiveness to neighbors like Ethiopia which lack these endowments. Comparatively, in landmass, Eritrea is somewhat smaller than England or slightly larger than Pennsylvania in the US.267 Like Ethiopia’s, Eritrea’s population is unevenly distributed with the highest density in the center of the country in and around the cities of Asmara (the country’s capital) and Keren, matched against smaller settlements in the north and south.268 Also like Ethiopia, Eritrea is a predominantly rural country,269 with an economy based largely on agriculture.270 Due to damages arising from the long struggle of self-determination against Ethiopia, coupled with a bout of recurrent droughts, at independence, Eritrean leaders faced the need to address numerous challenges from the war, including economic reconstruction, demobilizing former fighters, and resettling a large number of displaced citizens within and outside the country.271 As of 1993, the Eritrean

263 “Eritrea,” World Data, https://www.worlddata.info/africa/eritrea/index.php#:~: text=Eritrea%20is%20a%20country%20in,of%20the%20area%20of%20Ohio. 264 Ibid. 265 Ibid. The number breaks down into 1151 km for the mainland on the Red Sea,

and 1083 km in the Red Sea. “Eritrea,” World Factbook, note 255. 266 Ibid. 267 “Map of Eritrea,” note 256; and “Eritrea,” CIA World Factbook, note 255. 268 Ibid. 269 “Eritrea,” IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development], https://www. ifad.org/en/web/operations/w/country/eritrea (“About 80 per cent of poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their daily income”). 270 See “Eritrea,” IFAD, note 269 (stating that agriculture, including animal herding, and fishing, is the springfield of “almost all rural employment”; it forms the livelihoods of more than 75 percent of the population, accounts for about 20–30 percent of commodity exports, and for about 24 percent of the GDP). This, intriguingly, for a country with 26 percent arable land, but only four percent is under cultivation, leading to food insecurity for more than one-third of the population, especially rural dwellers. Ibid. “In good rainfall years, the country is only 60 per cent food-secure, and this figure falls to 25 per cent when rainfall is low.” Ibid. 271 International Monetary Fund, Eritrea—Recent Economic Development, IMF Staff Country Report No. 96/66 (August 1996), 1, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ scr/1996/cr9666.pdf.

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government repatriated about 350,000 Eritreans who hitherto lived as refugees in Sudan.272 Nine ethnic groups recognized by the Eritrean government are Afar, Bilen, Hidarb, Kunama, Nara, Rashaida, Saho, Tigre, and Tigrinya.273 The last two constitute the bulk of the population, with Tigrinya making up about 50 percent and Tigre about 30 percent.274 Christianity and Islam are the two major religions in Eritrea, with a small minority adhering to traditional faiths.275 About one-half of the population is Christian, many of them members of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, followed by Roman Catholics and a small number of Protestants.276 Eritrea is divided into six administrative regions—Anseba, Central, Gash-Barka, Northern Red Sea, Southern, and Southern Red Sea—which regions are further divided into 58 districts.277 Three Key Events in Eritrea’s Self-Determination Campaign Eritrea’s relationship with Ethiopia as a political community began on September 15, 1952, the date the two states became federated.278 Events leading to the federalization included a resolution by the UN General

272 Department of Political Science, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” https://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/sub-sah aran-africa-region/ethiopiaeritrea-1950-1993/. Of the number, about 25,000 refugees were repatriated to the country between November and May 1995 by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, while the overwhelming majority, numbering about 200,000, returned on their own without any repatriation assistance. Ibid. 273 Ministry of Information, Eritrea, “Eritrea’s 9 Ethnic Groups” (March 21, 2014), https://shabait.com/2014/03/21/eritreas-9-ethnic-groups/. 274 See EASO Country of Origin Information Report: Eritrea Country Focus (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg: European Asylum Support Office, May 2015), 12, https:// euaa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/public/Eritrea-Report-Final.pdf. 275 See “Eritrea: Religion,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/ place/Eritrea/Religion. 276 Ibid. The last two religions are throwbacks to Italian colonial rule, when

Roman Catholic and Protestant European missionaries introduced their own versions of Christianity into Eritrea. Ibid. 277 “Maps of Eritrea,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/eritrea. 278 UN General Assembly, “Ethiopia/Eritrea,” Resolution No. 390 A (V) (December 2,

1950), https://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/ethiopia-eritrea-un-general-assembly-resolution390-a-v-of-2-december-1950/.

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Assembly permitting the arrangement,279 the formation of a Representative Assembly for Eritrea,280 and the signature of the Eritrean-Ethiopian Act by Emperor Haile Selassie on September 11, 1952.281 The relationship came to an end on May 28, 1993, when Eritrea was admitted into the UN as the 182nd member state of the world body.282 The period in-between these two dates, spanning over 40 years, embodied multiple events that formed the self-determination labors of Eritreans against Ethiopia. These key events, elaborated below, include the collapse of the federation experiment between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Eritrean War of Independence, and the referendum on Eritrean independence, ending with Eritrea’s admission as a sovereign state into the UN.

279 Ibid. The resolution was adopted by a vote of 46, with 10 voting no, and 4 abstentions. See “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. The Allied Powers, who won WW II, turned to the UN after they were unable to resolve by themselves the status of Eritrea after the war. See “Historical Background,” note 259, ¶ 74. The resolution created a loose federation under the sovereignty of imperial Ethiopia, but gave Eritreans competencies over their own administrative and judicial structures, their own separate flag, two official languages (Tigrinya and Arabic), and control over their own domestic affairs, such as police, and taxation. Under the division of competencies, the central government in Addis Ababa retained control over defense, foreign affairs, currency and finance, foreign and interstate commerce, as well as external and interstate communications like ports. “Memorandum of Under Secretary Webb,” note 103; “Historical Background,” note 259, ¶ 75; and Fikrejesus Amhazion, “A Look Back on Eritrea’s Historic 1993 Referendum,” Tesfa News (April 23, 2018), https://tesfanews.net/revisiting-eritrea-historic-1993-refere ndum/. 280 The Assembly comprised 68 members. Elections to the body took place in Eritrea on March 16, 1952, following which conclusion the Assembly adopted a constitution on July 10, 1952, which Emperor Haile Selassie ratified on August 11, 1952. “Ethiopia/ Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 281 Ibid. The Act comprised the first seven paragraphs of the UN Resolution, and the Constitution of Eritrea. “Memorandum of Under Secretary Webb,” note 103. 282 See UN General Assembly, Resolution No. 47/230, Admission of Eritrea to Membership in the United Nations, GAOR 47th Session, Supp. 49, 2(6) (May 28, 1993); and UN Security Council, Res. No. S/RES/828 (May 26, 1993), http://unscr.com/en/ resolutions/doc/828.

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Collapse of the Federation Experiment Between Ethiopia and Eritrea The federal experiment between Ethiopia and Eritrea collapsed on November 16, 1962, the date the Ethiopian government voided the relationship and annexed Eritrea as its fourteenth province.283 Being landlocked, Ethiopia coveted Eritrea’s two seaports—Assab and Massawa—to facilitate its access to the coastline.284 The two seaports are located on the sea lane that connects Europe with the Persian Gulf and the countries bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans.285 One strategy of Ethiopia’s imperial leaders was to annex the territory on the ground that it had always been part of Ethiopia.286 To this effect, these leaders lobbied the Allied Powers.287 Within Eritrea itself, the annexation plan involved the help of Ethiopian Orthodox clergy, whose mobilization was based on religious loyalty.288 Testament to the plan was the formation in 1946 of a Unionist Party, financed and teleguided from Addis Ababa.289 For Ethiopia, federalization with Eritrea represented a beneficial midpoint short of the extremism of annexation. In the wake of Italian and British rules, federalization served to moderate Ethiopia’s claims of sovereignty over Eritrea while accommodating Eritrean aspirations for autonomy.

283 Two days before, on November 14, 1962, the Ethiopian Chamber of Deputies voted to abolish the federation. “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 284 See “Eritrea: Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond,” Britannica, https:// www.britannica.com/place/Eritrea/Contesting-for-the-coastlands-and-beyond. See also Reuters, “Ethiopia Says Re-opening Roads to Eritrea’s Red Sea Ports a Priority” (July 11, 2018), https://sg.news.yahoo.com/ethiopia-says-opening-roads-eritreas-red-sea-ports-122 826489--finance.html. 285 See Ministry of Information, Eritrea, “Eritrean Sea Ports” (April 11, 2014), https://shabait.com/2014/04/11/eritrean-sea-ports/. 286 See “Eritrea: Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond,” note 284. See also Christopher Angenfelt, The Unwavering Realism: A Comparative Case Study of Modern Time Security (Lund, Sweden: Lund University, 2015), 8, https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/ download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=5435244&fileOId=5435542 [Student Paper] (“Ethiopia has maintained that prior to the Italian colonization of Eritrea the country was in fact a part of the Ethiopian empire and has therefore no right to nationhood”). 287 “Eritrea: Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond,” note 284; “Historical Background,” note 259, ¶ 73 (Emperor Haile Selassie “lobbied the United States for the handover of most of Eritrea to Ethiopia”). 288 “Eritrea: Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond,” note 284. 289 Ibid. See also John Markakis, “Eritrea,” Britannica (Last updated December 1,

2022).

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The problem, however, was that Ethiopian imperial leaders gave federalism little chance to work. The rollback started in 1952 before the ink on the federation agreement dried on the papers they were written. The mindset may have been driven by a desire “to eliminate any traces of separatism in Eritrea.”290 Whatever the reason, the restrictions on autonomy were several and came in quick succession—notably, years before the armed phase of the war in search of self-determination. They were facilitated by the collaboration of supporters of centralized government within and outside Eritrea. Broadly, these restrictions may be classified as financial disputes between the national government and the Eritrean government,291 intervention in Eritrean domestic affairs, and generalized pressure on Eritreans to renounce autonomy. Specific indicators included: a measure in 1952 which made the federal court the final court of appeal in Eritrea292 ; the forced resignation in 1955 of the head of the executive branch in Eritrea and his replacement with a loyalist of the imperial government in Addis Ababa293 ; suppression of attempts to form autonomous organizations in Eritrea, including a ban on political parties in 1955, and a similar ban on trade unions in 1958294 ; change of the label of Eritrean government to a more generic “Eritrean Administration”295 ; replacing the Eritrean flag with Ethiopian flag296 ; imposition of Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, as medium of instruction in public schools297 ; introduction of a preventive detention law which impeded speech, including the freedom of association298 ; and relocating Eritrean business and industries to Ethiopia.299 290 “Eritrea: Federation with Ethiopia,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/ place/Eritrea/Federation-with-Ethiopia. 291 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272 (Emperor Selassie “seized Eritrea’s share of custom duties”). 292 Ibid. 293 See ibid. 294 “Eritrea: Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond,” note 284; “Eritrea: Federation with Ethiopia,” note 290. 295 Ibid. 296 “Ethiopian Annexation (1952–1962),” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.

org/military/world/eritrea/history-4.htm. 297 Markakis, “Eritrea,” note 289. 298 See “Ethiopian Annexation (1952–1962),” note 296. 299 Ibid.

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Eritreans protested these repressive initiatives. For instance, on May 22, 1954, the Eritrean Assembly adopted a resolution condemning “Ethiopian interference in Eritrean affairs”300 ; in 1957, high school students engaged in a three-day mass demonstration301 ; and in 1958, trade unions organized a four-day general strike.302 Ethiopian central authorities cracked down hard on these demonstrators; government troops fired live ammunitions on protestors, killing some and wounding many.303 Thus, convinced that peaceful protests were no longer effective, in November 1958, Eritrean exiles living in Sudan founded the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM).304 The Movement comprised students, intellectuals, and urban wage laborers305 ; its members engaged in clandestine political activities intended to engender resistance to the centralizing policies of the imperial Ethiopian state.306 The movement is different from the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF),307 commented upon below. The Eritrean War of Independence The Eritrean War of Independence took place from September 1961 until May 1991.308 The conflict broke out on September 1, 1961, when ELF militants, led by Hamid Idris Awate, launched an attack on government police stations in the Barka region of Eritrea.309 It ended on May 28, 1991, over 29 years later, when Eritrea won de facto independence from Ethiopia following the defeat of the Ethiopian Marxist–Leninist regime under

300 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 301 “Ethiopian Annexation (1952–1962),” note 296. 302 Ibid. 303 Ibid. 304 Ibid. 305 “Ethiopian Annexation (1952–1962),” note 296. 306 See ibid. 307 See Dan Connell, Historical Dictionary of Eritrea (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 212. 308 See note 253 and accompanying text. 309 See “Tribute to Hamid Idris Awate,” Tesfa News (August 30, 2015), https://tes

fanews.net/tribute-to-hamid-idris-awate/ (“Hamid fired the first shot against Ethiopian government forces on 1 September 1961 at Mount Adal”).

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Mengistu Haile Miriam.310 During the war, the two sides of the armed conflict received military assistance from different parties. We begin with the Eritrean side. The ELF initially led the independence movement after which, from about 1970, leadership shifted to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF).311 Beginning in 1963, the governments of Syria and Iraq provided military assistance to the ELF.312 From 1970 until September 1974, the governments of South Yemen and Libya replaced the governments of Syria and Iraq as providers of military assistance to the ELF.313 Starting from November 1964, the Sudanese government extended assistance.314 From March 1967 until 1970, the Chinese government did the same.315 Following its formation in 1970 by Isaias Afewerki, future President of independent Eritrea, the EPLF replaced the ELF as leader of the independence movement,316 from whence, by the late 1970s, it emerged as the dominant armed group in the Eritrean war of independence.317 The ascendance put the EPLF in line for the funnel of assistance from the “fraternal Arab states” like Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Syria.318 Other extensions of support for Eritrean independence, verbal as well as material, came on March 27, 1973, from the foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)319 ; February 18, 1975, from Sheikh Saas Abdullah, then Minister of Defense of Kuwait320 ; 310 See Paul B. Henze, Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 308–333 (“End of the Derg: The Victory of the Northern Guerilla Movements”); and Clifford Krauss, “Ethiopian Rebels Storm the Capital and Seize Control,” New York Times (May 28, 1991), https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/ 28/world/ethiopian-rebels-storm-the-capital-and-seize-control.html. In the memorable phraseology of Henze, the victory cleared the coast for “rebel movements [to] become governments.” Henze, pp. 330–333. 311 See “Eritrean War of Independence,” note 76. 312 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 313 Ibid. 314 Ibid. 315 Ibid. 316 See “Eritrean War of Independence,” note 76. 317 Ibid. 318 See “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 319 Ibid. 320 Ibid.

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and January 30, 1977, from President Nimeiry of Sudan, after a fruitless attempt to mediate the conflict.321 Due to these measures of assistance or in spite of them, from 1975 to 1977, the ELF and EPLF outnumbered the Ethiopian army, putting them in a position to liberate all of Eritrea, except Asmara, Massawa, and Barentu.322 For the Ethiopian side, support also came from various sources, including the Soviet Union, Cuba, as well as the governments of Libya and South Yemen.323 By far the most notable sources of support were the Soviet Union and Cuba. In November 1978, the Soviet government signed a 20-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Ethiopian government involving political and economic assistance to Ethiopia, including military training and advice for Ethiopian military personnel.324 The agreement capped assistance, begun a year before, involving the provision of 60 million tons of military assistance, made up of aircraft, tanks, artillery, and ammunition, to the Mengistu regime.325 Overlapping this period, beginning in 1977, the Cuban government deployed about 17,000 troops in support of the Ethiopian government.326 For Cuba, this was a switch in the side it was supporting in the conflict, given that, back to March 1967, the Cuban government provided military assistance to the ELF.327 But this time around, Cuba featured as a proxy of the Soviet Union in Africa. Cuba’s participation in the war all but petered out in September 1989 when the Cuban government withdrew its troops from Ethiopia.328 The withdrawal speaks to the character and limitations of its proxy role; the retrenchment was instigated by the proclivities and outlooks of Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev who, upon taking office in 1985, pursued a policy of economic restructure at home (perestroika) and new thinking in external relations (glasnost),

321 Ibid. 322 Alexander de Waal, Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia (New

York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), 50. 323 See “Ethiopia (1942-Present),” note 144. 324 Ibid. 325 Ibid. 326 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 327 Ibid. 328 See ibid.

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marked by improved relations with the United States.329 This was the context in which, from a high of about US$13 billion from 1977 to 1990, Soviet military and economic support for the Mengistu regime reached its nadir.330 The near-cessation of Soviet military, economic, and ideological support set the stage for the defeat of the Ethiopian army by the EPLF in tandem with other rebel groups and the collapse of the Mengistu regime in May 1991.331 Monuments of atrocity marked the conflict. These include the killing, between February and April 1967, of over 400 civilians in Barka district by Ethiopian government troops332 ; the mass execution in Tessenei prison on February 12, 1967, of 21 Eritreans, including teachers and government employees333 ; the mass execution in Asmara on December 28, 1974, of 45 Eritrean students believed to be members or sympathizers of the ELF334 ; and the massacre on May 12, 1988 in She’eb village of more than 400 Eritreans by Ethiopian government forces.335 The massacre came in the wake of the defeat of Ethiopian troops by EPLF 329 See Marilyn Berger, “Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Reformist Soviet Leader, Is Dead at 91,” New York Times (August 30, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/ world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-dead.html. See also Sylvia Babus Woodby, Gorbachev and the Decline of Ideology in Soviet Foreign Policy (London and New York: Routledge, 2019); and W. Raymond Duncan and Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, Moscow and the Third World Under Gorbachev (London and New York: Routledge, 2019). 330 See “The Derg, the Soviet Union, and the Communist World,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84 (“By late 1990, the Soviet-Ethiopian alliance had ended,” impelling the Mengistu government to look for support from other nations like China and Israel, none of which had the ability or incentive to provide the magnitude of support Ethiopia received from Soviet Russia). Keep in mind that much of this number is guesswork. See Hiltzik, note 89 (quoting a former Cabinet minister to the effect that “Mengistu was very secretive regarding the Russians[;] [n]o one knew how much they had promised him”). 331 See “The Derg, the Soviet Union, and the Communist World,” in Ethiopia: A Country Study, note 84. 332 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 333 Ibid. 334 See “Terror Grips Asmara after 45 Strangled,” Montreal Gazette (December 28, 1974), https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ZhMyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2aEFAAAAI BAJ&pg=2025,2893715&dq=ethiopian+army+massacres&hl=en. See also “Ethiopia/ Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 335 See Ministry of Information, Eritrea, “Bitter Defeat Scapegoating Innocent Civilians” (June 21, 2013), https://shabait.com/2013/06/21/bitter-defeat-scapegoating-inn ocent-civilians/. See also John Kifner, “After Rebels’ Gains, Ethiopia Vents Its Wrath

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insurgents March 17–19, 1988, in the Battle of Afabet.336 On May 14, 1988, in the aftermath of the massacre, Mengistu declared martial law in Eritrea.337 The declaration cleared the way for the perpetration of more atrocities in She’eb, this singular location when, on December 5, 1988, Ethiopian soldiers killed more than 400 Eritreans there.338 Yet other atrocities include the killing of over 600 Eritreans on December 1, 1970, in the village of Ona,339 after which, fifteen days later, the government declared a state-of-emergency in Eritrea clearing the way for more atrocities340 ; and the killing in Asmara and surrounding villages on February 14, 1975, of an estimated 500 Eritreans by Ethiopian solders,341 following which the Ethiopian government declared martial law in Eritrea the next day,342 clearing the coast for more atrocities. On February 15, 1975, by which time the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea had degenerated into war, the Ethiopian government declared martial law in Eritrea.343 Brushing aside an appeal from President Anwar Sadat of Egypt on February 9, 1975, for a ceasefire, the Ethiopian government extended the state-of-emergency to the whole of Eritrea on February 15, 1975.344 To calm the embers of dissidence, during the 1960s, the Second Division of Ethiopia’s Imperial Army, based in Eritrea, made periodic sweeps through the Eritrean countryside.345 Typically, these sweeps involved

on Civilians,” New York Times (August 30, 1988), https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/ 30/world/after-rebels-gains-ethiopia-vents-its-wrath-on-civilians.html. 336 See Bereket Kidane, “Eritrea: A Look Back at the Battle of Afabet,” Eritrea Madote (May 2016), http://www.madote.com/2016/05/a-look-back-at-battle-of-afabet.html. 337 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 338 Ibid. 339 See Simon Weldemichael, “Ona Massacre,” Ministry of Information, Eritrea (December 5, 2020), https://shabait.com/2020/12/05/ona-massacre/; and “Ethiopia/ Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 340 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 341 Ibid. 342 Ibid. 343 Ibid. 344 Ibid. 345 US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, note

2, ¶ 14.

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arresting suspects, destroying livestock, and burning down villages.346 Buoyed by military support and supplies from Cuba and the Soviet Union, during the 1980s, Mengistu launched several military operations, eight of them, according to one source, designed to crush the militancy.347 All the campaigns failed, as the following two offensives show. The first, conducted in 1982 and reportedly overseen by Mengistu himself, was the Red Star Campaign.348 Involving more than 120,000 troops, the largest number ever deployed in Eritrea, complete with massive air power and toxic gas, the campaign comprised attacks on EPLF bases, especially around Nakfa, close to the Eritrean border with Sudan.349 The logic behind this armada was that the sheer weight of numbers would overrun the insurgency line,350 but the EPLF managed to survive the attacks and the anticipated rout did not take place. The second operation, “Stealth Offensive,” was launched in March 1983.351 The operation took its name from the more guarded publicity surrounding it, a calculated departure from the high-profile design of Red Star. Here, as in the first campaign, though scathed, the EPLF and their co-insurgents stood unbowed.352 346 Ibid. 347 “Eritrean War of Independence,” World Encyclopedia, note 76. See also Human

Rights Watch, Total War in Eritrea, 1978–84 (August 25, 1977), https://www.hrw.org/ reports/pdfs/e/ethiopia/ethiopia.919/c7redsta.pdf. 348 See Connell, note 307, p. 438; and “Asmara Manifesto and the Launch of the Red Star Campaign,” Zantana (January 25, 1982–January 31, 1982), https://zantana.net/ derg-red-star-campaign-asmara-manifesto/. 349 See Charles Mitchell, “‘Operation Red Star’: Soviet Union, Libya Back Ethiopia in Eritrean War,” UPI (March 20, 1982), https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/03/ 20/Operation-Red-Star-Soviet-Union-Libya-back-Ethiopia-in-Eritrean-war/811738544 8400/. 350 See “Asmara Manifesto and the Launch of the Red Star Campaign,” note 348 (The purpose of the campaign was “to annihilate the [EPLF] ‘once and for all’”). 351 See Total War in Eritrea, 1978–84, note 347 (“The War in 1983–4”). 352 Ibid. Not only did the result remain indeterminate with Eritreans

forces holding their own, there were instances when these insurgent forces proverbially took the fight to Ethiopian central forces. See, for example, Reuters, “Rebels in Ethiopia Claim Capture of Red Sea Port,” New York Times (February 11, 1990), https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/world/rebels-in-ethiopia-claim-captureof-red-sea-port.html; “Ethiopian Rebels Report Capture of Strategic Port on Red Sea,” Los Angeles Times (February 11, 1990), https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-199002-11-mn-1051-story.html. The port in question is the one at Massawa.

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The Ethiopian government rebuffed many peace initiatives. On February 9, 1975, President Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry of Sudan offered to mediate negotiations between the parties; the Ethiopian government refused the offer to mediate two days later.353 Similarly, on February 9, 1975, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt appealed to the Ethiopian government for a ceasefire.354 Instead, the Ethiopian government acted contrarily when, six days later, Mengistu extended the state-of-emergency to the whole of Eritrea.355 On November 16, 1984, in the aftermath of the capture by EPLF forces of Tessenei on January 15, 1984, Mengistu announced that the Ethiopian government would not negotiate with the Eritrean rebels.356 Then, between September 7 and November 20, 1989, former US President Jimmy Carter, on behalf of his Carter Center based in Atlanta, attempted, ultimately unsuccessfully, to mediate the dispute between the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa and the Eritrean militants.357 About 1.4 million people died and millions more rendered homeless during the nearly thirty years from September 1961 to May 1991 of the Eritrean War of Independence.358 The Referendum on Eritrean Independence A referendum plays a critical role in facilitating nonviolent exercise of the right to self-determination.359 Because the new regime in Ethiopia

353 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 354 Ibid. 355 Ibid. 356 Ibid. 357 See ibid. See also David B. Ottaway, “Carter Opens Peace Talks Between Ethiopia and Eritrean Rebels,” Washington Post (September 8, 1989), https://www.washingto npost.com/archive/politics/1989/09/08/carter-opens-peace-talks-between-ethiopia-anderitrean-rebels/85bad0ae-a004-4713-ae19-9be59a327d3d/. 358 See “Ethiopian Civil War,” New World Encyclopedia, http://www.newworldencyclo pedia.org/entry/Ethiopian_Civil_War. 359 See Juve J. Cortés Rivera, “Creating New States: The Strategic Use of Referen-

dums in Secession Movements,” Territory, Politics, Governance, 11(1) (2023), 140–157 (abstract) (commenting on the strategic values of a referendum for independence movements, including its ability to frame the struggle for independence in terms of democracy and the right to self-determination, in a way that makes it difficult for a central government to dismiss).

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supported Eritrea’s independence,360 separation went amicably. Thus, during a peace meeting in Addis Ababa from July 1 to 5, 1991, the Ethiopian government accepted the proposal for a referendum between officials of the government and Eritrean nationalist leaders.361 The acceptance represented a 360-degree about-face, judging from the claim of then-President Mengistu Haile Mariam on November 16, 1984, to the effect that the Ethiopian government would not negotiate with insurgents.362 The referendum on Eritrea’s independence took place from April 23 to 25, 1993.363 The UN supervised the vote via the instrumentality of the UN Observer Mission to Verify the Referendum in Eritrea (UNOVER).364 Eritreans overwhelmingly voted for independence.365 This was followed on May 29, 1991, by the formation of a transitional 360 See note 92 and accompanying text. 361 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 362 See ibid. 363 See Amhazion, note 279. The question put to voters at the referendum was: “Do you approve that Eritrea should become an independent sovereign state?” “Ethiopia: Exact Wording of Question for Referendum of April 1993 Regarding Eritrean independence; Whether or Not the Question Made Reference to a Choice between Slavery and Freedom,” Ref World (June 19, 2001), https://www.refworld.org/docid/3df4be300. html. See also Matt Qvortrup, “Voting on Independence and National Issues: A Historical and Comparative Study of Referendums on Self-Determination and Secession,” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 20(2) (2015), 1, 9 (Based on the advice of UN personnel, the two sides settled for the simple question: “Do you want Eritrea to be independent?”). 364 UNOVER was established pursuant to UN General Assembly Resolution No. 47/ 114 (December 16, 1992), and remained in effect until April 25, 1993. See UN General Assembly, Res. 47/114, Report of the Secretary General Concerning a Request to Observe the Referendum Process in Eritrea, GAOR 47th Session, Supp. 49 (December 16, 1992), 195–196. It comprised 110 long-term observers. Ibid. The aim of the Observer Mission was to ensure the impartiality of the referendum, including reportage of any claims of irregularities, verification of the counting, computation of the results, and announcements of those results. Ibid. Three other key entities sent observers to monitor the referendum but unlike the UN on a short-term basis. These were the OAU (later known as the AU) which sent 18 short-term observers, led by Papa Louis Fall of Senegal, to monitor the referendum; the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); and the League of Arab States (LAS). See “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. The Mission was disbanded on May 31, 1993, three days after Eritrea was admitted as a sovereign state into the UN. Ibid. 365 See Amhazion, note 279. 1,100,266 persons out of 1,102,082 registered voters, representing 99.83 percent, voted yes, vis-à-vis 1822 out of 1,102,082, representing 0.17 percent, who voted no. The turnout of voters in the referendum was 98.5 percent. Ibid.

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government by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), headed by Isaias Afwerki, EPLF secretary-general.366 The EPLF led the independence movement when the Ethiopian central government was defeated. On March 21, 1993, Eritrea’s National Assembly elected Afwerki president of Eritrea.367 Next, on April 27, 1993, the transitional government formally declared Eritrea independent from Ethiopia.368 About 575,000 Eritreans died during the war, 600,000 were internally displaced, and an estimated 450,000 sought safety and succor as refugees in the Sudan.369 Between April 30 and May 8, 1967, alone, Ethiopian soldiers killed about 10,000 Eritreans and rendered 50,000 homeless.370 Beginning in March 1967, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees provided humanitarian assistance to about 28,600 Eritreans who sought shelter and safety as refugees in Sudan.371 On April 8, 1969, the World Food Program (WFP) announced a plan to provide food assistance to Eritrean refugees in southeast Sudan.372 Without delving into the post-independence era outside the scope of this book, it is appropriate to make two observations here. The first relates to the issue of peacetime brain drain. Eritrea has a notorious reputation as a refugee source that continues in the aftermath of the war. Eritreans migrate to neighboring and non-neighboring countries, such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Israel, the Sudan, and Yemen, for multiple reasons, including the “green pasture” of better economic fortunes abroad, and lack of political freedoms and related human rights at home.373 Though Eritrea’s large diaspora is a source of vital remittances that account for an estimated 30 percent of the country’s GDP annually,374 the brain drain is fraught with negative consequences for the country’s long-term

366 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 367 Ibid. 368 See Amhazion, note 279 (pointing up May 24, 1993, as the date). 369 “Ethiopia/Eritrea (1950–1993),” note 272. 370 Ibid. 371 Ibid. 372 Ibid. 373 See “Eritrea,” CIA World Factbook, note 255. 374 Ibid.

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development.375 Second, pointing to repressions at home, in the 5-yearperiod from 2015 to 2019 for which information is available, the Eritrean government devoted 10 percent or more of its GDP to military spending, an occurrence which placed it a dubious No. 1 in the world on this ranking.376

Gauging the Status of the Right to Self-Determination in Ethiopia Since 1995: Critique of the Theory of Ethnic Federalism This section chronicles self-determination events in the period since the adoption of Ethiopia’s Constitution of 1995, which entrenched the right to self-determination for eligible ethnic groups. It has two segments: a sketch of the civil war from 2020 to 2022, colloquially called the Tigray War and a critique of explanations of the conflict anchored on “ethnic federalism.” The Civil War in Ethiopia from November 2020 to November 2022 As this whole chapter makes evident, post-imperial Ethiopia has been a land marked by conflicts. The Tigray War, the first major political crisis under the 1995 constitution, took place from November 3, 2020, until November 3, 2022.377 It was a confrontation between the Ethiopian national government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front 375 See, for example, Victor H. Mlambo et al., “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Fight Brain Drain or Enjoy Remittances: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa,” Affrika: Journal of Politics, Economics[,] and Society, 9(1) (June 2019), 293–313 (sharing the wisdom that African leaders are better off fighting brain drain rather than settling for the short-term advantages of remittances, given that empirical evidence seems to support the conclusion that remittances do not offset the losses in productivity resulting from brain drain). 376 “Eritrea,” CIA World Factbook, note 255. 377 See Alexander Winning and Tim Cocks, “Combatants in Ethiopia’s Tigray War

Agree to Stop Fighting,” Reuters (November 2, 2022), https://www.reuters.com/ world/africa/african-union-parties-ethiopia-conflict-have-agreed-cease-hostilities-202211-02/; “Ethiopia: Government, Tigrayan Forces Agree to End Two-Year War,” Alja Zeera (November 2, 2022), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/2/ethiopias-war ring-sides-agree-cessation-of-hostilities-au; and “AU Announces Peace Deal in Ethiopia’s Tigray Conflict,” DW (November 2, 2022), https://www.dw.com/en/au-announcespeace-deal-in-ethiopias-tigray-conflict/a-63628721.

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(TPLF).378 Tigray is Ethiopia’s fourth-largest ethnic group after Oromo, Amhara, and Somali in this order (see Table 3.1). The TPLF is a foremost political party in Ethiopia and the ruling party in Tigray, one of the eleven NRS states of Ethiopia under the 1995 constitution (Table 3.2). The party played a pivotal role in the EPRDF, the coalition of rebel movements, that, as a government, replaced the Mengistu regime after its ouster in May 1991.379 In fact, the party majorly helped to create the EPRDF in 1990.380 Its fortunes arguably waned in December 2019 with the EPRDF’s disbandment and its replacement with the Prosperity Party (PP).381 The TPLF refused to join the new party, worried about the progression of political reforms under the government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali,382 whose quantum and pace, in the TPLF’s view, threatened regional autonomy under the new dispensation of federalism in the country.383 The PP’s creation was part of the program of reforms that Prime Minister Abiy unveiled. Other changes included the end of a twenty-year border war with Eritrea, which achievement won Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize for 2019384 ; the release of political prisoners, removal of bans on 378 See Winning and Cocks, note 377. 379 See notes 88 and 90 and accompanying texts. 380 See Jason Burke, “Rise and Fall of Ethiopia’s TPLF—From Rebels to Rulers

and Back,” Guardian (London) (November 25, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/nov/25/rise-and-fall-of-ethiopias-tplf-tigray-peoples-liberation-front (“By the end of the 1980s, the TPLF was by far the biggest and most effective among the coalition of Ethiopian armed rebel groups that had united under the banner of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front […] to fight the ailing Ethiopian regime”); and Awol Allo, “Why Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party Could Be Bad News for Ethiopia,” Alja Zeera (December 5, 2019), https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/ 12/5/why-abiy-ahmeds-prosperity-party-could-be-bad-news-for-ethiopia (stating that the TPLF created the EPRDF coalition). 381 See Allo, note 380. 382 See International Crisis Group, Ethiopia: Ethnic Federalism and Its Discontents,

Report No. 153 (September 4, 2009), https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/ ethiopia/ethiopia-ethnic-federalism-and-its-discontents. 383 See Felix Bethke, “Civil War in Ethiopia. The Instrumentalization and Politicization of Identity,” PRIF [Peace Research Institute Frankfurt] Blog (December 23, 2021), https://blog.prif.org/2021/12/23/civil-war-in-ethiopia-the-instrumentaliza tion-and-politicization-of-identity/; and Allo, note 380. 384 “The Nobel Peace Prize 2019,” The Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/pri zes/peace/2019/summary/ (recognizing the Prime Minister “for his efforts to achieve

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dissident groups and facilitating the return from exile of members of these groups; the declaration of press freedom and the grant to diverse political groups of the freedom of association.385 Many observers viewed these changes as unprecedented in a country like Ethiopia where, before then, “everything [was] done in a very prescriptive, slow and managed way.”386 Abiy’s agenda for reform was spurred by demands for transition to real democracy that protesting masses of the Ethiopian people believed that the country’s political elite had obstructed.387 Abiy took office in April 2018 in the aftermath of anti-government protests during the period of Haile Mariam Desalegn, who succeeded Meles.388 Mariam left office amidst demands by the masses of the Ethiopian people for better governance, including an end to political corruption, abuse of office, and repression by members of the ruling party.389 Abiy was a former military official and a leader of the OPDP, one of the four insurgency groups in the ERPDF coalition.390 A Pentecostal Christian born in Beshaba, a coffee-farming district in southwestern Ethiopia, to a Muslim Oromo father and an Orthodox Amhara mother,

peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea”). See also “Ethiopia PM Abiy Wins Nobel Peace Prize for Mending Ties with Eritrea,” Global Village Space (October 11, 2019), https://www.globalvillagespace.com/ethiopia-pm-abiy-wins-nobel-peace-prize-formending-ties-with-eritrea/. 385 Yoseph Badwaza and Jon Temin, “Reform in Ethiopia: Turning Promise into Progress,” Freedom House (September 2018), https://freedomhouse.org/report/ policy-brief/2018/reform-ethiopia-turning-promise-progress (“A Reform-Minded Prime Minister?”). 386 Jason Burke, “‘These Changes Are Unprecedented’: How Abiy Is Upending Ethiopian Politics,” Guardian (London) (July 8, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/jul/08/abiy-ahmed-upending-ethiopian-politics (quoting Ahmed Soliman, an expert in East African politics at London’s Chatham House, a policy think tank based in London). 387 “Ethiopia’s Tigray War: The Short, Medium and Long Story,” BBC News (June 29, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378. 388 See notes 247–250 and accompanying texts. 389 See “Abiy Ahmed Sworn in as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister,” Alja Zeera (April

2, 2018), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/2/abiy-ahmed-sworn-in-as-ethiop ias-prime-minister. 390 Amy McKenna, “Abiy Ahmed,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biogra phy/Abiy-Ahmed.

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Abiy extended the opportunity for political participation to underprivileged groups.391 The first Oromo in recent memory to come to the prime minister position, Abiy grabbed the attention of protesting youths who yearned for greater accountability and inclusiveness in the political process.392 He brought to governance a welcome dose of interpersonal skills and approachability that his predecessors lacked.393 Indeed, to many Ethiopians, he seemed a breath of fresh air capable of uniting a divided country.394 But besides feeling left out in the scheme of things, Tigrayan leaders sensed the program of political reforms Abiy introduced as an attempt to (re)centralize power in the national government, inconsistent with regional autonomy under the new federal system.395 After decades of dominating Ethiopian politics, it is possible that TPLF leaders developed a sense of entitlement to state power, and that they felt an existential threat emanating from the loss of relative power in the government, the armed forces, and the ruling party in the Abiy reforms that other groups may have perceived as leveling the playing field that motivated them to respond with mobilization and violence.396 On the other hand, there were also actions of the national government that unwittingly helped feed, rather than mollify, the apprehension of TPLF leaders. For example, despite the fact that the conflict was largely fought along the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Region, the central government negotiated the peace agreement with Eritrea, which caught international attention about Abiy’s reforms and won him the Nobel Peace Prize, without consulting Tigrayan leaders.397 Whatever the remote factors at play, an immediate trigger factor leading to war was a no-election order

391 “Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed: The Nobel Prize Winner Who Went to War,” BBC News (October 11, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43567007. 392 Ibid. 393 See ibid. 394 Ibid. 395 See Giulia Paravicini, “Ethiopia’s Tigray Holds Regional Election in Defiance of

Federal Government,” Reuters (September 8, 2020), https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-ethiopia-politics/ethiopias-tigray-holds-regional-election-in-defiance-of-federal-govern ment-idUSKBN25Z35S. 396 See Bethke, note 383. 397 Ibid.

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as precaution against the spread of COVID-19 by the national government, which the TPLF defied by holding parliamentary elections in its region.398 The war broke out on November 3, 2020, when military forces controlled by the TPLF attacked Ethiopian military facilities within the vicinity of Tigray, including the command headquarters of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital city, and barracks of the Fifth Battalion in Dansha, also in Tigray.399 The TPLF justified these attacks as “preemptive self-defense.”400 The Ethiopian national government responded with a range of initiatives, denominated “law enforcement operation,” including an invasion, declaration of a state-of-emergency on Tigray, shutdown of government services in the region, creation of an interim government there, and the designation of the TPLF as a terrorist organization.401 Like other disasters and catastrophes, conflicts can be hard to localize to one originating spot. Accordingly, overtime, the war between the Ethiopian government and Tigray spread to other regions and groups, particularly those adjacent to Tigray. These include Afar and Amhara to which areas the conflict reached by July 2021.402 Notably, the groups also 398 See Simon Marks and Abdi Latif Dahir, “Ethiopian Region Holds Local Elections in Defiance of Prime Minister,” New York Times (September 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-electionsabiy-crisis.html. The national government rescheduled elections in the country to sometime in 2021, an occurrence that would have extended its terms by about nine months, a decision that Tigrayan leaders and members considered a power grab by Mr. Abiy, especially given that they were not adequately consulted before the no-election in 2020 because of COVID-19 decision was made. Ibid. 399 See Jen Kirby, “‘Dying by Blood or by Hunger’: The War in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region, Explained,’” Vox (April 24, 2021), https://www.vox.com/22370629/ethiopiatigray-eritrea-amhara-war-ethnic-cleansing. 400 Ibid. See also “Ethiopian Military Operation in Tigray is Complete, Prime Minister Says,” Reuters (November 28, 2020), https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ethiopia-con flict-idUKKBN28809L. 401 See American Ethiopian Public Affairs Commission (AEPAC), “AEPAC Statement: Basic Facts on the Law Enforcement Operation in Tigray Region of Ethiopia” (Updated June 11, 2021), https://aepact.org/basic-facts-on-the-law-enforcement-operation-in-tig ray-region-of-ethiopia/#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Government’s%20law%20enforcemen t,committed%20by%20the%20TPLF%20leadership (“Who is Responsible for the Onset of the Conflict in Tigray?”). 402 See Laetitia Bader, “Ethiopia’s Other Conflict,” Human Rights Watch (July 4, 2022), https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/04/ethiopias-other-conflict.

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include Oromo which, because of its importance in the scheme of things on this topic, is accorded extended commentary here. Located principally in the central portions of the country, Oromia is the largest NRS of Ethiopia. In both population (numbering over 35 million people) and landmass (253,690 square kilometers, encompassing Addis Ababa, the country’s capital city), the Oromo ranks above every other ethnic group in the country. In 2022, the Oromo comprised approximately 36 percent of Ethiopia’s population (compared to approximately 6 percent for Tigray, see Table 3.1). Their language, Oromo (Afaan Oromoo or Oromiffa), is one of the most widely spoken languages in Ethiopia, the most widely spoken Cushitic language, and the fourth most widely spoken language of Africa, after Arabic, Hausa, and Swahili.403 Despite their advantages, joined with the creation of Omomia as one of Ethiopia’s eleven NRS, and election of one of their own as Prime Minister, the Oromo still feel a deep sense of marginalization in Ethiopian politics that dates back to Emperor Menelik in the nineteenth century.404 A group that dedicates its energies to Oromo self-determination campaign is the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF or Shene). The group 403 See “Oromo People | Ethnic Groups—Horn of Africa,” Native Breed (September

21, 2021), https://www.nativebreed.org/oromo-people-ethnic-groups-horn-of-africa/. The Oromo are reputed as the largest aboriginal people in Ethiopia nay the Horn of Africa. This is in contradistinction to other nationalities of Northern Ethiopia, recent settlers, known as Habesha, who claimed Arabian or Jewish ancestry and established the Solomonic Dynasty which ruled Ethiopia from 1270 to 1974. The Oromo remained independent until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when they lost their sovereignty. From 1881 to 1886, Emperor Menelik II conducted several unsuccessful invasion campaigns against their territory. Initially, the Arsi Oromo (a branch of Oromo comprising several clans) staved off conquest by fiercely resisting the new settlers, enemies equipped with modern European firearms, but were ultimately defeated in 1886. See, for example, Abbas H. Gnamo, Conquest and Resistance in the Ethiopian Empire, 1880–1974 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2014). 404 See Jacey Fortin, “The Ugly Side of Ethiopia’s Economic Boom,” FP (March 23, 2016), https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/23/no-one-feels-like-they-have-any-right-tospeak-at-all-ethiopia-oromo-protests/; and Asafa Jalata, “Ethiopia and Ethnic Politics: The Case of Oromo Nationalism,” Dialectical Anthropology, 18(3/4) (December 1993), 381– 402. The matter is more complicated than it seems at first sight. As one analyst pointed out, “it is difficult to speak of the Oromo as occupying a completely marginal existence in Ethiopia,” given that the group “ha[s] a long history of integration and extensive assimilation to the Amhara political and cultural center.” Namhla Thando Matshanda, “Ethiopia’s Civil Wars: Postcolonial Modernity and the Violence of Contested National Belonging,” Nations and Nationalism (April 11, 2022).

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emerged as “a culmination of a century[-]old yearn of the Oromo people to have a strong and unified national organization to lead” their struggle for self-determination.405 It assesses the ERPDF and its progeny as “merely a cosmetic change intended to affect the momentum of [its] just struggle” for self-determination.406 The OLF is among several insurgent groups across different regions that, before the end of hostilities in the Tigray War in 2022, formed the targets of the Ethiopian national government counterinsurgency operations, either directly using its own military forces or through proxies (like the regime in newly-independent Eritrea).407 One point of similarity between the OLF and the TPLF is their common opposition to the national government in Ethiopia. That is where the similarity ends. The OLF anchors its justification for Oromo independence from Ethiopia on decolonization. It reasons that the boundaries of Ethiopia were created by Emperor Menelik by the forcible incorporation of politically independent entities in the late nineteenth century and that this act of colonization was as illegitimate as those of the European powers.408 The TPLF, for its part, based that justification on national self-determination, rather than decolonization, consistent with its Marxist–Leninist idiosyncrasy and mindset.409 Another issue complicating the case of Oromo was the assassination on June 29, 2020, of the popular singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Hachalu Hundessa, an Oromo, who was gunned down in Addis Ababa.410 His murder triggered widespread protests and unrest across Oromia and the rest of the country that left more than 200 people

405 “OLF

Mission,” https://web.archive.org/web/20061212044409/http://www. oromoliberationfront.org/OLFMission.htm. 406 Ibid. 407 See Danish Immigration Service, Ethiopia: An Update on the Security and Human

Rights Situation Since February 2022, Country of Origin Information (COI) Brief Report (September 2022), 11–12, https://us.dk/media/10545/ethiopia_an-update-on-the-sec urity-and-human-rights-situation-since-february-2022.pdf. 408 See Kjetil Tronvoll, “The Anatomy of Ethiopia’s Civil War,” Current History, 121 (835) (2022), 163–169. 409 See ibid. 410 Bader, “Ethiopia’s Other Conflict,” note 402.

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dead.411 Reinforcing the sense of marginalization many Oromo feel about their condition in Ethiopia, Hundessa was an arrowhead in the large-scale protests mounted by Oromia and other portions of Ethiopia that cleared the coast for the emergence of Abiy as Prime Minister in April 2018. The Tigray War was a conflict “marked by extreme brutality.”412 The war claimed the lives of about 600,000 people and rendered millions of Ethiopians homeless.413 An estimated 2 million Tigrayans, amounting to one-third of the ethnic group’s population fled their homes,414 over 70,000 of those individuals to neighboring Sudan where they sought refuge.415 All sides involved in the conflict, including proxies for the national government, perpetrated human rights violations, including summary executions, deportations, widespread rapes and related sexual violence, massive destruction of property, and ethnic cleansing.416 Ethiopian government forces engaged in looting and carpet

411 “Ethiopia Arrests Suspects Over Haacaaluu Hundeessaa Killing,” Alja Zeera (July 10, 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/10/ethiopia-arrests-suspects-overhaacaaluu-hundeessaa-killing. 412 Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Tigray Conflict: Report Calls for Accountability for Violations and Abuses by All Parties” (November 3, 2021), https://www.ohchr.org/en/2021/11/tigray-conflict-report-callsaccountability-violations-and-abuses-all-parties (quoting Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights). 413 See “US Says All Sides Committed War Crimes in Ethiopia Conflict,” Alja Zeera (March 20, 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/20/us-says-that-all-sidescommitted-war-crimes-in-ethiopia-conflict#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20governm ent%20has,forcible%20deportations%20and%20ethnic%20cleansing; and “Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed: The Nobel Peace Prize Winner Who Went to War,” note 391. 414 “Ethiopia’s Tigray War,” note 387. 415 Michael Atit, “Sudan’s Tigray War Refugees Hope to Return Home After

Peace Deal,” VOA (January 5, 2023), https://www.voanews.com/a/sudan-s-tigray-warrefugees-hope-to-return-home-after-peace-deal-/6905812.html. 416 “US Says All Sides Committed War Crimes in Ethiopia Conflict,” note 413; and “Tigray Conflict: Report Calls for Accountability for Violations and Abuses by All Parties,” note 412.

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bombing, including shelling of schools and hospitals.417 The Abiy administration also shut down Internet and telephone services in Tigray.418 The Tigray War ended on November 2, 2022. In a joint statement signed the same day, the warring parties “agreed to permanently silent the guns and end the two years of conflict in northern Ethiopia.”419 The statement was backed by a peace agreement, worked out by the AU, that took effect the next day.420 Among other objectives, the agreement aimed to “restore the constitutional order disrupted” by the conflict, provide a framework for addressing matters arising from the conflict as well as ensure accountability for those matters, foster reconciliation and rehabilitation of social bonds, and secure the commitment of the parties to address the underlying political differences that led to the conflict.421 Under the agreement, the TPLF pledged to respect the constitutional authority of the national government, and 417 See Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopia: Unlawful Shelling of Tigray Urban Areas” (February 11, 2021), https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/11/ethiopia-unlawful-she lling-tigray-urban-areas. The occurrence harked back to the experience during the dark old days under Mengistu Haile Miriam when government forces burned civilians and civilian targets “like wood.” See Human Rights Watch, “‘Mengistu has Decided to Burn Us like Wood’: Bombing of Civilians and Civilian Targets by the Air Force” (July 24, 1990), https://www.hrw.org/reports/archives/africa/ETHIOPIA907.htm. 418 See International Press Institute, “Ethiopia: Internet Shutdowns in Tigray Persist as

Ethiopia Hosts UN Internet Meeting” (December 2, 2022), https://ipi.media/ethiopiainternet-shutdowns-in-tigray-persist-as-ethiopia-hosts-un-internet-meeting/. 419 “Joint Statement Between the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of

Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front” (November 2, 2022), ¶ 2, https:// www.peaceau.org/uploads/joint-statement-gov-fdre-tplf-11-02-2022-19-38-33.pdf. 420 It is not clear to what extent the cessation of hostilities is dictated by forces within Ethiopia, rather than economic assistance from external sources like the US. See “Why Is Ethiopia at War with Itself?” Trinità dei Monti Think Tank (March 31, 2022), http://tri nitamonti.org/2022/03/31/why-is-ethiopia-at-war-with-itself/ (“Some consider that all the steps taken by the Ethiopian government in finding a resolution may have been taken just to go back to A[frican] G[rowth and] O[pportunity] A[ct], because the United States, on January 1 [2022] did remove Ethiopia from the trade program.”). The AGOA was passed by the US Congress in May 2000 expressly to assist the economies of sub-Saharan Africa and to improve economic relations between the US and the region. Office of the United States Trade Representative, “African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA),” https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/trade-development/preference-programs/africangrowth-and-opportunity-act-agoa. 421 See African Union, Agreement for Lasting Peace Through a Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Between the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Addis Standard (November 2, 2022)

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halt any conduct likely to “undermine[] the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia, including unconstitutional correspondence and relations with foreign powers.”422 For its part, the Ethiopian national government promised to “halt military operations targeting the TPLF combatants,” and to lift the label that it slapped on the TPLF as a terrorist organization,423 in May 2021, in the course of the war.424 The Trouble With the Theory of Ethnic Federalism Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution, which established the country as a federal parliamentary system, divided the land into NRS based on “settlement patterns, language identity[,] and consent of the people concerned.”425 This is the structure that scholars like Mahmood Mandani analogize to “ethnic federalism.”426 However, failed implementation of Article 39 is the stuff of normal politics that should not be put on the door of invidious ethnic politics. Alex de Waal, a frequent commentator on Ethiopian affairs, blamed the Tigray war on differential interpretations of the right to self-determination.427 According to him, the legal notion of selfdetermination is necessarily “indeterminate,” in that it is built mainly on an insistence fraught with negative consequences for negotiation.428 He elaborated that the EPRDF “remained a vanguard party in which the procedures of democratic centralism were taken to an extreme,” in [hereinafter African Union, Peace Agreement for Ethiopia], art. 1, https://addisstandard. com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AU-led-Ethiopia-Peace-Agreement.pdf. 422 African Union, Peace Agreement for Ethiopia, note 421, art. 7 (“ConfidenceBuilding Measures”). 423 Ibid. 424 “Ethiopia Removes ‘Terrorist’ Tag from Tigray Regional Party,” Alja Zeera (March

22, 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/22/update-1-ethiopia-removes-ter rorist-designation-from-dominant-tigray-party. 425 See Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, note 183, art. 46. 426 See Mandani, note 231. See also International Crisis Group, Ethiopia: Ethnic

Federalism and Its Discontents, note 381 (arguing that “[g]ranting self-administration to dominant ethnic groups [ …] created new minorities”). 427 Alex de Waal, “Talking and Fighting about Self-Determination in Ethiopia,” LSE Blog (January 11, 2021), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2021/01/11/talkingfighting-about-self-determination-constitution-civil-war-ethiopia/ 428 Ibid.

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an environment of opaque, rather than transparent, decision-making.429 In his view, Ethiopia leaders operated a federal system where “political certitude prevailed over democratic tolerance,”430 of a manner that prevented the opposition from exercising legitimate democratic rights.431 Implementing the right to self-determination in a multiethnic society like Ethiopian mandates a quantum of dialog that Abiy and his team seem to lack.432 Instead, they were technocrats not versed in the niceties of “real politics, let alone handling radical disagreements.”433 The German scholar Felix Bethke reasoned similarly. For him, rather than ethnic federalism, what is taking place in Ethiopia is the instrumentalization and politicization of ethnicity.434 In his view, whereas the strategy of the Abiy administration of downgrading the TPLF’s access to power in various areas (such as the armed forces, the ruling party, and the government), may have contributed to escalate the conflict in Tigray, blaming it wholly and singularly on “shifts in the representation of ethnic groups” is “misleading.”435 “Since the 1970s, political disputes in Ethiopia have usually been resolved by force of arms, […] with each party insisting that only their view is correct, and that those who challenge them aren’t legitimate.”436 But Ethiopia is unlikely to return to centralized power that marked the period before 1995. Barring a return to that old dispensation, Ethiopian leaders must work hard to improve the federalism embedded in ethnicity. However, that grit is what is solely lacking. Followers of the Ethiopian political system observe that, although the constitution vests all powers not expressively given to the national government, under the principles

429 Ibid. 430 Ibid. 431 Ibid., citing Leenco Lata, The Ethiopian State at the Crossroads (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1999), veteran Oromo leader, who was one of the principal drafters of the 1991 National Charter, a cornerstone of the 1995 constitution. 432 See ibid. 433 Ibid. 434 Bethke, note 383. 435 Ibid. 436 De Waal, “Talking and Fighting about Self-Determination in Ethiopia,” note 427.

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of federalism, in the national regional states, in actuality these subnational units “remain factually weak.”437 In the manner it has been practiced in Ethiopia since 1995, “[f]ederalism has allowed new ethnic elites to emerge but has not fundamentally altered the principle of elite-based paternalistic politics.”438 Although the 1995 constitution made provision for devolution of powers under its article 39 revolved around the major ethnic groups, the ERPDF also retained a tight grip on the central government down to the subnational units that negates legitimate opposition to the point of repression. A lingering question is whether, as a mark of good statecraft, whatever the provocation, whether the Ethiopian national government, led by Prime Minister Abiy, should have used a policy tool like war, steeped in uncertainty and unpredictability, to compel regional obedience to a national decree. Given its multiethnic nature, questions of ethnic identity and representation, which Ethiopian national leaders need to keep in mind, will for a long time continue to determine Ethiopian politics. Ethiopians must “find a stable solution for peaceful coexistence,” that may include some degree of ethnicity.439 Dating back to the establishment of China in 1523 B.C. as the first recorded nation in history,440 ethnic groups have been the vector of the collective right to self-determination, in modern international relations and law embedded in “peoples”. Even acknowledged nation-states like the US still use ethnic categories.441 This is also the case with Britain whose policy of indirect rule in Africa created ethnic consciousness in its African colonies, including Nigeria analyzed in the next chapter. In the

437 International Crisis Group, Ethiopia: Ethnic Federalism and Its Discontents, note 382, p. 1 (“Executive Summary”). 438 Ibid., pp. 5–6. 439 Bethke, note 383. 440 Ray S. Cline, “Foreword,” in Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), p. xi. 441 The six categories of race or ethnicity used in employment applications in the US

are: (1) American Indian or Alaska Native, (2) Asian, (3) Black or African American, (4) Hispanic or Latino, (5) Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and (6) White. See US Census Bureau, “Quick Facts,” https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST 045221. Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2021, Whites made up nearly 76 percent of the US population. Ibid.

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postcolonial period, Nigerian federalism was built on the tripod of HausaFulani, Yoruba, and Igbo ethnicities.442 Countries other than Ethiopia with features of ethnic federalism in their constitutional systems include Nepal, Pakistan, South Sudan, and former Yugoslavia.443 When properly tailored and managed, supposed ethnic federalism can be a workable solution.444 Five of the country’s NRS, Afar, Amhara, Oromiya, Somali, and Tigray, are single ethnic states, while several, such as Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella Hizboch (Gambella Peoples), Hareri Hizb (Harari Peoples), and YeDebub Biheroch Bihereseboch na Hizboch (Southern Nations), are multiethnic national regional states shorn of a dominant ethnic group. All this leads to the conclusion that, rather than ethnicity as such, the problem here is a governance issue. It is hard to minimize the constitutional engineering achievement embedded in Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution and its contribution to harmonizing the sovereignty and self-determination that forms the focus of this book. In constitutionalizing the right to self-determination, Ethiopian elites aimed to facilitate the construction of a political and economic community based on the free will of ethnic groups.445 This is a novel idea nothing of its kind anywhere else in Africa.446 With this

442 Mohammed Isah Shehu et al., “Nigeria’s Ethno-Regional Tripod Federalism: Characters and Complexities,” International Journal of Management Research & Review, 7(3) (March 2017), 289–303. See also B.O. Nwabueze, Constitutionalism in the Emergent States (London: C. Hurst, 1973), 113 (recounting how at independence, Nigeria’s federal system comprised three regions, each controlled by a single ethnic group around which a number of minority ethnic groups were clustered). 443 See, for example, Adam Bergman, “Ethnic Federalism in Nepal: A Remedy for a Stagnating Peace Process or an Obstacle to Peace and Stability?” (Uppsala University: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Spring 2011), https://web.archive.org/ web/20160305112701/http://www.pcr.uu.se/digitalAssets/118/118045_ethnic-federa lism-in-nepal---a-remedy-for-a-stagnating-peace-process-or-an-obstacle-to-peace-and-stabil ity-final-version.pdf (Nepal); Maryam S. Khan. “Ethnic Federalism in Pakistan: Federal Design, Construction of Ethno-Linguistic Identity and Group Conflict,” Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice, 30 (2014), 77–129 (Pakistan); and Ilija G. Vujacic, “The Challenges of Ethnic Federalism: Experiences and Lessons of the Former Yugoslavia (Chap. 14),” in Jürgen Rose and Johannes Ch. Traut, eds., Federalism and Decentralization: Perspectives for the Transformation Process in Eastern and Central Europe (Münster and New York: Lit Verlag; Palgrave, 2001) (Yugoslavia). 444 Vujacic, note 443. 445 De Waal, “Talking and Fighting about Self-Determination in Ethiopia,” note 427. 446 Ibid.

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achievement, Ethiopia joined the list of a small number of countries in the world that grant the right to secession, the only one so far from Africa.447 In the aftermath of the entrenchment of the right to selfdetermination, Ethiopia metamorphosed from a “prison of nations” to a multinational state where ethnic groups, formerly oppressed and marginalized, formed the building block “for a new form of unity, based on recognition of [the] right[] to self-determination.”448 Yet, in Ethiopia, self-determination is “a right at once fundamental and elusive,”449 and a “symbolic decoration” shorn of intrinsic merit.450 Nevertheless, studies have shown that recognizing ethnic identity, as Ethiopia did, promotes peace.451 The implementation of the right to self-determination evinced by the Tigray War speaks to the unskilled statecraft in postcolonial Africa related to this right commented upon in Chapter 1 of this book.452 In

447 See generally Forniès, note 222. The other nine countries are: Canada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Denmark, Papua New Guinea, the UK, Netherlands, and Frances. Ibid. Moldova, one of the former republics of the former Soviet Union has some interesting features that marks it out. There, to head off a brewing secessionist dispute with Gagauzia, in 1994, the legislature enacted a law on autonomy that granted the territory the right to “external self-determination,” should it choose to use the right. Ibid. Some of these countries like the UK and France do not expressly include the right to self-determination in their high law. Ibid. 448 Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe and Feseha Habtetsion Gebresilassie, “Nationalism and Self-Determination in Contemporary Ethiopia,” Nations and Nationalities, 27 (2021): 96–111. 449 Ibid. 450 See B. Tesfa, “Federalization with a Constitutional Guarantee to Secession: Contro-

versies, Paradoxes[,] and Imponderables in Ethiopia,” Regional and Federal Studies, 25(1) (2015), 45, 63. 451 See Elisabeth King and Cyrus Samii, Diversity, Violence, and Recognition: How Recognizing Ethnic Identity Promotes Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). Focusing on Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, this study affirmed the merit of recognizing ethnic identity. It found that countries which chose recognition experienced less violence, as well as more vitality in economics and the practice of democracy, depending, of course, on the ethnic group in power. See particularly, pp. 85–110 (“Recognition Under Plurality Rule and the Paradox of Recognition in Burundi”); pp. 111–135 (“Non-Recognition Under Minority Rule and the Paradox of Non-Recognition”); and pp. 136–160 (“Ethnic Recognition under Minority Rule in Ethiopia”). 452 See Chapter 1, note 26, and accompanying text.

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the final analysis, the suboptimal result from Ethiopia does not nullify the value of constitutionalizing the human right to self-determination.

Conclusion This chapter chronicled Ethiopia’s contribution to the intersection between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa that drives this book, including its bellwether role in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination. Ethiopia is also notable for its strong participation in African affairs that goes back to the formation of the OAU, later AU, in 1963, one prominently indicated by the fact that its capital city Addis Ababa is also the AU headquarters.453 Beginning with a chronicle of the basic facts on the country, themed around the land of the Blue Nile despite its geopolitical insecurity of landlock-ness, it analyzed the constitutional history of Ethiopia from 1931 to 1995 in the lead-up to the constitutionalization of the right to self-determination in the country; a complementary separate statement on Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution, which constitutionalized the right to self-determination; the politics of constitutional engineering in the country; struggles for self-determination in the land before 1995, exemplified by Eritrea; and struggles for self-determination post-1995 revolved around the implementation of Article 39 non-robustly portrayed in some portion of the literature as “ethnic federalism.” Pre-1995, the challenge Ethiopia faced was how to create a “viable constitution acceptable to a majority of Ethiopians and Eritreans.”454 Since then, Eritrea has emerged into separate independence and Ethiopia has adopted a new constitution anchored on parliamentary federalism, 453 See Liesl Louw-Vaudran, “Why the African Union Needs a Stable Ethiopia,” ISS [Institute for Security Studies] (March 16, 2018), https://issafrica.org/iss-today/ why-the-african-union-needs-a-stable-ethiopia (“Ethiopia occupies a strategic position as A[frican] U[nion] host and as a power in an unstable part of Africa”); and Mehari Taddele Maru and Abel Abate, “Ethiopia’s Policy toward the AU: Time to Look Beyond Unique Contributions and Special Responsibilities,” Addis Standard (February 12, 2015), https://addisstandard.com/ethiopias-policy-towards-the-au-time-to-look-bey ond-unique-contributions-special-responsibilities/ (portraying Ethiopia as “the seedbed for Pan Africanism, the principal force for the establishment of the OAU, and the host of the AU for [nearly six] decades”). 454 Colin Legum, “The Coming of Africa’s Second Independence,” in The New Democracies: Global Change and U.S. Policy, A Washington Quarterly Reader, ed. Brad Roberts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 75, 79.

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from many indications, in need of finetuned implementation.455 Berhanu Balcha analogized the experience of the country as it has evolved to the former Soviet Union where “copious promises of self-determination[,] including independence for […] ethnic republics,” were visited with “ruthless force when the rights were requested.”456 Whether or not they entrench the right to self-determination in their constitutions, the trick for Ethiopia and other African countries in the journey toward harmonization of sovereignty and the right to selfdetermination is to inculcate “a democratic base in [their] concept of self-determination” like, say, countries in Western Europe.457 Ethiopia would have gained (in)valuable experience with federalism before 1995 if it had stayed the course in its partnership with Eritrea rather than abrogate it, as Emperor Selassie did, in 1962. The union was a loose federation, embedded in two separate constitutional documents, an exercise in decentralization of political powers less constraining than the stricter two-state federalism in Cameroon discussed in Chapter 5. In letting that opportunity slip off, Ethiopia missed the chance for a valuable lesson on self-determination free of war before 1995 when it constitutionalized the right to self-determination for major ethnic groups. With Ethiopia’s bellwether contribution to the intersection between sovereignty and selfdetermination that animates this work delineated in this chapter, the next question is: what is the nature of the contributions of the other two countries to that intersection? The following two chapters wrestle with the answer to that question, beginning with Nigeria in Chapter 4.

455 See Berhanu Gutemu Balcha, “Constitutionalism in the Horn of Africa: Lesson from the New Constitution of Ethiopia,” Institut for Historie, Internationale Studier og Samfundsforhold, Aalborg Universitet (2009), https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/ 17102273/DIIPER_wp_15.pdf. 456 Ibid. 457 Harold S. Johnson, “Self-Determination: Western European Perspectives,” in Self-

Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), 95.

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Key dates in Ethiopian constitutional and self-determination histories Date

Event

1892 1896 1835

Addis Ababa, formerly Finfinne, became the capital city of Ethiopia. On March 1, Ethiopia defeated Italy in the Battle of Adwa. Italy defeats and annexes Ethiopia with Eritrea and Somaliland to form Italian East Africa On July 16, Ethiopia adopted its first-ever constitution. Patterned after the Meiji Constitution of Imperial Japan, the high law replaced Fetha Nagast, a legal code laced with Christian religious principles, as supreme law. On September 15, the UN General Assembly Resolution adopts Resolution 390(A), creating a loose federation between Ethiopia and Eritrea of two separate constitutions. Under the arrangement (distinguishable from a two-state federalism later in Cameroon), sovereignty vested in imperial Ethiopia, which also retained control over foreign affairs, defense, finance and currency, and foreign and interstate commerce, among other competencies, while Eritreans were given competencies over their own administrative and judicial structures, including control over essentially local matters like police and taxation. On November 4, Ethiopia adopted its second constitution in the modern era. The high law repeals and replaces the 1931 constitution. Although it contains elements of U.S. constitutionalism, such as the separation of governmental powers and rudimentary rights for citizens, perceptive constitutional scholars see it as little more than “a legal charter for the consolidation of absolutism.” On September 1, Eritrea War of Independence began. The war went on for nearly three decades, ending May 24, 1991, with the secession of Eritrea. The country was admitted into the UN as its 182nd member state on May 28, 1993. On November 14, the Ethiopian government unilaterally annexes Eritrea as a province, following the abolition of federalism two days before. The action breached the terms of the UN Resolution 390 (A) of 1952. On September 12, the Dergue, a military junta, overthrows and removes Emperor Haile Selassie, the country’s ruler since 1930, from office in a military coup. In March, the Dergue abolished the monarchy and established Ethiopia as a Marxist–Leninist state with itself as the vanguard party in a provisional government. It remains in office until its own overthrow by the EPRDF, a coalition of four insurgency groups, in May 1991. On February 22, Ethiopia adopts its third constitution in modern times. The document inaugurated the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE), proclaimed to be a state of “working people founded on the alliance of workers and peasants” and related “democratic sections of society.” The formation of the PDRE marked the abolition of the Dergue by Mengistu.

1931

1952

1955

1961

1962

1974

1975

1987

(continued)

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(continued) Date

Event

1995

On August 21, Ethiopia adopts its fourth constitution in modern times, which inaugurated the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The document is memorable for the “unconditional right to self-determination” for eligible groups that it entrenches. On December 19, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali disbands the EPRPF and replaces it with his Prosperity Party that the TPLF refused to join. On November 3, a war breaks out between the Ethiopian national government and the Tigrayan national regional state, led by the TPLF. It ends two years later, on November 2, 2022, the result of a peace agreement negotiated by the African Union.

2019 2020

CHAPTER 4

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Non-constitutionalized Setting: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective

Introduction This chapter integrates Nigeria’s perspectives into the main thrust of this book revolved around the intersection among sovereignty (à la the claim of territorial integrity), self-determination, and constitutional law in postcolonial Africa. It is the first of two chapters devoted to exploring the relationship between sovereignty and self-determination in a nonconstitutionalized setting; the next, complementing and completing this presentation is Chapter 5 on Cameroon. In addition to this introduction, this chapter explores six illustrative issues, sealed off with a conclusion and two attachments. The six illustrative issues are basic facts related to Nigeria organized around the sobriquet of “giant of Africa”; survey of Nigerian constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999; commentary on the politics of constitutional engineering in the country; sketch of Biafra 1 coinciding with the period of Nigeria’s civil war from 1967 to 1970; analysis of Biafra 2 coinciding with the much longer period under the Fourth Republic since 19991 ; 1 Due to excessive military intervention into Nigerian politics, the country celebrates each instalment of civilian rule, free of military intrusion, with the appellation of a “Republic.” Reference to the Fourth Republic suggests four such instalments when, actually, the number of republics is three. As we show later in this Chapter, a projected Third

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_4

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and an X-ray of two matters arising from these preceding issues, namely: the coterminous-ness or lack thereof of Igbo and Biafra,2 and interrogation of the delay in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination in Nigeria, specifically meaning why, in spite of Biafra 1, Nigeria did not precede Ethiopia as a bellwether in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination. The two attachments are Appendix A outlining key events in Nigerian constitutional and self-determination histories, and Appendix B on the “Kaduna Declaration” on supposed “Igbo persistence for secession,” by a group of northern groups issued in June 2017. The declaration shed needed light on the matters arising from the issues this chapter explores. Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 laid out the loci of separatist movements in Africa, including ethnic groups tied to or associated with those movements. For Nigeria, the movements listed are Biafra 1, Biafra 2, Oduduwa, and Niger Delta. Of the lot, the most notable movements are Biafra 1 and Biafra 2, associated with the Igbo in present-day southeastern Nigeria. The other separatist movements are still arguably inchoate with the Niger Delta agitation associated with the Ijaw mostly focused on campaigns for greater control over oil resources (“resource control”) possibly within a reshaped Nigeria, including protests over the national government’s inattentiveness to the environmental and ecological devastations from oil drilling.3

Republic became stillbirth in 1993 when a presidential election that would have ushered in that Republic was annulled by the military regime under General Ibrahim Babangida from 1985 until 1993. 2 See Jacob S. Lewis, “What Drives Support for Separatism? Exposure to Conflict and Relative Ethnic Size in Biafra, Nigeria,” Nations and Nationalism (November 22, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12907 (finding that the highest levels of support for a secessionist group is associated with members of ethnic groups that will form the dominant group in the proposed state). 3 Burke, Jason. 2016. Nigerian Army Denies Killing 150 at Biafra Demonstrations. Guardian (London). November 24. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/ 24/nigerian-army-denies-killing-150-at-biafra-demonstrations (“Most groups in the delta are demanding regional autonomy and the right to control their petroleum resources within Nigeria”); and “Equatorial Guinea: Extremism and Terrorism,” Counter Extremism Project, https://www.counterextremism.com/countries/equatorial-guinea/report (referring to MEND as “a Nigeria-based militant group that claims to fight for a fairer distribution of oil wealth”).

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Basic Facts Related to Nigeria, “Giant of Africa” Etymology: From “Amalgamation” to British Crown Colony Nigeria takes its name from the Niger River which courses through its territory.4 The name was coined in 1897 by Flora Shaw, a British journalist,5 later married to Frederick Lugard (1858–1945),6 first governorgeneral of the country. Nigeria is not “an African creation that reflect[s] the affiliation and sentiments of the people living there”; instead, it is “the result of British colonial conquest.”7 Nigeria came into being

4 See Diplomatic Mission of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Mexico, “A Brief History of Our Country,” https://www.nigerianembmexico.org/history-of-nig eria#:~:text=The%20name%20Nigeria%20was%20taken,Lugard%2C%20a%20British%20colo nial%20administrator. 5 Victor Duru, “Nigeria: How British Journalist Flora Shaw Gave the Giant of Africa its Name,” Legit (November 5, 2021), https://www.legit.ng/people/1442208-nigeriahow-a-british-journalist-flora-shaw-gave-giant-africa-name/; and “Flora (née Shaw), Lady Lugard,” National Portrait Gallery, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/per son/mp65594/flora-nee-shaw-lady-lugard#:~:text=From%201893%20she%20was%20colo nial,by%20the%20Royal%20Niger%20Company. 6 See Reuters, “Lord Lugard, 87, African Pioneer; Former Governor General of Nigeria Dies—Occupied Uganda, Fought Slavers,” New York Times (April 12, 1945), 23, https://www.nytimes.com/1945/04/12/archives/lord-lugard-87-african-pioneer-for mer-governor-general-of-nigeria.html. 7 April A. Gordon, Nigeria’s Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 3. This issue arises because of the overweening instability pervading the over 100-year existence of the country that continually draws attention to its artificiality. The proposition resonates with the statement of Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005), US Senator from Minnesota, who gave a speech to the US Congress on May 16, 1969, in which he criticized the US government’s position related to the Nigerian civil war. He lambasted the “bankruptcy” of US policy of a united Nigeria at all costs, which he said had resulted in the American government’s “accepting the deaths of a million people as the price for preserving a nation that never existed.” Eugene McCarthy, “Speech Urging American Intervention” (May 16, 1969), reprinted in A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, 1966–1969, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 401–403. Emphasis added. Senator McCarthy believed that the sacrifice “of several million people” to defend “the boundaries of Nigeria imposed artificially by a colonial power” was too high a price to pay for national unity. Ibid. Emphasis added. Within the same period, Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, in his Ahiara Declaration, subsequently commented upon in this Chapter, reasoned similarly when he observed that, as constituted, Nigeria “cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered an African necessity. Yet [Biafrans] are being forced to sacrifice [their] very existence as a people to the integrity of that ramshackle creation that has no justification either in history or in the freely expressed wishes of the people.” Chukwuemeka

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on January 1, 1914, when the British government by fiat amalgamated three territories it acquired in the area to form the country,8 with no regard for preexisting divisions, whether ethnic, cultural, or linguistic.9 It was an event that almost didn’t take place because a committee advised against the merger.10 The architect of the amalgamation was Lugard. The three territories involved were the Northern Protectorate, which Britain acquired in 1900,11 the Southern Protectorate, which it acquired the same year,12 and the Colony of Lagos, which it acquired on March 5, 1862.13 The colonization of Lagos followed its annexation on August 6, 1861, and its bombardment ten years before in 1851.14 Recall the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885.15 There, with the US in attendance as observer, the major Western powers partitioned Africa among themselves to minimize cut-throat competition in search of colonies in the region,16 leading to the gamut of artificial boundaries

Odumegwu Ojukwu, The Ahiara Declaration: The Principles of the Biafran Revolution (Enugu, Eastern Nigeria: Mark Press, 1969). 8 See Jack McCaslin. “Lord Lugard Created Nigeria 104 Years Ago,” Council on Foreign Relations (January 2, 2018), https://www.cfr.org/blog/lord-lugard-created-nig eria-104-years-ago. 9 In actuality, because Lagos and the Southern Protectorate were consolidated in 1906, becoming the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, see S.H. Steinberg, “Federation of Nigeria,” In The Statesman’s Year-Book, ed. S.H. Steinberg (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1965), only two territories were amalgamated in 1914: the Northern Protectorate and the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. 10 The consolidation of North and South to create Nigeria ran against the advice of a committee the British colonial authorities set up in 1899 which recommended that the two remain separate the way they were. It also ran against the belief of the amalgamator Frederick Lugard pertaining to the “oil-and-water incompatibility of the two.” A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, 1966–1969, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 7. 11 A.E. Afigbo, “The Consolidation of British Imperial Administration in Nigeria: 1900–1918,” Civilizations, 21(4) (1971), 436–459. 12 Ibid. 13 See The Centenary Project, “Colonial Footprints: Lagos, Then and Now,”

Google Arts and Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/story/colonial-footprintslagos-then-and-now/LAUBxuvCARsA8A. 14 Ibid. 15 See Chapter 1, note 73 and accompanying text, and Chapter 2, notes 187–194 and

accompanying texts. 16 See Chapter 2, notes 187–194 and accompanying texts.

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that litter Africa today.17 The colonization of Lagos took place before the conference, while those of the other two territories took place after the partition meeting. “At no time before” British intrusion “was Nigeria even closely ruled by one government”; instead, the three territories that the Britain government acquired comprised “a bewildering variety of communities and entities of varying sizes, levels of political and social development, and degrees of independence and autonomy.”18 Moreover, the consolidation of the territories was undertaken for pedestrian reasons revolved around shifting the economic burden of administering the Northern Protectorate, unable to fend economically for itself, away from the British treasury.19

17 Matt Rosenberg, “The Berlin Conference to Divide Africa,” ThoughtCo (Updated June 30, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/berlin-conference-1884-1885-divide-africa1433556 (the conference “divided coherent groups of people and merged disparate groups who […] did not get along”). 18 Ignatius Akaayar Ayua and Dakas C.J. Dakas, “Federal Republic of Nigeria,” in Constitutional Origins, Structure, and Change in Federal Countries, eds. John Kincaid and George Alan Tarr (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 240. See also International Crisis Group, Nigeria: Want in the Midst of Plenty, Africa Report No. 113 (July 19, 2006), 5 (pointing out that “[t]he boundaries of present-day Nigeria contain a prodigious variety of historical political units, social orders, economies, and cultures”); and Ibrahim A. Gambari, Party Politics and Foreign Policy: Nigeria under the First Republic (Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980), 7 (likening the precolonial scene to a cluster of independent indigenous states, such as the Yoruba Kingdoms of Oyo and Benin in the West, the Hausa states and Borno in the North, and acephalous Igbo and Ibibio communities in the East, all of which “experienced the advent of the Europeans first as traders, then as explorers and missionaries, and finally as rulers”). Few works abound which deal with precolonial Nigeria as a monolithic entity. For one sample, see Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 16–38 (Early states and societies, 9000 BCE–1500 CE), 39–60 (Slavery, state, and society, circa 1500–circa 1800). 19 See Philip C. Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations: Building the Record of a Moral Superpower (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2017), 70 (citing Nigerian constitutional scholar J.A.A. Ayoade to the effect that the amalgamation aimed at “freeing the British treasury of the financial responsibility for Northern Nigeria”). Lugard would know because from 1900 until 1914, he served as high commissioner of the Northern Protectorate. See “Frederick Lugard,” in Nigeria: A Country Study, ed. Helen Chapin Metz (Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991), https://countrystudies.us/nigeria/17.htm. Colonies are expensive projects. It is, therefore, strange that Britain would choose to run its colonies in Nigeria on a shoestring budget. This concern about overheads goes back in time with the UK. British government chartered the Royal Niger Company under the leadership of Sir George Taubman Goldie. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the company had vastly succeeded in subjugating

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Following its amalgamation by Lugard as a country, Nigeria became a Crown Colony of Britain which proceeded to administer it as such.20 Navigating Native Resistance Through a Semblance of Constitutional Reforms Colonial control is fraught with resistance from the colonized. Faced with this truism, British colonial authorities needed a more efficient way than sheer force to maintain control and minimize native resistance to foreign rule.21 They found that efficient and more sustainable control methodology in moving their Crown colony through the path of pseudoconstitutional developments. There were four such exercises that the British colonial office unveiled before Nigeria’s independence in 1960. The first three of these exercises were named after governors under whose watch the reform in question took place while the last was named after the Secretary of the Colonies.

the independent southern kingdoms along the Niger River (e.g., Benin in 1897 and Aro in 1901–1902). The conquest of these states facilitated the introduction of the Niger area to British rule. See J.E. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1960). 20 See Max Siollun, What Britain Did to Nigeria: A Short History of Conquest and Rule (London: Hurst, 2021), 281–298 (Indirect Rule), and 299–318 (Colonial Life). 21 Recall the observation in note 19 to the effect that Britain chose to run its colonies in Nigeria, as elsewhere, on a shoestring budget. Then add to the observation the policy of indirect rule in British colonies vis-à-vis direct rule in French colonies. Under its policy of indirect rule, Britain used existing local structures and traditions, such as chieftaincy institutions, even in kingless communities lacking these institutions, as “conduits for establishing rules and regulations while English officials worked behind the scenes and could exercise a veto power.” American Historical Association, “England’s Indirect Rule in Its African Colonies,” https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/tea ching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/through-the-lensof-history-biafra-nigeria-the-west-and-the-world/the-colonial-and-pre-colonial-eras-in-nig eria/englands-indirect-rule-in-its-african-colonies#:~:text=Indirect%20rule%20was%20the% 20plan,could%20exercise%20a%20veto%20power. For their part, the French followed a different approach, denominated direct rule, whereby French colonial authorities “call[ed] the shots for themselves by establishing and administering the rules and regulations for their African colonial subjects.” Ibid. For an extended discussion on the distinctions between the two approaches, see “The Difference Between French and British Colonialism in Africa,” Historyville (June 14, 2022), https://www.thehistoryville. com/colonialism-in-africa/.

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The first, the Clifford Constitution of 1922, was named after Hugh C. Clifford, governor of the country from 1919 until 1925.22 This constitution is notable for the elective principles that it introduced into the lexicon of governance in colonial Nigeria that it did not, however, extend to the North.23 The second, the Richards Constitution of 1946, was named after Arthur F. Richards, governor from 1943 until 1948.24 The constitution is notable for the rudiments of federalism involving the division of the country into three provinces—East, West, and North, each with its own regional assembly—that it embodied.25 The third, the Macpherson Constitution of 1951, was named after John Macpherson, governor from 1948 until 1954.26 This constitution is the first whose drafting was informed by a semblance of consultation and input from colonized Nigerians. The document was also notable for invigorating Nigeria’s incipient federalism, including renaming the provinces as regions and granting more powers to the regional houses of assembly who were allowed to make laws and make recommendations on many matters concerning their people.27 The fourth and final exercise, the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954, was named after Oliver Lyttleton, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1951 until 1954.28 It was under this constitution that the seeds of federalism in Nigeria sowed in 1946 under the Richards Constitution,

22 See S.J.S. Cookey, “Sir Hugh Clifford as Governor of Nigeria: An Evaluation,” African Affairs, 79(317) (October 1980), 531–547. 23 See Tekena N. Tamuno, “Governor Clifford and Representative Government,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 4(1) (December 1967), 117–124. 24 Kalu Ezera, Constitutional Developments in Nigeria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 64–81. 25 See ibid. 26 See ibid., pp. 105–175 (evolution of the document). 27 See ibid., pp. 132–152 (analyzing the document). 28 See Philip Murphy, “Portrait of Oliver Lyttelton, First Viscount Chandos (1893–

1972),” Artware Fineart, https://www.artwarefineart.com/gallery/portrait-oliver-lyttel ton-first-viscount-chandos-1893%E2%80%931972.

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reached relative full blooming.29 A key trigger for the drafting and adoption of this document was the mass killing of the Igbo in Kano in 1953,30 coming on the heels of prior attacks seven years earlier in Jos in the country’s middle belt region. In the light of the killings, Lyttleton reached the conviction that Nigeria, “if it [were] to be nation, must be a federation, with as few subjects reserved for the Central Government as would preserve national unity.”31 Independence, Republicanism, and the Experience of Federalism Since Independence After nearly 100 years of British rule counting from the colonization of Lagos in 1862, Nigeria became independent on October 1, 1960, under the British Commonwealth of Nations.32 It was admitted into the

29 See Chizoba Ikenwa, “Features of Lyttleton Constitution, 1954,” Nigerian Infopedia, https://nigerianinfopedia.com/features-of-lyttleton-constitution-1954/. 30 See Cheta Nwanze, “Echoes of 1953 Kano Riot,” Guardian (Lagos) (January 31,

2018), https://guardian.ng/politics/echoes-of-1953-kano-riot/. See also Herbert EkweEkwe, “The Igbo Genocide and Its Aftermath,” Pambazuka News (February 21, 2012), https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/igbo-genocide-and-its-aftermath. Igbo is one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria. See Table 4.2 below. 31 Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 8, p. 10 (quoting the diary of Oliver Lyttleton). 32 See Nigeria Independence Act 1960, 1960 Chapter 55 8 and 9 Eliz. 2 (“An Act to make provision for, and in connection with, the attainment by Nigeria of fully responsible status within the Commonwealth”), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/ Eliz2/8-9/55#:~:text=An%20Act%20to%20make%20provision,responsible%20status%20w ithin%20the%20Commonwealth. By some account, this event was unremarkable. Nigeria’s independence is analogized to decolonization without revolution, one devoid of “a nationwide independence movement that crossed ethnic divisions,” where, instead, the nationalist leaders simply stepped into the shoes of the departing British colonial authorities. See John Campbell, “Nigeria and the Nation-State,” Council on Foreign Relations (November 16, 2020), https://www.cfr.org/teaching-notes/nigeria-andnation-state (“Main Takeaways”) (teaching notes from John Campbell, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)). There is more. In one of the most fawning speeches to a former colonial authority on Independence Day, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, first Prime Minister of Nigeria, remarked: “We are grateful to the British officers whom we have known, first as masters, and then as leaders, and finally as partners, but always as friends.” Speech of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, October 1, 1960, reprinted in Black Past (August 20, 2009), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1960-sir-abu bakar-tafawa-balewa-independence-day/. Bryan Sharwood Smith, colonial governor of

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UN on October 7, 1960, as the 99th member of the organization.33 At independence in 1960, Nigeria was a federation of three regions and a national government based in Lagos, for long the country’s capital city. It was, however, a lopsided and potentially unstable federal system where the Northern Region was allocated 167 out of the 305 seats in the Federal House of Representatives, the repository of federal power, approximately 54 percent of all seats, matched against 73 for the Eastern Region, 62 for the Western Region, and 3 for Lagos Federal District.34 As the US government modestly pointed out, on the verge of understatement, in intelligence information recently declassified, allotting the majority of the seats in Nigeria’s lower house gives Northern leaders “a check on the scope of federal activities, as long as they can control the Northern constituencies.”35 Nigeria perfected its independence three years later when, on October 1, 1963, it became a republic.36 Republican status eliminated residues of lingering British control,37 emblematized by the station in the new country of a governor-general who functioned as a representative of the British Crown. Federalism is central to the theme of constitutionalism that animates this book; thus, a more elaborate discussion of the doctrine is warranted here. Federalism is “a constitutional division of government[al] power the Northern Region, was so taken by the tribute that he used part of the expression as the title of a book he wrote on his stewardship. See Bryan Sharwood Smith, But Always as Friends: Northern Nigeria and the Cameroons, 1921–1957 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969). 33 S.O. Akinboye, “Beautiful Abroad but Ugly at Home: Issues and Contra[di]ctions

in Nigeria’s Foreign Policy,” University of Lagos Inaugural Lecture Series (2013), www. unilag.edu.ng/opendocnew.php?; and Gambari, note 17, p. 62. 34 Central Intelligence Agency, “Probable Developments in the Federation of Nigeria”

(January 24, 1961, declassified February 5, 2014), https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/ document/cia-rdp79r01012a019000010001-1. 35 Ibid. 36 See Nigeria Republic Act 1963, 1963 CH. 57 (December 18, 1963), https://

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/57/enacted (“An Act to make provision as to the operation of the law in relation to Nigeria as a Republic within the Commonwealth”). 37 For example, § 2 of the Nigerian Independence Act stipulated that “[n]o Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on or after [October 1, 1960] shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to Nigeria or any part thereof as part of the law thereof, and as from that day.” However, the same law also indicated in § 1 that, from October 1, 1960, the supposedly independent country “shall […] constitute part of Her Majesty’s dominions under the name of Nigeria.” Republican status eliminated this glaring contradiction.

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between a central or national government and a set of regional units.”38 Features of a federal system include that both the national and regional governments have some independent as well as some shared powers over their citizens; that neither government owes its legal existence to the other; and that, as a matter of law, neither may dictate to the other(s) regarding structural organization, fiscal policies, or definition of essential functions.39 Under a federal system, both the national government and its regional components have sovereignty in the sense that each level can exercise governmental powers directly over citizens.40 More so than Ethiopia, Nigeria has a known reputation as one of the world’s federal countries.41 Like the US, Nigeria is also notable for its long practice of federalism. But this is where the similarities end. For, unlike the US, where the federal arrangement resulted from the coming together of separate states, federalism in Nigeria involves the subdivision of the country into smaller units.42 The reference to the US is justified because of the enamor that Nigeria has for the US political system.43 Starting at independence with a parliamentary system of government modeled after the UK,44 since 1979 Nigeria has practiced a presidential system of government patterned after the US.45

38 Michael E. Milakovich and George Gordon, Public Administration in America, 10th Ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2009), 109. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Forum of Federation, “Federal Countries,” http://forumfed.org/federal-countries/. 42 See Dele Babalola, “Nigeria: A Federation in Search of Federalism,” 50 Shades

of Federalism (2017), http://50shadesoffederalism.com/case-studies/nigeria-federationsearch-federalism/ (branding Nigeria a federation without federalism, in the sense that the country operates a federal constitution while in practice it works as a unitary state). 43 See Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, pp. 196–200 (comparing the US and Nigerian constitutional systems). 44 Unlike Nigeria, Britain operates a unitary system of government marked in recent years by devolution of governmental powers. See Vernon Bogdanor, Devolution in the United Kingdom (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Joanna George, “Devolution vs Federalism: What are the Differences?” Constitutional Law Matters (April 29, 2022), https://constitutionallawmatters.org/2022/04/devolution-vsfederalism-what-are-the-differences/. 45 See Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, p. 192.

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As of the date of its republican status in 1963, Nigeria had four regions, an additional federating unit over and above the three it inherited from the UK at independence. The new region was the Midwestern region.46 From a federation of one national government and four regions in 1963, Nigeria today has 36 states and a federal capital territory based in Abuja.47 Table 4.1 presents a picture of these political units. Save for the Midwestern Region in 1963, all the states were created through military decrees.48 The current 36-state structure came into being under General Sani Abacha, Head of State from 1993 to 1996.49 Because of the proliferation of these units in the country, the creation of geopolitical zones as federating units, in place of the mostly nonviable states, became necessary. Hence, the emergence of the six geopolitical zones, incidentally under General Abacha in 1993.50 As Table 4.1 shows, each of the six geopolitical zones has six states, except for the Southeast with five and the Northwest with seven.51 Since their creation, successive Nigerian national governments have used these zones as a tool for the distribution of political appointments and related benefits from the storehouse of Nigeria’s “national cake.”52 Still, the arrangement has not been formally incorporated into the Nigerian constitution.53

46 See Teslim Omipidan, “How Nigeria’s Mid-Western Region was Created in 1963,” Old Naija (November 13, 2014), https://oldnaija.com/2014/11/13/how-the-mid-wes tern-region-was-created/. 47 Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, p. 134. See also Dele Babalola, The Political Economy of Federalism in Nigeria (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 27–57. 48 Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, p. 2. 49 Ejitu N. Ota et al., “Creation of States in Nigeria, 1967–1996: Deconstructing the

History and Politics,” American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(1) (2020), 1–8, https://www.arjonline.org/papers/arjhss/v6-i1/5.pdf (Table 1). 50 See Adedayo Babatunde, “Geopolitical Zones in Nigeria and Their States,” All News (April 21, 2021), https://allnews.ng/news/geopolitical-zones-in-nigeria-and-their-state. 51 Ibid. 52 Jackline Wangare and Adrianna Simwa, “Geopolitical Zones in Nigeria and Their

States: All the Details,” Legit (November 28, 2022), https://www.legit.ng/ask-legit/gui des/1094595-geopolitical-zones-nigeria-states/. 53 See Philip C. Aka, “Why Nigeria Needs Restructuring Now and How It Can Peacefully Do It,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, 46(2) (Winter 2018), 123, 147–148 (arguing for their entrenchment into the constitution).

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Table 4.1 Nigerian states and federal capital territory Item no.

Name of state

Capital city

Geopolitical zone

1

Federal Capital Territory Abia Anambra Ebonyi Enugu Imo Akwa Ibom Bayelsa Cross River Delta Edo Rivers Ekiti Lagos Ogun Ondo Osun Oyo Adamawa Bauchi Borno Gombe Taraba Yobe Jigawa Kaduna Kano Katsina

Not applicable

Not applicable

Umuahia Awka Abakaliki Enugu Owerri Uyo Yenagoa Calabar Asaba Benin City Port Harcourt Ado Ekiti Ikeja Abeokuta Akure Oshogbo Ibadan Yola Bauchi Maiduguri Gombe Jalingo Damaturu Dutse Kaduna Kano Katsina

Southeast Southeast Southeast Southeast Southeast South South South South South South South South South South South South Southwest Southwest Southwest Southwest Southwest Southwest Northeast Northeast Northeast Northeast Northeast Northeast Northwest Northwest Northwest Northwest

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Population as of 2019 (million)54 2.7 3.8 5.6 3.0 4.3 5.1 4.7 2.3 4.1 5.3 4.4 7.0 3.3 13.0 6.0 5.0 4.2 7.5 4.5 7.5 5.7 3.6 3.3 3.3 6.7 8.3 14.2 9.3

(continued) 54 “Nigeria

Population,” Population U, https://www.populationu.com/nigeria-pop ulation#:~:text=Nigeria%20population%20in%202022%20is%20estimated%20to%20be% 20216%20million.&text=Nigeria%20is%20a%20federation%20of%2036%20states%20and% 201%20federal%20capital%20territory. All figures rounded up.

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Table 4.1 (continued) Item no.

Name of state

Capital city

Geopolitical zone

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Kebbi Sokoto Zamfara Benue Kogi Kwara Nasarawa Niger Plateau

Birnin Kebbi Sokoto Gusau Makurdi Lokoja Ilorin Lafia Minna Jos

Northwest Northwest Northwest North Central North Central North Central North Central North Central North Central

Population as of 2019 (million) 5.0 5.8 5.3 5.7 4.1 3.2 2.6 6.2 4.4

In sum, unlike Ethiopia, Nigeria has practiced federalism for a much longer period. However, like Ethiopia, both during military and civilian regimes alike, there are many political powers concentrated in the central government, evident in the yearning and repeated appeals for “true federalism” in the country.55 The concentration reached new heights under General Muhammadu Buhari, President from 2015 to 2023.56 The concentration of government powers at the center runs against the grains of the divination from British colonial officialdom for a central government with few powers necessary only to preserve national unity,57 one 55 Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, pp. 133–137 (“Taking

Political Restructuring Seriously”). Juxtaposition of the US and Nigeria bears out this proposition. In the US, “[p]residents compete with numerous actors […] for influence over public policy, including Congress, the courts, interest groups, political appointees in the departments and agencies, and career civil servants.” David Leonhardt, “The Morning: The Transition Begins,” New York Times, The Morning (November 24, 2020) (quoting Matt Glassman, a political science instructor at Georgetown University). There, “[t]he president must rely on his informal ability to convince other political actors [that] it is in their interest to go along with him, or at least not stand in his way.” Ibid. Conversely in Nigeria, the president is a political overlord who exercises oversized influence on public policy. See Obi Nwakanma, “The President’s Power is Tyrannical Power in Nigeria,” Vanguard (Lagos) (March 26, 2017), https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/03/presid ents-power-tyrannical-power-nigeria/ (portraying the President’s power as tyrannical). 56 See Wole Soyinka, “Lessons for Nigeria’s Militarized Democratic Experiment,” New York Times (October 9, 2020), http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/nigeriamilitarized-democratic-experiment.html (analogizing much of Nigeria’s democracy under the Fourth Republic since 1999 as “militarized democratic experiment”). 57 See note 31 and accompanying text.

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made after experimentation with a centralized unitary formula for 40 years from the setup of the country in 1914.58 The occurrence also works against the very definition of federalism as a political arrangement where both a national government and its constituent units exercise powers directly over their citizens. There is just little sovereignty left for subnational governments in a setting like Nigeria where an all-powerful national government exercises expansive powers that extend into characteristically local issues (e.g., law enforcement) which, in the US where Nigeria draws its model, are within the purview of subnational authorities.59 Demographic Features and Profile Nigeria is far and away the most populous country in Africa. “One out of every four Africans and one out of every five persons of African origin is a Nigerian.”60 Nigeria had a population of over 218 million people in 2022,61 on an area (land and water) of 923,760 square kilometers,62 placing it No. 32 on the list of largest countries in the world by area.63 Precisely, it is the sixth most-populous country in the world, after China, India, the US, Russia, and Pakistan.64 There are projections that by 2050, Nigeria will be the fourth most-populous country in the world or tie with the US for that ranking. Nigeria had a population of approximately 45 million at independence in 1960,65 less than one-fourth of 58 See notes 22–26 and accompanying texts (commenting on the constitutional reviews that preceded the adoption of the 1954 constitution). 59 Philip C. Aka and Joseph Abiodun Balogun, Healthcare and Economic Restructuring: Nigeria in Comparative Perspective (Gateway East, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 37. 60 OECD, “West Africa Gateway: Nigeria” (Last updated September 2012), https:// www.oecd.org/swac/publications/Nigeria_e-version_en_light.pdf. 61 See Table 1.2 in Chapter 1, citing “Countries in Africa 2022,” World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-in-africa. 62 See “Largest Countries in the World (by Area),” Worldometer, https://www.worldo meters.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/. 63 Ibid. CIA information ranks the country No. 33 in the world by area. See “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated May 16, 2023). 64 See “Current World Population,” Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/ world-population/. 65 “Nigeria, 1960,” Population Pyramid, https://www.populationpyramid.net/nigeria/ 1960/.

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the US’s population, which as of that date, stood at over 179 million.66 The projection means that merely ninety years later, with its area size unchanged, Nigeria worrisomely is about to match the US in population. On population spread, significant clusters of people are scattered throughout Nigeria, with the highest density areas being in the southern portions of the country.67 More specifically, with a population density of 571 people per mile,68 more so in its tropical, non-Sahelian regions,69 Nigeria ranks among the most densely populated countries in the world. Like Ethiopia and Cameroon, youths comprise the bulk of Nigeria’s population: approximately 62 percent of the population are persons below 25 years of age, with nearly 42 percent in the 0–14-year bracket; persons 55 and above make up just over 7 percent of the population.70 Nigeria is bordered to the north by the French-speaking country Niger Republic, to the northeast by Chad, to the east by Cameroon, and to the west by Benin Republic.71 Its southern coast rests on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean.72 A slight reshaping of Nigeria’s borders took place soon after independence when, in a referendum in spring 1961, Northern Cameroon voted to join Nigeria, while Southern Cameroon voted to join French-speaking Cameroon. Before the referendum, Northern Cameroon was administered separately within Nigeria, while Southern Cameroon was part of Eastern Nigeria. Chapter 5 dealing with Cameroon provides more detailed information on these changes. More recently, the International Court of Justice heard a land and maritime dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon, wherein it awarded ownership of the Bakassi Peninsula

66 “United States of America, 1960,” Population Pyramid, https://www.populationpy ramid.net/united-states-of-america/1960/. 67 See “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook, note 63. 68 “Nigeria Demographics,” Worldometer, https//www.worldometers.info/demograph

ics/Nigeria-demographics/. 69 “Nigerian Population 2020 (Live),” World Population Review, https://worldpopulat ionreview.com/countries/nigeria-population. 70 “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook, note 63 (“Age Structure”). 71 See “Maps of Nigeria,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/nigeria;

and “Political Map of Nigeria,” Nations Online, https://www.nationsonline.org/one world/map/nigeria-political-map.htm. 72 “Maps of Nigeria,” note 71.

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Table 4.2 Major ethnic groups of Nigeria Item no.

Name of group

Share of population as of 2018 (percentage)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Hausa Yoruba Igbo Fulani Tiv Kanuri/Beriberi Ibibio Ijaw/Izon Others

30 15.5 15.2 6 2.4 2.4 1.8 1.8 24.9

Source “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated December 21, 2022)

to Cameroon but a stretch of land in the area around Lake Chad to Nigeria.73 Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups, of which four major ones, the Fulani, Hausa, Igbo,74 and Yoruba (see Table 4.2) make up approximately 67 percent or two-thirds of the country’s population.75 Next to religion, Nigeria is more evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, with the northern portions of the country being predominantly Muslim and the southern portions predominantly Christian, with the Yoruba southwest containing a mixture of these two faiths and a sprinkling of traditional religions.76 More than the other two countries that formed the case 73 See Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, p. 1. 74 On a note of style, Igbo, like other Nigerian ethnic groups, is used throughout this

Chapter and book in both the singular and plural senses. In addition to a nationality group, Igbo stands for the language spoken by the Igbo ethnic group. For more on the group, see Philip C. Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” Howard Law Journal, 48(1) (Fall 2004), 165, 177–184 (“The Igbo people and nation”). For more extended works on the Igbo, see, for example, Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1975); and Elizabeth Isichei, The Ibo People and the Europeans: The Genesis of a Relation—To 1906 (London: Faber & Faber, 1973). 75 See Chapter 1, note 56 and accompanying text. 76 See “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74,

p. 180, n. 87. See also Andrew McKinnon, “Christians, Muslims and Traditional Worshippers in Nigeria: Estimating the Relative Proportions from Eleven Nationally Representative Social Surveys,” Review of Religious Research, 63 (2021), 303–315 (especially Table showing religious identity by survey year of Nigeria’s adult population).

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study in this book, religion has a decisive influence on Nigerian politics. “In Nigeria, religious beliefs, identities, and practices are very public social markers and animate everyday behaviors and interactions[;] [f]rom social events to workplace meetings, [religion] is highly visible across the country.”77 This is probably because, in the country, religious organizations are the source of critical assistance like “social services, financial support[,] and [even] the means for social mobility to adherents.”78 Whatever the reason, Nigeria is a land where fear of ethno-religious domination is rife and where managing religious diversity vis-à-vis inculcation of a national identity poses a perennial challenge for the government, in the Muslim north as well as the Christian south.79 Under the Fourth Republic since 1999, religion assumed such salience in Nigeria’s politics, nothing of its level since independence in 1960, to the point that the country now has a mixed legal system, made up of English common law, Islamic law in twelve northern states, and traditional law,80 in place of the secular order it inherited from the UK at independence.81

77 Leena Koni Hoffmann and Raj Navanit Patel, “Collective Action on Corruption in Nigeria: The Role of Religion,” Chatham House Briefing (March 26, 2021), https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/03/collective-action-corruption-nig eria/context-religion-nigeria. 78 Ibid. 79 “CIFORB Country Profile—Nigeria,” https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/

college-artslaw/ptr/ciforb/resources/Nigeria.pdf. 80 See “Nigeria,” CIA World Factbook, note 63. This is compared to Ethiopia as civil law, see “Ethiopia,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated December 21, 2022); and Cameroon as “mixed legal system of English common law, French civil law, and customary law.” “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook (Last updated December 21, 2022). Nigeria’s twelve sharia states are Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara. Philip C. Aka, “Judicial Independence under Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Problems and Prospects,” California Western International Law Journal, 45(1) (2015), 1, 38, n. 154. 81 See ibid., pp. 37–43; and Philip C. Aka, “Nigeria Since May 1999: Understanding the Paradox of Civil Rule and Human Rights Violations under President Olusegun Obasanjo,” San Diego International Law Journal, 4 (2003), 209, 240–246.

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Mainstay of Nigeria’s Economy As shown in Chapter 1, Nigeria shares with Ethiopia and Cameroon the distinction of an economy anchored in agriculture, except that Nigeria has the additional good fortune of being a major oil-producing country.82 In 2023, Nigeria ranked 15th among oil-producing countries in the world with over 1.3 million barrels pay per day.83 Add to this resource the endowment of an oil and gas reserve estimated at over 37 billion barrels, which places the country as No. 10 in the world.84 Following the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the 1950s, by the 1970s, crude oil replaced agricultural exports as the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy and source of foreign exchange.85 And within the first four decades of oil exports to the world economy, Nigeria earned nearly US$ 1.2 trillion.86 The list of Nigerian agricultural products is broad-ranging and includes cassava (manioca, tapioca), yam, cowpea, taro, okra, sorghum, ginger, peanuts (groundnuts), sweet potato, cocoa beans, palm oil, millet, sesame seed, millet production, plantain, papaya, pineapple, cotton, rubber, timber, corn, rice, beans, soybeans, cocoyam, maize, tomato, sugarcane, mango and guava, cashew nuts, banana, onion, green pepper, livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chicken), and fish. Nigeria produces these food items both for export and domestic consumption.87 About 70 percent of the country’s agricultural activities is unmechanized, in mostly small and scattered agricultural holdings.88 Due to the continued reliance on antiquated methods of production, Nigeria’s agricultural sector suffers from low productivity.89 82 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 7 (“Mainstay of the Economy”). 83 See U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Production of Petroleum and

Other Liquids (last visited July 21, 2023). 84 See “Nigeria Oil,” Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/oil/nigeria-oil/. 85 See, for example, Jedrzej Georg Frynas, Oil in Nigeria: Conflict and Litigation

Between Oil Companies and Village Communities (Münster, Germany: LIT Verlag, 2000), 8–58 (surveying “[t]he making of Nigeria’s oil industry,” including the impact of oil on the Nigerian state). 86 Tume Ahemba, “Squandered Oil Wealth Leaves Nigeria in Dark Age,” Reuters (July 22, 2008), https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-nigeria-oil-decay/squandered-oil-wealthleaves-nigeria-in-dark-age-idUSL1470212320080723. 87 Aka and Balogun, Healthcare and Economic Restructuring, note 59, pp. 84–85. 88 Ibid., p. 85. 89 Ibid.

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Although still steeped in agriculture, to its credit, Nigeria has made tractions in the direction of industry and service that, for the record, bears some recounting. Elements of Nigeria’s industry include oil refining, coal, tin, columbite, rubber, plastic materials, beverages, tobacco, pharmaceutical products, electrical and electronic products, iron and steel, motor assembly, wood, pulp paper products, chemicals, ceramic products, hides and skins, textiles, apparel, footwear, cement, building materials and construction, food processing, chemicals, fertilizer, printing, and ceramics.90 The largest industries within this sector are petroleum, agriculture, mining, and tourism. The feature on this list of natural resource items like oil, coal, tin, columbite, and rubber, speaks to the still limited traction in Nigerian industrialization. Elements of Nigeria’s service sector include banking and finance, insurance, real estate, transportation, telecommunication or information and communication technology (ICT), wholesale and retail trading, restaurants and hospital services, motion pictures (Nollywood) and entertainment, education, and tourism.91 Because of the premium it has assumed in the repertoire, Nollywood deserves some more elaborate discussion. Nollywood resulted in the export of Nigerian music and entertainment to many parts of the globe.92 In prolific-ness, Nollywood is reputed to be the secondlargest film industry in the world, after Hollywood in the US, and Bollywood in India.93 Nollywood produces about 2500 films a year under more exacting circumstances than in India, talk less the US.94 In 2014, Nollywood alone accounted for little over 1 percent of Nigeria’s GDP.95 Just like Ethiopia in the previous chapter, all three sectors of Nigeria’s economy are interrelated and complementary. Activities in the agricultural and industrialization sectors “rely majorly on the service sector to supply

90 Ibid., p. 86. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., p. 87. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid.

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needed functions[,] such as banking, accountancy, information, and technology.”96 Speaking to the interrelatedness of the sectors, notice also that tourism features in both the industrialization and service sectors. As Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 shows, in 2021, Nigeria has an estimated GDP per capita of US $4900, compared to $2300 for Ethiopia, and $3700 for Cameroon. Besides this cheerful news, compared to the other candidates in this book, Nigeria’s economic achievements are modest to the point of suboptimality. As the diagram shows, in 2021, the country had a labor force of 65 million, rather small for its populousness, compared to Ethiopia with 56 million workers and Cameroon with approximately 12 million. Within the same time period, the country also recorded the highest rate of unemployment—over 9 percent—compared to 3.6 percent for Ethiopia and nearly 4 percent for Cameroon. At 19.6 percent, its youth unemployment number is more than double the unemployment rate, compared to nearly 6 percent for Ethiopia and over 6 percent for Cameroon. Finally in 2018, of all three candidates, Nigeria recorded the highest number of citizens below the poverty line: over 40 percent versus 23.5 percent for Ethiopia and 37.5 percent for Cameroon. Within the same timeline, in May 2018, under the Fourth Republic, Nigeria achieved the dubious reputation of becoming the “poverty capital” of the world by displacing India as the country with the highest number of extremely poor people in the globe.97 As of that date, Nigeria had 87 million extremely poor people, defined as persons who live on an income of less than US $2 a day, out of a population of about 200 million people, compared to India with 73 million extremely poor people in a population of nearly 1.4 billion persons.98 The foregoing chronicle of dismal socioeconomic statistics predated the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999. For under the second phase of military rule in the country from 1984 until 1998, Nigeria experienced such deterioration in economic performance that resulted in its reclassification by the UN

96 Abiodun Moses Adetokunbo and Ochuwa Priscillia Edioye, “Response of Economic Growth to the Dynamics of Service Sector in Nigeria,” Future Business Journal, 6(27) (2020), https://fbj.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43093-020-00018-9. 97 See Aka and Balogun, Healthcare and Economic Restructuring, note 59, p. 45. 98 Ibid., p. 45, n. 106.

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from a middle-income economy to the rank of the poorest countries in the world.99 Nigeria is a country of “abundant human and natural resources [that] still struggles with mass impoverishment.”100 One side effect of this immiseration is the production of “millions of migrants, essentially economic refugees, who live throughout Africa, Europe, and the U.S.”101 Agitation for democratic rule in the country before 1999 had something to do with the general belief of Nigerians that economic progress is possible only under a civilian government.102 And with civilian rule enthroned, some perceptive Nigerian leaders harped on the necessity for economic progress to provide the “democratic dividend” necessary to sustain democracy in the country.103 Two interrelated events recently that have compounded—and confounded—the dire economic conditions of Nigeria’s longsuffering citizens are oil theft and debt fees from excessive government borrowings under General Muhammadu Buhari from 2015 until 2023. Oil theft, known as oil bunkering in the parlance of Nigeria’s oil industry, involves the illegal tapping (whether cold or hot), smuggling, diversion, and illegal refining of petroleum products in parts of the country.104 On average, “Nigeria loses about 200,000 barrels of oil per day.”105 In 2021, oil thieves stole about 193 million barrels of the country’s crude oil, worth

99 Philip C. Aka, “The ‘Dividend of Democracy’: Analyzing U.S. Support for Nigerian Democratization,” Boston College Third World Law Journal, 22(2) (Spring 2002), 225, 274. 100 International Crisis Group, Nigeria: Want in the Midst of Plenty, Africa Report No. 113 (July 19, 2006), 1. 101 Ibid. 102 Philip C. Aka, “Education, Economic Development, and Return to Democratic

Politics in Nigeria,” Journal of Third World Studies, 18 (2001), 21, 22. 103 Aka, “The ‘Dividend of Democracy,’” note 99, p. 274. 104 Emily Mangan, “A Primer on Nigeria’s Oil Bunkering,” Council on Foreign Rela-

tions (August 4, 2015), https://www.cfr.org/blog/primer-nigerias-oil-bunkering. One common technique of this theft involves “tapping into an oil pipeline and transporting the oil elsewhere to be sold internationally or refined locally. In order to access the oil, a small group of welders will puncture a pipeline at night, establishing a tapping point from which the group can operate.” Ibid. 105 Reuben Abati, “The Oil Thieves of Nigeria,” Premium Times (Abuja) (January 4, 2022), https://www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/503903-the-oil-thieves-of-nigeriaby-reuben-abati.html.

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about US$3.5 billion, and about 10 percent of the country’s external reserves.106 “[A] veritable example of [the] grand corruption” that ails Nigeria, oil theft in the country is “an organized crime, with a network of stakeholders that cuts across many layers of interest[,]” including the very “agencies saddled with the responsibility to stop it,” an illegal “enterprise that involves the collusion of both state officials and their agents.”107 The analyst Reuben Abati estimated that the value of the crude stolen is “enough to fix many of the country’s problems and reduce” its leaders “obsession with borrowings.”108 Plus the theft has ramifications that extend to jobs and opportunities.109 Abati blames oil theft on “[t]he opaqueness that dominates the entire oil and gas value chain in Nigeria,” worsened by “[t]he absence of political will to tackle the problem.”110 What makes the problem hard to address is that the perpetrators “are major figures in the communities and key financiers of political processes.”111 There is something else: oil theft is tied to the politics of the country, including the ownership of mineral resources.112 Nigerian law, including the country’s 1999 constitution, vests the ownership and control of natural resources in any part of the country in the national government.113 This is an occurrence ethnic groups in the Niger Delta area,

106 Reuben Abati, “Asari Dokubo, Tinubu and Oil Theft,” Huhu Online (June 20, 2023), https://huhuonline.com/index.php/home-4/opinions/16103-asari-dokubotinubu-and-oil-theft-reuben-abati. 107 Abati, “The Oil Thieves of Nigeria,” note 105. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid. Especially considering that “[c]rude oil in the international market has a

signature imprint that indicates the source.” Ibid. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 See Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999), Constitute Project, § 44(3), item 39 Schedule II of the Exclusive Legislative List, https://www.constitutepr oject.org/constitution/Nigeria_2011.pdf?lang=en; Nigeria—1969 Petroleum Act, Natural Resource Governance Institute, § 1, https://resourcegovernance.org/analysis-tools/pub lications/nigeria-1969-petroleum-act. See also Attorney General of the Federation vs. Attorney-General of Abia State, 4 NILR 5 (2002), CMI256, https://cmlcmidatabase. org/attorney-general-federation-v-attorney-general-abia-state (Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, and Rivers State).

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such as the Ijaw, stoutly resist in the name of “resource control.”114 Thus, many in the Niger Delta who engage in oil stealing “do not consider their activities as theft or crime.”115 The connection of oil theft to excessive government borrowing, not that it justifies it, is that, given Nigeria’s excessive dependence on oil resources, oil theft leaves the government with less revenue to address the myriad of economic challenges Nigerians confront.116 Under Buhari, Nigeria’s national government relied heavily on internal and external borrowing to finance its operations.117 However, service fees on impetuous borrowing, particularly external loans, leaves little resources for spending on social programs for the Nigerian masses while burdening the economic future of subsequent generations who will pay these loans. To no avail, various entities within and outside the country decried this appetite for borrowing. These include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which projected that “the Nigerian government may spend nearly 100 percent of its revenue on debt servicing by 2026.”118 Where the leaders lack economic wisdom, the people are exposed to needless material hardship.119 Under the economic illiterate regime of Muhammadu

114 See Abati, “The Oil Thieves of Nigeria,” note 105. 115 Ibid. Parenthetically, Abati observed that “[t]hievery […] is a national pastime, a

national creed, in Nigeria. Everybody is looking for something to steal: From gold in Zamfara and Ilesa to bitumen in Ondo, crude oil in the Niger Delta Basin, and the vaults of the Central Bank, if possible.” Ibid. 116 See Abati, “The Oil Thieves of Nigeria,” note 105 (observing that “For a country that depends on petroleum products for about 85 percent of its total export revenue and has been unable to define a future for itself beyond oil, oil theft is akin to a national calamity, […], and an economic sabotage of the highest order”). 117 Ebenezer Obadare, “Massive Borrowing Puts Nigeria’s Future at Risk,” Council on Foreign Relations (August 16, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/blog/massive-borrowingputs-nigerias-future-risk. 118 Ibid. 119 Parody of “[w]here there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29: 18, Holy

Bible, King James Version.

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Buhari from 2015 until 2023,120 Nigerians endured two economic recessions,121 capped by the emergence of their land as the world’s poorest country.122 Justifying the Giant of Africa Moniker We organized this whole section around the theme of Nigeria as the giant of Africa, guided by the starting point, as indicated earlier, that Nigeria is the largest black nation in the world.123 Even before its independence in 1960, “there was a feeling that because of its size and resources, Nigeria was somehow destined to play a big role in Africa, if not in the world.”124 But such advantage or endowment is nominal if much of that population, more than two out of every five residents, in absolute terms amounting to over 90 million people, live in extreme poverty.125 After over one hundred years, including the 60 years since independence, Nigeria’s economy remains steeped in the mold of agricultural production with little traction toward industrial production, much less postindustrial services.126 Before independence in 1960 and for many years after selfrule, the engine of the Nigerian economy revolved around the production of agricultural goods that the country exported to the world market: palm oil in the east, cocoa in the west, and groundnuts (peanuts) in the

120 Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s literary giant once labelled Buhari an “economic illiterate.”

See Bloomberg News, “Buhari Pursues Cabinet to Boost Nigeria Economy, Battle Boko Haram,” Buenos Aires Herald (April 6, 2015), http://www.buenosairesherald.com/art icle/186014/buhari-pursues-cabinet-to-boost-nigeria-economy-battle-boko-haram. 121 The recessions took place in 2016 and 2020. See Chukwuemeka Ayomide, “Under Buhari, Nigeria’s Economy to Lose 10 Years’ Gains: World Bank,” Peoples Gazette (June 23, 2021), https://gazettengr.com/under-buhari-nigerias-economy-to-lose10-years-gains-world-bank/. 122 See notes 97–98 and accompanying texts. 123 See notes 60–64 and accompanying texts. 124 Gambari, note 18, p. 16. 125 The calculation comes from Chapter 1, Table 1, items 2 (population) and 14 (share of population below poverty line). See also John Campbell, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 11– 24 (grappling with the telling question, “If Nigeria Is So Rich, Why Are Nigerians So Poor?”). 126 See Chapter 1, note 66, and accompanying text.

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north.127 The picture seemingly changed with the expanded export of oil products in the early 1970s following the discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities more than one decade earlier. By mid-1973, oil production in Nigeria reached a peak of nearly 2 million barrels a day,128 and by 1975, oil accounted for over 92 percent of Nigerian’s foreign exchange earner.129 Henceforth, however, Nigeria turned into a mono-product economy that supplied crude oil to the world economy and little else. The high dependence on crude oil within the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, including reliance on oil for three-quarters of government revenue (rather than on tax receipts), creates a problem for Nigeria because it renders it vulnerable to fluctuations in oil prices and production. Nigeria retained its position as a proverbial hewer of wood and drawer of water to the world economy, only now as an exporter of crude oil, rather than agricultural exports the era before. The structure of the country’s economy remained that of an underdeveloped country where agriculture continued to play a major role. This is not to suggest that there was no growth in the nonagriculture sectors of the economy for there was. Some growth took place in industrialization and the service sector witnessed an uptick. However, these spurts of growth in the industrialization and service wings of the Nigerian economy were not enough to decisively change the essentialist mono-culture status of the economy embedded in agriculture. Nigeria achieved its status as the largest economy in Africa by rebasing its GDP calculation in April 2014 to give more credit to services.130 Nigeria joined the IMF on March 30, 1961. The Fund permits its member countries to update their GDP numbers every five years to reflect changes in their economic structure,131 which is standard practice Nigeria

127 See Sylvester Okotie, “The Nigerian Economy Before the Discovery of Crude Oil,” in The Political Economy of Oil and Gas Activities in the Nigerian Aquatic Ecosystem, ed. Prince F. Ndimele (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2017), 71–81. 128 Gambari, note 18, p. 141. 129 Gambari, note 18, p. 5, n. 2. 130 See “Africa’s New Number One,” Economist (April 12, 2014), https://ww.econom

ist.com/leaders/2014/04/12/afrocas-new-number-one. 131 See International Monetary Fund, “Botswana: Technical Assistance Report-National Accounts Mission” (November 18, 2020), https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/ Issues/2020/11/17/Botswana-Technical-Assistance-Report-National-Accounts-Mission49898.

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used in 2014. It was as a result of this rebasing that Nigeria overtook South Africa, which previously held the prize of the largest economy in Africa.132 The last time Nigeria did such updating was in 1990. At the point it rebased its GDP calculation, the Nigerian economy was worth US$ 510 billion.133 Yet, in the instructive observation of Forbes Africa, in an argument for more industrialization in Nigeria, the country’s being Africa’s largest economy is a confounding occurrence, viewed against the background of its dire economic situation back to the time of the rebasing, evident in an “abject decline in […] real GDP, income, employment, manufacturing, and retail sales.”134 In other words, in many respects, Nigeria’s emergence as largest economy in Africa is an event more apparent than real; its touted strengths are afflicted with doses of Achilles’ heel, including the quicksand of an undiversified economy, that render them unsustainable. A résumé of “the overriding story of Nigeria” since independence has been “[t]he progressive erosion of democratic and developmental promise.”135 It is the condition of unrealized potential, giant with clay feet,136 that one perceptive scholar, commenting on the country’s political system from 1960 until 1996, likened to a “crippled giant.”137

132 See Prinesha Naidoo, “Nigeria Tops South Africa as the Continent’s Biggest Economy,” Bloomberg (March 3, 2020, updated March 4, 2020), https://www.bloomb erg.com/news/articles/2020-03-03/nigeria-now-tops-south-africa-as-the-continent-s-big gest-economy. 133 PharmaAccess Foundation, Nigeria Health Sector: Market Study Report (Pieters-

bergweg and Amsterdam, Netherlands: March 2015), 9, https://www.reo.nl/sites/def ault/files/Market_Study_Health_Nigeria.pdf. The number climbed down to US$ 440.8 billion in 2022. See “Nigeria Remains Africa’s Largest Economy for 5th Straight Year,” The Will (July 23, 2023), https://thewillnews.com/nigeria-remains-africas-largest-eco nomy-for-5th-straight-year/. 134 “Nigeria Needs Industrialization Now,” Forbes Africa (May 1, 2017), https://www. forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/05/01/nigeria-needs-industrialization-now/. 135 Aka, “Nigeria Since May 1999,” note 81, p. 222 (citing Larry Diamond). 136 Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Daniel 2: 31–45 (“The head of that statue

was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. […] Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, were all broken in pieces and […] the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found”). 137 See generally Eghosa E. Osaghae, The Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998).

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In sum, although mythical, framing the basic facts of Nigeria in this chapter around the moniker of a giant of Africa is nonetheless legitimate. Nigeria is no more giant of Africa than landlocked Ethiopia is the land of the Blue Nile (Chapter 3), nor Cameroon (Chapter 5) is the picture of diversity in Africa. The appellation lacks qualitative depth. It means that, despite all its many socioeconomic ills, the country still happens to be home to the largest economy in Africa.

Nigerian Constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999 Nigerians have lived under four constitutions since independence, including the independence constitution. Four charter documents this section analyzes are the 1960, 1963, 1979, and 1999 constitutions. Testament of extensive military rule that marked governance in the country, vis-à-vis Ethiopia and Cameroon, the two other countries under examination in this book, the first two constitutions were prepared under civilian rule while the last two took place under military regimes. However, whereas the preparation of the 1979 constitution was backed by a Constituent Assembly, which served as a conveyor-belt of the people’s input, the 1999 constitution lacked this key feature. The 1960 Constitution This constitution drew its significance from the fact that it is the independence constitution of the country, the charter that marked its emergence as a sovereign state, theoretically free of British tutelage and imperialism.138 Enacted by the British Order in Council, this constitution came into force upon the country’s independence on October 1, 1960. Under this constitution, Nnamdi Azikiwe, governor-general of the country, represented the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as Nigeria’s head of state. The Constitution comprises 154 articles broken up into 11 chapters, plus a schedule of exclusive and concurrent legislative lists. The exclusive list, embodying allocation of power and authority vested exclusively in the

138 For a text of this high law, see Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria, 1960, Law Nigeria, https://constitution.lawnigeria.com/2018/03/26/1960-constitution-of-nigeriathe-nigerian-constitution-hub/.

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national government then headquartered in Lagos, comprises 44 responsibilities, including aviation, currency, defense, external relations, specified higher educational institutions (such as the University College at Ibadan and its teaching hospital), and immigration. The concurrent list, competencies that both the national and regional governments share as a matter of constitutional right, comprised 28 items, including the census, industrial development, higher education, and professional licensing (notably law and medicine). Chapter I deals with the Nigerian federation, together with its constituent federating regional units. Chapter II outlines the requirements for citizenship, including dual and commonwealth citizenship. Chapter III lays down the fundamental (basic) rights of citizens, including the right to life, right to privacy, free speech and conscience, peaceful assembly and association, freedom from inhuman treatment, freedom from slavery and forced labor, freedom from discrimination, and the jurisdiction of the courts related to complaints alleging violation of any of these rights. Chapter IV deals with the establishment of the office of the governorgeneral and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, who is appointed by the Queen of England to represent her in the federation and holds office during “her pleasure.” Chapter V deals with parliament, including its composition (made up of an upper-house Senate signifying the equality of the three regions, much like the House of Lords, and a directly elected House of Representatives, much like the House of Commons), procedures, and lawmaking powers. Chapter VI focuses on executive powers at the national and regional levels, including the doctrine of collective responsibility, and the right of the governor-general to be informed about matters related to the government. Chapter VII focuses on the formation of the Nigeria Police, including appointment to the force, establishment of the Nigeria Police Council, and establishment of the Police Service Commission. Chapter VIII deals with the national court system, including the establishment of the Federal Supreme Court as well as its original and advisory jurisdictions, its power to hear and rule on appeals from other federal courts, appeals from the Court to Her Majesty in Council based in London, the establishment of the Federal High Court in Lagos, and the right of the regions to establish their separate court systems. A provision, interesting from the consequences it spelled down the line for the country’s secular status relates to the power of the Supreme Court over appeals

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from other federal courts. Two of those courts were the Court of Resolution and the Sharia Court of Appeal, both under Article 111. Art. 112(5) describes these two courts as follows. The Court of Resolution refers to a tribunal established by the Court of Resolution Law, 1960, of Northern Nigeria, as amended, or any law that replaced that law. The Sharia Court of Appeal stands for a tribunal established by the Sharia Court of Appeal, 1960, of Northern Nigeria, as amended, or any law that replaced that law. Chapter IX deals with finances, including the establishment of the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the Contingency Fund, the country’s public debt, and revenue allocation. Chapter X deals with the public service of the federation, including the establishment of the Public Service Commission. Chapter XI rounds off with miscellaneous issues, such as the powers and procedures of federal commissions. The 1963 Constitution The adoption of this constitution both coincided with and signified the status of Nigeria as a republic.139 Republican status spelled the cessation of the British monarch, in the person of the Queen of England, as Nigerian head of state. In her place Nigeria had an indigenous head of state designated President that Nnamdi Azikiwe, who hitherto stood in for the queen as governor-general, filled in as the first President of the country.140 This constitution comprised 165 articles broken up into eleven chapters, plus a schedule of exclusive and concurrent legislative lists, a carryover from the constitution of 1960. The charter came into force on October 1, 1963, the third anniversary of Nigeria’s independence. Based on a parliamentary system of government inherited from the UK, this constitution remained in effect until a military coup in 1966 that overthrew Nigeria’s democratic institutions. This constitution tracked the 1960 constitution in organization down to the same eleven chapters of its predecessor. But there are also key notable differences that need to be pointed out. First, the 1963 constitution, unlike its predecessor, embodied a preamble. It read that through

139 For a text of this high law, see Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1963, Law Nigeria, https://constitution.lawnigeria.com/2018/03/26/1963-constitut ion-of-nigeria-the-nigerian-constitution-hub/. 140 See ibid., art. 157.

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their representatives assembled in Parliament, “[w]e the people of Nigeria” “firmly resolve[] to establish the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” in pursuit of various goals, including “the unity of our people and faith in our fatherland,” promoting inter-African cooperation and solidarity, promoting world peace and international understanding, as well as promoting liberty, equality, and justice in Nigeria and the world at large.141 Another noticeable difference, adverted to before, was the change of the title of the Head of State of the country from GovernorGeneral to President. The position was to be occupied by Nnamdi Azikiwe, former governor-general. The third was the birth of the Mid-Western region.142 The fourth difference separating this constitution from its 1960 counterpart relates to the court system. Appeals of the Supreme Court’s decision to Her Majesty’s Council in London is discontinued. Instead, the document spelled out that “[N]o appeal shall lie to any other body or person from any determination of the Supreme Court.”143 However, the provisions relating to the Court of Resolution and Sharia Court of Appeal in Northern Nigeria remained unchanged, with the article related to these tribunals now Article 119(5). Last but not least is the creation of the Niger Delta Development Board, charged with responsibility for advising the national government as well as those of the Eastern and Midwestern regions regarding the physical development of the area in 1959 demarcated as the Niger Delta.144

141 Ibid., preamble. 142 See ibid., art. 3(1). Designed to benefit the Edo majority, the region was created

in June 1963 from the Benin and Delta provinces of the Western Region, with Benin City as it headquarters. The motion to create passed successfully on March 24, 1962, after an unsuccessful attempt on April 4, 1961, less than six months after independence. Onoho’Omhen Ebhohimhen, “Who Has Ceded the Midwest Region?” Vanguard (Lagos) (September 14, 2017), https://guardian.ng/opinion/who-has-ceded-the-midwest-region. 143 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1963, note 139, art. 120. 144 Ibid., art. 159.

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The 1979 Constitution This constitution inaugurated the Second Nigerian Republic.145 Under the 1960 and 1963 constitutions, Nigeria remained a federal parliamentary democracy. What gave this constitution its distinctiveness is its option for the presidential system of government modeled after the US, in place of the parliamentary system Nigeria inherited from the UK. The charter has 279 articles packaged into 8 Chapters, a preamble, and a list of six schedules. The preamble read, “We[,] the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having firmly and solemnly resolved to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state under God dedicated to the promotion of inter-African solidary, world peace, international cooperation and understanding,” and to ordain and give themselves a constitution designed to “promot[e] […] the welfare of all persons in our country on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice.”146 Interpretively, to the extent that a preamble obligates, this constitution provides for an indivisible and indissoluble state conditioned on the obligation of the government to promote the welfare of all citizens based on freedom, equality, and justice. This is still so even though the main text of the charter also specified that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state[.]”.147 Next are the appendices that, in Nigeria’s constitutionalism, go by the name of numerical schedules. The First Schedule outlined the then 19 states of the country along with their respective constituent local governments and capital cities as well as the definition of a Federal Capital Territory to be based in Abuja, rather than Lagos. The country moved to this new site in December 1991.148 The Second Schedule is a listing of the responsibilities vested in the national government under the exclusive legislative list, numbering 67, and responsibilities that it shares with the states, numbering 30, contained in the concurrent legislative list. Under

145 For a text of this high law, see Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, Law Nigeria, https://constitution.lawnigeria.com/2018/03/26/1979-constitut ion-of-nigeria-the-nigerian-constitution-hub/. 146 Ibid., preamble. 147 Ibid., art. 2(1). 148 See Ayodale Braimah, “Abuja, Nigeria (1991–),” Black Past (August 11, 2014), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/abuja-nigeria-1991/.

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the concurrent legislative list, national authority prevails over the states on any matter where there is a conflict between national and state authority. This grant of power gives the national government expansive powers in a system of divided authorities. The Third Schedule is a listing of federal and state executive bodies. Federal bodies enumerated are the Council of State, Civil Service Commission, Electoral Commission, Judicial Service Commission, National Defense Council, National Economic Council, National Population Commission, National Security Council, and Police Service Commission. The ones for the states are the Civil Service Commission, Council of Chiefs, Electoral Commission, and Judicial Service Commission. The Fourth Schedule delineates the functions of a local government council. The Fifth Schedule lays down the code of conduct for public officers, along with a battery of public officials from the President through state and local government personnel, subject to the code, complete with the establishment of a Code of Conduct Bureau and a Code of Conduct Tribunal. The Sixth Schedule deals with oaths of offices, complete with templates of such oaths. There are six such templates: oath of allegiance to the country, for the president, state governors, Vice President, deputy governors, ministers and commissioners, members of the National Assembly and State Assemblies, and judicial oath. Finally to the chapters, Chapter I modestly titled “General Provisions,” contained momentous provisions that the title masks. The ones that stand out are those pertaining to the supremacy of the document—in the ordinary scheme of things, analogizable to the expansive powers of the national government as the governmental level that speaks for all Nigerians irrespective of their subnational affiliations. The document forbids any person or group of persons from seizing control of the country’s government or any part of that government in a manner inconsistent with the charter document’s provisions.149 This is a provision constitutional scholars praise as the “anti-coup” clause, bearing in mind the widespread intervention of the military in the country’s body politic in the thirteen years prior to the adoption of this constitution.150 Another is the

149 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, note 145, art. 1(2). 150 See E. Remi Aiyede, “Democratic Security Sector Governance and Military Reform

in Nigeria,” in Learning from West African Experiences in Security Sector Governance, eds., A. Bryden and F. Chappuis (London: Ubiquity Press, 2015), 97–116.

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stipulation to the effect that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign state[.]”.151 Chapter II focuses on the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy. Grouped under categories, such as political, educational, and economic, these objectives and principles seemingly obligate “all organs of government, and […] all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive, or judicial powers, to conform to, observe[,] or apply the provisions of this chapter of this Constitution.”152 The provisions that stand out include: the obligation for the state to “foster a feeling of belonging and of involvement among the various people[s] of the Federation[,]”153 “abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power[,]”154 “guarantee the independence, impartiality, and integrity of courts of law,” and secure easy accessibility to these courts,155 provide affordable healthcare for all within the country,156 provide “equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels,”157 and ensure that the composition of the national government or of agencies of that government and conduct of their affairs should “reflect the federal character of Nigeria […] ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State[s] or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”158 Other obligations are: to promote “planned and balanced economic development” throughout the country, operate the economic system to prevent concentration of wealth in a few hands or groups; as well as to provide decent and affordable shelter, livable wages, unemployment, retirement and related social protection benefits,159 among others. The problem with these highminded objectives and principles that look like obligations is that they are not; instead, they are simply aspirations that are non-justiciable in 151 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, note 145, art. 2(1). 152 Ibid., art. 13. 153 Ibid., art. 15(1)(5). 154 Ibid., art. 17(1)(e). 155 Ibid., art. 17(1)(d). 156 Ibid., art. 18(1). 157 Ibid., art. 14(1)(3). 158 Ibid., art. 14(3). See also ibid., art. 14(4) (enjoining the same doctrine on state

and local governments). 159 Ibid., art. 16(1(2)(a)–(d).

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the sense that citizens cannot sue for remedies when governments violate them as is often the case in Nigeria.160 Chapter III deals with the rights of citizenship. One provision that stands out is the stipulation that a Nigerian who acquires the citizenship of another country will “forfeit” his or her Nigerian citizenship.161 Chapter IV deals with fundamental (basic) rights of citizen, no different from the 1963 Constitution, including the role of the judiciary in protecting these rights, all the way down to legal aid. Chapter V deals with the legislative branch, both national and state, including the establishment of the twochamber National Assembly, the procedure for summoning and dissolving it, qualifications for membership, and revenue powers. Chapter VI focuses on the executive branch, both national and state, including the establishment of the Office of President and governor at the state level, the establishment of certain national executive bodies and their counterparts at the state level, issues relating to public revenue, and federal institutions like the Nigeria Police, national armed forces, as well as political parties. Chapter VII deals with the judicial branch, denominated judicature, both national and state, including the three levels of national courts (High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court), state courts, state Sharia Court of Appeal, and State Customary Court of Appeal. Chapter VIII is devoted to the Federal Capital Territory and miscellaneous provisions. The 1999 Constitution This constitution inaugurated Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.162 The Second Republic lasted only four years from 1979 until 1983 when the military intervened again in Nigerian politics. What was missing in the period from 1983 until 1999, totaling 16 years, was a projected Third Republic under General Ibrahim Babangida that became stillborn because his regime annulled the elections, held June 12, 1993, designed to 160 See Femi Falana, “Making Chapter II of the Constitution Justiciable,” This Day

(Lagos) (March 2, 2022), https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2022/03/02/mak ing-chapter-ii-of-the-constitution-justiciable. 161 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, note 145, art. 26(1). 162 For a text of this high law, see Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,

1999, Constitute Project, https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Nigeria_1999. pdf.

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usher in that Third Republic.163 Babangida justified the annulment on irregularities (vote buying), as well as on the need to protect the country’s judiciary.164 The real reason was the military leadership’s uneasiness about a power shift to a Yoruba man outside the preferred Hausa-Fulani hegemonic group.165 The fallouts surrounding the annulment forced Babangida to resign in August, leaving power in the hands of a transition government, headed by a Yoruba businessman, that he hastily assembled.166 Pressured by public opinion within and outside the country to hand power to elected civilian authorities, the Babangida regime repeatedly moved the date: from 1992 through January 1993 to August 27, 1993.167 Almost section by section, the 1999 Constitution is, to use a Nigerian pre-digital vocabulary, “carbon copy” of the 1979 Constitution. This charter contains 320 articles organized into 8 chapters, plus a preamble and attachment of seven schedules, compared to 279 articles in equally eight chapters plus a preamble and six schedules of its 1979 counterpart. The new material, missing in the 1979 charter, is Schedule VI pertaining to election tribunals: for the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly, as well as for the Governorship elections. To give a sense of the similarities, there was the usual preamble to the effect that “We the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria […] firmly and solemnly resolve[] […] to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible

163 See text of his speech, see Foundation for Investigative Journalism, “Full Text of

Ibrahim Babangida’s 1993 Annulment Speech” (June 12, 2023), https://fij.ng/article/ flashback-full-text-of-ibrahim-babangidas-1993-annulment-speech/. 164 See ibid. See also Claude E. Welch, “Civil-Military Agonies in Nigeria: Pains of an

Unaccomplished Transition,” Armed Forces & Society, 21(4) (July 1, 1995), 593–614; and Ian Campbell, “Nigeria: The Election That Never Was,” Democratization, 1(2) (1994), 309–322. 165 Ian Campbell, “Nigeria’s Failed Transition: The 1993 Presidential Election,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 12(2) (1994), 179–199. 166 See Associated Press, “Nigerian Military Dictator Steps Down, Installs Interim Regime,” Los Angeles Times (August 27, 1993), https://www.latimes.com/archives/laxpm-1993-08-27-mn-28537-story.html. 167 “How Nigeria’s Third Republic Failed in 1993,” Historyville (July 25, 2022), https://www.thehistoryville.com/nigerias-third-republic/; and Peter M. Lewis, “Endgame in Nigeria? The Politics of a Failed Democratic Transition,” African Affairs, 93(372) (July 1994), 323–340.

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and indissoluble sovereign nation under God […].”168 Reinforcing this provision, the same constitution contained, within its very first articles, the statement to the effect that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble Sovereign State to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”169 Also within the mix is the anti-coup stipulation to the effect that “[t]he Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the Government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.”170 A striking difference between these two documents is that, whereas the 1979 Constitution underwent the approval of a Constituent Assembly after the Constitution Drafting Committee completed its work, the 1999 Constitution lacked these popular inputs.171 This deficiency took place despite the fact that, unlike the 1979 Constitution, there was a longer period of military rule, 16 years, compared to 13 for the first stretch of military dictatorship, preceding this constitution. A second major difference relates to the growth in the number of states in the country. This document gave its imprimatur to the 36-state structure which replaced the nineteen states under the Second Republic in 1979, twenty years before.172

The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Nigeria Recall the definition of constitutional engineering and its connection with politics laid out in Chapter 3 on Ethiopia.173 Based on that formulation, Table 4.3 presents the major political figures involved in some of

168 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, note 162, preamble. 169 Ibid., art. 2(1). 170 Ibid., art. 1(2). For an elaboration of this provision, see note 150 and accompanying

text. 171 See Jacob O. Arowosegbe, “Revisiting the Legitimacy Question of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution,” Global Constitutionalism, 11(1) (March 2022), 27–54. 172 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, note 162, art. 3(1). 173 See Chapter 3, notes 237–238 and accompanying texts.

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the steps, whether drafting, adoption, or implementation of constitutional documents in Nigeria. Many key institutions of Nigerian life were adopted during the era of two long stretches of authoritarian military regimes in the country from 1966 until 1983 and from 1983 until 1999. Between these two stretches, in the postcolonial period, Nigerians lived under military regimes for over 29 years, nearly one full generation. These institutions include the partition of the country, its boundaries unchanged, into 36 states, plus a federal capital territory by 1996—from a modest four in 1963 until 1966, and the relocation in 1991 of the country’s capital city from Lagos to Abuja. It is possible, as some commentators have surmised, that the military is the only national institution in Nigeria that can muster the consensus, Table 4.3 Parade of Nigerian leaders and the constitutions they are associated with Item no.

Name of leader

Period in office

Constitution(s) associated with

Robustness

1

Murtala Muhammed, and Olusegun Obasanjo Abdulsalami Abubakar Olusegun Obasanjo Musa Shehu Yar’Adua Goodluck Jonathan Muhammadu Buhari

1975–1979

1979 Constitution

Extensive

1998–1999

1999 Constitution 1999 Constitution 1999 Constitution 1999 Constitution 1999 Constitution

Transitional and non-extensive Substantial

2 3 4 5 6

1999–2007 2007–2010 2010–1015 2015–2023

Transitional and non-extensive Non-extensive Non-extensive

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albeit by fiat, for the resolution of contentious national issues.174 Whatever the reason, it is little surprise that, compared to the other two countries under examination in this book, military regimes superintended the preparation of Nigeria’s two latest constitutions, including the move from a federal parliamentary to the federal presidential system. As indicated earlier, even the character of the country’s federalism, including the relocation to a new capital city, changed during military rule. In contrast, there was no military intervention in politics in Cameroon in the overt sense that interference took place in Nigeria. While the military seized power in Ethiopia after Emperor Haile Selassie, that regime under the headship of Mengistu Haile Miriam civilianized itself before it was forced out in 1991,175 something that General Sani Abacha (1993–1998) tried but failed to achieve in Nigeria before his death in office on June 8, 1998.176 For completeness, analysis of constitutional engineering necessarily includes commentary on the political shepherds of the engineering in question. General Yakubu Gowon who ruled the country from 1966 until his overthrow in 1975 reneged on his promise to return the country to civilian rule at the end of the civil war.177 Neither did Babangida whose Third Republic agenda, as we saw, ended with the annulment of the 1993 election which led to his leaving office in August of that year.178 So, like Gowon, there is little constitutional engineering associated with Babangida. Abacha died in office before he could civilianize his regime. The survey leaves us with Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun

174 See generally Toyin Falola et al., The Military Factor in Nigeria, 1966–1985 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin. Mellen Press, 1994) (covering the period to 1985). See also Philip C. Aka and Joseph Abiodun Balogun, Improving Disability Laws Under Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2022), 117–118 (articulating the negative legacy of prolonged military rule related to disability laws in the country). 175 See Chapter 3, notes 86–87 and accompanying texts. 176 See Enemaku Idachaba, “Chronology of Major Political Events in the Abacha Era

(1993–1998),” in Nigeria During the Abacha Years (1993–1998): The Domestic and International Politics of Democratization, eds. ‘Kunle Amuwo, et al. (IFRA-Nigeria, 2001), 341–363. 177 See Dare Babarinsa, “What If Gowon Had Kept His Promise?” Guardian (Lagos) (October 21, 2021), https://guardian.ng/opinion/what-if-gowon-had-kept-hispromise/. 178 See note 166 and accompanying text.

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Obasanjo administration, pertaining to the 1979 constitution,179 and the transitional, holding, administration of Abdulsalami Abubakar from 1998 until May 1999.180 Juxtaposed with the two other countries in our case studies, arguably the most extensive constitutional engineering took place in Nigeria. However, incidentally, much of these changes took place under military tutelage and idiosyncrasies.

Biafra 1: 1967–1970 Biafra is the name of the region that strove unsuccessfully to secede from Nigeria from 1967 to 1970; these were the years of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafra War or Nigeria’s war over Biafra.181 The leader of Biafra and the face of the self-determination movement was General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.182 Ojukwu was appointed governor of Eastern Nigeria by General Johnson T. Aguiyi-Ironsi on January 17, 1966,183 in the wake of the first military coup in the country elaborated upon later in this discussion. He was sworn-in on June 10, 1967, as Biafran Head of State by Louis N. Mbanefo, Chief Justice of Biafra.184 At the end of the war, Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire where he lived in exile

179 See “How General Olusegun Obasanjo Americanized Nigeria in 1979,” Historyville (May 30, 2022), https://www.thehistoryville.com/olusegun-obasanjo-americani zed-nigeria/. 180 See “Abubakar’s Transition to Civilian Rule,” Global Security, https://www.global security.org/military/world/nigeria/history-06.htm; and Ogidan P. Damilola, University of Lagos, “Military Disengagement from Politics in Nigeria: General Abdulsalami Abubakar and the Short Transition,” Word Press (October 23, 2012), https://greent hesis.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/military-disengagement-from-politics-in-nigeria-gen eral-abdulsalami-abubakar-and-the-short-transition/. 181 The phrase “Nigeria’s war over Biafra” comes from Mark Curtis, “Nigeria’s War Over Biafra, 1967–70,” in Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, ed. Mark Curtis (New York: Vintage Books, 2004). 182 “Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian Military Leader and Politician,” Encyclopedia Britannica. 183 Ibid. 184 See Samuel Fury Childs Daly, A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and

the Nigerian Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1.

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until his pardon and return to Nigeria on May 18, 1982.185 Côte d’Ivoire was one of five countries in the world to officially recognize Biafra, the others being Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia in Africa and Haiti outside the continent.186 Ojukwu died in November 2011.187 The typical self-determination scenario is one in which a nongovernmental group seeks to exercise this right in the manner of claims against an existing state; the other, the one here involved, is an instance where a self-determination movement also doubles as a government. Given the setting here, one conceivable way to approach the campaign for Igbo self-determination during this period which the Nigerian civil war parallels is by analyzing the war as it relates to the Igbo, the major ethnic group in Biafra, specifically the causes and courses of the war, its unmitigated brutality, and the immediate aftermaths of the war. To back off a bit, there are commentators who will consider the bifurcation made in this Chapter between Biafra 1 and Biafra 2 as artificial because for them the two time periods are seamless. That would be the case with analysts who, for some reason, consider the period since the end of the civil war as a continuation of the war by other means. Thus, in its petition to the panel investigating human rights violations, the Oputa Panel, that General Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007) set up, Oha-Na-Eze Ndi-Igbo, an Igbo

185 See Raphael James, “18 June 1982: Ojukwu’s Return to Nigeria from Exile,” The News (Lagos) (June 18, 2020), https://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2020/06/18/18-june1982-ojukwus-return-to-nigeria-from-exile/; and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Because I Am Involved (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books, 1989), 66–67. 186 See Ryan Hurst, “Republic of Biafra (1967–1970),” Black Past (June 21, 2009), https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/republic-biafra-1967-1970/. The stress on official recognition is justified by the fact that other countries gave recognition to Biafra short of formal recognition. These include: France, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), South Africa, and the Vatican. Ibid. The Biafrans also received aid from non-state actors, such as the Joint Church Aid, foreign mercenaries, Holy Ghost Fathers of Ireland, Caritas Internationalis, and U.S. Catholic Relief Services. See Enda Staunton, “The Forgotten War” (Autumn 2000), reprinted in History Ireland (2018), https://web.archive.org/web/20180122072543/http://www.historyir eland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-forgotten-war/; and “Nigerian Civil War,” New World Encyclopedia, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nigerian_ Civil_War (“Stalemate”). 187 See Robert D. McFadden, “Odumegwu Ojukwu, Breakaway Biafra Leader, Dies at 78,” New York Times (November 26, 2011), https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/ world/africa/odumegwu-ojukwu-leader-of-breakaway-republic-of-biafra-dies-at-78.html.

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sociocultural group, covered 1966 until 1999,188 although this was also the time specified in the Commission’s terms of reference. True to this reminder, the many ghosts from the civil war still haunt Nigeria and its diverse peoples because the nation-building inequities from the colonial period that led to the conflict were left unaddressed by the leaders, most of whom were soldiers who fought in the war,189 and the promises of rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation these leaders made after the war were not kept,190 as the discussion below makes clear. These ghosts from Biafra 1 shaped the strategies of the protagonists of Biafra 2, including the decision to conduct the self-determination campaign this time around peacefully and nonviolently. However, as the discussion below makes clear, the decision did not change the violent response to the campaigns by the Nigerian national government and its security forces. Keenly mindful of these caveats, the bifurcation made in this Chapter is a non-sharp one designed solely to facilitate analysis. Causes and Courses of the War All wars are a function of the interplay of a medley of remote and immediate forces. The Nigerian civil war was no different. Dating back to the colonial period, Igbo have been victims of vicious, unprovoked, attacks. Staying with the post-independence period, the succession of “remote” factors which contributed to bringing the war included the persistent troubles and violence in the Western Region, controversies over the accuracy of census figures, a devastating workers’ general strike in June 1964, and a dispute over the electoral irregularities that marred the conduct of the 1964 general elections.191 The immediate cause which triggered 188 See Oha-Na-Eze Ndi-Igbo, The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndigbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999): A Call for Reparations and Appropriate Restitution: A Petition to the Human Rights Violations Investigating Committee (Onitsha, Nigeria: Snaap Press, 2002). 189 See Max Siollun, “Nigeria Is Haunted by Its Civil War,” New York Times (January 15, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/opinion/nigeria-civil-waranniversary.html. 190 Gordi Udeajah, “Failure of Gowon’s Three Rs, Cause of Separatist Groups,” Guardian (Lagos) (June 8, 2017), https://guardian.ng/politics/failure-of-gowons-threers-cause-of-separatist-groups/. 191 See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 206.

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the war were the pogrom (unjustified mass killings) of an estimated 100,000 Easterners, most of them Igbo, in non-Eastern portions of the country, particularly Northern Nigeria.192 The pogrom followed a bloody military coup in January 1966,193 that many northerners inaccurately accused the Igbo of masterminding.194 The killings overlapped with a retaliatory counter-coup in July 1966 involving the murder of hundreds of Igbo military officers, including the Head of State, General AguiyiIronsi, who appointed Ojukwu as military governor of Eastern Nigeria.195 “The counter-coup practically wiped out the officer corps of Igbos in the Nigerian army.”196

192 See G.N. Uzoigwe, “The Igbo Genocide, 1966: Where is the Outrage?” http:// www.untref.edu.ar/documentos/ceg/25%20G%20N%20UZOIGWE.pdf; and Osaghae, note 136, p. 63 (putting the number at 80,000–100,000, not counting “several thousands more wounded”). 193 See Max Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture (1966– 1976) (New York: Algora Publishing, 2009), 237; and Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. 124. 194 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, 192–94, n. 164 (marshaling four reasons, two of which are that it is “inconceivable that Igbos would mastermind a coup to overthrow a government that was headed as President by one of their own Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe,” and that the coup plotters “desired to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba leader, then doing time in prison for the treasonable felony of plotting to overthrow the government, and make him Prime Minister. An Igboinspired coup designed to assert Igbo domination of the country would not be making a Yoruba Prime Minister”). The allegation about an Igbo coup was ironic because the Igbo who participated in the coup feared a possible disintegration of the country. See Ryan Hurst, “Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970),” Black Past (May 20, 2009), https://www.bla ckpast.org/global-african-history/nigerian-civil-war-1967-1970/. However, the intervention triggered suspicion about Igbo domination from the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba, resulting in the bloodier countercoup six months later. Ibid. 195 This helps explain why one Igbo group in a reparation and restitution petition to the Nigerian government in 1979 called the northern reaction to the coup of January 1966 as unjustified and unwarranted “misplaced aggression” against the Igbo. See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 195, citing Oha-na-Eze Ndi-Igbo, The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria, 1966–1999: A Call for Reparations and Appropriate Restitution (1999), p. 10. 196 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 193.

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In view of this ghastliness, many Igbo see the resultant civil war as a continuation of the pogrom in 1966,197 what one writer succinctly time-lined the “harrowing days of January 1966-January 1970.”198 Igbo resolve to leave Nigeria thickened in the wake of the mass killings. In the account of one historian, “Before September [1966], only a small minority had advocated secession. After September, it was probably the wish of the majority.”199 And in the language of one Biafran government statement, “[l]iving together with Northerners had been intolerable from the beginning: By the end of 1966[,] it had become impossible.”200 Igbo and their fellow Eastern Nigerians felt they were leaving a country that no longer wanted them.201 As Julius Nyerere advised in a statement extending Tanzania’s recognition of Biafra in April 1968, a rejected people “must have the right to live under a different kind of arrangement which […] secure[s] their existence.”202 Two governments emerged in Nigeria during the period in question: the Nigerian regime in Lagos under General Yakubu Gowon, which replaced the government of General Aguiyi-Ironsi, versus the Eastern Nigerian government under General Ojukwu, headquartered in Enugu, which did not recognize the new government in Lagos.203 A hardening of positions took place between the two sides, both of which traded

197 Chukwuma J. Obiagwu, Adventures of Ojemba: The Chronicle of Igbo People (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2008), 88 (“The war started as soon as the coup failed in 1966[,] but Igbos started fighting back only after May 29, 1967”). 198 Henry C. Onyema, “Biafra on My Mind,” PM News (Lagos) (June 3, 2015), https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/06/03/biafra-on-my-mind/. 199 Isichei, A History of the Igbo People, note 74, p. 246. 200 Biafran Memorandum Circulated to Heads of State at OAU (September 1967),

in Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 198. 201 Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. 8 (recounting the Eastern Nigerian position that “Biafra did not secede: Biafra was pushed out”). 202 Julius K. Nyerere, statement reprinted in Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 2, note 7, p. 209. He opined that “every people must have some place in the world where they are not liable to be rejected by their fellow citizens.” Nyerere, “Why We Recognized Biafra,” reprinted in ibid., p. 211. 203 See Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. 392; and C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafra: Selected Speeches and Random Thoughts of C. Odumegwu Ojukwu (NY: Harper & Row, 1969), 157.

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unfriendly charges and recriminations at each other.204 Attempts at peace talks within the country failed to break this polarization. A last-ditch peace conference at Aburi, Ghana, in January 1967, held at the instance of the Ghana government at which the parties hammered out an agreement for a loose confederal government, in-between the full independence the Biafrans craved and the reintegration into Nigeria that the Lagos government demanded,205 failed to head off the conflict. This was because, upon its return to Lagos, the Nigerian delegation refused to implement the agreements because General Yakubu Gowon unilaterally ruled them out as “unworkable.”206 Until the war broke out, the refrain within the Eastern Nigeria government was “On Aburi We Stand.”207 The agreements had ramifications for self-determination that Nigeria missed. In addition to the possibility of averting a brutal civil war, it had the potential for decentralization and devolution of powers with ramifications for self-determination down the nation-building road that Nigeria let slip through its fingers.

204 For example, the Gowon regime in Lagos accused the Igbo of being “militantly chauvinistic,” creating “apprehension in the minds of others,” while the Eastern Nigeria government accused the Lagos regime controlled by Hausa-Fulani of nursing the mindset that “there can be no peace […] in Nigeria unless the country is ruled and dominated by the North.” Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. 13. 205 The two-day meeting took place January 4–5, 1967. It was hosted by General

Joseph A. Ankrah, then Ghana Head of State, and attended by Gowon, Ojukwu, all the military governors of the regions, and top civil servants, both from the federal side and the Eastern Region. Key issues covered in the agenda included reorganization of the armed forces, agreement on a new constitutional order, and the welfare of displaced persons, including the more than 2 million Igbo and other Easterners who fled the pogroms of 1966. See Nowamagbe Austin Omoigui, “Final Aburi Communique,” http://www.daw odu.com/aburi1.htm; and Eric Teniola, “How Aburi Conference Failed,” Sun (Lagos) (November 12, 2017), https://sunnewsonline.com/how-aburi-conference-failed/. 206 Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, pp. 306–310 (quoting a broadcast by General Gowon). The official records of the minutes of the meeting at Aburi are reprinted in ibid., pp. 315–340. 207 See

C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, “On Aburi We Stand: Broadcast” (February 25, 1967), https://www.google.com/books/edition/On_Aburi_We_Stand/n6EMAQ AAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover (text of a radio broadcast by General Ojukwu) (“The survival of this country […] hinge[s] on the implementation of the Aburi agreements. […] Fellow countrymen and women, on Aburi we stand. There will be no compromise”).

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In addition to breaching the Aburi Accords, General Gowon subsequently proceeded to carve the country into twelve states,208 without consulting the Eastern Nigerian government. The division included a split of the Ojukwu-governed Eastern Region into three parts.209 It was in this context that, on May 27, 1967, the Eastern Nigeria Consultative Assembly, a legislature of sorts, passed a Resolution mandating General Ojukwu to declare Eastern Nigeria independent as the Republic of Biafra “at the earliest practicable date.”210 Ojukwu followed through with a Declaration three days later, on May 30, 1967.211 The Declaration “totally dissolved all political ties between” Easterners, thenceforth known as Biafrans, “and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”212 The Nigerian government responded to the secession with an invasion denominated “surgical police action” on July 6, 1967, to quash what it considered “Ojukwu’s rebellion.”213 In June 1967, in response to the declaration, the Nigerian national government placed an embargo on the shipping of goods to and from Biafra, excluding oil tankers.214 Thus began the Biafra War.215 Outnumbered in soldiers and arms by 208 See radio broadcast announcing the new states in Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflicts

in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, 444–449. 209 Ibid. 210 See Resolution in Ojukwu, Biafra, note 203, pp. 191–192. The Assembly

comprised the Chiefs, Elders, and Representatives of all the twenty provinces of Eastern Nigeria, assembled in a “Joint Meeting of the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders and the Consultative Assembly.” Ibid., p. 191. In choosing the name Biafra, Eastern Nigerians took a name from their past. See Ojukwu, Ahiara Declaration, note 7 (explaining that “[f]rom the moment we assumed the illustrious name of the ancient kingdom of Biafra, we were rediscovering the original independence of a great people”). 211 For a text of the declaration, see Ojukwu, Biafra, note 203, pp. 192–196, or “(1967) Biafra’s Declaration of Independence,” Black Past (May 30, 2019), https:// www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1967-biafras-declaration-of-independence/. 212 Ojukwu, Biafra, note 203, pp. 192–196. Ojukwu said the Declaration was informed by certain principles, including an “[a]ware[ness] that [they] can no longer be protected in [their] lives and in [their] property by any Government based outside Eastern Nigeria,” the “belie[f] that [they] are born free and have certain inalienable rights which can best be preserved by [themselves],” and an “[u]nwilling[ness] to be unfree partners in any association” of any coloration, political or economic. Ibid. 213 See Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. 111. 214 Solomon Elusoji, “Timeline: Biafra War in Key Dates” (Updated January 14, 2020),

https://www.channelstv.com/2020/01/14/timeline-biafra-war-in-key-dates/. 215 See Hurst, “Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970),” note 194.

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the Nigerian military, supplied by Britain and the then Soviet Union, the Biafrans were not ready for war.216 Therefore, General Gowon anticipated a quick victory.217 However, that did not turn out to be the case; instead, the war went on for 30 months until January 15, 1970, when it ended following the final collapse of the Biafran resistance.218 In the words of General Philip Effiong, Ojukwu’s second-in-command, Biafrans “accept the authority of the federal military Government of Nigeria,” along with the “existing administrative and political structure of the” country, under the belief that “any future constitutional arrangement will [be] worked out by representatives of the people of Nigeria.”219 A discussion of the numerous military operations on both sides involved in the war is outside the scope of this book.220 Suffice it to say

216 Ntieyoung U. Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 1966–1970: A Personal Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 2d. Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 89–106. See also Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (New York: Penguin Press, 2012) (“Biafra had only 2,000 troops at the beginning of the war”). 217 Faced by unanticipated resistance from the Biafrans, the war goals of the national government changed with the progression of the war: from “[a] short, surgical police action,” to “total war,” to “final offensive.” See Nowa Omoigui, “Federal Nigerian Army Blunders of the Nigerian Civil War, Part 2,” Nigerian Civil War File, https:/web.archive.org/web/20071204163202/http://www.dawodu.com:80/ omoigui25.html; and Stanley Meisler, “Nigeria and Biafra,” The Atlantic (October 1969), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/10/nigeria-and-biafra/660429/. 218 General Yakubu Gowon, “The Dawn of National Reconciliation” (January 15, 1970), in Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 2, note 7, pp. 457– 461 (“The tragic chapter of violence is just ended. We are at the dawn of national reconciliation. Once again, we have an opportunity to build a new nation. […]. There is no question of second[-]class citizenship in Nigeria”). 219 “Text of Biafran Surrender,” New York Times (January 16, 1970), 13. See also Graham B. Kerr, Collector, “Historical Note, Republic of Biafra Collection, circa 1968– 1970,” Emory University, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Atlanta, GA 30322, https://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/biafra1335/#descri ptive_summary (“due to fighting or from famine, Biafran forces agreed to a ceasefire with the Nigerian government and were reintegrated into Nigeria”). 220 For a sample of the many books published on the war, see, for example, Akpan, note 216; John J. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967– 1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015 [1977]) (focusing on the external forces that played a major role in fomenting the war); John de St. Jorre, The Brothers’ War: Biafra and Nigeria (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972); Zdenek Cervenka, The Nigerian War, 1967–1970 (Bonn, Germany: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1971); Frederick Forsyth, The Biafra Story: The Making of An African Legend (Westminster, London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969); Philip Effiong, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story (New York:

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that the four rounds of pogrom of 1966,221 and the resultant exodus of about 2 million Igbo from northern Nigeria alone who sought safety in Eastern Nigeria turned Biafra into a region of people “impoverished from top to bottom.”222 By 1969, at the height of the war, nearly 6 million internally displaced persons existed in Eastern Nigeria.223 A “Cruel War” Historians rank the Biafra War as “the bloodiest civil war of the twentieth century,”224 as well as “the biggest, best weaponed, bloodiest war in the whole history of Black Africa.”225 In defending Tanzania’s recognition of Biafra, Julius K. Nyerere, President of Tanzania from 1964 until 1985, berated the conflict as a “cruel war.”226 It was “three years of fighting, famine[,] and disease,”227 where millions of Biafrans died, most from starvation because of the land, sea, and air blockades imposed on them,228 backed by a British government determined to protect its African Tree Press, 2007); Alexander A. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980); On the internal struggles within Biafra during the war, see Bernard Odogwu, No Place to Hide: Crisis and Conflict Inside Biafra (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1985). 221 Uzoigwe, note 192. The four were: May 29, July 29, September 29, and October 29, all in 1966. Ibid. 222 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in the New Century,” note 74, p. 193, n. 170, quoting Stanley Diamond, “Who Killed Biafra,” New York Review of Books (February 26, 1970), 14. 223 Conor Cruise O’Brien, “Biafra Revisited,” New York Review of Books (May 22, 1969), 15–23. 224 Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 1, note 10, p. vii. 225 Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria, Vol. 2, note 7, p. 462. 226 President Julius Nyerere, quoted in de St. Jorre, note 220, p. 193 (positing that

“the breakup of Nigeria is a terrible thing, but it is less terrible than the cruel war”). 227 Rosa Davis, “Biafran Lessons,” The Guardian (London) (September 14, 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/08/biafranlessons. 228 The Nigerian Navy also established a sea blockade that besides weapons, included denial of food, and medical supplies. Between 3000 to 5000 people died daily the result of starvation from the naval blockade. Hurst, “Nigerian Civil War,” note 190. Nobody knows for sure precisely how many people died in Biafra. Different analysts give different figures, some as high as 3.5 people. See, for example, Philip C. Aka, “Human Rights as Conflict Resolution in Africa in the New Century,” Tulsa Journal of Comparative & International Law, 11(1) (Fall 2003), 179, 180, quoting Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe. Mark Curtis put the

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interests in Nigeria,229 and Soviet-Russia then angling for a communist foothold in Black Africa’s foremost capitalist country. Millions more were also maimed and rendered homeless and destitute, not including victims of the pogroms in 1966 in the lead-up to the war.230 All this took place while the US government took a backseat to Britain as Nigeria’s former colonial overlord, preoccupied by the events of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.231 While in Ethiopia the campaign for self-determination waged by Eritrea went on for nearly 30 years, in Nigeria, the conflict over Biafra lasted 30 months. Adding the period of the pogrom from the summer of 1966 would extend that period of self-determination to 42 months or three and a half years, far below the near-30 years of the selfdetermination struggle in Eritrea turned into warfare. Speaking to the number as “between one and three million deaths.” Curtis, note 175, p. 1. But one million will be an overly conservative number. Relief workers in Biafra estimated that by summer 1968, “6,000 people—mainly children and women—were dying daily.” Hugh McCullum, “Biafra Was the Beginning,” Africa Files (September 14, 2016), http:// www.africafiles.org/printableversion.asp?id=5549. Another writer, Dan Jacobs, in his work instructively titled “the brutality of nations,” observed that by 1968, 12,000 persons a day, mostly children, were dying while Red Cross access to Biafra was hampered by Nigerians supported by the British, who hoped that a Nigerian victory would secure their oil and other interests. Dan Jacob, Brutality of Nations (New York: Knopf, 1987). Let’s stay with the conservatively lower 6,000 deaths. Multiplying that number by 365 days yields 2.19 million deaths in just one year for a war that went on for close to three years. Bear in mind that the Biafran armed forces was mostly volunteer, with little training and equipment, compared to the regular, much-better equipped Nigerian federal forces. Little wonder why the Nigerian side recorded a much lesser casualty of about 100,000 people. See Noo Saro-Wiwa, review of Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, note 216, Guardian (London) (September 14, 2016), http://www.guardian. co.uk/books/20012/Oct/05/chinua-achebe-there-was-a-country. 229 See Mark Curtis, “How Britain’s Labor Government Facilitated the Massacre of Biafrans in Nigeria—To Protect Its Oil Interests,” Declassified UK (April 29, 2020), https://declassifieduk.org/how-britains-labour-government-facilitated-the-mas sacre-of-biafrans-in-nigeria-to-protect-its-oil-interests/. See also “Biafra War,” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/biafra.htm (explaining how the Soviet Union became an important source of military equipment for Nigeria). As this source elaborated, “Modern Soviet-built warplanes, flown by Egyptian and British pilots, interdicted supply flights and inflicted heavy casualties during raids on Biafran urban centers.” Ibid. For its part, “[i]n line with its policy of noninvolvement, the United States prohibited the sale of military goods to either side while continuing to recognize the” Nigerian national government. Ibid. 230 See notes 221–222 and accompanying texts. 231 On the Civil Rights Movement, see note 302 below, and accompanying text.

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brutality of Nigeria’s war over Biafra,232 Ethiopia lost far fewer people than the number who perished in Biafra: 1.4 million people during the War of Independence in Eritrea and 600,000 in the Tigray War,233 compared to an estimated 3.5 million people dead in Biafra who sought legitimately to exercise their right to self-determination. More people died in Biafra than the US lost in all the conflicts it has fought in its entire history, including the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865.234 The economic and educational consequences were equally disastrous. The Biafran economy, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world before the war, was in shambles with many cities and villages in ruins, as well as the destruction of countless schools, hospitals, and communication facilities.235 Regarding education, with the destruction of schools and other educational resources and with many students joining the war effort as child soldiers, the losses were incalculable for Easterners notable for their educational achievements emerging from British colonialism.236 In his speech in 1969 in Ahiara, at the height of the hardships in Biafra,237 Ojukwu identified the Biafra War as “a war which threatens

232 See generally Jacob, note 228 (positing that greater coordination of efforts between

private agencies under international conventions could more effectively combat the inertia and genocidal policies of nations.) Jacob contended that supplies for the starving Biafran refugees during the Nigerian civil war were impeded by major nations, notably Britain. He posited that both Britain and the US feared that a weakened Nigeria would encourage a Soviet presence in West Africa. He proposed greater coordination of efforts between private agencies under international conventions aimed to promote humanitarian relief and prevent genocide. Ibid. 233 See Chapter 3, notes 358 (Eritrea) and notes 413–414 (Tigray), together with accompanying texts. 234 For one statistics of US war casualties, see Patrick T. Reardon, “As Bodies Pile Up, Support Can Slip,” Chicago Tribune (March 30, 2003), 8. 235 Curtis, “Nigeria’s War Over Biafra,” note 181. 236 See Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann, 1983),

46 (juxtaposing Igbo achievement with the Yoruba’s); and Isichei, A History of the Igbo People, note 74, p. 185 (observing that from 1958 to 1959, the self-governing Eastern Nigerian government invested over 40 percent of its revenue on education). 237 On June 26, 1968, the Biafra government released a “Charge to Humanity” statement outlining the deteriorating situation in Biafra and soliciting the support of the international community. And on July 12, 1968, Life magazine published in New York City, released an edition where Biafran children appear on the cover with the headline “Starving Children of Biafra War.” Elusoji, note 214.

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[Biafrans] with total destruction.”238 Biafra was the first war in recent memory where hunger was used as a weapon of war.239 In Biafra, the Nigerian government fomented what the US politician Senator McCarthy decried as “[a] strategy of siege” designed to produce a military victory that has instead “produced massive starvation unparalleled in modern warfare.”240 Biafra was a war that the Nigerian government and its allies waged “to overwhelm and destroy the corporate ability of [Biafrans] to resist an aggression triggered” by the horrific massacres of 1966,241 the latest in a range of unprovoked killings dating back to 1946 under the watchful eyes of British colonial rule. An estimated one-third of the Igbo population at the time perished in the war.242 In its surpassing egregiousness, the war “revealed[,] for the first time[,] the true depth of incompatibility of the four partners [the Hausa/Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba] in the Nigerian federation.”243 Two Silver Linings from the Biafra War An overriding lesson of the Biafra War for Nigeria and the international community is that “no people should be deprived of their humanity.”244 In a world marked by global interdependence, injustice in one place is a threat to justice everywhere.245 Two silver linings from the war tied to

238 Ojukwu, Ahiara Declaration, note 7. He elaborated that “defenseless [Biafrans]” had been targeted “with a vast array of military hardware of a sophistication unknown to Africa. For two years we have withstood his [the enemy’s] assault with nothing other than our stout hearts and bare hands.” Ibid. Such was the tightness of the blockade that the Nigerian central government imposed on Biafra that it regarded flying in fuel and foreign journalists as acts of war against it. Staunton, note 188. 239 James F. Phillips, “Biafra at 50 and the Birth of Emergency Public Health,” American Journal of Public Health, 108(6) (June 2018), 731–733 [Editorial]. 240 McCarthy, “Speech Urging American Intervention,” note 7, p. 402. 241 Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Obasanjo’s Obsession with Biafra Versus Facts of History,”

US Africa Online (last visited July 8, 2004), http://www.usafricaonline.com/ekweekwe. biafra.html. 242 Ibid. 243 Peter Baxter, Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Warwick, UK: Helion

and Company, revised and expanded edition, 2019), book’s back cover. 244 Onyema, note 198. 245 Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” African Studies Center,

University of Pennsylvania (April 16, 1963), https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/ Letter_Birmingham.html (“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are

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the thrust of this book revolved around harmonizing the tension between sovereignty and self-determination are the Ahiara Declaration, and the improved international responses to humanitarian emergencies that the war engendered. The Ahiara Declaration In defending their rights to self-determination following the failure of the Aburi Accords, Biafrans reasoned that they left Nigeria out of a decision that “exercis[ing] [their] inalienable right to self-determination [i]s [their] only remaining hope for survival as a people.”246 Specifically, they viewed the struggle to maintain their own state as not just a resistance, but also as a “positive commitment to build a healthy, dynamic[,] and progressive state, such as would be the pride of black [people] the world over.”247 Prepared by a team of intellectuals headed by the renowned novelist Chinua Achebe, the speech famously known as the Ahiara Declaration was delivered by General Ojukwu on June 1, 1969, in Ahiara, a little-known city in present-day Imo State, that the declaration afterward made famous. Issued more than two years since the birth of Biafra, the speech expounded the principles of the Biafran revolution, keeping in mind the bounded sense in which Ojukwu used the term “revolution.”248 It was an address wherein, sketching “the character and structure of the new society,” Ojukwu spelled out the things that set Biafra apart from Nigeria.249 In all, it was a story embedded in “a total and vehement rejection of all those evils which blighted Nigeria.”250 Assessing Nigeria’s independence as “a lie,” Ojukwu urged Biafrans to “reject Nigerianism in all its guises.”251 Most pertinently, Biafra signified

caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”). 246 Ojukwu, Ahiara Declaration, note 7. 247 Ibid. 248 Instructively, the document’s definition of a revolution is guardedly limited and pragmatic. It is as “a forward movement […] which improves a people’s standard of living and their material circumstance and purifies and raises their moral tone. It transforms for the better those institutions, which are still relevant, and discards those, which stand in the way of progress.” Ibid. 249 Ojukwu, Ahiara Declaration, note 7. 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid.

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a “conception[] of the end and purpose of the modern African state,” distinctly different from Nigeria’s.252 It is a conception embedded in the “conviction that a modern Negro African government worth the trust placed in it by the people, must build a progressive state that ensures the reign of social and economic justice, and of the rule of law.”253 Biafrans are “a non-Muslim island in a raging Islamic sea,” animated not only by a burning desire “to remain free and independent but also to create a new and better order or society for the benefit of all.”254 Therefore, Biafra will be a state that “uphold[s] social justice at all times.”255 Biafra ceased to exist before it had the opportunity to write a constitution. Therefore, many analysts rank this progressive document as the closest to a constitution of the young republic. Though portrayed by some as a work of expediency, “[n]evertheless, not many states have found time and inclination, amid the desperation of a losing way, to debate the nature of the just society, and ways in which it might be attained.”256 The historian Elizabeth Isichei praised the declaration as embodying the hopes and aspirations of many in Africa who saw Biafra as “a first step to establishing a more just society” on the continent.257 To put the matter in its proper perspective, among Nigeria’s major ethnic groups, the Igbo is the only one with experience in running a country amidst an adversity. So, with the message of social justice that it embodied, the Ahiara Declaration is a fraction, albeit an important element, of overall Igbo ingenuity displayed to the world during Biafra. Available evidence showed that the Biafran government was an impressively democratic one that, within the exacting constraints of a ghastly 252 Ibid. 253 Ibid. 254 Ibid. 255 Ibid.

Social justice is giving to each person what he or she is due. The term refers to gestures rooted in the idea that every human being deserves dignity and is entitled to equal opportunity, equal treatment, and equal rights. See “What is Social Justice?” San Diego Foundation (September 24, 2022), https://www.sdfoundation.org/news-events/sdf-news/what-is-social-justice/#:~: text=United%20Nations,National%20Association%20of%20Social%20Workers. Given the centrality of a strong banking system in providing the access to credit facilities necessary for promoting social justice, on January 29, 1968, the Biafran government introduced its own currency separate from Nigeria’s. Elusoji, note 214. 256 Isichei, A History of the Igbo People, note 74, p. 249. 257 Ibid.

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war, respected human rights. In 1968, Time magazine praised Biafra as “a war-time democracy” with a “functioning judiciary, a ministerial executive government and a civil service,” where decisions were frequently made based on the advice of a consultative assembly of elders.258 This contrasted with Nigeria where a military junta held sway, shorn of any veneer of legislative and judicial restraints. The campaign for self-determination marked by Biafra 1 unleashed the untapped creativities of the Igbo. In the compelling reminiscence of General Ojukwu nearly two and a half decades after the war, the campaign sired the transportation of the hitherto hidden technological energies of an African people to the world stage: [W]e remember with pride and hope the three heady years of our freedom. […] In three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years, […] in one heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built bombs, we built rockets, we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets, we guided them far, we guided them accurately. For three years blockaded without hope of imports, we maintained engines, machines[,] and technical equipment. We maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol at the back of their gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport on the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through a telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity, the world heard us and spoke back to us. We built armored cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from trainers to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In three years of freedom[,] we had broken the technological barrier. In three years[,] we became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced black people on earth. We spun nylon yarn, we developed new seeds for food and medicines. […].259

The rocket Ojukwu referred to in the excerpt was the ogbunigwe (Ojukwu bucket), manufactured by the Research and Production Organization of 258 “Nigeria’s Civil War: Hate, Hunger, and the Will to Survive,” Time (August 23, 1968), 20–21. 259 Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, “Nigeria: The Truths Which Are Self-Evident,” Nigeria World (January 15, 2000), http://nigeriaworld.com/feature/speech/ojukwu_arc hives.html.

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Biafra (RAP), part of an incipient indigenous arms industry that was praised as the most effective weapon in the Biafran arsenal.260 RAP was headed by Col. Ejike O. Aghanya (1932–2020).261 The discussion here anticipates the recommendation in Chapter 7 (the blueprints) for agitators for self-determination to go beyond the immediate concerns of their campaign to reflect on building a new society day and night better than the one they seek to exit, beginning with the imperatives of social justice. Improved International Responses to Humanitarian Emergencies The Biafra War was a codeword for a humanitarian disaster.262 Therefore, in addition to thoughts on social justice from the Ahiara Declaration that the conflict contributed to, Biafra also laid the groundwork for better responses to humanitarian emergencies worldwide. It was “the first African war to be televised”263 ; and with the war in Vietnam, it shared the distinction of being among “the first wars to be fought as much on television as on the battlefield.”264 Mass publics across the world, particularly in the UK and the US, beheld the excesses of the Nigerian military vis-àvis the sufferings of Biafrans and displayed responses that the international media took a pause from its coverage until then focused exclusively on the Vietnam War, to report. That international reaction, brought to the fore by the international media, helped to define how the world now views and responds to similar crises. Biafra stimulated the development of issues related to contemporary complex emergencies. It taught the international community about how to better provide and coordinate assistance to persons affected by 260 See Forsyth, The Biafra Story: The Making of An African Legend; and Ubong Essien Umoh, “The Making of Arms in Civil War Biafra, 1967–1970,” Calabar Historical Journal, 5: (2011): 348. 261 See Ejike Aghanya, Behind the Screen (Springfield, 2006). 262 For example, in July 1968, Life magazine based in New York carried a cover story

on starving children in Biafra. See “Starving Children of Biafra War,” Life (July 12, 1968), https://oldlifemagazine.com/july-12-1968-life-magazine.html. 263 Philip Gourevitch, “Alm Dealers,” New Yorker (October 4, 2010), https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/alms-dealers. See also Celine Akosua Henry, “After Dinner, Watch How People Starve and Die in Africa,” Medium (January 15, 2020), https://medium.com/@celineakosuahenry/after-dinner-we-watch-how-peopleand-die-in-biafra-7fd446fd3994 (commenting on the role of photojournalism, television images and other media during the Biafran war). 264 Phillips, note 239.

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a complex emergency.265 From these lessons came the beginnings of a framework for a gamut of issues, including rehabilitation of refugees and internally displaced persons, repatriation of unaccompanied children, and the necessity for safe havens to minimize human suffering for victims in conflict situations.266 One monument of this global benefit from Biafra is Medecine Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), an international medical humanitarian agency born in France in the wake of Biafra.267 In its own words, the organization “was founded in 1971 in France by a group of doctors and journalists in the wake of war and famine in Biafra.”268 In short, the unarticulated backdrop of Annan’s call in 1999 for states to redefine their national security (along with their understanding of sovereignty) to better accommodate “collective interests,” in the face of rising humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters in the world,269 was Biafra. In sum, the famine and incalculable human suffering in Biafra led to the development of international humanitarian programs designed to facilitate effective responses to complex emergencies anywhere in the world. Prevention is better than cure. Thus, the beauty of this book lies in the blueprints that it marshals for preventing avoidable wars of independence like Biafra, with the untold anguish that accompanies such conflicts. Immediate Aftermaths of Nigeria’s War Over Biafra Securing peace is necessary after every conflict, without which cessation of hostilities merely sets the stage for the next war.270 Unfortunately, General Gowon and the rank of Nigeria’s national leaders after him failed 265 Elusoji, note 214. 266 See ibid. 267 See Medecine Sans Frontiers: Doctors Without Borders, “Our History,” https:// www.doctorswithoutborders.org/who-we-are/our-history. 268 Ibid. 269 See Chapter 1, notes 44–47, and accompanying texts. 270 Philip C. Aka, “Nigeria: The Need for an Effective Policy of Ethnic Reconciliation

in the New Century,” Temple International & Comparative Law Journal, 14(2000), 327, 328–330.

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to draw the right lessons from the Biafra War. What makes this ironic is that some of these leaders were aware of the implications of the war for unity and nation-building. For example, General Ibrahim Babangida, Head of State from 1985 to 1993, once likened the war to “the most painful national trauma […] whose emotional cars will continue to haunt [the country] for years to come.”271 In sum, after the war, Gowon announced a program of “economic and social reconstruction” in war-damaged Eastern Nigeria that he never implemented until his removal from office in 1975 and which, similarly, subsequent Nigerian leaders failed to implement. In other words, the Aburi Accords many years before were not the only promise to Biafrans that the Nigerian government breached. The postwar breaches gave an unseemly impression of the continuation of war by other means. The measures unveiled complicated economic recovery for Biafrans from the war while hampering their ability to participate in the postwar economy. There were many of these measures,272 but three stand out that, illustratively, we discuss here. The first is the “abandoned property” issue signified by the declaration of property and investments, such as buildings, that Igbo left behind in Nigerian cities, particularly Port Harcourt close to the Igbo homeland, when they fled for safety as “abandoned property.”273 The occurrence negated the guarantee of “the security of life and property of all citizens in every part of Nigeria and equality in political rights” that General Gowon made in his “Dawn of National Reconciliation” marking the end of the war.274 The Gowon regime did not attempt to address this problem and subsequent governments that tried, did so half-heartedly and unsuccessfully. For example, the Muhammed-Obasanjo

271 Alison Carb Sussman, “Babangida, Ibrahim, 1941-: Nigerian President and Military Officer,” Contemporary Black Biography (1993), http://www.encyclopedia.com/educat ion/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/babangida-ibrahim-1941. 272 See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note

74, pp. 209–213 (“In its effort and determination to destroy Igbo spirit and élan in the aftermath of the war, no means seemed too small for the Nigerian government”). 273 See Charles Ugwuanyi, “Ojukwu: Biafra and the ‘Abandoned Properties Question (2)’,” PM News (Lagos) (March 8, 2012), https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2012/03/08/ ojukwu-biafra-and-the-abandoned-properties-question-2-charles-ugwuanyi/. 274 Gowon, “The Dawn of National Reconciliation,” note 218.

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government (1975–1976) compulsorily and unconstitutionally acquired some of the property without adequate compensation to their owners.275 The second is the unveiling of a banking regulation in January 1971, barely one year after the war’s end, which nullified all bank accounts operated by Eastern Nigerians during the war.276 Under this measure, every Igbo who had a bank account before the war received a level amount, at the time determined as 20 pounds, regardless of the actual size or amount of their savings.277 As Chinua Achebe pointed out, this policy unjustly enriched Nigeria’s national government at the expense of the Igbo bank owners to the tune of millions of pounds as well as impoverished the incipient Igbo middle class that survived the war.278 An equitable resolution, which the government could have used but failed to use, would have been to restore all bank accounts to their balance as of May 29, 1967, the date before Biafra came into existence.279 The third is the enactment into law of the Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974,280 a business indigenization law, precisely at a time when the Igbo were still reeling from the effects of the war. The timing ensured the effective exclusion of Igbo, who lacked the economic and financial muscle to participate, from ownership in Nigeria’s industrial sector. The law “completed the routing of the Igbo from the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy,”281 effectively turning them into street traders

275 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note

74, p. 212 (citing Joe Igbokwe, Igbos 25 Years After Biafra (Advent Communications, 1995)), 29. 276 See William Borders, “In Former Biafra, the Scars of War Fade,” New York Times (January 17, 1971), 1. 277 See Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, note 236, pp. 45–46. 278 Ibid., p. 46. 279 See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, citing Oha-na-Eze Ndi-Igbo, The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria, 1966–1999: A Call for Reparations and Appropriate Restitution (1999), p. 294. 280 The Decree was repealed and replaced in 1995 by Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission Act, Decree No. 16 of 1995, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (January 16, 1995) (“An Act to establish the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, to encourage and promote investment in the Nigerian economy; and for matters connected therewith”). 281 Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, note 236, p. 46.

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and resulting in the skepticism, if not cynicism, with which till today many Igbo view “privatization” policies in the country.282 Topping these breaches and cementing them is General Gowon’s renege on his promise to hand over power after the Civil War. In his radio address marking the end of the war, Gowon reminded Nigerians of a promise he made earlier “to restore the Federal Constitution and to prepare the country for an orderly return to civilian rule as early as possible.”283 Later, Gowon penciled down 1976 as the firm date for the return of the country to civilian rule following the war,284 by which time he would have spent over one decade in office, counting from July 1966. The typical term of office in Britain, the country’s former colonial overlord, is five years and four in the US which system Nigeria adopted after jettisoning the British Westminster system. Under this formula, ten years in office would amount to two full terms under the British system. However, on October 1, 1974, Gowon changed his mind, just like he did with the Aburi Accords in 1967, ruling 1976 “unrealistic,” on the grounds that Nigerian politicians “had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”285 Keeping that promise would have minimized some of the arbitrariness, uncertainties, fiat-ness, and sheer impunity of military rule down the road in Nigeria’s checkered nation-building experiment that could have promoted the rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation, with positive ramifications for the right to self-determination, that his government proclaimed after the Biafra War. In retrospect, policies under the military government of General Gowon were little more than a raft of broken promises well beyond the renege on the Aburi Accords that started these breaches. Here, it also includes, most troublingly, a breach of the promise of a new constitutional order made to Biafrans after thirty brutal months of fighting, famine, and disease,286 in due exercise of their right to self-determination. In his “Dawn of National Reconciliation” speech marking the end of the war, 282 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, pp. 212–213, citing Pat Utomi, “Minority Question and the Common Good,” Guardian (Lagos) (November 2, 1999). 283 Gowon, “The Dawn of National Reconciliation,” note 218. 284 Dare Babarinsa, “What If Gowon Had Kept His Promise?” note 177. 285 Ibid. 286 See note 283 and accompanying text (statement by General Gowon), juxtaposed with note 219 and accompanying text (statement by General Effiong).

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General Gowon forbade the use of the term Biafra to refer to any portion of the former Eastern Nigeria.287 Subsequently, in 1975, Gowon made a decree that changed the name of the Bight of Biafra to the Bight of Bonny.288 These gestures shorn of forgiveness run against the grains of reconciliation after a ghastly war.

Biafra 2: The Period Since 1999 under the Fourth Republic Biafra 2 coincides with and overlaps the Fourth Republic, Nigeria’s latest installment of civilian rule, free of military dictatorship, during which era “Biafran activism has become an important part of Nigeria’s political landscape.”289 The coincidence suggests a rumbling for self-determination that became full-blown under the general environment of free speech that a democracy afforded, even one low-quality like the Fourth Republic. To elucidate, as of May 28, 2023, Nigeria passed through four administrations, namely: Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007), Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (2007–2010), Goodluck E. Jonathan (2010–2015), and Muhammadu Buhari (2015–2023). Of the twenty-four years, Obasanjo and Buhari, two retired military generals, both of whom saw service in Biafra and were former military Heads of State (Obasanjo from 1977 until 1979 and Buhari from 1983 until 1985), served for a total of 16 years or approximately 86 percent of the entire period. As shown later in this discussion, under these two leaders who governed with military ethos in civilian settings, Nigerian security forces murdered tens of thousands of Biafrans who dared to exercise the right to self-determination. The campaign for Biafra coincided with other problems within the polity which galvanized the sense of Igbo exclusion. Under Obasanjo, this was the codification of Sharia law into the Nigerian legal code, signified by the upgrading of Islamic Sharia law into criminal code,290 which many Igbo consider effective secession of the predominantly Muslim North 287 Gowon, “The Dawn of National Reconciliation,” note 218. 288 G. Onuoha, “Shared Histories, Divided Memories: Mediating and Navigating the

Tensions in Nigeria–Biafra War Discourses,” Africa Today, 63(1) (2016), 2–21. 289 Samuel Fury Childs Daly, “Unfinished Business: Biafran Activism in Nigeria Today,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (April 7, 2021), https://gjia.georgetown. edu/2021/04/07/unfinished-business-biafran-activism-in-nigeria-today/. 290 See note 80 and accompanying text.

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under the guise of religious freedom.291 Under Buhari, the emergent problem was the Boko Haram terrorist group.292 The terrorist activities of this group led to the death or relocation of many Igbo living in the North, particularly in the northeast of the country, which forms the epicenter of the insurgency.293 For many survivors, the relocations inexorably echo the forced exodus of Igbo from northern Nigeria of 1966 in the lead-up to the civil war.294 Whereas in Biafra 1 the entity that exercised the right to selfdetermination was a government, in Biafra 2, there was no government in place, leaving groups, as in Ethiopia, to fill that role.295 The collapse of the Biafran resistance in 1970 and the resultant forcible reintegration of Easterners into Nigeria meant that the Igbo, the major ethnic group in Biafra, reverted to what James Minaham called a “stateless nation.”296 Accordingly, Igbo self-determination movements under Biafra 2 since 1999 have worked to put the state back into Igbo nationality. Many

291 See Aka, “Nigeria Since 1999,” note 81, pp. 241–245, 247. 292 See Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations, note 19, pp. 83, 138; and

Philip C. Aka, “Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Humanitarian Action: Eight Steps to Humanitarian Wellness in Nigeria,” Willamette Journal of International Law & Dispute Resolution, 24 (2016), 1, 35–36, 50. 293 See

Tony Edike, “Insecurity: Igbo Flee the North En-Masse,” Naira Land (November 23, 2011), http://www.nairaland.com/809408/boko-haram-igbos-fleenorth. 294 See Conor Cruise O’Brien, “A Condemned People,” New York Review of Books,

9(1967), 11, 14 (observing that the exodus was of such “great scale […] that had this movement occurred across an international frontier,” rather than domestically as in this case, it would have been “classified among the great refugee problems of the twentieth century”). O’Brien reflected on estimates that about two million Igbo living in Northern Nigeria fled to Eastern Nigeria for safety, leaving their jobs, businesses, and personal property. Ibid. 295 However, the statement needs some qualification because the proposition applied with respect to Eritrea, but not in Tigray latter day from 2020 until 2022. Compare Chapter 3, notes 278–376, and accompanying texts (Eritrea) with Chapter 3, notes 377– 424, and accompanying texts (Tigray). 296 James Minaham, Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: S-Z (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 762. Stateless implied that a group so designated ought to have its own state. At the very least, stateless nations “pose one of the greatest challenges to contemporary political science, as they refute the ideal-type that is the nation-state upon which our entire international system relies.” Stephanie Chouinard, “Stateless Nations,” in The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2d. Ed., eds. Karl Cordell and Stefan Wolff (Abington, Oxon, and New York: Routledge, 2016), 54.

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groups in Nigeria and the Igbo Diaspora outside Nigeria, particularly in the US and the UK, emerged to fill this bill. Of the lot, both in Nigeria and in the Diaspora,297 two stand out, namely: the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), from 1999 to 2011, and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) from 2012 until this book.298 The discussion that follows will revolve around these two groups and periods. But first, several observations nay caveats. As the following conversation makes clear, rather than being mutually exclusive, the two separatist groups and periods overlap. The names of the groups betray their missions. MASSOB devoted its mission toward actualizing (restoring) Biafra. IPOB shares this mission,299 but, from the term Indigenous People which graces its name, also seems to draw impetus from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007, unearthed in Chapter 2.300 The human rights instrument outlawed discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters concerning their welfare.301 Rather than armed struggle, both separatist movements preferred nonviolent methods embedded in civil disobedience within the tradition of the Civil

297 These groups include Ekwe Nche Organization, Biafra Foundation, IgboZaraIgbo, Supreme Council of Elders of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Bilie Human Rights Initiative, and the Republic of Biafra Government in Exile (REPBGIE), among others. We will elaborate the missions of a few of these organizations. Ekwe Nche is noted for the Igbo Landing activities it engineered, strategically designed to draw in Igbo African-Americans into the Igbo self-determination campaign. More than one million Igbo were transported to the US alone during the Middle Passage. IgboZaraIgbo is a U.S. nonprofit, based in Washington, D.C., dedicated to the pursuit of Igbo welfare in Igboland, geographically located in the eastern portions of present-day Nigeria, as well as in the Igbo Diaspora in the US and across the world. This mission begins with the promotion of Igbo values in all their ramifications, including the reestablishment of an independent Igbo state to ground those values. IgboZaraIgbo Worldwide, “About Us,” https://www.igbozaraigbo. org/about-us/. There are also groups overtly not Biafra, what many pro-Biafrans, with impatient dismissiveness, call one-Nigerians, who occasionally support pro-Biafra issues, such as advocacy for the release of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu. 298 See Daly, “Unfinished Business,” note 289 (identifying the two organizations as “largest neo-Biafran organizations”). 299 Delving even deeper, IPOB works “to restore [Igbo] precolonial independence and […] sovereign[ty].” See Indigenous People of Biafra, “Our Story,” https://web.archive. org/web/20190322150751/https://www.ipobinusa.org/ourstory. 300 Chapter 2, notes 39–41, and accompanying texts. 301 Chapter 2, notes 42–45, and accompanying texts.

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Rights Movement in the US under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,302 as their mode for realizing independence. Put simply, these groups work for a negotiated settlement achieved through a referendum of the type the UK, a nonfederal state grants, for example, to its Scottish citizens.303 Nonetheless, as elaborated below, for daring to use the right to selfdetermination, members of each of these groups were subjected to a broad array of persecution, including mass arrests, harassment, intimidation, torture, indefinite detention, kangaroo trials, and extrajudicial killings, in the hands of the Nigerian national police, armed forces, and secret police. This was also a period when, feeling they lacked a voice in their own government, Biafrans sought admission and gained membership into the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO).304 Because action breeds reaction and violence respects no moral boundaries, violation of human rights occurred on both sides, but much more so on the side of the national government with its control over the means of violence. MASSOB was founded in Aba, heartbeat of Igbo commerce and entrepreneurship, but has massive followership in numerous Diasporic locations, including Canada, the UK, the US, all the way down to China. IPOB was established in London but draws massive support from many locations in Nigeria that, in addition to the eleven states of the Southeast and South South (see Table 4.1 above), include Abuja, and Lagos. Another is the influence of the Biafran groups in the Diaspora outside Nigeria. Especially in the UK and US, these groups operate within the 302 See Chris Simkins, “Non-violence Was Key to Civil Rights Movement,” VOA News (January 20, 2014), https://www.voanews.com/a/nonviolencekey-to-civil-rightsmovement/1737280.html. For an important recent work on the movement, see Thomas E. Ricks, Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954– 1968 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) (chronicling major changes in the US creditable to the Movement that can be better understood if viewed in military terms, especially the prism of tactics and strategy). 303 See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 259, citing MASSOB to the effect that “[i]ndependence goes with negotiation. We are negotiating Biafra’s independence.” 304 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organization, “UNPO Welcomes [Five] New

Members” (August 3, 2020), unpo.org/article/22010. Established on February 11, 1991, in The Hague, Netherlands, the UNPO is an international, non-governmental, body which works to empower and lend voices to marginalized and other unrepresented peoples in regions across the world. Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, “About UNPO,” https://unpo.org/section/2.

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environment of free speech and assembly more robust than the more constrictive atmosphere in Nigeria—although the rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB leader, a dual-citizen of Nigeria and the UK citizen, chronicled in Chapter 1,305 also demonstrates the limits of these guarantees. These pro-Biafra groups are also a wellspring of ideological and financial support for the leading Biafra groups, whether formed in Nigeria or abroad. A third influence is that of non-Biafra organizations with sympathy for pro-Biafran activists. Many of these organizations in Nigeria and abroad have members who identify with or more substantively contribute to Igbo self-determination initiatives of Biafra groups, especially to mainstreams ones like MASSOB and IPOB. One example was the petition for reparation and restitution for violations of Igbo human rights that Oha-Na-Eze Ndi-Igbo submitted to the Oputa Panel in 1999.306 A more recent example would be support or advocacy for the release of Nnamdi Kanu under indefinite detention by the Nigerian secret police. For all pro-Biafra groups, the 800-pound gorilla, a proverbial elephant in the room, was Ojukwu before his death in 2011. Several events bear out this proposition. In a public lecture he delivered in 1994, at the height of military repression in the country, Ojukwu reminisced on Igbo achievement during the Nigerian civil war, including how the three years of independent statehood made Biafrans the most technologicallyadvanced black people on earth.307 Next, at the inception of the Fourth Republic in 2000, Ojukwu was part of a forty-person high-power delegation, sponsored by a well-known Igbo organization, to then President Olusegun Obasanjo that presented Igbo concerns to Obasanjo, “including a demand for restructuring the country into a confederation.”308 Finally, in July 2007, still under the Fourth Republic, Ojukwu renewed his call for the secession of the Biafran state as a sovereign

305 See Chapter 1, notes 81–107, and accompanying texts. 306 See note 188 and accompanying text. 307 See Ojukwu, “Nigeria: The Truths Which Are Self-Evident,” note 259. 308 Philip C. Aka, “Ben Nwabueze and African Intellectual Tradition,” in The Igbo

Intellectual Tradition: Creative Conflict in African and African Diasporic Thought, ed. Gloria Chuku (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 223, 238. The context was a bloody conflict in Kaduna, a northern city with a substantial Igbo population, where more than 300 people were killed, many of them Igbo, with their businesses, schools and personal property destroyed. Ibid.

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entity.309 The setting for his comments was the 40th anniversary of the start of the Biafra War. He opined that, due to the invidious discrimination they have endured in Nigeria since the civil war, more than ever before, the Igbo have reason to seek independence. As he put it, “[w]hat upsets the Igbo population is [that] we are not equally Nigerian as the others.”310 Igbo Self-Determination Initiatives under MASSOB from 1999 until 2011 MASSOB was founded in September 1999, at the dawn of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, by Ralph Uwazurike, an Indian-educated lawyer. Of the four leaders under the Fourth Republic referenced above, the terms of the first three, Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan, coincided with this period. Of the three, the leader who persecuted MASSOB the most was General Obasanjo. The other two leaders, each handpicked by him, were truly civilian leaders with no military experience and of the two, Yar’Adua served three sickly years in office before his death and succession by former Vice President Jonathan in 2010. The tool of MASSOB’s self-determination campaign included complaints of Igbo discrimination and exclusion, framed in the lexicon of marginalization, and the use of activities that included display of Biafran paraphernalia, such as hoisting Biafran flags, down to soccer competitions. “MASSOB was known for its soccer leagues as much as its politics.”311 Even this too was a problem for Nigerian security forces who hounded pro-Biafran activists for any activity with the semblance of self-determination. Thus, in September 2004, under General Obasanjo, Nigerian security forces arrested 53 pro-Biafran agitators for participating in a MASSOB youth soccer tournament in Lagos.312 In 2009, MASSOB established a radio station, Radio Biafra, in the UK with Nnamdi Kanu,

309 “Call for Biafra to leave Nigeria,” BBC News (July 6, 2007), http://news.bbc.co. uk/2/hi/africa/6276820.stm. 310 Ibid. 311 Daly, “Unfinished Business,” note 289. 312 “Nigeria: Treatment of Members of the Movement for the Actualization of the

Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB),” Ref World (June 27, 2005), https://www.ref world.org/docid/440ed73221.html.

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future leader of IPOB, as director.313 The radio was a reactivation of Radio Biafra from the Civil War era under Ojukwu.314 Obasanjo foreclosed peaceful self-determination campaigns. He stated, “[t]here is no peaceful way of getting out of Nigeria.”315 He elaborated, “we can find a peaceful way of living together in harmony. That is our own creed, that is our objective and that is what we are living for and that is what we are struggling every moment of the day and night to achieve.”316 Consistent with this hardline position, the Nigerian security forces severely persecuted members of MASSOB and other pro-Biafra groups, with whom they clashed numerous times. These members included Uwazuruike, who was detained indefinitely on treason charges.317 Under Obasanjo’s first term alone unto 2003, Nigerian security forces killed about 3000 members of MASSOB and detained thousands more indefinitely without trial.318 Igbo Self-Determination Initiatives under IPOB Since 2012 Kanu formed IPOB in 2012 in London with Uche Mefor,319 a co-proBiafran activist. The period here coincided with the regimes of Jonathan, 313 See Nwafor Sunday, “CNN Discovers Location of ‘Radio Biafra’ in London,” Vanguard (Lagos) (September 26, 2021), https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/09/cnndiscovers-location-of-radio-biafra-in-london/. 314 Chukwuemerie Uduchukwu, “Finally, Radio Biafra is Off the Airwaves,” Premium Times (Abuja) (July 18, 2015), https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/186 872-finally-radio-biafra-is-off-the-airwaves.html. 315 Aka, “Why Nigeria Needs Restructuring Now and How It Can Peacefully Do It,” note 53, p. 130, quoting Muyiwa Adeyemi and Isa Abdulsalami, “We Can Find Peaceful Living, Says President in Taraba,” This Day Online (Lagos) (December 7, 2001). 316 Ibid. Besides being illogical, the statement is overbroad: it counts even those agitating for separate statehood among the “we” whom Obasanjo said are “struggling every moment of the day and night” to find peaceful living within Nigeria. 317 See Sam Ohuabunwa, “Restructuring Nigeria: Waiting for Tinubu and Buhari,” Business Day Online (July 4, 2017), https://www.businessdayonline.com/restructuringnigeria-waiting-tinubu-buhari/ (Uwazurike “had a running battle with Obasanjo, going in and out of detention”). 318 Aka, “Nigeria Since 1999,” note 81, p. 248. 319 Imagine the solecism or worse of a Biafran movement having a base in a country

like Britain that oppressed the Igbo tremendously, keeping Nigeria one, both during colonial rule and neocolonial post-independence period, especially during the Biafra War that some believe the UK instigated. Continuing this solecism, Ojukwu himself, a patron

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from 2010, and Buhari, since 2015. Kanu began his pro-Biafran activism in 2009 as a Radio Biafra anchor and broadcaster under Uwazuruike.320 Like the Obasanjo regime, the Nigerian government under Muhammadu Buhari displayed a negative disposition toward self-determination campaigns built around the notion that there is no peaceful way of getting out of Nigeria. For him, “[t]he corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a subject of debate.”321 It was an antipathy deep-seated enough that “[f]or Nigeria to divide now […] it is better for all of us to jump into the sea and get drowned[,]”322 He took the position that given that Nigeria has “a multiparty democracy system now[,]” the proBiafra protesters should “organize themselves and vote to have a state within a state.”323 Otherwise, “they are joking with Nigerian security, [something] [he Buhari] will not tolerate.”324 Consistent with this hardline stance, security agencies shut down Radio Biafra on the grounds that it is unlicensed, banned pro-Biafran newspapers and rough-handled non-compliant vendors, broke up rallies and meetings, arrested demonstrators, killed others, and engaged in kangaroo trials of so many, among other repressions. An Amnesty International report documented and reported the extrajudicial killings of about 150 unarmed pro-Biafra activists by Nigerian security forces in a series of attacks dating back to August 2015 that the human rights group fingered as a “chilling crackdown.”325 The report found “overwhelming evidence

saint of Biafra, died in 2011 in London, where he underwent treatment for health issues exacerbated by a stroke. 320 Chikodiri Nwangwu, “A Breakdown of Biafra Separatism, and Where Kanu Fits into the Picture,” Conversation (August 18, 2021), https://theconversation.com/a-breakd own-of-biafra-separatism-and-where-kanu-fits-into-the-picture-166235. See also note 313 and accompanying text. 321 Quoted in Ibrahim Ahmadu, “Buhari: I Won’t Compromise Nigeria’s Corporate Existence,” Freedom Online (November 21, 2015), https://freedomonline.com.ng/buh ari-i-wont-compromise-nigerias-corporate-existence/. 322 Quoted in Burke, note 3. Over two days, they also shot 60 people over two days in connection with events marking the Biafran Remembrance Day on May 30, 2016. Ibid. 323 Conor Gaffey, “Buhari: Nigeria ‘Will Not Tolerate’ Biafra Agitation,” Newsweek (March 7, 2016), https://www.newsweek.com/biafra-muhammadu-buhari-434084. 324 Ibid. 325 Amnesty International, “Nigeria: At Least 150 Peaceful Pro-Biafra Activists Killed in

Chilling Crackdown” (November 24, 2016), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/ 2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/. The Nigerian army

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that Nigerian security forces committed gross human rights violations” involving the unlawful killing, detention, and torture of IPOB members and supporters in several Igbo cities, including Aba, Onitsha, and Port Harcourt.326 In 2016, the European Union expressed its support for a referendum as a way out of the impasse over Biafra.327 The Buhari regime ignored this recommendation. It did not stop there. Instead, the Nigerian national government branded IPOB a terrorist organization,328 following which, in September 2017, a federal court in Abuja declared IPOB activities as “acts of terrorism.”329 Two interrelated incidents of atrocities, out of many, illustrate the graveness of the repression against IPOB under Buhari’s presidency. The first is the storming of Nnamdi Kanu’s home in Afaraukwu, Umuahia, in September 2017, during which over 22 people were killed.330 The second is the arrest, rendition from Kenya, torture, and indefinite detention by the Nigerian secret police, since June 2021, of Kanu. This was the latest in a lineup of persecutions begun with an arrest in Lagos on October 14, 2015, following which the IPOB chief was illegally seized for more than one year.331 His persecution was excerpted in Chapter 1 as a textbook example of the hydra-head nature of the tension between sovereign and

denied the report, see Burke, note 3, but the separatists pushed back that the number of deaths was even higher. Burke, note 3. 326 Amnesty International, “Nigeria: At Least 150 Peaceful Pro-Biafra Activists Killed in Chilling Crackdown,” note 325. The report was based on analysis of 87 videos and 122 photographs, along with interviews of 146 witnesses. Ibid. 327 Jeremiah Akpan, “European Union Replies Pro-Biafran Agitators Over Calls for BiafrExit,” Naija (February 2017), https://www.naija.ng/701259-european-union-rep lies-pro-biafra-agitators-calls-biafrexit.html#701259. 328 See Nkasi Wodu, “The U.S. Should Not Designate Nigeria’s IPOB a Terrorist Group,” Council on Foreign Relations (February 10, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/blog/ us-should-not-designate-nigerias-ipob-terrorist-group. 329 Evelyn Okakwu, “IPOB Was Legally Declared a Terror Organization, Court Rules,” Premium Times (Abuja) (January 18, 2018), https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/ headlines/255976-ipob-was-legally-declared-a-terror-organisation-court-rules.html. 330 Okey Sampson et al., “Soldiers Storm Kanu’s Home,” Sun (Lagos) (September 15, 2017), https://sunnewsonline.com/soldiers-storm-kanus-home/. 331 Seun Opejobi, “I’m Ready to Die for the Actualization of Biafra Despite One Year in Prison—Nnamdi Kanu,” Daily Post (Lagos) (October 14, 2016), https://dailypost. ng/2016/10/14/im-ready-die-actualisation-biafra-despite-one-year-prison-nnamdi-kanu/.

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self-determination at the heart of this study,332 as well as the need for interventionist techniques domestically and globally embedded in conflict resolution this book showcases in Chapter 7 as a possible way out. In response to these and other acts of repression, IPOB unveiled a set of activities designed to withstand or undercut the crackdown by Nigerian security forces. These strategies which mimic the ones in Ambazonia, include Monday sit-at-homes, and instigation of “ghost” communities.

Matters Arising: Two Lingering Questions Begging for Answers These are matters covered to some extent in the presentation above that, for the record, in the light of their importance, are isolated in this section for closer study. In no specific order, the two lingering questions relate to the coterminous-ness (or lack thereof) of the Igbo ethnic group and Biafra, and the delay in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination in Nigeria. The Coterminous-ness of Igbo as an Ethnic Group and Biafra Igbo is coterminous with Biafra 1. This is apparent in the discussion above, including the analysis in Biafra 1. The purpose here is to lend more obviousness to an obvious phenomenon. Igbo made up the dominant ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria, and the dominant ethnic group in Biafra. They are today the sole ethnic group in Southeast Nigeria, and with three other ethnic groups (Hausa, Fulani, and Yoruba) make up about two-thirds of Nigeria’s population of over 200 million people in 2023 (see Table 4.1). Moreover, along with the Yoruba Southwest, the Southeast, made up of the five states in Table 4.4, ranks among the most homogenous geopolitical zones in the country. Back to Biafra 1, Igbo comprised almost seventy percent of its population then of 14 million people, making them the majority group in a republic that also included key co-ethnics like Annang, Efik, Ibibio, Ijaw, Ogoja, Ogoni, and Opobo.333 In the period since the civil war, more

332 Chapter 1, notes 81–107, and accompanying texts. 333 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74,

pp. 180–181.

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Table 4.4 Igbo states of Nigeria Item no.

State

Headquarters

Date created

Area (in square km)

1 2 3 4 5

Anambra Imo Abia Enugu Ebonyi

Awka Owerri Umuahia Enugu Abakaliki

February 3, 1976 February 3, 1976 August 27, 1991 August 27, 1991 October 1, 1996

4843 5529 6320 7161 5532

than at any other time, Biafra activism overlapped and became coterminous with Igbo nationalism. Unto the contemporary period, many people, Biafran activists and detractors alike, perceive the flag of Biafra as the ethnic symbol of the Igbo nation rendered stateless in 1970 by military defeat.334 If this is not enough, the notice embedded in the Kaduna Declaration of 2017, supposedly expelling the Igbo out of Northern Nigeria, was addressed exclusively to the Igbo, singled out for their “persistence for secession” (see statement incorporated below as an appendix to this chapter).335 Sponsors of the declaration alleged, among other things, that “[t]he Igbo people of the South-East […] are today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria’s history.”336 They further claimed that “the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope and action at every stage, with adverse effects on the law-abiding people of other regions residing in or passing through the East.”337 Igbo is one of the major ethnic groups in Africa with a language that is also widely spoken within the environs of Eastern Nigeria and beyond.338

334 Minaham, note 296. 335 “Kaduna Declaration,” Appendix B to Chapter 4. 336 “Kaduna Declaration” (“Igbo Provocation”). 337 Ibid. 338 Widely spoken across Eastern Nigeria and surrounding areas, Igbo is part of the

Niger-Congo language family, a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It has regional dialects that are somewhat mutually intelligible amidst the larger “Igboid” cluster. Richard Fardon, and Graham Furniss, eds., African Languages, Development, and the State (New York: Routledge, 1994), 66.

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Defeat is an orphan while victory has many friends, as the saying goes.339 Building on the fear of Igbo domination, the detachment with which non-Igbo groups in former Eastern Nigeria view and approach Igbo advocacy for Biafra is a function of events since the civil war and its aftermaths, including the creation of new states which gave these minorities their own states, furthering the dissociation from the Igbo since the end of the conflict that also insulated them from the discrimination and human rights violations that the Igbo have been subjected to. Table 4.4 sets forth five majorly Igbo states of Nigeria. The table should be read in conjunction with Table 1.1 on Nigerian states. Created by military decrees during the eras of military dictatorship in Nigeria, the five states emerged out of the womb of East Central State created on May 27, 1967, in the lead-up to the civil war. This was one of the three states carved out of the old Eastern Nigeria; the other two were Cross River and Rivers States.340 Other Nigerian states where Igbo have ancestral homes are the six South South States (see Table 4.1) along with Benue and Kogi. Igbo are a Diasporan people.341 From the bailiwick of their ancestral home in the Southeast, the backbone of the Igbo population extends to all five regions of Africa,342 and the ten geographic regions of

339 After the war, some Igbo subgroups, such as the Ikwerre, dissociated themselves from the larger Igbo population. In the post-war era, people of eastern Nigeria changed the names of both people and places to non-Igbo-sounding words to disguise their Igbo-ness. See, for example, Kelechukwu Ihemere, A Tri-Generational Study of Language Choice, and Shift in Port Harcourt (Irvine, CA: Universal Publishers, 2007), 26–28. 340 The state-creation exercise in 1967 “put one part of Igbo[] into Rivers State, another into the Mid-West, yet others into Cross River State, and left the rest of Igbo isolated and landlocked in what was called East Central State.” Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 197, n. 193. In his speech urging US intervention in Nigeria’s war over Biafra, Senator Eugene McCarthy (1916– 2005), US Senator from Minnesota from 1959 until 1971, called the twelve-state structure an action designed to confine Igbo “to a crowded, infertile region smaller than their ancestral homeland, with no access to the sea” in order to “break their influence.” Quoted in ibid. 341 See Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, pp. 183–184. 342 The five regions are: East, West, Central, North, and South. “Regions of Africa,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/geography/regions-of-africa.html.

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the world.343 Here is how the Scottish explorer William Balfour Baikie (1825–1864) described Igboland in his travelogue, Igbo settlement extends east and west in the Niger-Delta region which is owned by the Middle-Belt, formerly known as Bendel, from the Old Kalabar river to the banks of the Kwora, Niger River, and live in some territory at Aboh, an Igbo clan, to the west-ward of the latter stream. On the north it borders on Igara, Igala and A’kpoto, and it is separated from the sea only by petty tribes, all of which trace their origin to this great race.344

The “petty tribes” he talked about are Igbo neighbors,345 some of whom joined them in Biafra 1 but have little appetite for Biafra 2, due to changed circumstances over the nearly 30-year period between Biafra

343 The ten geographic regions are: Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Central America, Eastern Europe, European Union, Middle East, North America, South America, and Oceania. Juan Ramos, “The Geographic Regions of the World,” Science Trends (June 15, 2018, last updated March 5, March 2020), https://sciencetrends.com/the-geographic-reg ions-of-the-world/#:~:text=The%20geographic%20regions%20of%20the%20world%20can% 20be%20divided%20into,South%20America%2C%20and%20the%20Caribbean. 344 William Balfour Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage Up the Rivers Kwóra

and Bínue (Commonly Known as the Niger and Tsádda) in 1854[,] With a Map and Appendices (London: J. Murray, 1856). Ancient maps, whose authenticities are hard to verify, exist in the Internet showing the location of Biafra before the amalgamation by Britain in 1914. These include: a map of the world, prepared in 1525, showing the location of Biafra on the west coast of Africa (along with the likes of Abyssinia, presentday Ethiopia on the East); a map of Africa, prepared in 1662, showing three kingdoms in West Africa, namely: the Kingdom of Biafra in the East, the Kingdom of Benin in the West, and the Kingdom of Zamfara in the North, the first two shared common boundaries and had the Atlantic Ocean in the South with direct access to the sea, through their bays known as Bight of Biafra and Bight of Benin; and, a map of Africa, drawn in 1710, showing that what used to be Biafra was located in present-day Cameroon. See Ayomide Akinbode, “Does Biafra Still Exist,” Historyville (January 15, 2019), https://www.thehis toryville.com/biafra-republic/. 345 Igbo value their neighbors. Ethnic groups said to be related to the Igbo include the Ibibio, Efik, Annang, Bahumono, Ndoni, Ogoni, Idoma, Igala, Edo, Ijaw, Ogoja, Krio, and the Yako. These are the neighbors Igbo share their territory and traditions with. Gordon, note 7, p. 37. A common saying in Igbo folklore is ojemba enwegh iro, translatable into an advice for the traveler to foreswear making enemies on his journey. Given that the Igbo are a historically trading group, the saying means that, to facilitate “valuable trade, communities had to maintain peaceful relationships with each other, and traders forged these relationships with households and communities along their trade routes.” Ibid., p. 38.

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1 and the inception of the Fourth Republic that minimized their ardor for separate statehood. Those changed circumstances were the product of state creations in the country that promoted autonomy for former Eastern minorities, but also, given that many of those creations followed ethnic lines, also “solidified ethnic identities,”346 to the incidental benefit of the Igbo. From a geographical standpoint, the Igbo homeland is divided into two unequal sections by the Niger River: an eastern portion (larger of the two), and a midwestern section, a bifurcation, however, that poses no impediments to cultural unity.347 For many Igbo, Biafra 2 is a marker of psychological identification as well as a political forum. Regarding the first, since 1999, Biafra has become a distinctive badge of honor separating Igbo who advocate for an independent homeland, separate from Nigeria, and a variegation of the Igbo elite these pro-Biafrans derisively called ndi “one Nigeria” (one-Nigerian persons). While pre-1999, Igbo ethnics loyal to oneNigeria dominated the Igbo public sphere, in the period since 1999, the neo-Biafrans seized that sphere. For political organizations, many Igbo hold out Biafra as a distinctive alternative to Nigeria. Embedded in the Igbo State Union,348 the feeling goes back to colonial Nigeria. In an address in June 1949 to an Igbo gathering in Aba, the future nerve center of Igbo commerce and industry, Nnamdi Azikiwe, a foremost Igbo nationalist, said the course open to the Igbo was self-determination, a concept he likened to “national selfrealization.”349 Consistent with the prevalent ideology of Pan-Africanism

346 Siollun, “Nigeria Is Haunted by Its Civil War,” note 189. 347 Katharine Slattery, “The Igbo People—Origins and History,” University of

California, Riverside, http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/igbo/igbo1.htm#:~:text=Igb oland%20is%20the%20home%20of,largest)%20and%20the%20midwestern%20region. 348 Formerly Igbo Federal Union, this organization is an Igbo pan-ethnic organization, headed by Nnamdi Azikiwe, and closely associated with the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which he co-founded with Herbert Macaulay. The aim of the organization was to improve and advance Igbo education and other ethnic self-help institutions. The organization had an Igbo “national anthem” and contemplated forming an Igbo bank. See generally Gilbert Chukwu Aro and Kelechi Johnmary Ani, “A Historical Review of Igbo Nationalism in the Nigerian Political Space,” Journal of African Union Studies, 6(2/3) (August/December 2017), 47–77. 349 Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Text of Address to the Igbo State Assembly on June 25, 1949,” reprinted in Black Past (September 2, 2009), https://www.blackpast.org/global-africanhistory/1949-nnamdi-azikiwe-address-ibo-people/.

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of his era, he advised the Igbo to tread on “the road to self-determination […] within the framework of a federated commonwealth of Nigeria […], leading to a United States of Africa.”350 He intoned, [t]he keynote in this address is self-determination for the I[g]bo. Let us establish an I[g]bo State, based on linguistic and ethnic factors, enabling us to take our place side by side with the other linguistic and ethnic groups which make up Nigeria and the Cameroons.351 Azikiwe’s address came five years after the massacre of Igbo in Jos in 1945 under British colonial watch and instigation.352 By 1967, his claim for self-determination within Nigeria metamorphosed into “national self-realization” outside Nigeria as Biafrans along with their neighbors in Eastern Nigeria. Why Nigeria Did Not Precede Ethiopia in Constitutionalizing the Right to Self-Determination Given that Nigeria is scene to the longest struggle for self-determination, why did the country’s leaders not constitutionalize this right earlier than Ethiopia, soon after its civil war over Biafra in 1970, like Ethiopia did after its own war over Eritrea in 1991? We hazard two explanations, both converged on poor governance. First, Nigerian leaders do not take power devolution seriously. Similarly, they do not take social justice seriously. The discussion on power devolution includes the character of Igbo traditional society which makes the group particularly antipathetic to concentrated political powers. Failure of Power Devolution Devolution of powers is administrative decentralization; it is “the transfer of power from a central government to subnational” entities.353 What makes this concept significant is that “[t]hroughout history, there [is] a tendency for governments to centralize power.”354 Applying this concept

350 Ibid. 351 Ibid. 352 See Obiagwu, note 197, p. 96. 353 Charles Hauss, “Devolution: History, Benefits, and Challenges,” Britannica (June

22, 2023), https://www.britannica.com/topic/devolution-government-and-politics. 354 Ibid.

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to Nigeria, at issue is the “national question” revolved around how to structure the country to make every ethnic group a stakeholder in the Nigerian project. It was in answer to this question that colonial Nigeria adopted federalism in 1954. The orchestrated killings of Igbo in Kano in northern Nigeria convinced British colonial authorities that Nigeria, if it must remain one, must decentralize political powers such that there are few powers reserved for a central government.355 Against the grain of this wisdom, since the end of the First Republic in 1966, Nigerian governments, military and civilian alike, have concentrated many powers at the center, at the expense of the subnational governments to the point of usurpation. Under the Fourth Republic since 1999, the Nigerian national government exercises exclusive power over 68 issue areas of competency out of a total of 98 issue areas. This is in comparison to some 30 items on the concurrent list that the national government exercises in unison with the states. However, the states may exercise power on the concurrent list only when the national government has not already preempted the states on any of these 30 functions or competency areas. The net result is that, as Olisa Agbakoba, former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, observed, “[i]n effect, [s]tate [g]overnments really have no power” in Nigeria.356 The reason for this occurrence is that, in an attempt to prevent secession of the type that took place in the country from 1967 until 1970, the lawyers who drafted Nigeria’s 1979 constitution, on which the 1999 constitution is based, left many powers at the center. This line of argument is elaborated upon in Chapter 6 on the object lessons from the three case studies. The concentration is evident in the yearning and repeated appeals for “true federalism” in the country.357 Devolution of power is critical in Nigeria, given the status of the country as a patchwork of numerous ethnic groups, some of which, like the Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, and Yoruba, are sizable enough to form their own separate countries. For how much longer can Nigeria continue to buck the global trend toward powersharing and devolution? Why would the country continue to centralize 355 See note 31 and accompanying text. 356 “Agbakoba Writes Senate, Proposes ‘Simple Way to Restructure Nigeria,’” Elombah

News (last updated November 4, 2020), https://elombah.om/agbakoba-writes-senate-pro poses-simple-way-to-restructure-nigeria/. 357 See note 55 and accompanying text.

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power in a nominally federal system at a time when unitary systems like China and the UK, through the technique of power devolution, are reaping “the benefits of decentralized government without necessarily establishing federalism[?]”.358 Nigeria “is in urgent need of a […] redesign” away from the nominal federalism it has operated since the advent of military rule in the country in January 1966.359 This is how a Nigerian political system, properly decentralized will look like. First, it will be a cross between a federal and confederal systems, with ingredients designed to promote the economic viability of each federating units within the political system.360 Second, it will have six units, by whatever name (whether region, province, or zone), based on the existing six geopolitical zones, each by itself in place of the current thirty-six states or as “a cluster of states put together based on ethnic homogeneity.”361 Each will have its own constitution; will be responsible for its own census; will exercise control over its own resources, based on a principle of ownership rooted in the proposition that “everybody owns all that is [on] one’s land or under it”362 ; will have its own police and armed forces, the last consistent with the unimplemented Aburi Accords in the lead-up to the civil war.363 The six zones should be entrenched in the national constitution.364 Third, the constitution of the central government should integrate a secession clause to give any zone that wants to leave the opportunity to do so under certain specified conditions like in Ethiopia. Now, as in 1954, the goal should be to assign to the central government as few subjects and competencies as it needs to

358 J. Tyler Dickovick and Jonathan Eastwood, Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 179. 359 Reuben Abati, “Why We Need to Restructure Nigeria to Save It,” Info Square

(Online) (June 3, 2016), http://infosuare.com.ng/tag/why-we-need-to-restructure-nig eria-to-save-it-by-reuben-abati/. 360 Aka, “Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Humanitarian Action,” note 292, p. 30. 361 Ibid., quoting Ojukwu, “Nigeria: The Truths Which Are Self-Evident,” note 259,

p. 22. 362 Ibid. 363 See notes 205–207, and accompanying texts. 364 Aka, “Why Nigeria Needs Restructuring Now and How It Can Peacefully Do It,”

note 53, pp. 147–148, 152.

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preserve unity365 : foreign affairs, defense, and coordination of economic activities among the six geopolitical zones. This would translate into an exclusive legislative list of no more than ten items, compared to the current sixty-eight. Left as is, the current overbearingly powerful center is an albatross that, as Abubakar Atiku, Vice President of Nigeria from 1999 until 2007, warned in 2016, makes Nigeria’s “unity more fragile, [its] government more unstable and [the] country more unsafe.”366 More than many other groups in Nigeria, concentrated powers run against the Igbo DNA. Precolonial Igbo societies were kingless communities, marked by decentralized political powers; ancient Igbo organized themselves into village democracies, two thousand in all, where they practiced a direct democracy characterized by a system of checks and balances, the pursuit of consensus through protracted discussion, the use of religious sanctions, and political institutions that combined popular participation with weighting for experience.367 Although elders ran affairs in these communities, there was also considerable scope for individual mobility and political participation was open to many groups, including women. In the elucidation of the distinguished writer Chinua Achebe, “The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with,” given that “[i]t did not have the apparatus of centralized government[;] [instead] a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages [existed] each of which shared the running of [public] affairs […].”368 These republican communities, with their unstinted aversion for absolutism, was the governmental system the Portuguese, the first set of Europeans who made contact with the Igbo, beheld in the fifteenth century.369

365 See note 31 and accompanying text. 366 Atiku Abubakar, “Restructuring for Nigeria’s National Unity,” Remarks During a

Book Launching at the Yar’Adua Center, Abuja (May 31, 2016), http://opinion.premiu mtimesng.com/2016/05/31/173089/. 367 Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in Nigeria in the New Century,” note 74, p. 177. 368 Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 7. 369 See Ifi Amadiume, “Culture Summary: Igbo,” HRAF World Cultures (Yale Univer-

sity), https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/cultures/ff26/summary (“History and Cultural Relations”).

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Failure of Social Justice Social justice is giving to each person what he or she is due; it denominates gestures rooted in the idea that every human being deserves dignity and is entitled to equal opportunity, equal treatment, and equal rights.370 It is a concept with deep roots in economics, especially poverty reduction, which, earlier in this chapter, we tied to the Ahiara Declaration, one of two silver linings from Biafra 1 (the other being emergency relief) that the Nigerian national government failed to tap into, the result of a failure to draw the proper lessons from the war.371 Instead, many years after the war, within the ironic context of the Fourth Republic, the country’s latest experiment in civilian rule, free of military dictatorship, Nigeria displaced India as the poverty headquarters of the world.372 Social justice extends the dividend of democracy for citizens beyond political-civil rights into the domain of socioeconomic rights through discernible progress in this area; it does not privilege political-civil rights (like elections and the right to vote) over socioeconomic rights. President John F. Kennedy taught that a free society must “help the many who are poor[.]”373 Many years later, another US President, William J. Clinton, advised in his address to the Nigerian National Assembly in August 2000, that, “in the end, successful political change must begin to improve people’s daily lives.”374 Many agitators for selfdetermination, a good number born after the civil war, believe that, in an independent state alternative to Nigeria, “they will find all the things

370 See note 255. 371 See Siollun, “Nigeria Is Haunted by Its Civil War,” note 189; and Ike Anya,

“Nigeria is Haunted by Biafra War,” Guardian (London) (October 10, 2012), https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/10/chinua-achebe-biafra-review. According to Siollun, “[i]n the rush to ‘forgive and forget’ after the war, Nigeria skipped key questions about its purpose, its form, and its destiny. There was no official narrative of what happened, nor an appraisal of lessons learned from it. […]. It simply stopped the war without addressing its root causes. And by refusing to discuss the war’s legacies, the country’s rulers bred a deep, dangerous disenchantment.” Ibid. 372 See notes 97–98 and accompanying text. 373 John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy (January 20,

1961), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, http:www.jfklibrary.org/Ree arch/Reearch-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx. 374 William J. Clinton, “Remarks to a Joint Session of the Nigerian National Assembly in Abuja, August 26, 2000,” in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 2000–2001 (Washington, D.C.: Best Books, 2000), 1705, 1706.

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that Nigeria has failed to provide: good leadership, jobs, infrastructure, regular electricity, economic and physical security.”375 As this author observed elsewhere, “[i]f Nigerian governments did their homework well by providing access to economic opportunities for all its citizens, Igbo youth without direct memory of Biafra [1] probably would not risk life and limb taking to the streets in large number […] demonstrating for an alternative state from Nigeria.”376

Conclusion This chapter unearthed the contributions of Nigeria to the discussion in this book related to the intersection between sovereignty and selfdetermination. Starting with the basic facts of the country organized around the sobriquet of “giant of Africa,” more apparent than real, amidst the multiple contradictions that impede realization of its full potentials, the chapter surveyed Nigeria’s constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999, explored the politics of constitutional engineering in the country, analyzed Biafra 1 coinciding with the period of Nigeria’s civil war from 1967 to 1970, and discussed Biafra 2, overlapping the much longer period under the Fourth Republic since 1999. The campaign for selfdetermination in Biafra 1 occurred within the context of a gory armed conflict, nothing of its kind before, wherein the group that drove the campaign was a government. In contrast, that of Biafra 2, nearly 30 years later, was led by two major groups out of many, each of which was severely repressed under the regimes of two retired military generals with combat experience in the civil war. Of the two, Buhari’s approach was all stick, shorn of any carrots. His hardline bears juxtaposition with that of Yemi Osinbajo, his Vice President over his two terms in office until 2023. Osinbajo displayed a contrasting approach within the three short weeks that he was acting president in the absence of Buhari as his principal received medical treatment

375 Max Siollun, “Nigeria Is Coming Apart at the Seams,” Foreign Policy (September 13, 2016), https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/08/nigeria-is-coming-apartat-the-seamsbiafra/. 376 Aka, “Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Humanitarian Action,” note 292, p. 21.

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in the UK for an undisclosed condition.377 The instructive context was the celebration in Abuja, set by Nigeria’s national government, of the 50th anniversary of Biafra. Osinbajo’s position was that citizens have the right to discuss whether or not they remain in Nigeria and that they are free to exercise that right.378 However, he added, Nigerians are greater together than apart.379 They should, therefore, work together to build their country, rather than allow their frustrations to drive them to see their compatriots as enemies.380 “We are greater together than apart. Instead of trying to flee every time we face frustrations, it is best for us to come together to build the nation. […] Our frustrations must not drive us to see other people as enemies.”381 While General Buhari’s “state within a state” admonition to proBiafran agitators,382 seems reasonable, in reality, its value is meretricious. Democracy here can be of little help because a minority can be voted down forever,383 as the Igbo have been since their failed campaign in Biafra 1 more than half a century ago. Similarly, rights do not provide adequate protection because those rights need to be negotiated and without the auxiliary precautions exit affords, minorities like the Igbo and their fellow Biafrans get suboptimal deals.384 The chapter also addressed two interrogatories, matters arising from the conversation, bearing on the coterminous-ness or lack thereof of Igbo and Biafra, and the delay in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination in Nigeria. On matter arising number 1, the selfdetermination landscape in Nigeria changed in-between Biafra 1 and Biafra 2, such that the campaign for independence from Nigeria became 377 See Ifedayo Peters, “Osinbajo in 51 Days,” Vanguard (Lagos), https://www.van guardngr.com/2021/03/osinbajo-in-51-days/. 378 Seun Opejobi, “Biafra at 50: Citizens Have Right to Discuss Their Continued Existence in Nigeria—Osinbajo,” Daily Post (Lagos) (May 25, 2017), https://dailypost. ng/2017/05/25/biafra-50-. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid. 381 Ibid. 382 See note 323 and accompanying text. 383 Timothy Waters, “Let His People Go: Sudan’s Lesson for Secession,” EJIL: Talk!

(Blog of the European Journal of International Law) (January 24, 2011), https://www. ejiltalk.org/let-his-people-go-sudans-lesson-for-secession/. 384 See ibid.

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coterminous with the Igbo. Back in 1967 in the lead-up to the war, the minorities in Eastern Nigeria enjoyed a measure of autonomy that grew with the creation of more states in the country, and they were not exposed to severe discrimination to the point of exclusion and marginalization that the Igbo endured. These were the factors that explained the reduced ardor for separate existence by whatever name for these minority groups. Some of these factors, particularly state creation, also helped the Igbo: they resulted in the emergence of five states in a geopolitical zone wholly Igbo that has created a homogenous unit nonexistent during Biafra 1 that, in the midst of exclusion, has facilitated the Igbo campaign for self-determination. Next to matter arising number 2, earlier than Ethiopia, Nigeria should have led the way in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination, given its experience with Biafra. On this topic, we proffered two explanations, embedded in two failures converged on governance: not taking power devolution and social justice seriously. Left unaddressed, in their synergy, the two failures are potential state-breakers. Eliminating only the second failure will minimize the zeal with which groups oppose the center since some of the problems have economic roots. However, it is difficult to see how, with its poor track record in governance going back in time, Nigeria can make headway in poverty reduction absent power devolution. There is something more: in its current incarnation, sovereignty is tied to responsibility385 ; thus, the Nigerian government needlessly delegitimizes itself when it unfairly denies social justice to a segment of its population,386 whether Biafrans or one-Nigerians. To thrive as a state in the twenty-first century, Nigeria needs to enact reforms boldly and persistently in several areas of its national life, including devolution of political powers, and social justice. In his address to the US Congress in 1917 instructively titled “Peace Without Victory,” President Woodrow Wilson elaborated his belief as to why “no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.”387 Unto Biafra 2, events in Nigeria show that, in suppressing the right to self-determination of the Igbo and

385 See Chapter 1, notes 42–47, and accompanying texts. 386 See Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, note 236, p. 19. 387 See Chapter 2, note 200, and accompanying text.

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their fellow Biafrans from 1967 to 1970, the Nigerian national government won itself victory without peace. The Biafrans were no match for Nigeria’s borrowed firepower; therefore, the war was a campaign for selfdetermination where, as it were, for three arduous years, the Biafrans successfully resisted surrender and kept on fighting until their resistance ran out.388 With Ethiopia and Nigeria now covered, the flashlight in this book moves next to Cameroon, the object of Chapter 5.

Appendix A to Chapter 4: Key Dates in Nigerian Constitutional and Self-Determination Histories Date

Event

1862

On March 5, Lagos became a British colony, in the aftermath of its bombardment by the British in 1951 and its annexation on August 6, 1861 In the aftermath of the Berlin conference in Germany in 1884–1885 where European countries met and partitioned Africa among themselves, with the US as observer, Britain created the Northern Protectorate which included emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate and parts of the former Bornu Empire Still this year, Britain created the Southern Protectorate through a merger of two coastal properties: the Niger Coast Protectorate (inaugurated in 1885 as the Oil River Protectorate) and territories below Lokoja on the River Niger chartered by the Royal Niger Company On January 1, Frederick Lugard amalgamates the Northern and Southern Protectorates, along with the Colony of Lagos, to create Nigeria On November 4, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafran leader (1967–1970) was born, in Zungeru, Northern Nigeria. Ojukwu died in London on November 26, 2011, aged 78 Colonial Nigeria adopted the Lyttleton Constitution which made Nigeria a federation of three regions: Eastern, Western, and Northern Regions On October 1 this year, Nigeria became independent from Britain under a constitution which made the country a federal state of three regions—the Eastern, Western, and Northern regions—under a parliamentary system of government patterned after the UK with the Queen of England as Head of State Nigeria adopted a constitution that, while still patterned after the UK, upgraded its status to a republic, signified by the replacement of the Queen of England by a President as Head of State. Secondly, the number of regions in the country is increased to four, following the creation of the Midwestern Region that year from the Western Region

1900

1914 1933

1954 1960

1963

(continued)

388 See Elusoji, note 214.

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(continued) Date

Event

1966

On January 15, the First Republic of Nigeria comes to an end following a bloody military. This was followed by a bloodier counter-coup on July 28 the same year From May to September, in the aftermath of the January coup in 1966, about 100,000 Igbo living in northern Nigeria were killed, with over 300,000 fleeing to Eastern Nigeria where they sought refuge January 4–5, representatives of Eastern Nigeria and the Nigerian Federal government met in Aburi, Ghana, under the auspices of the Ghanaian military government then under Head of State General Joseph Ankrah, to design a confederal system that will cool things down and prevent an impending war. But upon return to Lagos, the Gowon government reneged on the agreement, calling it unworkable On May 27, the federal side under Gowon unilaterally divided Nigeria into 12 states, Eastern Region into 3 states, the West and Midwest intact unchanged and six states in the North, a measure which triggered the war On May 30, via its governor, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Eastern Region secedes under the name of Biafra on a theory of human rights under a proposition that no government outside Eastern Nigeria can protect Igbo and their fellow Easterners. The declaration of independence followed a mandate three days before by representatives of twenty provinces of Eastern Nigeria at a joint meeting of the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders and the Consultative Assembly to declare Eastern Nigeria independent as the Republic of Biafra “at the earliest practical date.” The resolution included a recommendation for “the adoption of a federal constitution based” on newly-created provinces. Justifications for the declaration included the failure of Nigeria’s Federal government in Lagos to implement the Aburi Accords. On July 6, war breaks out between Eastern Nigerians as Biafrans and the Nigerian federal government, headed by General Yakubu Gowon, based in Lagos. The Nigerian government started the attack which it called a “police action” to subdue the Biafrans and reintegrate them forcibly into Nigeria, subsequently, on September 2 that year, upgrading its military operation to “total war.” The war turned out a 30-month bloody conflict On September 2, the Federal Military Government under General Gowon upgrades its military operation against Biafrans from “police action” to “total war.” On June 1, Biafra’s Head of State, releases the Ahiara Declaration, a document next to a constitution, which expounds the principles of the Biafran revolution. Some scholars view the declaration as a shift to a more politically radical phase in Biafra’s self-determination campaign On July 12 of this year, Life Magazine published in New York carried a cover story of Biafran children headlined “Starving Children of Biafra War” On May 30, Bruce Mayrock, a 20-year-old student of Columbia University, set himself on fire on the lawn of the United Nations, bearing a placard protesting genocide in Biafra

1966

1967

1967

1967

1967

1967

1968

1968 1969

(continued)

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(continued) Date

Event

1979

On October 1, Nigeria adopted its third constitution in the post-independence period. The high law inaugurates Nigeria’s Second Republic (or installment of civilian rule) under a constitutional and political arrangement patterned after the US presidential system of government as a way out of the instabilities of the First Republic after thirteen years of military dictatorship. Unlike the 4 regions of the First Republic, by this constitution, the number of federating units grew to nineteen On May 29, Nigeria adopted its fourth constitution in the post-independence era. The constitution tracks its 1979 predecessor in key respects but did not pass through the popular overview of the 1979 document. The federating units had now ballooned to 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory at Abuja, that the national government relocated to, away from Lagos, on December 12, 1991 On September 13, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), a self-determination group, is founded by Ralph Uwazuruike On October 27, Zamfara State became the first state in Nigeria to adopt Islamic Sharia law as its legal code in replacement of the existing legal code. The law came into force on January 27, 2000. By June 2012, twelve northern states, including Zamfara, have adopted Sharia law In September, Half of a Yellow Sun (Vintage) by Chimamanda Adichie is published. A tale of love, violence, and betrayal during the Biafra War told through five characters, the novel was made a film in 2013 The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a self-determination group is formed by Nnamdi Kanu, and Uche Mefor, two Igbo pro-Biafra political activists based in London On June 6, five northern groups issued the “Kaduna Declaration,” a position paper purportedly expelling the Igbo out of the North on ground of their “persistence for secession.”

1999

1999

1999

2006

2012

2017

Appendix B to Chapter 4: Text of “The Kaduna Declaration” Reprinted from: Sahara Reporters, “Northern Youths Declare War on Igbos in The North, Ask Them To ‘Leave’ Within Three Months,” Sahara Reporters (June 6, 2017), http://saharareporters.com/2017/ 06/06/northern-youths-declare-war-igbos-north-ask-them-%E2%80% 98leave%E2%80%99-within-three-months.

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Joint Position Paper issued by the Arewa Citizens Action for Change, Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Arewa Youth Development Foundation, Arewa Students Forum, and Northern Emancipation Network, on the Igbo Persistence for Secession June 6, 2017 Preamble The persistence for the actualization of Biafra by the unruly Igbo of South-Eastern Nigeria has lately assumed another alarming twist which involved the forceful lockdown of activities and denial of other people’s right to free movement in the South-East by the rebel Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its overt and covert sponsors. This latest action and similar confrontational conducts which amount to a brutal encroachment on the rights of those termed as nonindigenous people residing and doing lawful businesses in those areas illegally demarcated and defined as Biafra by the Igbo, are downright unacceptable and shall no longer be tolerated. Observations Concerned by this persistent Igbo threat to national integration, the above-named Pan-northern groups met with several others and reviewed the current position of the North and jointly came up with the following observations: 1. Igbo Provocation

a. The Igbo people of the South-East, without remorse for the carnage they wrought on the nation in the 1960s, are today boldly reliving those sinister intentions connoted by the Biafran agitation that led to the very first bloody insurrection in Nigeria’s history. b. Emboldened by the apparent indifference of the Nigerian authorities, the Igbo secessionist tendency is widening in scope and action at every stage, with adverse effects on the law-abiding people of other regions residing in or passing through the East, while the Igbo leaders and elders by their utterances and direct action or inaction appear to support and encourage it.

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c. This is happening irrespective of the undisputable fact that: 1. The cruel Igbos have done and are doing more damage to our collective nationhood than any other ethnic group; being responsible for the first violent interference with democracy in Nigeria resulting in a prolonged counterproductive chain of military dictatorship. 2. The Igbos similarly orchestrated the first, and so far, the only civil war in Nigeria that consumed millions of lives and sowed the seed of the current mutual suspicion and distrust. 3. The Igbos are also responsible for Nigeria’s cultural and moral degeneracy with their notorious involvement in all kinds of crimes, including international networking for drug and human trafficking, violent robberies and kidnappings, high-profile prostitution and advanced financial fraud. 4. At the peak of the devastating Boko Haram violence in some parts of the North, available records show that the Igbo people have variously been apprehended while attempting to convey catches [sic] of dangerous arms and ammunition to the troubled regions. 5. There are today sufficient reasons to suspect that some Igbos masquerade as Fulani herdsmen to commit violent atrocities across the country in order to cause and spread ethnic disaffection. 6. It is also on record that since the inception of the current democratic dispensation, the Igbos have shown and maintained open contempt and resentment for the collective decision expressed by majority of Nigerians at various stages via generally acceptable democratic processes. 2. Docile Northern Response

a. While these provocative acts of aggression persist and grow in dimension with each new move, leaders of the North whose people are at the receiving end of the threats, appear helplessly unperturbed.

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b. Rather than endorsing a concise framework for pre-emptive action to protect and safeguard the interest of the North and its people, leaders of the region at every stage tend to seek the cover of a flimsy and long-discarded excuse of having fought in the [19]60s to keep Nigeria united. c. Without pursuing a resolute action-plan, these northern leaders have adopted and have been dragging its people into a pitifully pacifist position in order to sustain an elusive national cohesion that has long been ridiculed by the Igbos.

Our Stand 1. From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbos and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement. 2. This conclusion is necessitated by the realization that it since ceased to be comfortable or safe to continue sharing the same country with the ungrateful, uncultured Igbos who have exhibited reckless disrespect for the other federating units and stained the integrity of the entire nation with their insatiable criminal obsessions. 3. Rather than certain sections holding the whole country to ransom at every stage, each should be allowed to go its own way as we categorically proclaim today that the North is fed up with being [in] the same country with this pack of acrimonious Igbo partners. 4. The North hereby openly calls on the authorities and other national and international stakeholders to acknowledge this declaration by taking steps to facilitate the final dissolution of this hopeless union that has never been convenient to any of the parties.

Prelude to Final Separation 1. Recovery and Control of Landed Property As a first step, since the Igbo have clearly abused the unreciprocated hospitality that gave them unrestricted access to, and ownership

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of landed properties all over the North, our first major move shall be to reclaim, assume and assert sole ownership and control of these landed resources currently owned, rented or in any way enjoyed by the ingrate Igbos in any part of Northern Nigeria. Consequently, officials of the signatory groups to this declaration, are already mandated to commence immediate inventory of all properties, spaces or activity in the north currently occupied by the Igbos for forfeiture at the expiration of the ultimatum contained in this declaration. In specific terms, the groups are directed to compile and forward an up-to-date data of all locations occupied by any Igbo in any part of Northern Nigeria including schools, markets, shops, workshops, residences, and every other activity spaces. 2. Relocation Notice Secondly, with the effective date of this declaration, which is today, Tuesday, June 6, 2017, all Igbos currently residing in any part of Northern Nigeria are hereby served notice to relocate within three months and all northerners residing in the East are advised likewise. 3. Enforcement All northern civil society and pressure groups are by this declaration mandated to mobilize for sustained, coordinated campaigns at their respective State Government Houses, State Houses of Assembly, Local Government Council Secretariats, and Traditional Palaces to mount pressure for steps to be taken to ensure enforcement of the directives contained herein.

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Conclusion In conclusion, we are hereby placing the Nigerian authorities and the entire nation on notice that as from the 1st of October 2017, we shall commence the implementation of visible actions to prove to the whole world that we are no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos. From that date, effective, peaceful, and safe mop-up of all the remnants of the stubborn Igbos that neglect to heed this quit notice shall commence to finally eject them from every part of the North. And finally, all authorities, individuals or groups are hereby advised against attempting to undermine this declaration by insisting on this union with the Igbos who have thus far proved to be an unnecessary baggage carried too far and for too long.

CHAPTER 5

Sovereignty and Self-Determination in a Non-Constitutionalized Setting: Cameroon in Comparative Perspective

Introduction This chapter integrates Cameroon’s perspectives into the thrust of this book revolved around the intersection among sovereignty (à la territorial integrity), self-determination, and constitutional law in postcolonial Africa. It is the last of two chapters, after Chapter 4 on Nigeria, devoted to exploring the relationship between sovereignty and self-determination in a non-constitutionalized setting. In addition to this introduction, this chapter explores five illustrative issues, sealed off with a conclusion and one attachment. The five illustrative issues are: a portraiture on the basic facts on Cameroon organized around the notion of the country as Africa in miniature on grounds of its diversity, a survey of Cameroonian constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, a sketch on the politics of constitutional engineering in the land, exploration of the “Southern Cameroon” problem embedded in demands for restoration of federalism, and discussion of the crossover into agitation for full independence, free and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_5

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separate from French-speaking Cameroon—what one analyst aptly characterized as a shift “from representation in a federal state to the creation of an independent Ambazonia.”1 Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 laid out the loci of separatist movements in Africa. For Cameroon, those sites are listed as Ambazonia, and Bakassi. Without relegating the self-determination stirrings in Bakassi, the main focus in this chapter is Ambazonia, the nerve center of self-determination struggle of this book. Bakassi, a peninsula formerly part of Nigeria, that was transferred to Cameroon, consistent with the ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2002 on a land and maritime dispute between the two countries,2 is outside the scope of this book.

Cameroon, “Africa in Miniature”: Basic Facts Related to the Country Etymology of Cameroon Cameroon is a country in Africa at the crossroads between two subregions of the continent—West Africa and Central Africa—each of which subregion it belongs in as of right. Because of its central location on the map of Africa, galvanized by its position at the juncture of the Gulf of Guinea, Cameroon is sometimes referred to as “the hinge of Africa.”3 Its straddle between West Africa and Central Africa made Cameroon eligible for membership of both the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), two political and economic unions of the two subregions.4 1 Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, “The Cameroon Anglophone Crisis: Examining Escalation and Seeking Solutions,” Africa Program Meeting Summary, Chatam House: The Royal Institute of International Affairs (November 2, 2017), https://www.chathamho use.org/sites/default/files/events/Meeting%20Summary%20-%20The%20Cameroon%20A nglophone%20Crisis.pdf. (internal quote secluding Ambazonia deleted). 2 See International Court of Justice, Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria (Cameroon v. Nigeria: Equatorial Guinea intervening) (October 10, 2002), https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/94. 3 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022); and Robert Longley, “A Brief History of Cameroon,” ThoughtCo (Updated September 14, 2020), https://www.thoughtco.com/brief-history-of-cameroon-43616. 4 These are two of the six or so political and economic organizations in Africa. The others, alphabetically, are: the Arab Mahgreb Union (AMU), formed in February 1989, and made up of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia; Common

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However, while the country is a member of ECCAS,5 it does not have membership in ECOWAS.6 Etymologically speaking, Cameroon took its name from the Portuguese word, Camaroes, meaning shrimps, coined by the Portuguese sailor Fernando Poo.7 Upon arrival in the territory in 1472, Poo beheld such abundance of shrimps (prawns) at the Wouri river in Douala that he called the river Rio Dos Camaroes, Portuguese for “river of shrimps”8

Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), formed December 1994, and made up of Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), formed in 1996, and made up of Djibouti, Eritrea (currently inactive), Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda; and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), formed April 1980, and made up of Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. See Institute for Security Studies, “Profile: Arab Maghreb Union (AMU),” https://issafrica.org/profile-arab-maghreb-union-amu; Office of the United States Trade Representative, “Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA),” https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/africa/regional-economic-communitiesrec/common-market-eastern-and-southern-africa-comesa; African Union, “Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD),” https://au.int/en/recs/igad; and African Union, “Southern African Development Community (SADC),” https://au.int/en/recs/ sadc. 5 See African Union, “Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS),” https://au.int/en/recs/eccas. Besides Cameroon, the other ten members of this organization are: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Rwanda. Ibid. 6 The fifteen members of this organization are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. See ECOWAS, “Member States,” https://ecowas.int/ member-states/. Besides Cameroon, three other countries located in West Africa that are not members of ECOWAS are Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and Mauritania. See Philip C. Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations: Building the Record of a Moral Superpower (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2017), 228 (“The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations”). 7 “Cameroon,” Nations Online, https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/cameroon. htm?ref=binfind.com/web. 8 Ibid.

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That was how the territory begot the name that over time different European countries, in the course of their interactions with inhabitants of the territory,9 spelled differently: Cameroon in English, Cameroun in French, Kamerun in Germany, and Cameroes in Spanish.10 “[T]his is the only instance where a country is named after a crustacean.”11 Geopolitical Feature and Demographic Profile Cameroon shares borders with six countries in West and Central Africa: Central African Republic to the east, Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, as well as Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south.12 Of the six countries, the ones Cameroon shares the most boundaries with are Nigeria (1795 km), Chad (1116 km), and Central African Republic (901).13 Cameroon builds its coastline to the west on the Bight of Biafra, within the vicinity of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.14

9 The Africanist scholar Roland Oliver called these foreigners “strangers at the gates.” See Roland Oliver, The African Experience: Major Themes in African History from Earliest Times to the Present (New York: Avalon Publishing, 1992), 159–173. 10 See “Cameroon,” Nations Online, note 7. 11 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. This may well be so. At the same time,

this lack of creativity in name-branding by European expeditioners is more widespread than it seems on initial thought. Put aside for the moment unimaginative names like the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, among others. Consider this: Following the discovery of Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1609 by British captain William Keeling (which calls to mind Christopher Columbus’s famed discovery of the US), the territory was named the Cocos Islands in 1622 for their coconut trees. Some maps began referring to them as the Keeling Islands in 1703. About 24 times the size of The Mall in Washington, D.C., this raft of islands in Southeastern Asia, within the vicinity of the Indian Ocean, southwest of Indonesia, is about halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka. “Cocos (Keeling) Island,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022). 12 “Political Map of Cameroon,” Nations Online, https://www.nationsonline.org/one world/map/cameroon-political-map.htm; and “Map of Cameroon,” Geographic Guide, https://www.geographicguide.com/africa-maps/cameroon.htm. 13 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 14 “Map of Cameroon,” note 12.

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As of 2022, Cameroon has a population of approximately 28 million people,15 on an area (land and water) of 475,442 square kilometers.16 In comparable terms, Cameroon is slightly larger than California or about four times the size of Pennsylvania, both US states.17 Like Ethiopia and Nigeria in our case studies, but much less so than these two countries, Cameroon ranks high in population in the world than it does in area: 52.18 With area at No. 54 and population at No. 52 in the world, of all three countries that form the case study in this book, Cameroon is the one with the least gap between area and population. To juxtapose Cameroon with the two other countries, Ethiopia ranked No. 27 in area (bearing in mind the caveat that a large portion of the country’s border with Somalia is undefined) and 12 in population, while Nigeria registered an even greater gap of No. 32 in area vis-à-vis No. 6 in population. Cameroon’s population is concentrated in the west and north, with a sparsely populated interior.19 It is almost evenly divided between urban and rural dwellers. Population density is highest in the large urban centers (such as Douala, Garoua, and Yaoundé), the western highlands, and the northeastern plain.20 In contrast, the Adamawa Plateau, southeastern Bénoué depression, and most of the South Cameroon Plateau are sparsely populated.21 Compared to many African countries, including Ethiopia

15 See Table 1.2 in Chapter 1, citing “Countries in Africa 2022,” World Population Review, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-in-africa. With a growth rate estimates at 2.75 percent in 2022 which makes it No. 15 in the world. “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 16 See “Largest Countries in the World (by Area),” Worldometer, https://www.wor ldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/. This number makes Cameroon the 54th-largest country in the world by area. Ibid. 17 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 5. 18 “Cameroon Population (Live),”

Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/ world-population/cameroon-population/#:~:text=Cameroon%20ranks%20number%2052% 20in,145%20people%20per%20mi2).&text=The%20median%20age%20in%20Cameroon% 20is%2018.7%20years. 19 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 20 See “Cameroon Demographics Profile,” Index Mundi, https://www.indexmundi.

com/cameroon/demographics_profile.html#:~:text=28%2C524%2C175%20(July%202 021%20est.)&text=Bamileke%2DBamu%2024.3%25%2C%20Beti,4.5%25%20(2018%20e st.). 21 Ibid.

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and Nigeria in this book, Cameroon is a highly urbanized country.22 No different from the other two candidates in this book, Cameroon’s population has a high proportion of youth: as of 2020, more than 60 percent or three-fifth is under the age of 25,23 and likely to remain so for quite some time.24 Estimate as of 2020 showed that just about 7 percent of the population is 55 and above.25 From the standpoint of administrative structure, Cameroon is divided into ten regions (Table 5.1), two of which are in English-speaking Cameroon. These are the Northwest Region, and Southwest Region, items. 5 and 7 on the Table, respectively. Cameroon is home to an estimated 230–282 ethnic and linguistic groups. Table 5.2 shows the major ethnic groups in the country; the first three groups make up 60.5 percent of the overall population.26 Christianity is the predominant religion in Cameroon, with about two-thirds of the country affiliated to the faith, compared to about one-fourth who are adherents of the Islamic religion, with the remainder being practitioners of traditional religions.27 Distribution-wise, “Muslims and Christians live in every region, although Christians are concentrated primarily in the southern and western regions[,] [while] [l]arge cities have significant populations of both groups.”28

22 “Cameroon Urban Population 1960-2023,” Macrotrends, https://www.macrotrends. net/countries/CMR/cameroon/urban-population. 23 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3 (“Demographic Profile”). The numbers for Ethiopia and Nigeria respectively are over 59 percent and approximately 62 percent. See Chapter 3, note 34, and accompanying text (Ethiopia), and Chapter 4, note 70, and accompanying text (Nigeria). 24 See “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3 (pointing out that [f]ertility is falling, but remains at a high level, especially among poor, rural, and uneducated women, in part because of inadequate access to contraception”). 25 See “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 26 See Chapter 1, note 57, and accompanying text. 27 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. The breakdown, based on estimates from the CIA in 2018, is as follows: Roman Catholics 38.3 percent, Protestants 25.5 percent, other Christians 6.9 percent, Muslims 24.4 percent, animists 2.2 percent, others 0.5 percent, none 2.2 percent. Ibid. For another breakdown with slightly different numbers, see Benjamin Elisha Sawe, “Religious Beliefs in Cameroon,” World Atlas, https://www. worldatlas.com/articles/religious-beliefs-in-cameroon.html. 28 “Cameroon—Religion,” Global Security, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/africa/cm-religion.htm.

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Table 5.1 Ten regions of Cameroon (in order of population) Item no.

Region

Capital

Population as of 2022

Area in square km

1.

Central (Centre in French) Far North (Extrême-Nord in French) Littoral (same in French) North (Nord in French) Northwest (Nord-Quest in French) West (Quest in French) Southwest (Sud-Quest in French) Adamawa (Adamaoua in French) East (Est in French) South (Sud in French)

Yaoundé

3,905,000

68,953

Maroua

3,796,000

34,263

Douala

3,178,000

20,248

Garoua

2,297,000

66,090

Bamenda

1,906,000

17,300

Bafoussam

1,875,000

13,892

Buea

1,503,000

25,410

Ngaoundéré

1,124,000

63,701

Bertoua

830,000

109,002

Ebolowa

773,000

47,191

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

Table 5.2 Major ethnic groups of Cameroon Item no.

Name of group

Share of total population as of 2018 (percentage)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Bamileke-Bamu Beti/Bassa, Mbam Biu-Mandara Arab-Choa/Hausa/Kanuri Adamawa-Ubangi Grassfields Kako, Meka/Pygmy Cotier/Ngoe/Oroko Southwestern Bantu Others, including foreign ethnic groups

24.3 21.6 14.6 11 9.8 7.7 3.3 2.7 0.7 4.5

Source “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook (Updated December 21, 2022)

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Cameroon’s Political History from Precolonial Through Colonial to the Period Since Independence and After Before Portuguese intrusion in 1472,29 several indigenous and nonindigenous groups inhabited the territories that formed modern-day Cameroon. The first is the Bantu people. Dating back around 1500 BCE [before the Common Era], archaeological diggings show that the area that now comprises Cameroon was the homeland of the Bantu peoples.30 Until the contemporary period, descendants of the ancient Bantu inhabited the forests of what became the southern and eastern provinces of Cameroon, where they continue to practice their cultures and traditions.31 There are also centralized states, with echoes into modern times, such as the Mandara Kingdom from today’s northern Cameroon from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. At the highpoint of its reign, before its defeat by the Fulani in 1893, the Mandara Kingdom was a regional power.32 The third group, which, unlike the first two above, is non-indigenous, is the Fulani, a nomadic Islamic people from the Sahel region of Western and North-Central Africa.33 Starting from the area that became Nigeria, in the early decade of the nineteenth century, Fulani scholars and soldiers introduced Islam into present-day northern Cameroon through the means of jihad (or “holy war”) involving sacking and displacing the indigenous population and imposing theocratic Emirate rules over them.34 This is how, unto the present day, the Fulani 29 See notes 7–8 and accompanying texts. 30 Longley, note 3. 31 Ibid. 32 “Cameroon,” SAHO: South African History Online, https://www.sahistory.org.za/

place/cameroon#:~:text=The%20Kingdoms%20of%20Bamum%2C%20Bamileke,the%20M andara%20mountains%20%5Bxxiii%5D (“The Emergence of Centralized Kingdoms”). 33 Longley, note 3. 34 Ibid.; and Quentin Gausset, “Historical Account or Discourse on Identity? A Reex-

amination of Fulbe Hegemony and Autochthonous Submission in Banyo1,” Cambridge Core (May 13, 2014), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/history-in-africa/art icle/abs/historical-account-or-discourse-on-identity-a-reexamination-of-fulbe-hegemonyand-autochthonous-submission-in-banyo1/F9326BE3A1682E93E026CCD7BB141659 (“[F]ollowing the example of Usman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, the Fulbe of Cameroon organized in the beginning of the nineteenth century a ‘jihad’ or a ‘holy war’ against the local pagan populations to convert them to Islam and create an Islamic state[;] [t]he divisions among the local populations and the military superiority of the Fulbe allowed them to conquer almost all northern Cameroon”) (abstract). On the inauguration of the

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can be found in locations like Adamawa, Benue, and Diamaré where they maintain their nomadic way of life, farming and raising cattle.35 As earlier indicated, European presence in the territory that became modern-day Cameroon dates back to the third quarter of the fifteenth century by the Portuguese.36 During the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, certain impediments, especially the outbreaks of malaria, prevented large-scale European presence in what later became Cameroon.37 At that time, economic activities revolved mostly around the slave trade.38 The situation changed beginning in the nineteenth century. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 regularized European “scramble for Africa” by superimposing a new map over more than one thousand indigenous cultures in the region.39 Equally, the conference launched the emergence of Germany, alongside the major European powers, as a colonial power.40 Back to the seventh century BC, Islam had a huge presence in many parts of Africa, including present-day Cameroon.41 The predominance changed subsequently. Following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, European missionaries conducted Sokoto Caliphate in the northern part of the territory that metamorphosed into Nigeria, see “Usman dan Fodio: Sokoto Caliphate Founder,” DW (February 24, 2020), https:// www.dw.com/en/usman-dan-fodio-founder-of-the-sokoto-caliphate/a-51995841. 35 Longley, note 3. 36 See note 8 and accompanying text. 37 Longley, note 3. It was not until 1820 that the quinine was discovered as a cure

for the deadly malaria fever. See Tom Cassauwers, “The Global History of Quinine, the World’s First Anti-Malaria Drug,” Medium (December 30, 2015), https://medium.com/ @tcassauwers/the-global-history-of-the-world-s-first-anti-malaria-drug-d1e11f0ba729. 38 Longley, note 3. 39 See Matt Rosenberg, “The Berlin Conference to Divide Africa,” ThoughtCo (Updated

June 30, 2019), https://www.thoughtco.com/berlin-conference-1884-1885-divide-africa1433556. 40 See “The German ‘Scramble for Africa’ (1882–1909), De Gruyter (January 23, 2015), https://doi.org/10.1515_9783110685015-004(1).pdf (With the conference, Germany “put itself at the center of the European colonial enterprise”). See also Chapter 2, notes 187–192 and accompanying texts. 41 See Mark Cartwright, “The Spread of Islam in Ancient Africa,” World History Encyclopedia (May 10, 2019), https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1382/the-spread-ofislam-in-ancient-africa/ (“Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and

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proselytization campaigns, including the establishment of Christian churches and schools that diminished the influence of Islam.42 Consistent with the partition deals worked out at the Berlin conference,43 in 1884, modern-day Cameroon started its journey of foreign rule under Germany as Kamerun.44 The involuntary tutelage lasted for 34 year until 1918,45 when, following the defeat of Germany in World War I and the loss of its colonies in Africa and elsewhere,46 the territory was split between France and the UK as League of Nations mandates, three-fourths of the trust territory to France and one-fourth to the UK.47 Subsequently, in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1945), these mandates turned into UN trusteeships.48 Per its policy of assimilation, France administered its portion of the territory as part of France, while Britain administered its own territory from neighboring Nigeria, part of its own policy of indirect rule, in what many critics analogized to a neglected “colony of a colony.”49 The law which governed British implementation of its trusteeship was the British Cameroons Administration Ordinance of 1924, which divided the administration of British

missionaries, […] largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated the religion or converted to it themselves”). 42 Richard A. Joseph, “Church, State, and Society in Colonial Cameroun,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 13(1) (1980), 5–32, https://doi.org/10. 2307/218370. 43 See notes 39–40 and accompanying texts. 44 See, for example, Mieke van der Linden, The Acquisition of Africa (1870–1914)

(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016), 174–214 (“German Cameroon”); and “Cameroon,” Academia Lab, https://academia-lab.com/encyclopedia/cameroon/ (following signature of “protection treaties between the German delegation and the most important leaders of the Duálá, Ndumb’a Lobe (King Campana) and Ngand’a Kwa (Akwa), on July 11 and 12, 1884, the German flag was raised, with a “Protection Mandate” unveiled in Douala on July 14”) (“German Colonization”). 45 See “Cameroon,” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/a22000968 (“German rule was marked by harsh treatment of the people of the colony, who were forcibly pressed into labor on large cocoa and rubber plantations in southwestern Cameroon”). 46 Van der Linden, note 44. 47 See “Chronology for Westerners in Cameroon,” Minorities at Risk Project, Ref World

(2004), https://www.refworld.org/docid/469f3876c.html. 48 Ibid. 49 See “Cameroon,” Academia Lab, note 44 (“Franco-British Colonization”).

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Cameroons into two: Northern Cameroons to be administered as part of Northern Nigeria, and Southern Cameroons to be administered as part of Eastern Nigeria.50 Under property law, trustee status mandates the trustee “to prepare the trust territory for self-independence.”51 This explains why, soon after 1946, the question of independence became an issue of heated discussions in French Cameroons, with different political parties expressing different views regarding the goals and timetable for self-government.52 When the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), the most radical among these parties, advocated immediate independence and the establishment of a socialist economy,53 France reacted with repressive measures that critics likened to “a dirty war,” including outlawing the party on July 13, 1955, and assassinating UPC leaders.54 French colonial authorities preferred more conservative parties, such as the Cameroon National Union (CNU), led by Ahmadou Ahidjo, to which party it transferred power in 1960.55 Faced with the crackdown, UPC insurgents responded with an insurgency that went on well after the country’s independence.56 In British Cameroon, the UK, the authority charged with responsibility for administering the Trust territory, ruled out the option of separate statehood,57 limiting the inhabitants of the Trust territory to the choice

50 See “The Northern Cameroons Case,” Duke Law Journal, 1964(3) (1964), 550, 551–552, JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1371038. 51 Henry H. Perritt Jr., “Structures and Standards of Political Trusteeship,” UCLA

Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs (Fall/Winter 2003), 385, 389. 52 “Cameroon,” Academic Lab, note 44. 53 “British Cameroons (1916–1961) and

French Cameroun (1916–1960),” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Cameroon/British-Cameroons-1916-61and-French-Cameroun-1916-60 (“Moving toward Independence”). 54 See “Cameroon,” Academic Lab, note 44; and Etienne Lock, “Ruben Um Nyobè (1913–1958),” Black Past (February 22, 2016), https://www.blackpast.org/global-afr ican-history/ruben-um-nyobe-1913-1958/. See also “Survivors Tell of France’s ‘Dirty War’ in Cameroon Independence,” France 24 (December 28, 2019), https://www.fra nce24.com/en/20191228-survivors-tell-of-france-s-dirty-war-in-cameroon-independence. 55 See “Cameroon,” Academic Lab, note 44. 56 See Thomas Deltombe, “The Forgotten War,” Jacobin (December 2016), https://

jacobin.com/2016/12/cameroon-france-colonialism-war-resistance/. 57 See Martin Z. Njeuma, “Reunification and Political Opportunism in the Making of Cameroon’s Independence,” Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 41 (1995), 27–37, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40341690. Britain ruled out independence because,

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of continuing their political life inside Nigeria with whom they have affiliated for many years, or joining French Cameroon.58 The inhabitants chose the latter.59 On January 1, 1960, French Cameroon became independent under Ahidjo and his political party, the CNU.60 Twenty months later, on October 1, 1961, the two Cameroons, French and British, came together to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.61 The two-state federalization was preceded by a referendum, formally known as the British Cameroon plebiscite, under the auspices of the UN, from February 11– 12, 1961, wherein British Cameroonians voted 70.5 percent in favor and 25.9 percent against, to join French Cameroon,62 rather than continue their political affiliation with English-speaking Nigeria, which became

based on a 1959 report, Southern Cameroon was not sufficiently viable to form an independent state. Ibid. However, a study published in 1960, contradicted the 1959 report. See Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: A Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 33. 58 See “British Cameroons (1916–1961) and French Cameroun (1916–1960),” note 53. This was despite appeals by certain Southern Cameroon leaders for the territory’s independence as a separate country. See Nicodemus Fru Awasom, “Negotiating Federalism: How Ready Were Cameroonian Leaders before the February 1961 United Nations Plebiscites?” Canadian Journal of African Studies, 36(3) (2002), 425–459. 59 The choice seems strange, given the accession to requests for autonomy granted to South Cameroonians during colonial Nigeria. For example, in response to a demand by Southern Cameroon representatives in the Eastern Nigerian Legislature for a separate regional government with seat in Buea, under the Lyttleton Constitution of Nigeria (1954), Southern Cameroon gained limited autonomy as a quasi-region within the Nigerian Federation. In the light of this development, E.M.L. Endeley emerged as leader of the Quasi-Region of Southern Cameroons, with the official title of Leader of Government Business. See Konings and Nyamnjoh, note 57, pp. 22-50. And in 1958, Southern Cameroons attained the status of a full autonomous region under the Nigerian Federation at which point Endeley’s official title changed to Premier. Ibid. 60 See ibid. In 1985, under Paul Biya, Ahidjo’s successor, the name of the party was changed to Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM). 61 “British Cameroons (1916–1961) and French Cameroun (1916–1960),” note 53. 62 See Results of the 1961 UN Plebiscite in Cameroon, in Billy Agwanda and U˘ gur

Yasin Asal, “The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon: The Change from Crisis to Conflict, and a Possible Way Forward to Resolution,” African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 21(1) (September 2021), 9–34, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354662639_ The_Anglophone_problem_in_Cameroon-_The_change_from_crisis_to_conflict_and_a_p ossible_way_forward_to_resolution.

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independent one year before.63 In contrast, approximately 60 percent of Northern Cameroonians voted yes to remain in Nigeria.64 This was the shape of the political and constitutional system until 1972 when the two-state federal system was abolished and replaced with a centralized unitary state denominated the United Republic of Cameroon. Going further, in 1984, the Cameroonian national government, now under the leadership of Paul Biya, promulgated a decree that changed the name of the country to simply Republic of Cameroon, with the prefix “United” struck off.65 The material in the next section provides a detailed discussion on the constitutional documents pertaining to these events. English-speaking South Cameroon makes up about onefifth of Cameroon’s population, with the remainder fourth-fifth being French-speaking.66 Given the numerical advantage, of the country’s two official languages, French is more widely spoken than English by a wide

63 The vote appeared to have been driven by a fear of Igbo domination embedded in the presumption that unification with Nigeria would result in a mass influx of Igbo from Nigeria into Southern Cameroon, leading to loss of employment and other business or economic opportunities. See ibid. As the thinking went, already, Southern Cameroonians “had suffered enormously at the hands of Igbo people who’d settled in their territory in previous decades.” Verkijika G. Fanso, “History Explains Why Cameroon is at War with Itself Over Language and Culture,” Relief Web (October 15, 2017), https://relief web.int/report/cameroon/history-explains-why-cameroon-war-itself-over-language-andculture#:~:text=Southern%20Cameroonians%20wanted%20nothing%20more,new%20fede ration%20with%20Cameroun%20Republic. There was a more philosophical justification anchored on the need to “try the other side of the border.” In the word of that source, Southern Cameroonians “have been with Nigeria for forty years under British administration. We have no roads [and] no government secondary schools. It is about time we try the other side of the border.” Agwanda and Asal, note 62. For Northern Cameroonians who voted to stay in Nigeria, the justification revolved around an unwillingness to discard their British lifestyle in favor of a French way of life. Ibid. 64 See Ibrahim Tukur El-Sudi, “The Nigerian States that Formed Parts of Northern Cameroons,” PR Nigeria (April 20, 2019), https://prnigeria.com/2019/04/20/nig erian-states-northern-cameroons/. The vote was 146,296 yes out of 243,999. Northern Cameroon became part of Nigeria effective June 1, 1961. Ibid. 65 See Dibussi Tande, “A Rose by Any Other Name: ‘United Republic of Cameroon’ vs. ‘Republic of Cameroon,’” Scribbles from the Den (Blog) (March 31, 2006), https:// www.dibussi.com/2006/03/a_rose_by_any_o.html. 66 Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, “Cameroon” (December 1, 2022), https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/cameroon/#:~:text=Although%20the%20A nglophone%20minority%20constitutes,%2Dwest%20and%20south%2Dwest.

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margin,67 even though the constitution grants both languages equality and none is superior to the other.68 Until recently, Cameroon has a reputation for political stability that has created space for a semblance of economic prosperity, including infrastructure in road and railway networks.69 It is the only one among the three countries in our case study that has not experienced military rule. Since its independence and unification in 1961, Cameroon has been led by just two leaders: Ahidjo from 1960 until his resignation in November 1982,70 and Paul Biya, since then until this book.71 Before becoming president in 1982, Biya held office as Prime Minister since June 1975.72 The continuous occupation of leadership positions going over half a century makes Biya one of the longest-serving leaders in the world.73 However, much like imperial Ethiopia, this semblance of political stability appears to come at the expense of political reforms. Mainstay of Cameroon’s Economy Consistent with the information provided in Chapter 1, Table 1.1, the mainstay of Cameroon’s economy, no different from Ethiopia’s and Nigeria’s, is embedded in agricultural activities.74 About 70 percent of the workforce is engaged in occupations tied to agriculture, including livestock and fisheries.75 Like Nigeria, much of Cameroon’s agriculture is still subsistence and conducted in fragmented farm holdings, rather than

67 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 68 See note 144 below (commenting on the provision of the Constitution mandating

the government to promote bilingualism). 69 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 70 Department of Political Science, University

of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, “Cameroon (1961-Present),” https://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/sub-sah aran-africa-region/cameroon-1961-present/. 71 See ibid. 72 Ibid. 73 “Cameroon’s Paul Biya Marks 40 Years as President,” France 24 (November 6, 2022), https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20221106-cameroon-s-paul-biya-marks-40years-as-president. 74 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 7 (“Mainstay of the Economy”). 75 Ibid., item 11. See also “Cameroon,” Infoplease, https://www.infoplease.com/enc

yclopedia/places/africa/cameroon/cameroon-country/economy.

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mechanized.76 However, unlike Ethiopia, but distantly removed from Nigeria, Cameroon is also an oil-producing country. In 2023, Cameroon placed 50 among oil-producing countries in the world with nearly 60,000 barrels a day, compared to over 1.3 million barrels a day for Nigeria.77 Much of the oil comes from the English-speaking portions of the country, the source of the country’s oil refinery. Agriculture represents about 51 percent of all exports and contributes over 40 percent of Cameroon’s GDP.78 In addition to crude oil, other natural resources Cameroon exports to the world economy include cocoa (of which the country is the fourth-largest producer in the world), coffee, rubber, cotton, and banana.79 The government works to diversify its energy sector, signified by the construction of a hydro-electric dam to increase power supply in the country,80 while actively sourcing for Foreign direct investment, to improve its infrastructure, create jobs, and generally grow its economy, within the constraints of an unfavorable business environment marked by bureaucratic corruption, amidst other disabilities.81 Cameroon’s GDP per capita in 2021 was US $3700 (in-between $2300 for Ethiopia, and $4900 for Nigeria).82 In the same time period, 76 Elise Stephanie Mvodo Meyo and Ivette Mbey Egoh, “Assessing the Impacts of Variable Input Costs on Maize Production in Cameroon,” Agricultural Sciences, 11(11) (November 2020), 1095–1108, https://doi.org/10.4236/as.2020.1111071 (“The cultivation of maize in Cameroon is predominantly dominated by smallholder farmers who use traditional methods and face drudgery”) (abstract). According to this source, “subsistence production is dominant” in Africa, with about 65 percent of the region’s population depending on this traditional method. Ibid., p. 1095. 77 See U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Production of Petroleum and Other Liquids (last visited July 21, 2023). 78 See UN Industrial Development Organization, “Cameroon Fact Book,” http:// www.unido.or.jp/files/sites/2/iatf-2021-promotion-material-info.pdf. 79 Ibid.; “Cameroon,” Infoplease, note 75. 80 See Darrell Proctor, “Hydro, Gas Projects Aim to Bolster Cameroon’s Electricity

Supply,” Power Magazine (May 26, 2023), https://www.powermag.com/hydro-gas-pro jects-aim-to-bolster-cameroons-electricity-supply/. The result of a public-private partnership, the gas-operated dam was begun in 2019. Praised as “the largest hydro project in” Africa, when completed and operational, it is projected to supply more than 30 percent of Cameroon’s electric needs. Ibid. 81 See U.S. Department of State, “2022 Investment Climate Statements: Cameroon,” https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-investment-climate-statements/cameroon/. 82 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 15.

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the country’s unemployment registered an estimated 3.87 percent of the labor force, with youth unemployment at 6.6 percent, and the share of the population below poverty 37.5 percent (as of 2014).83 The situation is made worse by a high population of homeless people, generated both from refugees fleeing from attacks by Boko Haram terrorists from neighboring Nigeria and Central African Republic, compounded since 2017 by separatist events from Southern Cameroon. In the face of these nonoptimal economic records, migration outside the country has increased dramatically, especially by young Cameroonians.84 In addition to the much-favored US and Europe, due to tighter visa requirements, destinations now encompass a wider range of locations, such as countries in the Middle and Far East (Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand, among others) and even neighboring countries like Gabon, Nigeria, South Africa, to name these African countries.85 As of September 2022, the Cameroonian national government depended on UN support to host nearly half a million refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from Central African Republic and Nigeria.86 Portraiture of Cameroon as “Africa in Miniature” in Analytical Perspective There are two ways to look at the moniker and portrayal of Cameroon as “Africa in miniature.” The first is as a microcosm of sort, based on features of diversity embedded in geology, linguistics, and culture. In the words of one analyst, in Cameroon you find the Fulani, the Sudanese and the Hausa in the north, the Beti, the Baka, the Bakweri and the Grassfield in the south[;] [a]s you travel from Kousseri to Ebolowa, you will have the opportunity

83 Ibid., items 12–14. 84 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3. 85 See ibid. See also Linus Unah, “In Nigeria, Anglophone Cameroonians Turn to Low

Paid Labor,” Alja Zeera (August 2, 2018), https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/ 8/2/in-nigeria-anglophone-cameroonians-turn-to-low-paid-labour. 86 “Cameroon,” CIA World Factbook, note 3.

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to meet almost all the people that make the different ethnic groups in Africa.87

An alternative way, more inanimately, is as “a variety of geographical regions like mountains, desert, savanna, rainforest, and coastal plains.”88 Whichever way one chooses to look at the phraseology, Cameroon’s stature of Africa in miniature has a ring of unnaturalness because it was a property induced by forces outside Africa beyond the control of Cameroonians. Like in Ethiopia, it was a political marriage between two unequal partners, though not a situation in which the bigger party coveted annexation of its smaller partner, as was the case in Ethiopia. In each case, the tool for this arranged political marriage was two-state federalization. In both instances, there were groups which argued for separate existence ab initio that the colonial overlord did not permit. Time will tell whether the outcome in Ethiopia indicated by full independence for Eritrea will repeat itself in the Cameroon. Why did the Cameroon government disband federalism in 1972 and centralize power? How can the country portray Africa in miniature in a unitary government? Given the migration of constitutional ideas that mark the contemporary world,89 why did Cameroon founding fathers and mothers not learn from the experience of a country like Canada? There, federalism was a response to the colonial-era diversity of the Canadian and Maritime provinces, particularly the sharp distinction between the French-speaking inhabitants of Lower Canada and the Englishspeaking inhabitants of Upper Canada and the Maritime provinces.90 John A. Macdonald (1815–1891), Canada’s first Prime Minister, originally favored a unitary system, but supported federalism after witnessing

87 Abdoulaye Ahidjo, “Cameroon: Africa in Miniature,” SICAS: Bridge to Study in China, https://www.sicas.cn/School/232/Contents/201228174505896.shtml. See also “Cameroon Country Profile,” BBC News (October 22, 2018), https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-africa-13146029. 88 See “Maps of Cameroon,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/cam eroon. 89 For an explanation of this concept, see Chapter 3, note 196. 90 See “Macdonald, Sir John Alexander,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, XII

(1891–1900), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/macdonald_john_alexander_12E.html.

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the carnage of the American Civil War, to avoid similar violent conflicts.91 In a nutshell, although the appellation has some justification in the facts, the name is somewhat a misnomer because it does not perfectly fit the country. It is a metaphorical proverb no more true of Ethiopia as the land of the Blue Nile or of Nigeria as the giant of Africa.

Cameroonian Constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008: A Tale of Three High(er) Laws Constitutional engineering in Cameroon, involving the drafting and adoption of constitutions in the country, started with the Constitution of 1960, which granted independence to the country from France. The country’s first supreme law in the postcolonial period, its adoption “came in the wave of independence of African states and thus it was drawn up in a hurry to meet the mood of the season.”92 Its drafting was done with little input from indigenous Cameroonians.93 Instead, exclusively, French colonial administrators and “a handful of colonial regime-minded

91 Ibid. See also “John A. Macdonald on the Federal System,” Macdonald and Laurier Days, https://web.archive.org/web/20130627210817/http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/en/macdonald/macdonald-speeches-1823 (commenting on how founders of the Canadian state came to the conclusion to “abandon the idea of Union altogether,” in favor of “a system of union in which the separate provincial organizations would be in some degree preserved,” in the light of the “disinclination on the part of the various Maritime Provinces,” along with entities in Lower Canada, “to lose their individuality, as separate political organizations”). 92 “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” Sur Le Cameroun (February 12, 2022; updated October 15, 2022), https://www.cameroun.cc/the-evo lution-and-changes-in-the-cameroon-constitution/. For Cameroon’s constitutional history before 1960, see Justin Ngambu Wanki, “(Un)Constitutional Amendments and Cameroon Constitutions: Strange Bedfellows with the Rule of Law and Constitutionalism,” African Journal of International and Comparative Law (February 2021), https://www.euppublis hing.com/doi/full/10.3366/ajicl.2021.0352 (sketching a background history involving three periods: 1884–1914, during which period Germans administered the territory as Kamerun, losing its colonial holdings there following its defeat in World War I; 1916– 1946, during which period the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor, mandated Cameroon to France and England; and 1946–1960, during which period the UN’s mandate over Cameroon was converted into a trusteeship, although its administration remained entrusted to France and the UK). 93 “Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92.

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Cameroonian elites,” wrote the document, no regard for “the aspirations of Cameroonians.”94 Here is how the document came into being. In 1959, France agreed to grant independence to its former colonies, including Cameroon, penciling down January 1, 1960, as the date for that independence.95 Thus, the document was hurriedly drafted to meet this deadline.96 The referendum which approved the document took place on February 21, 1960.97 The measure passed by 60 percent with a 75.5 percent voter turnout.98 The framers of the constitution based many provisions, such as those relating to the powers of the president, on the French model.99 The Constitution went into effect on January 1, 1960. Under it, Cameroon was defined as a unitary state with a one-house parliament, whose members were directly elected on the principle of universal suffrage.100 Even though this high(er) law preceded the 1961 constitution that merged the two Cameroons, the document influenced future constitutional engineering in Cameroon in the sense that, as one Cameroonian scholar pointed out, “all subsequent constitutions took their cue[s]” from this first one.101 Whereas the 1960 document applied only to East or French-speaking Cameroon, the Constitution of 1961 takes its especial importance from the fact that it joined two former Trust colonies, East and West (or Southern) Cameroons, the first French-speaking, as indicated before, and the latter English-speaking, using the vehicle of federalism, a political and constitutional union between a central government and two

94 Wanki, note 92. 95 “Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 96 Ibid. 97 Department of Political Science, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, “British/French Cameroon (1948–1961),” https://uca.edu/politicalscience/dadm-project/ sub-saharan-africa-region/britishfrench-cameroon-1948-1961/. 98 “Elections in Cameroon,” African Elections Database, https://africanelections.tripod. com/cm.html. 99 “Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 100 Ibid. 101 Wanki, note 92.

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or more federating units,102 “each of which retains control of its own internal affairs.”103 It is this factor that, compared to its predecessor, made the 1961 constitution consequential. The 1972 constitution is notable for abolishing the federal system created by the 1961 constitution and replacing it with a unitary form of government that, not done yet, concentrated even more powers in the office and person of the President. Two key amendments to the constitution were the ones on May 9, 1975, which created the position of Prime Minister; and June 29, 1979, seven years later after the constitution took effect, making the Prime Minister, not the Speaker of the National Assembly any longer, successor to the President and second in the order of succession.104 This was the scenario when, in November 1982, Paul Biya replaced Ahmadou Ahidjo as President.105 With respect to the politics of constitutional engineering in Cameroon, the 1984 constitution was a power play which resolved the tussle between Ahmadu Ahidjo and Paul Biya in favor of the latter. The document primarily altered Articles 1, 5, and 7 of the previous Constitution. Article 1 renamed the country the Republic of Cameroon, eliminating the prefix “United” in 1972. Article 5 did away with the post of Prime Minister. Article 7 (re)established the Speaker of the National Assembly as the presidential successor, the arrangement under the 1972 constitution before the subsequent amendment that changed that arrangement. The 2008 constitution was, in actuality, revisions of all previous documents. Rather than brand new, the constitution of 2008 was made up of changes to the constitution of 1996. Here are the changes. Passage on April 10, 2008, of a law as an amendment to the constitution to provide the President with immunity from prosecution for his acts as President and to allow him to run for reelection without limits.106 This same year too, via presidential decrees, provinces in the country changed their names to regions, their

102 For text of the document, see Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961, reprinted from: https://ambazonia.org/media/pdfs/Constitution%20of%20the% 20Federal%20Republic%20of%20Cameroun.pdf. 103 “Federation,” (meaning 2).

Dictionary,

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/federation

104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92.

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nomenclature up to the present day.107 These changes took place in the face of strong political opposition.108 In sum, although the timeline in constitution making and adoption in Cameroon spans from 1960 and encompassed six charters, the ones actually at play are the 1961, 1972, and 1996 constitutions, leaving out the ones of 1960, 1984, and 2008, as less substantive. These first three stand out more or less in momentousness in the light of the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination at the thrust of this book. Accordingly, the following discussion focuses on the before-mentioned constitutions. The Constitution of 1961 This constitution was adopted September 1, 1961, and came into force on October 1, 1961.109 It replaced the constitution of 1960.110 It is significant for joining the two Cameroons, East (French-speaking) and West

107 See Table 5.1 (list of the country’s 10 regions). 108 The vote took place after the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF) represen-

tatives walked out of the assembly, and just one month after the 2008 Cameroonian anti-government protests, widespread violence that resulted in dozens of deaths and the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators protesting price rises and the proposed constitutional changes. See “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. See also “Cameroon Parliament Extends Biya’s Term Limit,” France 24 (April 11, 2008), https://www.france24.com/en/20080411-cameroon-parliament-paulbiya-term-limit-extension. There was limited public discussion of the changes in the leadup to the vote, with declarations by SDF leader John Fru Ndi reportedly prohibited in the national press and television by Alain Belibi, Director of Information at the CRTV. A song titled “50 years in power” by the Cameroon singer Longuè Longuè was also reportedly banned by the Director of Programs at the CRTV, Celestin Boten, and Bill Karson, a journalist who had played the song was suspended and banned from air. Another artist Lapiro de Mbanga, who had composed a song analogizing the Cameroonian political system under Paul Biya to a “constipated constitution,” was arrested, and the painter Joe La Conscience (Joe de Vinci Kameni), who had attempted to walk from Loum to Yaoundé to give a petition of 100 signatures to Cameroon President Paul Biya against the constitutional changes, was sentenced to six months in prison. He and a colleague were arrested after initiating a hunger strike for holding a prohibited meeting of two persons in his private residence at Tsinga. See, for example, Daniel Brown, “Voice to the Voiceless,” Index on Censorship, 39(3) (2010), https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/09/voiceto-the-voiceless/ (exclusive interview with Lapiro de Mbanga). 109 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961, note 102, arts. 1 and

59. 110 Ibid., art. 59.

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(English-speaking) into a federation that its adoption consummated.111 That adoption was preceded by a constitutional-drafting conference held in Foumban (city in northwestern Cameroon in the Northwest region with a population of little over 83,000 in 2005), involving delegates from the two Cameroons.112 Under the constitution, each Cameroon had its own Prime Minister and its own house of parliament, unicameral in East Cameroon, but bicameral in West Cameroon: a House of Representatives, and a House of Chiefs.113 The constitution created a strong national government, headed by a President, and supported by a Vice President, a cabinet, and a national legislature made up of 50 members.114 The charter was adopted on September 1, 1961, and went into effect on October 1 of the same year.115 Along the line, two key amendments were made to this constitution. The first in 1969 was designed to “prolong the life of the federal assembly.”116 The second in 1970 altered the selection process for Prime Ministers. For many years, the Vice President and the Prime Minister of West Cameroon were the same person, but in 1970, via this amendment, the Vice President could not hold any other government office.117 The constitution comprises 60 articles broken down into eleven parts. Part 1, instructively titled “The Federal Republic of Cameroon,” contains four articles. Highlights of the provision include Art. 1 which proclaimed that the territories of East and West Cameroons, effective from October 1, 1961, shall join and constitute the Federal Republic of Cameroon,118 with a capital city based in Yaoundé119 ; that inhabitants of the two Cameroons shall form one Cameroonian nationality120 ; that the official languages of the combined country shall be English and French121 ; 111 See ibid., art. 1. 112 “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 See ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 118 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961, note 102, art. 1(1). 119 Ibid., art. 1(6). 120 Ibid., art. 1(9). 121 Ibid., art. 1(3).

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and that federal authority will be exercised by a Federal President and a Federal National Assembly.122 Part 2, on federal jurisdiction (meaning the powers of the Federal government), contains three articles. Part 3, on the presidency, made up of eight articles, created a President of the Federal Republic to be assisted by a Vice President. Part 4, set out in seven articles, created a Federal legislature made up of members from both Cameroons directly elected for a five-year term “in the proportion of one member to every eighty-thousand of the population.”123 Part 5, dealing with relations between the executive and legislative branches, contains 9 articles, the highlight of which is the provision that laws passed by the legislature must be published in the official languages of the combined country.124 Part 6, focusing on the judicial branch, embodies 4 articles, highlights of which provision are that: “[j]ustice shall be administered in the Federation in the name of the people of Cameroon by the competent Courts of each State[,]”125 and that the President “shall ensure the independence of the judiciary[.]”126 Part 7, containing one article, created a Federal Court of Impeachment, whose composition and other matters are set in federal law,127 charged with responsibility for trying the President for “high treason” and other government officials, beginning with the Vice President, for “conspiracy against the security of the State.”128 Part 8, containing one article, created a Federal Economic and Social Council, whose composition and other features will be regulated by federal law.129 Part 9, containing eight articles, focuses on the two “Federated States.” Highlights of the provisions include the statement to the effect that matters not specifically entrusted by the Constitution to a federal law “shall be of the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federated

122 Ibid., art. 4(a)–(b). 123 Ibid., art. 16. 124 Ibid., art. 31(1). 125 Ibid., art. 32(1). 126 Ibid., art. 32(2). 127 Ibid., art. 36(1). 128 Ibid., art. 36(2). 129 Ibid., art. 37.

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States,”130 as well as to the effect that “the House of Chiefs of the Southern Cameroons shall be preserved.”131 Part 10 on amending the constitution contains one article, a portion of which notably forbids the introduction of any amendment to the constitution that will “impair the unity and integrity of the Federation.”132 Part 11, titled “transition and special,” contains thirteen articles. Provisions which stand out in this portion include Art. 51, which made the President of then East Cameroon “for the duration of his existing term,” the President of the two Cameroons; Art. 52, which, also for the duration of the term of the President of then East Cameroon, made the Prime Minister of West Cameroon Vice President of the Federal Republic; Art. 56, which made the governments of the two Cameroons, effective October 1, 1961, governments of the two federated states; and Art. 59, which provides that this constitution replaced the East Cameroon high law adopted on February 21, 1960. The 1972 Constitution Down to its organizational structure, in important respects, this constitution follows the format of the 1961 unification constitution.133 Briefly, it abolished Cameroon’s federal system and replaced it with a unitary system, now denominated the United Republic of Cameroon. Moving further, the country now has one unified legislature, denominated the National Assembly of 120 members, with the unicameral legislature in East Cameroon and the bicameral one in West Cameroons disbanded.134 Under the constitution, the Speaker of the National Assembly is next after the President in the order of succession; otherwise, the power of the legislature was reduced, compared to the 1961 constitution.135 The constitution was approved in a referendum conducted on May 20, 1972,

130 Ibid., art. 38(1). 131 Ibid., art. 38(2). 132 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961, note 102, art. 47(1). 133 For text of the document, see Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon,

1972, reprinted in Constitute Project, https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/ Cameroon_2008.pdf?lang=en. 134 See “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 135 Ibid.

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and became effective from June 2, 1972, following Decree No. 72-270 signed by then President Ahmadou Ahidjo.136 Although its adoption was backed by a referendum conducted beforehand, the 1972 constitution seemed to be inconsistent with the 1961 constitution. The provision of the latter relating to amendment specified that “[n]o bill to amend the Constitution may be introduced if it tends to impair the unity and integrity of the Federation.”137 Certain key amendments took place in the aftermath of this constitution’s adoption. The first was the change on May 9, 1975, which created the position of Prime Minister.138 The second amendment was the change on June 29, 1979, which established the Prime Minister, rather than the Speaker of the National Assembly, as next in line after the President.139 This constitution remained in place until November 1982 when Paul Biya replaced Ahmadou Ahidjo as President of Cameroon.140 This constitution has 69 articles divided into thirteen parts, plus a preamble. The preamble incorporates the rights and freedoms of citizens. But another section of the charter, Art. 65, corrects the seeming anomaly by specifying that the preamble is “part and parcel” of the substantive constitution.141 Furthermore, the document affirmed the commitment of Cameroonians to fundamental freedoms embodied in two human rights instruments, both of which texts the document appends at its end. These two instruments were the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948; and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, adopted by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) (later the African Union, AU) on June 1, 1981, and entered into force on October 21, 1986. Part 1, on the state and sovereignty, embodies four articles. The provisions that stand out are the ones that: replaced federation with the

136 Ibid. 137 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, 1961, note 102, art. 47(1). 138 The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 139 Ibid. 140 See ibid. 141 Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972, note 133, art. 65 (“The Preamble shall be part and parcel of this Constitution”).

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United Republic of Cameroon,142 proclaimed Cameroon a “decentralized unitary State” that is also “one and indivisible,”143 set forth English and French as official languages of the country and with the “same status” in an environment where the State “guarantee[s] the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country.”144 Years later, under Law No. 84-1 of February 4, 1984, the term “United” prefixing Republic of Cameroon was removed, leaving the Republic of Cameroon standing.145 Part 2, on the executive branch, contains 9 articles, six on the president and three on the government, including a Prime Minister as head of that government. Provisions that stand out, speaking to the enormous powers of the President are that he appoints and fires the Prime Minister and other members of the Council of Ministers (the latter with the advice of the Prime Minister), presides over the Council of Ministers, and defines the duties of all these officials, to whom he could also delegate some of his powers, as he deems fit, whether within or outside the Council of Ministers.146 Under the constitution, executive power in the country is shared between an elected President who is the head of state and symbol of national unity as well as commander-in-chief of the armed forces,147 and an appointed Prime Minister who is head of government.148 However, rather than redolent of the division of executive powers under the British system where the president is a ceremonial figurehead, it is the system in France which superimposes a parliamentary model under a presidential system where the president wields enormous powers designed strategically to promote governmental stability.149 Hint is the provisions for presidential powers under Art. 8, coupled with Art. 11 which stipulates that subject only to the National Assembly, “The Government shall

142 Ibid., art. 1(1). 143 Ibid., art. 1(2). 144 Ibid., art. 1(3). 145 See ibid., art. 1(1). 146 Ibid., art. 10(1)–(2). 147 Ibid., arts. 5 and 8(2). 148 Ibid., art. 12(1). 149 See Jonathan Masters, “How Powerful Is France’s President?” Council on Foreign

Relations (February 1, 2017), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-powerful-francespresident.

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implement the policy of the Nation as defined by the President.”150 It is not all: as indicated before, unfazed by opposition protest, in 2008, Parliament passed a constitutional amendment removing term limits to the benefit of Paul Biya.151 And in Cameroon, a candidate who wins the most vote wins the presidency with no requirement to win a majority of the votes cast. Part 3 on the legislative branch contains eleven articles, one creating a bicameral legislature, a National Assembly (the lower house) and a Senate (upper house),152 and five articles on each house. The National Assembly comprises 180 members, each of whom is directly elected for a five-year term,153 but represent the entire nation rather than their individual constituencies.154 The Senate comprises 100 members, ten from each region, for a five-year term, seven of whom are elected indirectly by their regions,155 and three appointed by the President, each of whom must be 40 years or above.156 Senators represent the interests of regions and local councils.157 Part 4, dealing with the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, contains twelve articles. Part 5, dealing with the judicial branch, contains six articles. Judicial power, as a distinct power base, separable from executive and legislative powers, is vested in a three-court system, made up of a Supreme Court, courts of appeal, and tribunal, whose members must, “in the discharge of their duties, be governed only by the law and their conscience.”158 Another notable provision is that these jurists must administer justice “in the name of the people of Cameroon.”159 Part 6, on treaties and international agreements, contains three articles. A provision that stands out here is Art. 45, which permits

150 Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972, note 133, art. 11. 151 See note 106–108 and accompanying texts. 152 Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972, note 133, art. 14. 153 Ibid., art. 15(1). 154 Ibid., art. 15(2). 155 Ibid., art. 20(2) and 20(4). 156 Ibid., art. 20(2) and 20(3). 157 Ibid., art. 20(1). 158 Ibid., art. 37(2). 159 Ibid., art. 37(1).

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ratified treaties and international agreements to override national laws, where the other party implements the treaty or agreement in question.160 Part 7, dealing with the Constitutional Court, contains seven articles. Notable provisions under this part include the statements to the effect that the body comprises eleven members, persons “of high moral integrity and proven competence,”161 plus former Presidents of Cameroon as ex-officio members,162 otherwise not affiliated to the government,163 selected for a non-reviewable nine-year term,164 by the President and leaders of the national legislature in consultation with the Bureau of the Regional Council, and Higher Judicial Council, in more or less equal proportion.165 The Council has jurisdiction and the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws,166 including the regularity of presidential elections, parliamentary elections, and referendum operations167 ; and its ruling, not subject to appeal, are binding alike on all public officials, natural persons, and corporate bodies.168 Part 8, containing one article, establishes a Court of Impeachment, which can try the President, the Prime Minister, and other members of the government, for high treason, as well as some specified government officials for conspiracy against the security of the state.169 Part 9, containing one article, is on an Economic and Social Council. Part 10, embodying eight articles, deals with regions and local councils. Provisions that stand out in this part include Article 61, which enumerates ten provinces to be known as regions,170 as well as the authority of the President, “as and when necessary,” to change the names and modify the geographical boundaries of the regions as well as to create and name new

160 Ibid., art. 45. 161 Ibid., art. 51(1). 162 Ibid., art. 51(2). 163 See ibid., art. 51(5). 164 Ibid., art. 51(1). 165 Ibid., art. 51(2). 166 Ibid., art. 46. 167 Ibid., art. 48(1). 168 Ibid., art. 50(1)–(2). 169 Ibid., art. 53(1). 170 Ibid., art. 61(1). See also Table 5.1 (spelling out the identities of these regions).

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regions and fix their boundaries.171 Part 11, on constitutional amendments, contains two articles. The provision that is notable here is the one which makes impermissible any proposal for amendment which “affect[s] the republican form, unity and territorial integrity of the State[.]”172 Part 12, titled “special provisions,” contains two articles. Noteworthy are Art. 65, referred to before, which makes the preamble part and parcel of the constitution,173 and Art. 66, which specifies that some enumerated officials of the government, including the President and Prime Minister, must “declare their assets and property at the beginning and at the end of their tenure of office.”174 Last but not least, Part 13, dealing with transitional and final matters, contains three articles. Noteworthy is Art. 67, permitting new institutions created by the constitution to be set up progressively,175 shall remain in place and continue to function.176 Accordingly, the National Assembly shall exercise full legislative power until the Senate is set up,177 the Supreme Court shall perform the duties of the Constitutional Council until the Council is set up,178 and the territorial organization of the State shall remain unchanged until the regions are set up.179 The 1996 Constitution The advent of multiparty politics in the world during the 1990s, triggered by the collapse of one-party rules in the socialist world, touched off political liberalization in many African countries.180 These countries include

171 Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972, note 133, art. 61(2). 172 Ibid., art. 64. 173 Ibid., art. 65. See also note 141. 174 Constitution of the United Republic of Cameroon, 1972, note 133, art. 66. 175 Ibid., art. 67(1). 176 Ibid., art. 67(2). 177 Ibid., art. 67(3). 178 Ibid., art. 67(4). 179 Ibid., art. 67(5). 180 For a sample of the extensive literature on this topic, see Michael Bratton and

Nicolas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and John A. Wiseman, The New Struggle for Democracy in Africa (Aldershot, Brookfield, Singapore, and Sydney:

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Cameroon. One evidence of this wind of change was the move to a multiparty system in December 1990.181 Until this period, the CNU whose name changed in 1985 to CPDM was the only legally recognized political party in the land.182 Another evidence of change came from Southern Cameroon, in the form of clamors for return to a federal system by many disenchanted residents there, that the national government came under pressure to respond to.183 This was the context within which, on January 18, 1996, President Paul Biya proposed the adoption of Law No. 96/06, which metamorphosed into Cameroon’s 1996 Constitution.184 Short of a federal system, the document transmuted Cameroon into a “decentralized unitary state”; created semi-autonomous regions to replace the existing provinces; extended the President’s term in office to seven years; tweaked the order of succession to the presidency, moving it from the Speaker of the National Assembly to the President of the Senate or Vice President; departing from the unified legislature in the 1972 constitution, created a second chamber, the Senate as an upper house, while retaining the National Assembly as complementary lower house; and created new state organs, notably the Constitutional Court, and the Economic and Social Council.185 Overall, rather than a new document as such, this constitution was amendments to the 1972 constitution up and until January 18, 1996, when this document was adopted.

Ashgate, 1996). See also Marina Ottaway, Africa’s New Leaders: Democracy or State Reconstruction? (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999); and Marina Ottaway, ed., Democracy in Africa: The Hard Road Ahead (Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997). For more recent commentaries, see Gabrielle Lynch and Gordon Crawford, “Democratization in Africa 1990–2010: An Assessment,” Democratization, 18(2) (2011), 275–331; and Jeffrey Herbst, “Political Liberalization in Africa after Ten Years,” Comparative Politics, 33(3) (2001), 357–375. 181 See Global Campaign for Free Expression, Cameroon: A Transition in Crisis (October 1997), https://www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/publications/cameroon-a-tra nsition-in-crisis.pdf. (“The Path to Multiparty Politics”). 182 See note 60 and accompanying text. 183 “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 184 For text of the document, see Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon,

1996, reprinted in ILO, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/43107/ 97788/F-2103476279/CMR43107%20Eng.pdf. 185 See “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92.

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The document comprises 69 articles, divided into thirteen parts, plus a preamble, like in the 1972 constitution made “part and parcel” of the substantive charter.186 Part 1 on the topic of “The State and Sovereignty,” contains four articles. The provisions that, for our purpose in this book, stand out are the statements under Art. 1, that, effective from the entry into force of the charter, “The United Republic of Cameroon shall […] be known as Republic of Cameroon,”187 that Cameroon “shall be a decentralized unitary State,”188 that “[i]t shall be one and indivisible,”189 that the “official languages of the” country, both of which must have the same status, are English and French,190 and that the “State shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country.”191 The first provision draws attention because it is little more than a semantic change that does not restore the federal status that was abolished in 1972. Still, under Part 1, a provision that stands out is the one that gives persons 20 years and above the right to vote.192 The provision draws attention because the legal voting age in many countries is 18 or even below.193 For example, in Ethiopia, that age is 16, while in Nigeria it is 18.194 Part 2 on the executive branch embodies eight articles, six related to the President, and two on the government, particularly the Prime Minister. Provisions which stand out include the statement to the effect that the tenure of the President shall be for a term of seven years, subject to reelection once.195 Part 3, setting forth the powers of the legislative branch, contains ten articles, five on the National Assembly, the lower house representing the people, and five on the Senate, the upper house, representing regional and local interests. The National Assembly comprises 180 members, each of whom is directly elected for a five-year 186 Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon, 1996, note 184, art. 65. 187 Ibid. art. 1(1). 188 Ibid., art. 1(2). 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid., art. 1(3). 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid., art. 2(3). 193 See “Legal Voting Age by Country,” World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/art

icles/legal-voting-age-by-country.html. 194 Ibid. 195 Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon, 1996, note 184, art. 6(2).

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term. The Senate comprises 100 members, 70 of whom are elected indirectly by regional councils and 30 appointed by the President. Like a member of the National Assembly, each Senator serves for a five-year term. Part 4, focusing on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, contains twelve articles. Part 5, dealing with the judicial branch, contains six articles. A notable provision, for our purpose in this book, is Art. 37, which provides that “[j]ustice shall be administered in the territory of the Republic in the name of the people of Cameroon.”196 Part 6, dealing with treaties and international agreements, contains three articles. Part 7, relating to the Constitutional Council, contains seven articles. Notable provisions under this part include the statements to the effect that the body comprises eleven members, persons “of high moral integrity and proven competence,”197 plus former Presidents of Cameroon as ex-officio members,198 otherwise not affiliated to the government,199 selected for a non-reviewable nine-year term,200 by the President and leaders of the national legislature, in consultation with the Bureau of the Regional Council, and Higher Judicial Council, in more or less equal proportion.201 The Council has jurisdiction and the power to rule on the constitutionality of laws,202 including the regularity of presidential elections, parliamentary elections, and referendum operations203 ; and its ruling, not subject to appeal, are binding alike on all public officials, natural persons, and corporate bodies.204 Part 8, containing two articles, establishes a Court of Impeachment, which can try the President, the Prime Minister, and other members of the government, for high treason, as well as some specified government officials for conspiracy against the security of the state. Part 9, containing 196 Ibid., art. 37(1). 197 Ibid., art. 51(1). 198 Ibid., art. 51(2). 199 See ibid., art. 51(5). 200 Ibid., art. 51(1). 201 Ibid., art. 51(2). 202 Ibid., art. 46. 203 Ibid., art. 48(1). 204 Ibid., art. 50(1)-(2).

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one article, is on an Economic and Social Council. Part 10, containing eight articles, deals with regional and local authorities. Provisions that stand out in this part include Article 61, which enumerates ten provinces to be known as regions, as well as the authority for the President to change the names and modify the geographical boundaries of the regions and to create and name new regions and fix their boundaries. Part 11, on constitutional amendments, contains two articles. Part 12, titled “special provisions,” contains two articles. Noteworthy are Art. 65, referred to before, which makes the preamble part and parcel of the constitution, and Art. 66, which mandates some enumerated officials of the government, including the President and Prime Minister, to “declare their assets and property at the beginning and at the end of their tenure of office.” Nature abhors a vacuum. Consistent with this adage, all three articles under Part 13, dealing with transitional and final matters, mandate that the existing systems remain in place until their replacements are ready. This appears to be the logic behind the provisions under Art. 67 allowing progressive setup of new institutions created by the constitution,205 to shore up stability in government,206 free of any vacuum207 : the National Assembly exercising full legislative power until the Senate is set up ready and running,208 the Supreme Court taking on the duties of the Constitutional Council until the Council is fully functional,209 and the territorial organization of the State remaining unchanged until the regions are set up.210

205 Ibid., art. 67(1). 206 The rules here mimic the doctrine of the “constructive vote of no confidence”

under, incidentally, art. 67 of the German constitution permitting the Bundestag (German national parliament) to remove the chancellor from office only if there is a positive majority for a prospective successor. See “Constructive Vote of No-Confidence,” GK Today (June 24, 2019), https://www.gktoday.in/constructive-vote-of-no-confidence/. 207 Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon, 1996, note 184, art. 67(2). 208 Ibid., art. 6(2), art. 67(3). 209 Ibid., art. 67(4). 210 Ibid., art. 67(5).

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The Politics of Constitutional Engineering in Cameroon This section builds on the preceding discussion on the intricacies of constitutionalism in Cameroon since independence. Recall the definition of constitutional engineering and its connection with politics sketched out in Chapter 3 on Ethiopia,211 and applied in Chapter 4 on Nigeria.212 Three elements extractable from the formulation are: a public good trait signified in the fact that the purpose of drafting and adopting constitutions is to enhance the capacity of the government to cater to the wellbeing of the people, consistent with the tenets of the social contract213 ; an inherently political process; and a highlight of the identity of the major political figures associated with the drafting, adoption, and implementation of the constitutional documents in question. While like in the other two countries in this book, the process is inherently political, it is questionable, based on the survey of Cameroon’s three constitutions set forth above, whether the operation was driven by an impetus to enhance the capacity of the government to cater for the wellbeing of the masses of the Cameroonian people, within the context of any social contract. In sum, the 1961 constitution made Cameroon a two-state federal system, the 1972 constitution took away that federalism, and the 1996 charter introduced changes under the rubric of a “decentralized unitary state,” short of the two-state arrangement under which the two Cameroons came together in 1961, forced by political developments from abroad in the wake of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. Two major political figures exclusively implicated in Cameroonian constitutional engineering are Ahmadou Ahidjo, President from 1960 until 1982, and Paul Biya, President since 1982. Of the three constitutions surveyed above, Ahidjo is associated with the ones of 1961 and 1972, while Biya is linked with the 1996 constitution.

211 See Chapter 3, notes 237–238, and accompanying texts. 212 See Chapter 4, note 166, and accompanying text. 213 Celeste Friend, “Social Contract Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/.

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Ahidjo was elected President five consecutive times before he resigned on November 6, 1982, citing “exhaustion.”214 After he left the presidency, he remained Chairman of the ruling party, the CNU, until he was forced out in 1983.215 Ahidjo turned the country into a one-party state upon consolidating power against the UPC Marxists who fought against French rule in the country on the eve of independence.216 In ditching federalism and centralizing power in a unitary state, Ahidjo contended that managing separate governments in a poor country like Cameroon was expensive; he blamed the country’s underdevelopment, roiled by weak implementation of public policy, on the federal structure.217 In the elucidation of one analyst, “[a]s in other recently independent African countries, the […] ruling elites [in Cameroon] saw regional autonomy as an obstacle to national unity[,] [whereas] a centralized state, based on the French model, was considered necessary for development.”218 Upon leaving office, Ahidjo lived in exile in Dakar, Senegal, until his death in 1989.219 Paul Biya, who took over from Ahidjo as President, has been in government since January 1964, over 59 years as of this book, when he was appointed Cabinet Director at the Ministry of National Education, Youth Affairs and Culture.220 And from 1975 to 1982, he was Prime Minister under Ahidjo.221 Ever since, he has been President of the country. In 1996, as part of political reform process, the National Assembly imposed a two-term limit on the office that, volte-face, it voted to remove on April 10, 2008.222 Just like his predecessor, Biya combined this role with the Chairman of the CNU which, in 1985, he renamed CPDM in the wake 214 “Ahmadou Ahidjo,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biogra phy/Ahmadou-Ahidjo. 215 Ibid. 216 Ibid. See also notes 53-56, and accompanying text. 217 “Ahmadou Ahidjo,” note 214. 218 Teresa Nogueira Pinto, “Cameroon’s ‘Anglophone Crisis’ Offers a Bleak Outlook,” Geopolitical Intelligence Services Reports (August 9, 2018), https://www.gisreportsonline. com/r/cameroon-crisis/. 219 “Ahmadou Ahidjo,” note 214. 220 “Biography of President Paul Biya,” Republic of Cameroon: Presidency of the

Republic, https://www.prc.cm/en/the-president/biography. 221 Ibid. 222 See note 106 and accompanying text.

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of Ahidjo’s ouster, and of the introduction of multiparty democracy in the country.223 In the criticism of one singer, especially under Biya, Cameroon holds itself out as the land of “constipated” constitutionalism.224 Juxtaposed with the other two countries in this study, Cameroon has conducted the least constitutional engineering within the best meaning of the term. Instead, a good deal of its own engineering are revisions designed to update an existing constitution, many times the 1972 constitution which abolished the two-state federal system that brought together the two Cameroons. In the apt observation of one analyst, in the light of “the rife modifications” to Cameroon’s constitutions since independence, “only the preamble has remained untouched[.]”225 Given the tinkering, it is difficult to say when one constitution ends and another begins, compared to Ethiopia and Nigeria. And unlike these countries, Cameroon did not have any history of constituent assembly preparing a constitution. Under the Cameroonian constitution, national sovereignty vested in the people can be exercised through one of three possible means or a combination: the President, Members of Parliament, or by referendum.226 The problem with the referendum is that Southern Cameroons, being a relative minority, can be voted down repeatedly, assuming free and fair elections, especially given the irregularities that attend the conduct of many elections in Africa.227 While there are on the surface similarities with Ethiopia involving the rise and fall of federalism with respect to Eritrea, there are also markable differences. In Ethiopia, the oldest country in Africa, federalism came as a protective device, a midway arrangement to stop what would have been an annexation, whereas with Cameroon, federalism was the glue that held together East and West Cameroon, one French-speaking, the 223 See notes 181–182 and accompanying texts. 224 See note 108. 225 “The Evolution and Changes in the Cameroon Constitution,” note 92. 226 See Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon (adopted January 18, 1996),

amendment to the Constitution of June 2, 1972 (International Labor Organization), art. 29(1), https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/43107/977788/F2103476279/CMR43107%20Eng.pdf. 227 See André-Michel Essoungou, “African Elections: Works in Progress,” Africa Renewal (August 2011), https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2011/afr ican-elections-works-progress.

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other English-speaking, (no) thanks to European colonialism and tutelage. The overall messaging here for Cameroon, more than for the other two countries in our case studies, is that the balance in the intersection between sovereignty and self-determination skews more in the direction of sovereignty (or territorial integrity). Furthermore, military factor was not present in Cameroon the way it was in Ethiopia and Nigeria. Nor did Cameroon have any experience with radical Marxist–Leninist ideology as in Ethiopia, except for the tussle with UPC insurgents that petered out by the period of the unification of the two Cameroons in 1961.228 Unlike Ethiopia and Nigeria, constitutionalism here did not take place under military and socialist rule and, unlike Nigeria, the military was not the agency that carried out constitutional engineering. This explains some of the non-robustness of constitutional engineering in Cameroon, compared to Ethiopia and Nigeria.

The South Cameroon Problem: Demands for Restoration of Federalism Negating the Proposition that Abolishing Federalism Affirmed the Political Maturity of Cameroonians: Multiple Voices Recall the justification by President Ahidjo that a developing country like Cameroon lacks the economic wherewithal to maintain federalism.229 This is worrisome enough. Going beyond this, some members of Cameroon’s national government justified the abolition of two-state federalism in 1972 on the ground that doing so affirmed the “political maturity” of Cameroon, their reasoning being that Cameroonians have overcome their language and cultural divisions.230 The matter is more complicated than it appears on the surface. Cameroon has an “anglophone problem” signified by the deriding of

228 See notes 51–54 and accompanying texts. 229 See notes 217–218 and accompanying texts. 230 Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, “President Paul Biya and the ‘Anglophone

Problem,’” in The Leadership Challenge in Africa: Cameroon Under Paul Biya, eds. John Mukum Mbaku and Joseph Takougang (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 191, 197..

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English-speaking Cameroonians as “les anglos”231 (the English), poor cousins subject to marginalization or what one analyst analogized to “calculated neglect.”232 On the eve of the presidential election in 2018 where Biya sought, successfully once again, to extend his agelong rule by another seven years to 2025, one placard borne by a Southern Cameroonian read: “We have: no road, no jobs, no water.”233 Add to this complaint, the fact that, as of 2017, there was just one Anglophone among thirty-six ministers with portfolio in the Cameroonian national government,234 and that within the same period, of thirty-three army generals in the country, only three came from English-speaking Cameroon.235 The last, involving the extension into the security sector of French-speaking Cameroonians’ domination of the political system, is replete with negative ramifications for the protection of South Cameroonians, especially in times of crisis, such as the controversy related to the appointment of French-speaking teachers and lawyers into Englishspeaking South Cameroonian courtrooms and schools, subsequently compounded by the unilateral declaration of independence, both of which events are discussed below. Southern Cameroonians aimed for more control over affairs in their two regions, free of micromanagement by the national government based in Yaoundé; they perceived themselves as subject to control from the center that is even more constrictive than the 1996 constitution which

231 Zuzeeko Abeng, “Brutalization of Lawyers in Cameroon and the ‘Anglophone

Problem,’” Zuzeeko’s Blog (December 5, 2016), https://www.zuzeeko.com/2016/12/ the-anglophone-problem-and.html. 232 Amindeh

Blaise Atabong, “Cameroon’s ‘Anglophone’ Crisis Has Reached a Boiling Point as Security Forces Kill [Seventeen] Protesters,” Quartz Africa (October 2, 2017), https://qz.com/africa/1092006/cameroon-anglophone-crisis-policekill-15-southern-cameroons-independence-protestors/. 233 See Farouk Chothia, “Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: Red Dragons and Tigers— The Rebels Fighting for Independence,” BBC News (October 4, 2018), https://www. bbc.com/news/world-africa-45723211. 234 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, Report No. 250 (August 2, 2017), 10, https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cam eroon/250-cameroons-anglophone-crisis-crossroads. 235 Gaston Yundze, “Cameroon’s Anglophones Call for Secession or Federalism,” Anadolu Ajansi (March 31, 2017, updated April 4, 2017), https://www.aa.com.tr/en/ africa/analysis-cameroon-s-anglophones-call-for-secession-or-federalism/785179.

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created a “decentralized unitary” system.236 It is in the light of such gravamen that many Southern Cameroonians saw little logic in the proposition of “political maturity” as defense for abolition of the two-state federal arrangement that brought them into a political marriage with Francophone Cameroon in 1961. Instead, they read this reasoning as a stealth attempt by the national government to assimilate them and erase their history and culture.237 Four voices discussed here which negate the proposition that abolishing federalism affirmed the political maturity of Cameroonians are those of individuals, separatist groups, political parties, and conferences attended by representatives of Southern Cameroon. These voices are not mutually exclusive; instead, their energies in the pursuit of self-determination sometimes merge, as the all-Anglophone conferences discussed below illustrate. Individuals Two persons who typify this category are Fon Gorji-Dinka, and John Ngu Foncha. Gorji-Dinka is a one-time President of the Cameroon Bar Association who, in 1985, published essays which argued that the Biya government was unconstitutional, going as far as to call for an independent Republic of Ambazonia.238 Gorji-Dinka served as the first head of the Ambazonia Restoration Council,239 mimicry of the legislature in Ambazonia’s interim government, of which more below. In May 1985, 236 See ibid. Even though since 1996 a Southern Cameroonian has occupied the Prime Minister position, in a unitary presidential republic of the type that evolved in Cameroon in the past 63 years over two chief executives, one of whom has been in office for over 40 years, the office has no real power. See International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 13. 237 Henry Ngenyam Bang and Roland Azibo Balgah, “The Ramification of Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: Conceptual Analysis of a Looming ‘Complex Disaster Emergency,’” International Journal of Humanitarian Action, 7, art. 6 (2022), https://doi.org/10. 1186/s41018-022-00114-1. 238 “Who is Fon Fongum Gorji-Dinka?” Republic of Ambazonia Official Website, https://ambazonia.org/en/?option=com_content&view=article&id=153&Itemid=8. See also “Gorji-Dinka Releases Ambazonia Message,” Cameroon Postline (November 15, 2010), https://cameroonpostline.com/gorji-dinka-releases-ambazonia-message/%E2% 80%8B. 239 “Who is Fon Fongum Gorji-Dinka?” note 238. The Council comprises former members of the Governing Council plus representatives from regions across the world where Ambazonians live. Interim Government, Federal Republic of

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soon after he took his position, the Cameroonian national government seized and placed him under house arrest where he remained for three years before he escaped, first to Nigeria and subsequently to the UK.240 Foncha was a one-time leading Anglophone in the Cameroonian government who, in June 1990, resigned from the governing party due to disagreements with the group.241 Foncha was Premier of the British Cameroons in 1959 and held the position until October 1, 1961, when Southern Cameroon voted to become part of French Cameroon.242 He was also Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1961 until 1965, within which period he served concurrently as Vice President of the country until 1970.243 Foncha’s resignation tapped into matters at the heart of Cameroon’s “Anglophone problem,” among them: inadequate road networks and related infrastructure, inadequate employment opportunities, and lack of respect for Southern Cameroonians who, instead, were ridiculed as “les Biafrians,” prone to secession (no less than the Igbo in Eastern Nigeria who declared independence from Nigeria as Biafrans from 1967 to 1970).244 Foncha also accused his former colleagues in the CPDM of manipulating the constitution.245 In 1995, in the aftermath of his resignation from the CPDM in June 1990, he led a delegation of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) to the UN where the Council filed a complaint against what it considered an “annexation” of South Cameroon by Cameroon’s national government dominated by Francophone elites.246

Ambazonia, “Restoration Council,” https://www.ambazoniagov.org/index.php/govern ment/legislature/house-of-assembly. 240 “Who is Fon Fongum Gorji-Dinka?” note 238. 241 For a text of the letter, see “Foncha’s 9 Points Resignation Letter,” Bareta News

(Blog) (November 29, 2016), https://www.bareta.news/fonchas-9-points-resignation-let ter-june-1990/. 242 See “Foncha, John Ngu (1916–1999),” in Dictionary of African Biography, ed. Henry Louis Gates et al. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2012). 243 See ibid. 244 See text of the letter, note 241. 245 Ibid. 246 See Martin Ayong Ayim, Former British Southern Cameroons Journey Toward Complete Decolonization, Independence, and Sovereignty: A Comprehensive Compilation of Efforts, Vol One (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2010), 176.

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Separatist Organizations Under this category, one group that comes to mind is the SCNC. The Council was formed in 1995 as a pressure group aimed at shining the light on Cameroon’s “Anglophone problem” in a bid to draw the attention of the international community to the marginalization of South Cameroonians.247 It is a non-violent organization with a method of operation driven by its motto wrapped around “[t]he force of argument, [rather than] the argument of force.”248 Due to its advocacy of independence for South Cameroons, the Cameroonian government declared the group illegal and banned it.249 The illegalization set the ground for persecution of the members by Cameroonian security forces through various unconstitutional means, including interrupting their meetings, arresting, harassing, intimidating, detaining, torturing, subjecting them to unreasonable force, unfree and unfair prosecution, and extrajudicial killings, among other mistreatments.250 Due to arbitrary harassment and arrests by Cameroonian security forces, many leaders of the SCNC, along with members of other separatist organizations, fled the country.251 To make matters worse, some members of the Cameroonian national government, such as the minister of communication, likened federalism to secession, meaning they meant even to apply to individuals who advocate for the restoration of the two-state federalism the same punishment against subversion they reserve for SCNC activists.252 Political Parties The Social Democratic Front (SDF), the leading political party from Southern Cameroon, typifies this category of voices who dispute justification for the abolition of two-state federalism by the Cameroonian national

247 See “Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC),” Global Security (December 23, 2019), https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/scnc.htm; and “Cameroon: The Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC),” Ref World (October 2, 2000), https://www.refworld.org/docid/3df4be2018.html. 248 “Cameroon: The Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC),” note 247. 249 Ibid. 250 See “The Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC),” note 247; and “Cameroon: The Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC),” note 247. 251 Ibid. 252 See Yundze, note 235.

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government anchored on “political maturity.” Back in time, the SDF aired its contributions related to fixing Cameroon’s “Anglophone problem.”253 Following the permission of multiparty politics in the country in the 1990s, and in the wake of the abolition of federalism in 1972 that reached a new height in 1984 with the deletion of the “United” in the name of Cameroon, the party provided a forum that enabled Anglophones to make their case for marginalization against the Cameroonian state.254 Many Southern Cameroonians believed the SDF won the presidential elections in 1992 whose results were declared in favor of Biya and his CPDM.255 All-Anglophone Conferences More than the relative pigeon-holes of individuals, separatist organizations, and political parties, this category presents the strongest evidence yet that negates the proposition of “political maturity” by Cameroon’s officialdom as justification for abolishing the country’s two-state federal system. The two meetings which exemplify this all-important category are: the first All-Anglophone Conference held at Buea, capital city of the Southwest Region as of this book, from April 2–3, 1993256 ; and the second All-Anglophone Conference held at Bamenda, Northwest Region of Cameroon, from April 29 to May 1, 1994.257 These conferences take their “All-Anglophone” name from the fact that their attendees were representatives of Southern Cameroons from all walks of life. In the first, attended by 5,000 delegates, the conferees adopted a document known as the Buea Declaration (after the city where the meeting was held).258 The conferees complained that, “[t]hrough maneuvers and manipulations,” Southern Cameroonians “have been reduced from partners of equal status in the Union to the status of a subjugated people,” 253 Ibid. 254 Ibid. 255 Ibid. 256 “The

All-Anglophone Conference (April 2–3, 1993),” Martin Jumbam (Blog), https://www.martinjumbam.net/2018/04/the-all-anglophone-conference-april2-3-1993-.html. 257 See Konings and Nyamnjoh, note 230, p. 209. 258 “Buea Declaration,” text appended in “The All-Anglophone Conference (April 2–3,

1993),” note 256.

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and that a unitary state is too constrictive for the common values, vision, and goals Southern Cameroonians share with French-speaking Cameroonians: our Union accord has been violated. We have been disenfranchised, marginalized, and treated with suspicion. Our interests have been disregarded. Our participation in national life has been limited to non-essential functions. Our natural resources have been ruthlessly exploited without any benefit accruing to our territory or to its people. The development of our territory has been negligible and confined to areas that directly or indirectly benefit Francophones. Through maneuvers and manipulations, we have been reduced from partners of equal status in the Union to the status of a subjugated people. […] The common values, vision, and goals which we share as a people and those of our Francophone partners in the Union are different, and clearly cannot blend within the framework of a Unitary state such as was imposed on us in 1972.259

Relating to the union accord that they pointed out was violated, the conferees concluded that the 1972 constitution which abolished federalism in Cameroon “was unconstitutional, illegal, and a breach of faith.”260 The way to repair this violation, they indicated, would be to restore two-state federalism.261 They then committed themselves to “working for the restoration of a federal constitution and a federal form of government which takes cognizance of the bicultural nature of Cameroon.”262 At the second conference nearly two years later, the conferees reiterated their appeal for a restoration of the two-state federalism, with some voices this time explicitly calling for secession. More elaborately, the conferees created an Anglophone Council which it cautioned against accepting in its negotiations with Francophone Cameroon any arrangement which did not involve the restoration of federalism.263 However, “should the

259 Ibid. 260 Ibid. 261 Ibid. 262 Ibid. Instructively, the declaration ended with the assertion “God bless the Federal

Republic of Cameroon.” Ibid. 263 Ibid.

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government either persist in its refusal to engage in meaningful constitutional talks or fail to engage in such talks within a reasonable time,” the Council should “proclaim the revival of the independence and sovereignty of the anglophone territory and take all measures necessary to secure, defend and preserve the independence, sovereignty and integrity of the said territory.”264 In 2005, in the aftermath of these All-Anglophone conferences, Southern Cameroonians gained the attention of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). The UNPO is an international, nongovernmental body which works to empower and lend voices to marginalized and other unrepresented peoples across the world.265 On October 31, 2005, the organization wrote to Kofi A. Annan, then Secretary-General of the UN, concerning human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings, perpetrated against SCNC members peacefully exercising their right to self-determination in Southern Cameroon.266 It appealed to the Secretary-General to urge the UN Security Council to do something to stop these abuses.267 In 2018, following their unilateral declaration of independence from Cameroon, Southern Cameroonians formalized their membership in the UNPO.268 A Disconcerting New Phase in Cameroon’s “Anglophone Problem” The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC) is an organization of lawyers and teachers from Southern Cameroon.269 On

264 Ibid. 265 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, “About UNPO,” https://unpo.

org/section/2. Formed in 1991, UNPO has offices in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Ibid. 266 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, “UNPO to UN SecretaryGeneral on Human Rights Abuses in Southern Cameroons” (October 31, 2005), https:// unpo.org/article/5399. 267 Ibid. 268 See Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, “UNPO Welcomes Its

Newest Member: Southern Cameroons” (March 28, 2018), https://unpo.org/article/ 20710. 269 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 12.

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October 6, 2016, members of the Consortium began a sit-down strike,270 designed to keep English in the courtrooms and help make it stay there.271 The strikes soon snowballed into mass demonstrations that other groups, notably students and members of the general public in Southern Cameroon, joined.272 The demonstrations were backed with marches in cities like Bamenda, Buea, and Limbe, featuring appeals for the protection of the common law system in Anglophone Cameroon.273 With one undivided voice, the protesters complained that Cameroon’s national government, dominated by French-speaking elites in Yaoundé, gave short shrift recognition to the English legal and education systems in the two regions of Anglophone Cameroon.274 The protesters did not fancy the use of French language in the classrooms and courtrooms of English-speaking Southern Cameroon and consider the imposition of such usage to be discriminatory.275 Cameroon has two parallel schooling systems, Anglophone and Francophone. French speakers with poor English should not be hired in Anglophone schools, no more than English speakers with poor French are hired in Francophone schools.276 The protests went on several days each week, during which period schools remained closed, along with businesses like shops and related economic institutions,277 especially businesses which sympathized

270 Ibid., p. 2. See also Department of Political Science, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR, “Cameroon (1961–Present),” https://uca.edu/politicalscience/home/res earch-projects/dadm-project/sub-saharan-africa-region/cameroon-1961-present/. 271 See “Cameroon Teachers, Lawyers Strike in Battle for English,” Alja Zeera (December 5, 2016), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/5/cameroon-teacherslawyers-strike-in-battle-for-english. 272 Ibid. 273 See Nanche Billa Robert, “Protest March Restrictions in Cameroon,” Intech Open

(February 27, 2021), https://doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96024. 274 Chothia, note 233. 275 Radina Gigova, “Rights Group Call for Probe into Protesters’ Deaths,” CNN

(December 15, 2016), https://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/15/world/cameroon-protes ters-deaths/index.html. 276 See “Cameroon Teachers, Lawyers Strike in Battle for English,” note 271. See also Abeng, note 231 (“While qualified Cameroonians should be free to live and work in any region of the country, French-speaking individuals, including judges and teachers who cannot communicate in English should not be imposed on English-speakers by appointment or presidential decrees”). 277 “Cameroon Teachers, Lawyers Strike in Battle for English,” note 271.

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with the strikers. The demonstrations hampered educational activities in Southern Cameroon. Next to law, in the lead-up to the demonstrations, Southern Cameroon lawyers schooled and therefore versed in the English common law tradition, complained to the central government over the inappropriateness of using French civil law in English-speaking Southern Cameroon courtrooms.278 They want this system, rather than the civil law, introduced into educational institutions like the University of Buea and the University of Bamenda located in Southern Cameroon.279 They also asked for the translation into English of certain uniform acts central to their trade as lawyers.280 The demonstrations brought Cameroon’s Anglophone problem to the fore in a manner no other event before then did. And in the lead-up to the unilateral declaration of independence in October 2017, described below, the protests marked a disconcerting new phase in that problem. Cameroon’s constitution makes English and French the official languages of the country, “both languages having the same status.”281 The constitution also stipulates that Cameroon “shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country.”282 Despite these provisions, a large part of official business in the country is conducted in French, and Cameroon’s leader, President Paul Biya, rarely speaks English in public.283 In the wake of the abolition of two-state federalism in the country, the Cameroonian political system continued to be dominated by elites from the French-speaking portion of the country, to

278 Ibid. 279 See Nanche Billa Robert, “Uprising and Human Rights Abuses in Southern

Cameroon-Ambazonia,” Intech Open (February 24, 2020), https://doi.org/10.5772/ intechopen.91053. 280 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 11. The two uniform laws cited here were the Organization for the Harmonization of Corporate Law in Africa (OHADA), and Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) Code. Ibid. 281 See notes 144 and 190–191 and accompanying texts. 282 Ibid. 283 Conor Gaffey, “Understanding Cameroon’s Anglophone Protests,” Newsweek (February 13, 2017), https://www.newsweek.com/cameroon-anglophone-problem-paulbiya-556151. See also Atabong, note 232.

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the disadvantage of residents of Southern Cameroon, who felt themselves marginalized.284 The dominance of French over English as an official language is evident in official matters, including presidential addresses, which time and again are prepared in French with no translations in English.285 The occurrence left English-speaking Cameroonians handicapped since they need a good command of French to find work or do well in public exams set in French.286 Worse still, some Francophone officials use proficiency in French as a tool for marginalizing their English-speaking compatriots. “[S]ome anglophone police officers sometimes use French in order to intimidate and distance themselves from their fellow anglophones. Many of [these officers] understand the impact of French on English-speaking Cameroonians.”287 Proficiency in French confers advantages that Southern Cameroons, not fluent in the language, are denied. “[T]hings that happen in Bamenda cannot happen in Yaoundé, which is the capital and a predominantly French city.”288 It is a disadvantage in supposedly small things that add up when joined together. One of these are the texts on the country’s currency, the Central African CFA franc: French is the only language in every denomination of the currency, compared to bilingual countries like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, or even Burundi in Africa, which use more than one language in their currencies, in due respect for and sensitivity to minority rights.289 Government Crackdown on Peaceful Demonstrations The Cameroon government cracked down hard on the peaceful demonstrations, using various tools of repression, including firing tear gas and even live bullets on demonstrators that left many killed or maimed, mass arbitrary arrests, torture, detention in distant locations like the capital

284 Pinto, note 218. 285 See Yundze, note 235. For example, Cameroonian leader, Paul Biya, rarely speaks

English in public. See note 283 and accompanying text. 286 See Yundze, note 235. 287 Abeng, note 231. 288 Ibid. 289 Chotia, note 233.

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city of Yaoundé, far removed from the families of those detainees, among other violations, some of which the Cameroonian national government denied.290 In the age of the Internet that we live in, some of the violent images from the crackdown found their way into the social media,291 impelling the government, not that it justifies it, to shut down the Internet to insulate those images from the eyes and attention of the international community.292 Imagine what other types and quantum of abuses that took place under the cover of the Internet blockage and blackout. At this early point, the main goal of the protesters was the restoration of the two-state federation, as opposed to the creation of an independent state.293 The crackdown changed all this. This was how what started as a strike by teachers and lawyers snowballed into complaints about socioeconomic marginalization, as well as allegations of breach of the constitutional requirement in the country pertaining to the equal status of English and French as official languages.294 Put differently, this was how “[w]hat started as a simple request for the recognition of rights based on legitimate grievances morphed into a conflict enveloping nearly the entire English-speaking region[,]” with the result that radicalized forces calling for the creation of a separate country drown out moderate voices.295

290 Yundze, note 235; “Bamenda Protests: Mass Arrests in Cameroon,” BBC News (November 23, 2016), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38078238. 291 Ibid. “Video shared on social media showed disturbing scenes: a group of demonstrators parading the dead body of an activist, barricades set ablaze, police brutally beating protesters and firing tear gas against the crowds, gunshots echoing in the distance.” Gigova, note 275. CNN said it was “unable to confirm the authenticity of those videos.” Ibid. 292 “Cameroon Shuts Down Internet in English-Speaking Areas,” Alja Zeera (January 26, 2017), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/1/26/cameroon-shutsdown-internet-in-english-speaking-areas. 293 Pinto, note 218. 294 See Yundze, note 235. 295 Agbor Balla Nkongho, “Opinion: Key Steps Needed for Cameroon Peace

Talks,” DW , https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-key-steps-needed-for-cameroon-peacetalks/a-49618927. Going to the message of the necessity of international attention in the interest of world peace that underlies this book, this piece calls the crisis in the Cameroon “one of the world’s most neglected crises, despite … [the] unimaginable suffering” it has caused. Ibid. It opines that “[t]he dire situation on the ground [the conflict has engendered] demands coordinated international attention and action, even if a political solution to the underlying conflict is not imminent.” Ibid.

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“Those who supported creating an independent state via armed rebellion took control of the anglophone cause.”296

The South Cameroon Problem: Crossover into Demand for Separate State Declaration of Independence by Southern Cameroonians as Federal Republic of Ambazonia On October 1, 2017, South Cameroonians made a unilateral declaration of independence from Cameroon297 ; the date is significant because it marks the anniversary of the unification of the two Cameroons. The Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF),

296 Ibid. 297 See “Cameroon Independence Protests Result in Deaths,” BBC News (October

2, 2017), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41461007. Unlike the Biafrans many years before, there was no formal document that came to our notice attached to the declaration of independence. This probably explains the offhand reporting of the event by some foreign presses. The BBC News story denominates the unilateral independence event as “independence protests.” The mayor of Kumbo, Donatus Njong Fonyuy, told the BBC the flag of a secessionist movement had been put up in symbolic places in the town. There were several other demonstrations in other parts of English-speaking Cameroon. Demonstrators made a symbolic proclamation of independence as part of their protest, AFP news agency reported. Counter-demonstrations in support of the government and a unified Cameroon also took place in the city of Douala. Ibid. Reuters displayed a similar behavior. The news agency called the unilateral independence declaration “protests by activists calling for […] independence”: “Soldiers shot dead at least eight people and wounded others in Cameroon’s restless Englishspeaking regions on Sunday during protests by activists calling for its independence from the majority Francophone nation […].” See Reuters, “At Least Eight Dead Amid Cameroon Anglophone Protests” (October 1, 2017), https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-cameroon-politics/at-least-eight-dead-amid-cameroon-anglophone-protests-idUSKC N1C61R6?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=59d13d890 4d30123bc0a7b25&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter. Finally, Alja Zeera denominated the declaration “symbolic independence.” See Azad Essa, “Cameroon’s English-Speakers Call for Independence,” Alja Zeera (October 1, 2017), https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/1/cameroons-english-speakers-call-for-independence.

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an umbrella organization carved out from the bosom of leading Ambazonian nationalist movements,298 made the declaration.299 “Today, we reaffirm our autonomy over our heritage and over our territory.”300 At the All-Anglophone Conference in Bamenka in 1994, attendees pointed out they would revive “the independence and sovereignty of [their] territory,” if the Cameroonian national government failed to restore two-state federalism.301 With this declaration, Southern Cameroonians kept the promise. The official name of the country is the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, and SCACUF formed a government with Sisiku Ayuk Tabe Julius as interim president.302 Faced with a lack of recognition by any country, in addition to launching an interim government, the Ambazonians have unveiled other insignia of statehood, including a flag and national anthem, an official website,303 and, most recently, a crypto-currency,304 in the same way Biafrans introduced a currency in 1968.305 The separatists have also borne arms against Cameroon, as well as instigated Monday sit-at-home, school closures since October 2016, consistent with a civil disobedience technique known as Ghost Town operations that residents

298 Edward McAllister, “State Crackdown Fuels Independence Push in Anglophone Cameroon,” Reuters (October 3, 2017), https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-us-cam eroon-politics-separatists-idAFKCN1C80HV-OZATP. 299 In the aftermath of the repressive response to the 2016-2017 protests, including the

use of deadly force against unarmed demonstrators, even SCACUF leaders in the diaspora like Mark Bareta and Tapang Ivo, hitherto lukewarm toward secession, now support the option. International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 16. 300 Quoted in Essa, note 297. 301 See note 264 and accompanying text. 302 “Southern Cameroons Gets New Government with Sessekou Ayuk Julius Tabe as

Interim President,” Cameroon Concord (July 25, 2020), https://web.archive.org/web/ 20200725051906/http://cameroon-concord.com/headlines/southern-cameroons-getsnew-government-with-sessekou-ayuk-julius-tabe-as-interim-president. 303 The website is located at: https://ambazonia.org/en/about/republic-of-ambazo nia/history. 304 Amindeh Blaise Atabong, “Cameroon’s Anglophone Separatists Have Created Their Own Cryptocurrency,” Quartz Africa (December 12, 2018), https://qz.com/africa/149 2745/cameroon-anglophone-separtists-create-cryptocurrency-ambacoin/. 305 See Chapter 4, note 249.

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of the two regions of Southern Cameroon appear to support.306 These are pushback techniques, no different from Biafra 2 agitators in Nigeria, designed to get around or minimize the worse effects of the crackdown from Cameroon police and security forces. And, no less instructively, some of the documents used in the constitutional analysis in this chapter were posted by the interim government or their sympathizers in undertone support of their general case against centralization of state power in the hands of a Francophone elite in Yaoundé. Needless to say, like the Biafrans in Nigeria many years before, Southern Cameroonians made their declaration of independence under a new name: Ambazonia. Equally like the Biafrans, in declaring independence, the separatists chose a name from their past.307 Ambazonia comes from Ambozes, the local name for the bay at the mouth of the Wouri river, known in English as Ambas Bay,308 settlement area of freed slaves, regarded as the boundary line separating Anglophone and Francophone Cameroons. Southern Cameroon ties with Europe goes back to the Fifteen Century when European traders from several nations visited Ambas Bay beginning with the Portuguese in the 1470s.309 Founded by English Baptist Missionary Society and in existence from 1858 to 1887, Ambas Bay Colony had its capital in Victoria.310 Ambazonia covers Northwest and Southwest regions, the two administrative entities that make up English-speaking Cameroon.311 The two regions cover 42,710 square km of the country’s total area of 475,442 square km and little over 3.4 million of Cameroon’s 24 million inhabitants in 2022.312 They are the stronghold of the SDF, Cameroon’s main

306 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 18. 307 See Chapter 4, note 201 (Ojukwu’s explanation on how Easterners settled for the name Biafra). 308 Victor T. Le Vine, Politics in Francophone Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 6. 309 See note 36 and accompanying text. 310 “Cameroon,” World Statesmen, https://www.worldstatesmen.org/Cameroon.html. 311 See Table 5.1. 312 Computed from Table 5.1. See also “English Speakers Protest in Cameroon,

Demand Equal Rights Amid Calls for Secession,” DW (September 22, 2017), https:// www.dw.com/en/english-speakers-protest-in-cameroon-demand-equal-rights-amid-callsfor-secession/a-40649852 (putting the number at about 3.6 million, amounting to 15 percent, of Cameroon’s 24 million inhabitants).

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opposition party. Most of Cameroon’s crude oil is located off the coast of the two regions.313 With its capital city in Buea, Ambazonia is located between Nigeria to the west and north, and Cameroon to the east; it is wedged between West Africa and the former French Equatorial Africa.314 Reportedly, the name was coined in 1984 by Gorji-Dinka, a South Cameroonian lawyer and pro-Ambazonia political activist.315 The coinage coincided with the replacement of two-state federalism with centralized powers indicated by the change in nomenclature to the United Republic of Cameroon.316 For Gorji-Dinka and many Anglophone Cameroonians, the change “meant dissolution of the 1961 union[,]” leaving Southern Cameroonians no choice than to declare Ambazonia, in the signification of “an intervention of the people of Southern Cameroons to return the Statehood of the former British Southern Cameroons territory.”317 The Cameroonian National Government’s Response to the Declaration The Cameroonian national government called out the declaration as illegal.318 Next it tried out a carrot-and-stick approach that turned out more stick than carrot. The carrots include, in no particular order, creating an ad hoc committee to dialog with members of the CACSC, the league of lawyers and teachers that initiated the strikes in the lead-up to the declaration of independence319 ; creating the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Government; creating a National Commission for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism; creating new benches for Common Law at the Supreme Court and new departments at the National School

313 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 4. 314 “Southern Cameroon Map,” Maps Cameroon, https://maps-cameroon.com/sou

thern-cameroon-map. 315 See notes 238–240 and accompanying texts. 316 “Gorji Dinka Releases Ambazonia Message,” note 238. 317 Ibid. 318 “How Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World,” Council for Foreign Relations, https://world101.cfr.org/how-world-works-and-sometimes-doesnt/buildingblocks/how-self-determination-shaped-modern-world. See also Moki Edwin Kindzeka, “Cameroon’s French-English Divide Flares Up,” VOA News (September 22, 2017), https://www.voanews.com/a/cameroon-french-english-divide-flares-up/4040295.html. 319 See note 269 and accompanying text.

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of Administration and Magistracy; recruiting Anglophone magistrates and bilingual teachers; and turning the Internet back on after a 92-day cut.320 Some of these proposals for peace were half-hearted. For example, with respect to the dialog with CACSC members, the national government pushed back a proposal for federalism offered as a possible solution. More elaborately, when the CACSC advised the government to create an atmosphere for negotiation by putting a stop on the arrest of agitators and presented the draft for a federal state, the national government backed off and banned it along with the SCNC, the secessionist movement referenced earlier,321 on the ground that their activities “jeopardize[d] the security […], territorial integrity, national unity[,] and integration” of the country.322 It did not stop there. Security forces also arrested two members of the CACSC.323 Small wonder that many Southern Cameroonians considered some of these measures as “too little, too late.”324 Next to the vaster plenitude of stick, on New Year’s Eve 2017, President Biya issued a warning to the effect that “Cameroon’s unity is […] a precious legacy with which no one should take liberties,” and that the oneness and indivisibility of Cameroon is a requirement that he does not mind repeating for the benefit of anyone who desires the reiteration: Cameroon’s unity is […] a precious legacy with which no one should take liberties. Any claim, no matter how relevant, loses its legitimacy once it jeopardizes, even slightly, the building of national unity. All Cameroonians,

320 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 2. 321 See notes 247–249 and accompanying texts. 322 “SCNC and the Cameroon Anglophone Civic Society Consortium Banned,” CRTV

(January 18, 2017), http://crtv.cm/fr/latest-news/top-news-24/scnc-and-the-cameroonanglophone-civil-society-consortium-banned--18545.htm. 323 Eugene N. Nforngwa, “The Government Just Banned SCNC and Consortium,” Standard Tribune (January 17, 2017), https://web.archive.org/web/20170903034357/ http://thestandardtribune.com/2017/01/17/the-government-just-banned-scnc-and-con sortium/. 324 R. Maxwell Bone, “Paul Biya Is Offering Cameroon’s Anglophones Too Little, Too Late,” Foreign Policy (November 21, 2020), https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/21/ paul-biya-is-offering-cameroons-anglophones-too-little-too-late/ (referring to the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Government).

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without exception, have embarked on building a united, inclusive and bilingual nation. This is a unique experience in Africa. […]. We should remain open to constructive ideas, to the exclusion, however, of those that would affect the form of our State. […]. We are willing to move in the footsteps and spirit of the architects of Reunification, and put in place a national entity which will be tasked with proposing solutions aimed at maintaining peace, consolidating our country’s unity and strengthening our resolve, and our day-to-day experiences of living together. … Do I need to repeat this? Cameroon is one and indivisible. It shall so remain.325

Earlier, in a formal statement on November 30, 2017, Biya branded these protesters serial terrorists and criminals. He indicated that it has become clear now to everybody that “Cameroon is victim to repeated terrorist attacks from a secessionist group,” adding that faced with “such repeated aggression,” he would “like to assure Cameroonians that measures have been taken to eliminate these criminals and bring back peace throughout the national territory.”326 Other members of his government adopted the same hardline. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, minister for communication spoke similarly. Pledging that “[t]his division will never happen,”327 he said that Cameroon is “faced with a proper terrorist organization,” that the government will do its best, no stone unturned, to terminate.328 Defense Minister, Joseph Beti Assomo, threatened to take quick measures to “eradicate this inconvenient situation.”329 325 Text of President Paul Biya’s New Year Message to Cameroonians, January 1, 2017,

reprinted in Eye Newspaper (Blog), https://cameroonlatest.blogspot.com/2017/01/pre sident-paul-biyas-new-year-message.html. The President highlighted the expressions “living together” and “Cameroon is one and indivisible” in italics, with the latter exclaimed. 326 Quoted in Don James Sonkey, “Biya Declares War on Anglophone Separatists,” Sun (December 5, 2017), https://web.archive.org/web/20180731183218/http:// thesuncameroon.cm/index.php/2017/12/05/biya-declares-war-anglophone-separatists/. See also Reuters, “Cameroon Escalates Military Crackdown on Anglophone Separatists” (December 6, 2017), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cameroon-politics/cameroonescalates-military-crackdown-on-anglophone-separatists-idUSKBN1E02GG. 327 Quoted in Essa, note 297. 328 Quoted in “English Speakers Protest in Cameroon, Demand Equal Rights Amid

Calls for Secession,” note 312. 329 Quoted in Mbom Sixtus, “Cameroon Government ‘Declares War’ on Secessionist Rebels,” New Humanitarian (December 4, 2017), https://www.thenewhumanitarian. org/analysis/2017/12/04/cameroon-government-declares-war-secessionist-rebels.

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To these threats the Ambazonians retorted that Francophone Cameroon “ha[s] turned [them] into servants in [their] own house.”330 They pledged, “We must defend ourselves pre-emptively and reactively […]. [It will be] block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, village-by-village, [and] city-by-city.”331 One separatist described the strategy of the Ambazonians in terms of raising the cost of occupation for the Cameroonian national government: 60 [percent] of the GDP of Cameroon is earned in Ambazonia. […] Oil and wood are exploited by foreign companies, but the profits go to Yaoundé. On the other hand, there is allegedly no money to provide for English-speaking teachers […] Our first aim is to make Ambazonia ungovernable. We must try to raise the cost of the occupation to higher than the profits they get here.”332

By December 2017, the national government declared war on the separatists.333 It did not take long before the violence developed into a guerrilla war,334 wherein population centers and strategic locations largely controlled by the government, engaged in counterinsurgency actions, with swathes of more remote, rural areas controlled by separatist militias, who launched guerrilla attacks against Cameroon security forces as well as civilians these separatists suspect of collaborating or sympathizing with Cameroon defense forces. The militias, colloquially called “Amba-boys,” include the Ambazonia Defense Forces, the Tigers, and groups working

330 Statement of Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, quoted in Essa, note 297. 331 Statement of Lucas Cho Ayaba of the Ambazonia Defense Forces, quoted in Sixtus,

note 329. 332 “‘This is a Genocide’: Villages Burn as War Rages in Blood-Soaked Cameroon,” Guardian (London) (May 30, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/global-develo pment/2018/may/30/cameroon-killings-escalate-anglophone-crisis. 333 See Sonkey, note 326; and Sixtus, note 329. 334 Guerrilla warfare, meaning “small war,” in Spanish, “is a method of combat by

which a smaller group of combatants attempts to use its mobility to defeat a larger, and consequently less mobile, army.” “Guerrilla Warfare,” New World Encyclopedia, https:// www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Guerrilla_warfare. Tactics used by skilled guerrillas, aimed at undermining a larger, better-equipped, conventional army through protracted, long-intensity confrontation, include ambush, deception, sabotage, and espionage. Ibid.

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for the interim government335 ; they operate largely autonomously from political leaders, many of whom have fled abroad where they live in exile. Separatists also use “lockdowns” involving restrictions on movement, and closures of schools, markets, and businesses.336 In a word, since the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017, Southern Cameroon has been the site of an armed conflict between the Cameroon security forces and Ambazonian separatists. Because of the extended school closures, all two regions that make up Southern Cameroon have been turned into “ghost towns.”337 Because of repeated clashes between Cameroonian security forces and Ambazonian defense forces,338 teachers and students have been kidnapped, some killed and many schools and school equipment and supplies burned down. Part of the fallouts from the survival techniques the Ambazonians devised to cope with the crackdowns from Cameroon security forces, little schooling has taken place since the crisis. As of July 2019, for nearly three years, more than 700,000 children, about 9 out of every 10 students, have been out of school, with about 80 percent of schools closed.339 To fund their activities, some militias have perpetrated attacks directed at civilians. Government forces have torched entire villages suspected of harboring separatists, and they have committed a gamut of atrocities that includes extrajudicial killings and disappearances, arbitrary arrests of agitators, intimidating protesters, torture, and rape, as well as shutting down the Internet, including social media like Facebook and Whatsapp, to block the violations from catching the attention of the international media, if

335 Chothia, note 233. 336 See Jess Craig, “Briefing: Cameroon’s Intensifying Conflict and What It Means

for Civilians,” New Humanitarian (February 6, 2020), https://www.thenewhumanitar ian.org/news/2020/02/06/Cameroon-elections-anglophone-separatist-insurgency-Amb azonia. 337 Silja Frohlick ¨ and Dirke Kopp, “Who Are Cameroon’s Self-Named Ambazonia Secessionists?” DW (September 30, 2019), https://www.dw.com/en/who-are-camero ons-self-named-ambazonia-secessionists/a-50639426. 338 See “At Least [Seventeen] Killed in Cameroon Anglophone Unrest: Sources,” Vanguard (Lagos) (October 2, 2017), https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/10/least17-killed-cameroon-anglophone-unrest-sources/. See also Atabong, note 232; and Sixtus, note 329. 339 “Cameroon: North-West and South-West Crisis,” Situation Report No. 9, Relief Web (September 3, 2019), https://reliefweb.int/report/cameroon/cameroon-north-westand-south-west-crisis-situation-report-no-9-31-july-2019.

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posted on social media.340 There have also been curfews from dusk to dawn: 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.341 One infamous instance in this rap sheet of atrocities involves an order to evaluate sixteen villages in the Southwest Region avowedly to rout out the separationists.342 This response turned over 5,000 people homeless as they crossed the border into Nigeria.343 The net result was an armed conflict in Southern Cameroons that has left the population caught up in the fighting of multiple actors— Cameroonian security forces, the separatists, and militias supporting both sides—responsible for a range of atrocities that includes rapes, extrajudicial killings, and destruction of homes, businesses, and public properties.344 Human Rights Watch reported that extrajudicial killings and destruction of private property by Cameroonian security forces have been rife since the beginning of the crisis.345 It as well documented the extensive burning of villages by Cameroonian security forces that took place in both regions of Southern Cameroon between 2017 and 2019, together with the killings of unarmed civilians.346 One of the tragic highpoints in destructiveness from the war—likened to a rampage by Human Rights Watch—was the mass burning in Makon, Bamenda, on May 15, 2019, of over 70 homes by Cameroonian security forces.347

340 Frohlick ¨ and Kopp, note 337. 341 Ibid. 342 Ibid. 343 Ibid. 344 Amnesty International, “Cameroon: Rampant Atrocities Amid Anglophone Regions

Must Be Stopped and Investigated (July 4, 2003), https://www.amnesty.org/en/lat est/news/2023/07/cameroon-rampant-atrocities-amid-anglophone-regions-must-be-sto pped/; and Amnesty International, With or Against Us: People of the North-West Region of Cameroon Caught Between the Army, Armed Separatists, and Militias (London, UK: Amnesty International, 2023). 345 Human Rights Watch, Cameroon: Promised Investigation Should Be Independent:

Government Forces on Rampage in North-West Region City (May 23, 2019), https:// www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/23/cameroon-promised-investigation-should-be-indepe ndent?gclid=CjwKCAjw49qKBhAoEiwAHQVToynekCBeQO3gUM1lTctTVxxKZdlJ3o UfjR5820C9TPeCsgvUcA8xOhoCU1MQAvD_BwE. 346 Ibid. 347 Ibid.

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So far, as of this book, neither the Cameroonian central government nor the separatists have shown any sign of backing down.348 These violations of human rights arising from the Ambazonian conflict have drawn international attention with condemnations from Western governments and intergovernmental organizations like those of the UK, the US, France, and the European Union on the loss of lives and use of unreasonable force against unarmed protests, but little else,349 with one exception that bears pinpointing here: On May 13, 2019, the UN Security Council held an informal meeting to discuss Cameroon’s Ambazonia crisis.350

Conclusion: Now What? This chapter sets forth the contributions of Cameroon related to the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of this book. Beginning with the basic facts on Cameroon organized around the status of the country as Africa in miniature on grounds of its diversity, the presentation explored Cameroonian constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, the politics of constitutional engineering in the land, the denouement of the campaign for self-determination in Southern Cameroon, from peaceful protests to war: beginning with a demand for restoration of twostate federalism, next crossing over into full-blown agitation for separate statehood, complete with a declaration of independence, all the way to armed conflict of a kind that calls to mind Biafra 1 from 1967 to 1970, chronicled in Chapter 4 on Nigeria. Part of Cameroon’s “Anglophone problem” is the stereotype of many Southern Cameroonians as secessionists, “les Biafrans,”351 the same way 348 See “From Peaceful Protests to War: The Evolution of Cameroon’s Anglophone

Conflict,” DW (October 1, 2021), https://www.dw.com/en/cameroon-anglophone-con flict-five-years-on/a-59363797. 349 Jude Mutah, “Global Responses to Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: The Inadequate International Efforts to End the World’s Most Neglected Conflict,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs (November 8, 2022), https://saisreview.sais.jhu.edu/cameroon-ang lophone-crisis-global-response/. 350 Human Rights Watch, “UN: Shine Spotlight on Brutality in Cameroon” (May 13, 2019), https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/13/un-shine-spotlight-brutality-cam eroon#:~:text=(New%20York)%20%E2%80%93%20The%20United,in%20the%20country’s% 20Anglophone%20regions. 351 See Konings and Nyamnjoh, “President Paul Biya and the ‘Anglophone Problem’ in Cameroon,” note 230; see also note 244 and accompanying text.

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the patriotism of many Igbo toward the Nigerian state has been questioned since the end of Nigeria’s war over Biafra in 1970.352 But, there are certain gulfs, other than the 50-year time duration, that set Ambazonia and Biafra apart. Ambazonian insurgents are divided somewhat evenly between federalists and separatists: those who want a two-state federalist arrangement of the kind that prevailed until 1972, and those who advocate complete independence from French-speaking Cameroon. The division leaves room for a peaceful resolution, such as the path of internal self-determination of the kind that prevailed before 1972. In a 2017 study, Crisis Group, an international peace nonprofit, aired its views on Cameroon’s Anglophone problem. It posits that the conflict has shown the limits of “presidential centralism and a governance system” anchored on co-optation, so grave it can be resolved only by “dialogue and institutional reform,” rather than “by repression.”353 It recommends, for the medium term, decentralization based on the current ten-region system, including “full application and the improvement of existing laws.”354 Specifically, it foresees the option of an “effective decentralization […] alternative to federalism, that has the capacity to satisfy many Francophones opposed to a two-state federal system.”355 We demur. In Crisis Group’s assessment, to work, decentralization “must reduce the powers of administrators appointed by Yaoundé by creating regional councils, introducing elected regional presidents, transferring significant financial resources and powers, […] implementing measures that are already provided for in law,” and “tak[ing] legal measures specific to Anglophone regions in the areas of education, justice and culture, […] not currently covered by legislation.”356 The proposal is pedestrian. Yet, it is a recommendation that calls for a level of skilled implementation that, based on the analysis in this chapter, the 352 See Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann, 1983), 15 (describing how General Obasanjo, then military Head of State of Nigeria saw in the failure to recite the national pledge “an indictable absence of patriotism among a group,” the Igbo, that he, Obasanjo, “had always held with great suspicion”). 353 International Crisis Group, Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads, note 234, p. 24. 354 Ibid., p. 26. 355 Ibid. 356 Ibid.

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current Cameroonian national government, under the long-ranging and gerontological leadership of President Biya, lacks. Implementation is the heart of governmental business. It is “solid governance arrangement[]” embedded in “leadership, coordinated effort[,] and a team with a range of skills,”357 from the case study, missing in action under the Biya regime. The controversy over the appointment of language-incompetent teachers and judges into English-speaking classrooms and courtrooms in Southern Cameroon could have been easily solved by good governance,358 which property, from every indication in this chapter, the Biya regime appears to lack. A way around this quagmire is regime change; in the words of one analyst, specifically “modalities of [Biya’s] retreat from power,” given that President Biya’s long period in office spanning four whole decades is necessarily “part of the problem.”359 The solution could be for [Biya] to step down at the end of this term to allow for the renewal of the political landscape, through free and fair general elections. Any attempt at another term will only exacerbate frustrations, creating an environment conducive to violence. Both the international mediation and the national dialogue should consider addressing the modalities of his retreat from power.360

After the publication of the Lado article, in 2018, Mr. Biya won another term that extends his tenure to 2025.361 Another element evident from this case study is the influence of Nigeria both with reference to the use by self-determination agitators of tactics similar to those in Biafra over half a century ago and the spread over of 357 International Organization for Migration, “Features of Effective Implementation,” EMM2.0 Handbook, https://emm.iom.int/handbooks/stage-6-policy-implementation/fea tures-effective-implementation. 358 Abeng, note 231. 359 Ludovic Lado, “Toward a Sustainable Solution to the Anglophone Problem in

Cameroon,” Africa Up Close (Blog), Wilson Center (January 3, 2018), https://www.wil soncenter.org/blog-post/towards-a-sustainable-solution-to-the-anglophone-problem-incameroon (“Necessity of Regime Change”). 360 Ibid. 361 Moki Edwin Kindzeka, “Paul Biya, Cameroon’s 88-Year-Old President, Marks 39

Years in Power,” VOA News (November 6, 2021), https://www.voanews.com/a/cam eroon-paul-biya-marks-39-years-in-power/6302673.html.

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Islamic religion-based terrorist activities from the northeastern portions of Nigeria since 2009 that have shown their effects in Cameroon. On this latter issue, one analyst presciently observed that in the scenario of a civil war, now occurring in the country, “the Cameroonian Armed Forces would come under significant strain, fighting Boko Haram in the north and the separatists in the west.”362 There are similarities between the self-determination struggles in Nigeria and Cameroon, some of it explainable by the reality of closeness between the two neighboring countries bearing on a group, Southern Cameroonians, today Ambazonians, that used to be part of Nigeria. Yet, although the Nigerian government has not intervened in the crisis, it maintains an attitude of wariness toward Ambazonia insurgents, fearful of the possibility that an independent Southern Cameroon of whatever name could provide “a base for separatist Nigerian movements.”363 With all three case studies in the work now at an end, the flashlight in the book turns to the third and final portion dealing with small-stepsto-peace proposals, à la blueprints, for reconciling sovereignty and selfdetermination in decolonized Africa. It starts with Chapter 6 on lessons from the three case studies, followed next in Chapter 7 by the blueprints. Chapter 8 closes out the work with a concluding statement that brings together the achievements of the work plus a look into the future.

Appendix: Key Dates in Cameroonian Constitutional and Self-Determination Histories Date

Event

1924

Passage of the British Cameroons Administration Ordinance of 1924, which divided the administration of British Cameroons into two permitting Northern Cameroons to be administered as part of Northern Nigeria, and Southern Cameroons as part of Eastern Nigeria (continued)

362 Pinto, note 218. 363 Ibid., p. 18.

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(continued) Date

Event

January 1, 1960

Cameroon gained independence from France. The occurrence coincides with the adoption of the country’s first post-independence constitution. The document was patterned after the French de Gaulle constitution which superimposed a presidential system on a parliamentary formula. Under the constitution, power was centralized in the president in a unitary state with a unicameral legislature. Southern Cameroon merged into French Cameroon, sealed with the adoption of a federal constitution. Merger followed a plebiscite where Southern Cameroonians voted to join French-speaking Cameroon, rather than be part of Nigeria. They did not get the opportunity to vote to be on their own. Thus, this constitution, coming soon after the 1960 constitution, sealed the merger of the two Cameroons under a federal system with East and West Cameroon as federating units. Consistent with the French system the country adopted, the constitution created a powerful federal government. Cameroon adopts its third constitution in the post-independence period notable or notorious for abolishing the federal system of 1961 and replacing it with “a decentralized unitary” state which provided that the country “shall be one and indivisible.” Under this constitution, the name of the country changed from the Federal Republic of Cameroon to the United Republic of Cameroon. Cameroon adopts its fourth constitution in the post-independence period. This was more of a power play meant to stabilize the powers of Paul Biya against his predecessor Ahmadu Ahidjo. By a presidential decree, the name of the country changed from United Republic of Cameroon to Republic of Cameroon. President Paul Biya signed a decree creating the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Government. Anglophone lawyers, teachers, and students organized many large demonstrations protesting the marginalization of English and Anglophone institutions in the fields of law and education. The government announced several measures to cool things down that, however, the demonstrators viewed as insufficient. Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF), an umbrella organization created by leading Ambazonian nationalist movements, unilaterally declared English-speaking Cameroon independent as Ambazonia. Paul Biya declares war against the separatists, stating, “Cameroon is victim to repeated terrorist attacks from a secessionist group.”364 The UN Security Council held an informal meeting to discuss the Anglophone Crisis

August 14, 1961

1972

1984

August 1, 2018 November 2016 March 2017 October 1, 2017

November 30, 2017 May 13, 2019

364 Sonkey, note 326.

PART III

Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self Determination in Postcolonial Africa

CHAPTER 6

Object Lessons from the Case Studies

Introduction This chapter is one of three materials in Part III exclusively devoted to the search for time-sensitive answers to the questions in the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination in Africa that frames this book. Karl Marx famously advised analysts to go beyond philosophizing the world to actually changing it.1 The advice about analysis as springboard to action in an attempt to solve a problem animates the conversations in this chapter and the next.

1 “Theses on Feuerback,” Thesis 11 (1845), in Selected Works, Vol. 1, Marx Engels (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950), 13–15 (“[T]he philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it”).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_6

325

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Anticipatory of the blueprints in Chapter 7, this chapter assembles the object lessons gleanable from the case studies of the three countries, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, three live scenes of self-determination campaigns, that vivify the tension from the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination in need of resolution. Altogether, the three case studies embody five struggles for self-determination, four undertaken through armed conflict and one, Biafra 2, whose protagonists seek to achieve through peaceful, nonviolent means, but in which, no less than in the other four cases, an aloof central government is responding to the campaign for self-determination with a range of repression, including mass arrests, torture, detention without trial, and extrajudicial killings. For each country, the exploration of the intricacies in the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination was preceded by basic country details, organized around a theme, including features related to history, politics, and economic development; constitutional developments; and the politics of constitutional engineering unique to each country. In each case, the goal remained the same: to uncover extensive factual information that will back and inform the blueprints in Chapter 7. A diagram can tell more than a thousand words. Accordingly, the portion of the discussion following this introduction recapitulates the case study materials from the preceding three chapters (Table 6.1). That is next followed by a set of common discernable elements from the case studies denominated as object lessons.

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Recapitulation of Case Study Materials from Chapters 3 to 5

Table 6.1 Recap in graphics of case study materials from Chapters 3 to 5 Item Criterion No.

Ethiopia

Nigeria

1.

Basic country details

Organized around the theme of the Land of the Blue Nile, more real than apparent

Organized around the theme of the giant of Africa, more apparent than real

2.

Constitutional development

3.

Politics of constitutional engineering

Cameroon

Organized around the theme of Africa in miniature, more apparent than real From empire From federal From two-state through parliamentary democracy federal military-driven to federal presidential presidential Marxist–Leninist democracy birthed by a democracy to socialism to succession of military unitary federal regimes; analysis of four presidential parliamentary constitutions from 1960 democracy; republic; analysis to 1999, the most analysis of three of four momentous being the constitutions constitutions from 1979 constitution from 1961 to 1931 to 1995, the because of the move to 1996, the most most momentous the US presidential momentous being the last model that it signifies being the 1961 because of its art. constitution 39 entrenching because of the the right to two-state self-determination federalism that it embodies Two political Marked by huge Constitutional leaders in the influence of military engineering is imperial and rulers in constitutional dominated by post-imperial engineering; apart from two political periods, Emperor the First Republic, all leaders since Haile Selassie, and constitutional exercises independence, Mengistu Haile were conducted by the the latest Miriam, army President since dominated 1982 constitutional engineering in the country

(continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Item Criterion No.

Ethiopia

Nigeria

Cameroon

4.

Stages of selfdetermination struggle

Two: Biafra 1, embedded in armed violence; and Biafra 2, embedded in nonviolent civil disobedience that the central government still represses

One: Ambazonia, like Biafra 1, embedded in armed conflict

5.

Key fallouts from selfdetermination struggle

Two: Eritrea, before constitutionalization of the right to self-determination, and Tigray, after entrenchment of that right. Both struggles were embedded in armed conflict Events related to Eritrean war of independence, lesson in UN-organized referendum on independence (that benefited South Sudan down the line), and Tigray war, both embedded in armed violence

Events like sit-at-homes and “ghost town” operations by Ambazonian insurgents which leave Cameroonian armed forces reduced room for crackdown, in an armed-phase self-determination campaign

6.

Report Card

Biafra 1 brought on the lessons of social justice (emanating from the Ahiara Declaration) and improved international responses to humanitarian emergencies. From Biafra 2, activities similar to those in Ambazonia, responses necessitated by crackdowns by Nigerian security forces to a projected peaceful, nonviolent self-determination campaign Governance style A nominal federation changed little with political powers from socialist days concentrated at the even in multiparty center, even though the democracy. Hint: federating units grew federal system phenomenally from four embedded in on the eve of republican (constrictive) status in 1963 to 36 parliamentary states plus a Federal democracy Capital Territory in Abuja by 1996, unlike the US, in a fixed geographic entity

Constitutional reforms confined to regime maintenance around two presidents in a post-de Gaulle-type presidency superimposed upon a parliamentary system. Hint: unitary system embedded in an overly strong presidential system

(continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Item Criterion No.

Ethiopia

Nigeria

Cameroon

7.

Negative, despite constitutionalizing the right to self-determination

Negative, due to failure in power devolution. Based on its experience from Biafra 1, including the failed confederation agreement from Aburi, Nigeria should have constitutionalized the right to self-determination after its civil war in 1970

Negative, signified by the metamorphosis of the crossover in the demand for autonomy from restoration of two-state federalism to full independence as Ambazonia

Ramification for the right to selfdetermination

Collage of Six Object Lessons from the Case Studies This section continues the discussion from Table 6.1. It elaborates some of the issues arising from the diagram packaged as object lessons. The sample of six object lessons, all of them interlinked, are privilege of sovereignty over the right to self-determination to the point of reification, failure of power devolution indicative of a love of concentrated powers, failure of social justice, bad structure, the need to go beyond constitutionalization of self-determination, and the counterproductivity of cracking down on the free exercise of self-determination (see Table 6.2). There are several observations that must be made to get down to the discussion of these lessons. First, the list is illustrative, rather than meant to exhaust all possibilities. Second, the lessons are not mutually exclusive; instead, they overlap considerably (a good example being failure of power devolution and bad structure). Third, some of the lessons draw more discussions than others. However, that is something in the natural order of exploration that, by itself, does not make them more important than others since, in its own right, irrespective of length, each lesson is important and part of a seamless whole. Fourth, some of the lessons are more deductive than obvious (an example here being bad structure). Justification for the inclusion of these less obvious lessons is that to fulfill the job

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Table 6.2 Recap of the object lessons Item No.

Lesson

Indicators

1.

The privilege of sovereignty over the right to self-determination to the point of reification Failure of power devolution indicative of a love of concentrated powers

Indicators of the privilege visible in all three countries, but more so in Nigeria and Cameroon, due to the constitutionalization of self-determination in Ethiopia Indicators of this lesson visible in all three cases, including in Nigeria where, because of its size and immense diversity, federalism was introduced under British rule in a Westminster parliamentary system of government This was uniform to all three countries, including oil-producing Nigeria, partly because of political corruption in all three countries, but much less so in Ethiopia, vis-à-vis Nigeria and Cameroon This lesson appeared in all cases, even though, vis-à-vis Nigeria and Cameroon, Ethiopia was never colonized Because only Ethiopia constitutionalized the right to self-determination, this was a lesson that, facially, seemed limited to Ethiopia, although in actuality applied to all three countries This lesson appeared roundly in all three cases

2.

3.

Failure of social justice

4.

Bad structure

5.

The need to go beyond constitutionalization of self-determination

6.

The counterproductivity of cracking down on the free exercise of self-determination

of analysis mapped out for them, concepts, here lessons (in the variegation of their obviousness), must be defined robustly. Table 6.2 provides a recap of the lessons. In September 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the UNDRIP praised by grassroot organizations representing indigenous communities as “a tool for peace and justice.”2 The adoption was a historic event that culminated activities for indigenous peoples predating the very formation of the UN. While Cameroon voted yes, revealingly both Ethiopia and Nigeria abstained.3 It turned out that Cameroon’s vote of affirmation for the rights of indigenous peoples was hypocritical. This is because in 2 See Chapter 2, note 49, and accompanying text. 3 See Chapter 2, Table 2.1, and Chapter 2, note 51, and accompanying text.

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2017, ten years after the adoption of the instrument Cameroonian signed, the Cameroonian national government went to war against groups within its own country who attempted to use the right to self-determination. In voting yes while centralizing powers in manners inconsistent with the two-state federalism that brought the two Cameroons today in 1961, the Cameroon national government perpetrated hypocritical conduct outside the veneers of diplomacy. The Privilege of Sovereignty Over Self-Determination to the Point of Reification The first of these object lessons gleanable from the case studies is a privilege, nay reification, of sovereignty over the right to self-determination. This is regardless of whether or not self-determination was entrenched as a right in the national constitution. Ethiopia constitutionalized the right to self-determination. Yet, from 2020 to 2022, Addis Ababa fought a war over Tigray implicating the right to self-determination that observers blame on the theory of ethnic federalism. It is an explanation that, in the light of the argument in this book, we disagree with; for us, the reason is because constitutionalizing the right to self-determination, as Ethiopia did, represents an unminimizable point of departure in the journey toward harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination in Africa. Subsequent events related to the conflict point up the continued privilege of sovereignty over self-determination. In an agreement between the Ethiopian national government and the TPLF to end the Tigray War, sponsored by the AU, the TPLF committed itself to halt any conduct likely to “undermine[] the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ethiopia, including unconstitutional correspondence and relations with foreign powers,”4 among other obligations. This was in return for a promise by the Ethiopian national government to “halt military operations targeting [its] combatants,” and to lift the label of terrorist organization that it slapped on the TPLF.5 Next to Nigeria, the preamble to the country’s 1999 constitution incorporates a statement to the effect that Nigerians “firmly and solemnly

4 Chapter 3, note 422, and accompanying text. 5 Chapter 3, note 423, and accompanying text.

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resolve[] […] to live in unity and harmony as one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation under God.”6 The main document reinforced this provision.7 The 1979 constitution predating the 1999 charter provided similarly.8 The major difference between these two constitutions is that, whereas the 1979 constitution underwent the approval of a Constituent Assembly (after a Constitution Drafting Committee completed its work), the 1999 Constitution lacked this popular imprimatur.9 Next to the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination, the Nigerian national government under the Fourth Republic nursed an antipathy toward self-determination embedded in the notion that there is no peaceful way of getting out of Nigeria. In the emphatic expression of General Buhari, “[t]he corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a subject of debate.”10 He would not tolerate anyone “joking” with Nigeria’s security to the point that Nigerians would all better get drowned than for the country “to divide now.”11 For the sake of argument, it is necessary that we take a close look of the 1999 constitution, whose adoption was not preceded by a Constituent Assembly. The document provides that Nigerians “firmly and solemnly resolve[] …” to write a constitution aimed at “promoting the good government and welfare of all persons in our country on the principles of Freedom, Equality, and Justice,” as well as to “consolidate[e] the Unity of our people.”12 Because the clause inextricably ties sovereignty, indicated by “unity,” with equalitarian guarantees like equality and justice (analogizable to the broader freedom of selfdetermination), excessive attentiveness to sovereignty at the expense of

6 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, Constitute Project, https:// www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Nigeria_2011.pdf?lang=en, preamble. 7 See ibid., art. 2(1), stipulating that “Nigeria is one indivisible and indissoluble

Sovereign State to be known by the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” 8 See Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979, Constitution Net https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/nig_const_79.pdf, preamble; and art. 2(1) (indivisibility and indissolubility clause). 9 See Philip C. Aka, “Why Nigeria Needs Restructuring Now and How It Can Peacefully Do It,” Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, 46(2) (Winter 2018), 123–157. 10 Chapter 4, note 318, and accompanying text. 11 Chapter 4, notes 319 and 321, and accompanying texts. 12 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, note 6, preamble.

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the group freedom of self-determination is unwarranted because it creates an impermissible imbalance between the two complementary doctrines. Like Nigeria’s, Cameroon’s constitution precludes secession. The preamble of the country’s 1996 charter provides that all Cameroonians “solemnly declare that [they] constitute one and the same nation, bound by the same destiny.”13 Although, under the scheme of constitutionalism in Cameroon, the preamble is a part and parcel of the constitution, for the avoidance of any doubt, the main document reinforced this provision.14 Next to the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination in the country, President Biya stated that “Cameroon’s unity is […] a precious legacy with which no one should take liberties,” and that the oneness and indivisibility of Cameroon is non-negotiable.15 Biya also branded these protesters serial terrorists and criminals that he pledged to deal with as criminals.16 However, the “precious legacy” President Biya invoked was an unvarnished exercise in constitutional revisionism: the post-1972 unity he invoked was distinctively different from the unity of 1961 which created a two-state federalism that the Cameroon national government disbanded in 1972. Not to be outdone, his ministers pledged that secession “will never happen” and that they will act, no stone unturned, to “eradicate this inconvenient situation.”17 “When a constitution explicitly prohibits secession, it […] reduces the bargaining threats that can be used by subordinate units, while strengthening the central authorities.”18 The reason for this occurrence is because a secessionist movement must first overcome the prohibition to gain legitimate support for any self-determination endeavor.19 Such is the common unwholesome constitutional scenario, to the benefit of aloof central authorities, that agitators for self-determination in Nigeria and 13 Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon (adopted January 18, 1996), amendment to the Constitution of June 2, 1972 (International Labor Organization), preamble, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/43107/97788/F-210 3476279/CMR43107%20Eng.pdf. 14 Ibid., art. 1(2) (“The Republic of Cameroon shall be […] one and indivisible[.]”). 15 Chapter 5, note 325, and accompanying text. 16 Chapter 5, note 326, and accompanying text. 17 Chapter 5, notes 327–329, and accompanying texts. 18 Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg, “From Catalonia to California: Secession in

Constitutional Law,” Alabama Law Review, 70(4) (2019) (abstract). 19 See ibid.

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Cameroon confront. In an environment of general crackdown against IPOB in Nigeria, Vice President Osinbajo, sitting in for General Buhari as Acting President expressed an opinion potentially clement to the right of self-determination that was lacking in all three countries, particularly in Nigeria and Cameroon, where this right is unconstitutionalized. Osinbajo took the position that citizens have the right to discuss whether or not they remained in the country and that they may freely exercise the right, bearing in mind the benefits of living in a pluralistic society.20 Failure of Power Devolution Indicative of a Love of Concentrated Powers The love of concentrated powers is the root of all political evil. Failure of power devolution is the second of the object lessons from the case studies that we isolate here for analysis. In each case bar none, central authorities found political power so sweet they predisposed themselves not to share it. Given the immense ethnic diversity in Africa, a viable governance strategy would have been one embedded in devolution of powers that gives each ethnic group the space to practice their way of life within the political system. Yet, in state after state, the evidence was a love of centralized power for its sake. We will tell this story from the beginning with respect to each country, starting with Ethiopia. Ethiopia was still a feudal empire when, at UN instance, it entered into a loose federalism with Eritrea in 1952, short of a two-state partnership. After the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and his removal from office, the socialist-oriented military regime under Mengistu Haile Miriam centralized power until its own overthrow in 1991. It was not until 1995, following the successful secession of Eritrea, that Ethiopia embraced federalism, highlighted by entrenchment of the right to selfdetermination, adopted that year. Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 lists Ethiopia’s system of government as a federal parliamentary republic.21 This means that the country practices its federalism in a parliamentary system, much like Britain, a classically unitary state with a ceremonial president. This occurrence is revealing, given Ethiopia’s populous-ness in Africa only second to Nigeria on this attribute. Parliamentarianism in the British

20 Chapter 4, notes 374–378, and accompanying texts. 21 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 8.

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Westminster tradition was the operative system in Nigeria under its First Republic. Its leaders ditched this system after they blamed it for the political instability that led to the failure of that installation of civilian rule.22 They replaced it with the presidential system patterned after the US that Nigeria has utilized since 1999 to this day. For Nigeria, adopting the presidential system “removed the seeming anomaly of superimposing a parliamentary government on a federal system that pre-1979 the country endured.”23 There are other anecdotal factors that speak to centralized powers, inconsistent with power devolution, in Ethiopia. In the 2015 general election, opposition parties lost the only seat which they still held in the House of Peoples’ Representatives24 ; the EPRDF and its allies won all 547 seats.25 There is more. According to this news story, “[a]long with its allies, the EPRDF,” then in government “for more than two decades, also won a near clean sweep in regional state councils, winning all but 21 of the 1,987 seats.”26 Commenting on the election result, one public intellectual from Addis Ababa University opined that “there is no multiparty system in Ethiopia.”27 Ahead of the results, the Addis Standard, one of the few independent newspapers in the country, lamented what it assessed as the “tragic demise of the multiparty system.”28 Table 1.1 in Chapter 1 denominates Nigeria’s system of government as federal presidential republic.29 Given its populous-ness and long experience with federalism, vis-à-vis the other two candidates in this book, Nigeria should be a bellwether in power devolution that, unfortunately, it is not. Mass killings of Igbo and destruction of their properties (personal 22 See Philip C. Aka, Human Rights in Nigeria’s External Relations: Building the Record of a Moral Superpower (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2017), 192. 23 Ibid. 24 “Ethiopia’s Ruling Party Wins by Landslide in General Election,” Guardian

(London) (June 22, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/22/ethiop ias-ruling-party-win-clean-sweep-general-election. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. Subsequently, the EPRDF took back the only seat that was held by the

opposition, securing all 23 seats in the capital Addis Ababa. Ibid. 27 Ibid. (quoting Taye Negussie, a sociology professor at Addis Ababa University). 28 Ibid. 29 Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 8.

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and business) in Kano in 1953, sequel to an earlier one in Jos in 1946, convinced British colonial authorities that Nigeria would not long remain one country unless it was decentralized.30 This wisdom led to the formalization of federalism in the country in 1954.31 Given the large size and diversity of the country which makes it unamenable to centralized control, the idea of federalism in the country goes back deeper; its seed was sown in 1946 and given more fleshing in 1951.32 Thus, at its independence in 1960, Nigeria comprised one national government of three federating regions.33 However, British authorities bequeathed Nigeria a severely lopsided federal system where, vis-à-vis the two other federating units, the Northern Region was allocated a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, the repository of federal authority in the country.34 This sowed the seed for instability that consumed the First Republic from 1960 until 1966. Meanwhile, the number of regions increased to four in 1963, following the split up of the Western Region into two to create the Mid-Western Region. During the First Republic (1960–1966), the country remained a truly federal system albeit one marked by tremendous instability, the result of its lopsided-ness in a setting where the Northern Region dominated by Hausa-Fulani worked hard to maintain its hegemony. That system finally came to an end in 1966, following the intrusion of military rule into the political system, from which period until this book, centralized powers became the norm in the land. This is despite the fact that the country introduced three installations of civilian rule, denominated republics, one of which, the third, became stillborn. The two were the Second Republic from 1979 until 1983, and the Fourth Republic since 1999. The one born dead was a projected Third Republic which could not see the light of day because the presidential election that would have brought it into being was annulled by General

30 See Chapter 4, note 31, and accompanying text. 31 See Nigeria (Constitution) Order in Council, 1954, Statutory Instrument 1954, No.

1146 (August 30, 1954). 32 See Chapter 4, notes 25 and 29, and accompanying texts. 33 See George Anderson, “Member-State Structures in Federations: Creation and Impli-

cations,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias (March 23, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/acr efore/9780190846626.013.642. 34 See Chapter 4, notes 34–35, and accompanying texts.

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Babangida in 1993. The country came close to a confederation or a twostate federalism under the Aburi Accord of 1967. That system, designed as a last-ditch effort to stop the brewing civil war, never went into effect because the national government in Lagos then led by General Gowon dismissed it as unworkable. Not that it justifies it, the Nigerian military has a predilection for centralized authority because it fits with its ethos of hierarchy embedded in centralized powers. This centralization reached its highest point under General Buhari under whose regime one Ijaw leader lambasted operation of the country’s federalism as “cruelly constructed.”35 How did the disposition, planted during the many years of military rule in the country, spread over into civilian government? First, the most extensive exercise in constitutional engineering in the post-independence period, the one leading to the adoption of the 1979 constitution occurred under military rule during the regime of General Obasanjo as head of state from 1976 until 1979. Drafters of this charter document confessed that they transferred functions from the concurrent list (shared by subnational governments) to exclusive list (belonging to the central government), to promote “unity” and prevent the possibility of another Biafra.36 Now this charter was the prototype for the 1999 constitution adopted 20 years later. Imbued with this mindset, many Nigerian leaders strove to maintain a nominal federalism wherein, meanwhile, the federating units ballooned from 4 regions in 1963 to 37 states (including a federal capital territory in Abuja). This occurrence led to an

35 Ebenezer Adurokiya, “No Country in the World Is as Distorted And Cruelly Constructed as Nigeria—Professor G. G. Darah, N/Delta Leader,” Nigerian Tribune (Ibadan) (December 12, 2020), https://tribuneonlineng.com/no-country-in-the-worldis-as-distorted-and-cruelly-constructed-as-nigeria-professor-g-g-darah-n-delta-leader/ (interview of Professor G.G. Darah, an Ijaw leader). 36 See Gbenga Oke, “The Mistakes Rotimi Williams and I Made about Nigeria’s

Constitution—Nwabueze,” Vanguard (Lagos) (March 22, 2013), https://www.vangua rdngr.com/2013/03/the-mistakes-rotimi-williams-and-i-made-about-nigerias-constitut ion-nwabueze/ (quoting Nwabueze, one of the drafters of the 1979 constitution to the effect that, instead of producing unity, their action “produced disunity because of the intensity of the struggle to control the center”).

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“obsessive ethnic micromanaging of national life,” and the caricature of a country which “exists almost simply to share money and jobs.”37 Secondly, related to the first point, as retired generals, these military rulers, who insincerely packaged themselves as converts to democracy, participated wholesale in civilian governance to the point of dominance. For example, under the Fourth Republic spanning 24 years as of this book, two retired generals, who in their youth saw service in Biafra, served for a total of 16 years out of the 24 years so far of the Fourth Republic, amounting to two-thirds of the entire time period. Their dominance becomes more momentous bearing in mind that they handpicked the successors to whom they transferred power: Obasanjo to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan who ruled from 2007 until 2015, and Buhari to Bola Ahmed Tinubu since 2023. In short, for much of the past fifty-three years as of this book, “Nigeria has been governed by the soldiers who won the war.”38 The centralization of powers in a nominal federal system has led to unceasing calls for “true federalism,” including agitation for “resource control.”39 All to no avail. This is despite the fact that power devolution could quench some of the firestorm of agitations for self-determination in the country.40 Table 1.1 in Chapter 1 designates Cameroon as a unitary presidential republic.41 Power in the country is centralized in a political system steeped in a powerful presidency. This was in the wake of the 1961 constitution that created a two-state federal system. That system was disbanded in 1972 with centralized power continuing after that date, 37 Max Siollun, “Nigeria Is Haunted by Its Civil War,” New York Times (January 15, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/opinion/nigeria-civil-waranniversary.html. 38 Ibid. 39 See Dare Arowolo, “Nigeria’s Federalism and the Agitation for Resource Control in

the Niger Delta Region,” OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, 2(7) (December 2011), 83–88. 40 See Ayobami Egunyomi, “Fifteen-Seven Years After: The Case for Restructuring Nigeria,” Council on Foreign Relations (posted November 8, 2017), https://www. cfr.org/blog/fifty-seven-years-after-case-restructuring-nigeria (stating that restructuring, achieved through devolution of political powers away from Abuja, “will silence the agitation of the unrelenting Biafra and Niger Delta movements by giving them a region with the autonomy they seek”). 41 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 8.

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including the change by 1996 from United Republic of Cameroon to simply Republic of Cameroon. Like Ethiopia’s, Cameroon’s governmental system connotes centralized power in a political system that is patterned on France, rather than the US. Specifically, Cameroon superimposes a presidential system of government in a unitary format shorn of the decentralized structure in France,42 from which it borrowed its governmental model. Fostering the climate of concentrated powers is the fact that in all of its 63 years since independence as of this book, Cameroonians have passed through only two leaders in a political system that, though free of military coup, is still low-quality from a democratic standpoint; it is a political system where one individual, Paul Biya, has served continuously as President for over 40 years since 1982, with the constitution amended more than a few times to bolster the longevity in office. In sum, whether federal parliamentary republic, federal presidential republic, or unitary presidential republic, one common predilection the three countries share is a love of concentrated powers at the center. Consistent with the politics of constitutional engineering, each country has a long history of adopting new constitutions and, in the case of Cameroon, opportunistically amending those charter documents. Similarly, it is a history laden with centralizing powers at the center at the expense of subnational governments, even in supposedly federal states like Nigeria and Ethiopia. All this takes place in a world where even unitary systems elsewhere are creatively embracing devolution of powers.43 It is a world where, in line with the trend, rather than bucking it, countries in Europe are ceding off aspects of their sovereignty for mutual political and economic benefits.44

42 See European Committee of the Regions, “France: Member State,” https:// portal.cor.europa.eu/divisionpowers/Pages/France-Introduction.aspx#:~:text=France% 20is%20a%20unitary%20State,and%20the%20Municipalities%20(communes) (“France is a unitary State organized on a decentralized basis under [its] 1958 Constitution”). 43 See Chapter 4, note 356, and accompanying text (China and the UK); and note 42 and accompanying text (France). 44 George Mukundi Wachira, “Sovereignty and the United States of Africa: Insights from the EU,” Institute for Security Studies Paper No. 144 (June 2007), https://www. files.ethz.ch/isn/98932/PAPER144H.pdf.

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Failure of Social Justice A third lesson emanating from the case studies revolves around a failure of social justice. Social justice is an equalitarian doctrine with strong economic roots45 ; this includes, for our broad purpose here, indicators like rate of general unemployment, rate of youth unemployment, poverty reduction or alleviation, healthcare expenditure, and educational expenses, free of political corruption. Each of the three countries under examination in this book has an economy essentially anchored in agricultural activities.46 Rate of general unemployment is also high in each country: as of 2021, the numbers were 3.6 percent in Ethiopia, 9.79 percent in Nigeria, and 3.87 percent in Cameroon.47 Ditto for youth unemployment: as of 2021, 5.7 percent in Ethiopia, 19.6 percent in Nigeria, and 6.6 percent in Cameroon.48 Mirroring these bouts of dismal statistics or in spite of it, each country recorded small progress in poverty alleviation, judged by the share of the population below poverty line: Ethiopia at 23.5 percent in 2015, Nigeria 40.1 percent (2018 estimate), and Cameroon at 37.5 percent as of 2014,49 adding to the gloomy statistics the fact that, under General Buhari in the Fourth Republic, Nigeria displaced India as poverty headquarters of the world.50 Healthcare expenditures, as a share of GDP for each country as of 2020, were also nominal: Ethiopia 3.8 percent, Nigeria 3.4 percent, and Cameroon 3.5 percent.51 The numbers for educational expenses, also as a share of GDP, were also low: Ethiopia 4.5 percent as of 2019, Nigeria 0.5 percent as of 2013, and Cameroon 3.2 percent as of 2020.52 Compounding these negative records is political corruption

45 See Chapter 4, note 369, and accompanying text. 46 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, items 7 (mainstay of economy) and 11 (percentage of

labor force by occupation). 47 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 12. 48 See Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 13. 49 Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 14. 50 Chapter 4, notes 97–98, and accompanying texts. 51 Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 19. 52 Chapter 1, Table 1.1, item 18.

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in all three countries, although less widespread in Ethiopia,53 vis-à-vis Nigeria,54 and Cameroon.55 Given its disconcerting impact as a variable on social justice, youth unemployment can stand some elaboration here. One analyst likened rising youth unemployment in Africa to a “ticking time bomb.”56 With “[o]ne out of three young Africans [being] unemployed,” how can African countries create jobs for the young to preclude unrest, in a continent where the youth population is projected to double by 2050?57 To

53 See, for example, “Ethiopia Corruption Rank,” Trading Economics (2023 Data2024 Forecast), https://tradingeconomics.com/ethiopia/corruption-rank; and Getahun Legesse, “Analysis: Will Ethiopia’s Latest Crackdown on Corruption Reverse the ‘Red Carpet’ into ‘Red Line’”? Addis Standard (Addis Ababa) (December 12, 2022), https://addisstandard.com/analysis-will-ethiopias-latest-crackdown-on-corruptionreverse-the-red-carpet-into-the-red-line/. 54 See, for example, Uche Igwe, “Nigeria Has Failed to Tackle Corruption,” LSE Blog (February 21, 2023), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2023/02/21/nigeria-hasfailed-to-tackle-corruption/; Ebenezer Obadare, “Nigeria’s All Too Familiar Corruption Ranking Begs Broader Questions Around Normative Collapse,” Council on Foreign Relations (February 24, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/article/nigerias-all-too-familiar-cor ruption-ranking-begs-broader-questions-around-normative; and UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends: Second Survey on Corruption As Experienced by the Population (Vienna, Austria: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, December 2019), https://www.unodc.org/documents/nigeria/Corruption_Survey_2019. pdf. 55 See, for example, “Cameroon Corrupt Pass Nigeria, Ghana—Transparency International Latest Report,” BBC News Pidgin (January 23, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/pid gin/tori-51225635; and Moki Kindzeka, “Conflicts and Corruption Drain Cameroon’s Economy,” DW (January 23, 2019), https://www.dw.com/en/conflicts-and-corruptionin-cameroon-drain-the-economy/a-47202553. 56 Stella Mapenzauswa, “In Africa, Rising Youth Unemployment is a Ticking Time Bomb,” News Decoder (August 11, 2022), https://news-decoder.com/in-africa-risingyouth-unemployment-is-a-ticking-time-bomb/#:~:text=But%20the%20reality%20is%20t hat,six%20is%20in%20wage%20employment. 57 Ibid. This essay carried the picture of a man holding a poster marking South Africa’s Youth Day holiday in Soweto, South Africa, on June 16, 2020. The poster bore the legends “We are Hungry!” “We are Angry” “Asivikelane!” Zulu for “let’s protect each other!” Ibid. The story quotes the position of a Nigerian businessman to the effect that “Youth restiveness is a ticking time bomb.” The businessman also poignantly observed that 65 percent of Africa’s population is below the age of 35 and that many young people were not gainfully employed, a state of affairs worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns that lasted close to two years. Ibid. A well-known name among the Igbo is azi-ka-iwe, meaning the youth are more prone to anger than older persons because of a built-in comparative advantage indicated by an ability to hold more grudge that can

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take Ethiopia as example, about 70 percent of the country’s population is below 30.58 There, youths “are the active force behind the country’s growth,”59 an occurrence which poses for the country’s leaders, the challenge of finding a model that generates economic prosperity that creates more job opportunities for youths without impeding respect for their human rights.60 Additionally for a country like Nigeria, absence of social justice evokes a low-quality of governance that the late Chinua Achebe saw as lack of sufficient “personal example,” inconsistent with true leadership.61 Table 1.1 points to the homelessness in Africa indicated by the population of refugees and internally displaced persons.62 This is part of the tangible cost arising from self-determination struggles for already

be more toxic for society: they are younger and have more time to draw blood from detractors with their grudge. Instructively, Azikiwe is the last name of Nnamdi Azikiwe, a foremost figure in the decolonization movement in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Azikiwe was Nigeria’s governor-general (1960–1963) and president (1963–1966). See Chapter 4, note 140, and accompanying text. 58 Jason Burke, “‘These Changes Are Unprecedented’: How Abiy Is Upending Ethiopian Politics,” Guardian (London) (July 8, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/jul/08/abiy-ahmed-upending-ethiopian-politics. 59 Ibid. (quoting Befeqadu Hailu, a 37-year-old blogger jailed repeatedly for his prodemocracy writings). 60 Ibid. 61 Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Oxford and Portsmouth: Heinemann,

1983), 1. “The trouble with Nigeria,” he assessed, “is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.” Ibid. It is a problem that, for him, is indicated in the inability or unwillingness of Nigeria’s leaders to rise to the challenge nay responsibility “of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.” Ibid. These words were written in the aftermath of the Second Republic from 1979 until 1983 in a post-mortem of what went wrong that Nigerians and their governments could learn from, rather than resign themselves to in conversations as mere “national bad habits.” Ibid., p. 3. 62 Chapter 1, Table 1.1, items 23 and 23. For the distinction made in the literature between the two terms, see Judy El-Bushra and Kelly Fish, “Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons,” Inclusive Security (April 2012), https://www.inclusivesecurity.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/04/40_refugees.pdf (distinction based on whether or not the victim has crossed international borders and therefore entitled to protection and assistance from the countries they moved into and from the international community signified by the UN and its specialized agencies tasked with the welfare of these victims). Refugees receive that assistance, compared to internally displaced persons who are not extended the assistance. Although international law generally provides them with protection, there is no international law or standard specifically covering this category and no UN agency is specifically mandated to ensure their welfare. Ibid.

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fledgling and struggling economies. This failure of social justice worsens the general problem of homelessness in Africa encompassing an estimated 18 million refugees from Black Africa alone.63 These problems complicate the dilemma of brain drain as people flee from conflicts and non-conflicts in search of better living conditions not available in their own countries, as Cameroon exemplifies.64 Remittances from abroad provide life-saving economic cushions at home for families of migrants, but the phenomenon comes with broader economic repercussions that the band-aid cushions from remittances fail to make up. This is because, due to the brain drain, to turn their countries around, “even good leaders with considerable political skills will have […] to wait to create entire[ly] new cohorts of trained professionals to tackle problem areas.”65 Bad Structure A fourth object lesson from the case studies pertains to bad structure from inception. There is no African country that the influence of colonialism did not touch. Thus, although it was not colonized in the real sense of the term, even Ethiopia endured what one writer analogized to a “legacy of bitterness” under Fascist Italy from 1935 until 1941.66 The bad structure issue and the common lesson tied to it date back to the Berlin Conference from 1884–1885, where, to resolve their “scramble for Africa,” the major European countries partitioned territories in the region that they shared among themselves without the consent of the peoples who lived in those territories.67 The event set the stage for the patch of 55 countries today that litter Africa, “the legacy of political fragmentation,”68 that to this day has proved hard to reverse. Little wonder that some scholars make

63 See Chapter 1, notes 10–12, and accompanying texts. 64 See Chapter 5, notes 84–85, and accompanying texts. 65 National Intelligence Council, “Mapping Sub-Sahara Africa’s Future,” CR 2005-02

(March 2005), 5, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nic/africa_future.pdf. 66 See Alberto Sbacchi, Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935–1941 (Lawrenceville, New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 1997). 67 See Chapter 2, notes 186–195, and accompanying texts. 68 See Chapter 2, note 195, and accompanying text.

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a distinction between Berlin states, the artificial and dysfunctional countries with makeshift boundaries, product of the Berlin Conference, versus the Westphalian states, product of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, that marked the end of the 30-year war in Europe.69 Unlike their Berlin counterparts, the Westphalia states are more durable, stable, and more able to perform the functions of modern states.70 This is the sense in which, eliciting the lessons for International Law arising from the successful secession of South Sudan in 2011, Timothy W. Waters opined that supposedly inviolable borders can be a problem.71 He contests the proposition that challenging artificial borders can open up a Pandora’s box of troubles, instead, taking the position that “the belief that fixed frontiers reduce internal violence is more assumed than proven.”72 However, although structure is an issue for all three countries, the main focus will be on Nigeria and Cameroon which, vis-à-vis Ethiopia, have a more intensive experience with colonialism. In Nigeria, twenty-nine years after the Berlin Conference, British colonial overlord and officialdom consolidated peoples and political systems that, even their own studies indicated to them were incompatible,73 sheerly on the expediency of economic considerations.74 The practical difficulties of creating one nation out of the diverse groups impelled British colonizers to introduce federalism as a tool of governance in the country; the political arrangement reached full blooming in 1954 with the

69 See “Peace of Westphalia,” Encyclopedia Britannica (January 23, 2022), https:// www.britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia; and Steven Patton, “The Peace of Westphalia and it [E]ffects on International Relations, Diplomacy and Foreign Policy,” Histories, 10(1) (Article 5) (2019), https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/the_histories/ vol10/iss1/5. 70 For a juxtaposition of the two state systems, see Ernest Toochi Aniche and Inocent Moyo, “The Westphalian and Berlin Borders in Comparative Perspectives and the Logic of Colonial Conquest,” in The Paradox of Planetary Human Entanglements: Challenges of Living Together, eds. Inocent Moyo and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (London and New York: Routledge, 2023), Chap. 2. 71 Timothy Waters, “Let His People Go: Sudan’s Lesson for Secession,” EJIL: Talk! (Blog of the European Journal of International Law) (January 24, 2011), https://www. ejiltalk.org/let-his-people-go-sudans-lesson-for-secession/. 72 Ibid. 73 Chapter 4, note 10, and accompanying text. 74 Chapter 4, note 18, and accompanying text.

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creation of a set of three regions vested with considerable autonomy.75 However, by the time of independence in 1960, under British watch and pandering, this system turned into a lopsided federal government where one region, the North, had more representation in Parliament than its two federating counterparts joined together.76 The political structure, known as the First Republic, lasted for less than six years until its demise in January 1966. Ever since, despite its federal pretense, with no letup, Nigeria has been the scene of centralized powers that time and again many subnational groups competed to capture. The commentary about the cruel construction of Nigeria, referred in the object lesson above for failure of power devolution, attributed to Ijaw leader Darah,77 is as much about the state of federalism in the country as it is about bad structure; it is a statement about a nominally federal system where political powers managed to be centralized in a few hands, despite regime changes across time periods, colonial, military rules, and three bouts of civilian rules à la republics, and layers of constitutional engineering marked by change from a parliamentary to presidential system. Cameroon followed a different path to the same centralized route. Emerging from two different colonial backgrounds, one German-andEnglish and the other French, the two Cameroons came together in a two-state federalism under a strong presidential system that mimic(ked) post-de Gaulle France, free and clear of the checks and balances of the US presidential system. That system was disbanded in 1972 for a political and constitutional system where, while the president’s powers remain unattenuated, the autonomy hitherto assigned to Southern Cameroons, under the formula of the two-state federalism arrangement, was eliminated. The scrapping reached its highest progression point in 1996 with the decoupling of the term United in the official name of the country. Bad structure is not destiny. A country can change a bad structure bequeathed to it at independence. Following the adoption of its current constitution in 1789, the US ratified the Tenth Amendment (1791) which created complementary sovereignties for its two levels of

75 See notes 31–33 and accompanying texts. 76 See Chapter 4, notes 34–35, and accompanying texts. 77 See note 35 and accompanying text.

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government, national and state.78 However, although Nigeria operates a system of government patterned upon the US, it lacks the concept of complementary sovereignties. The Need to Go Beyond Constitutionalization of Self-Determination Of the three countries in the case study, only Ethiopia constitutionalized the right to self-determination. The lack of entrenchment in the other two countries raises a question regarding the feature of this variable on the list of object lessons from Chapters 3 to 5. There is a two-fold answer to the question. One is that the application to all three countries of a lesson which appeared on the face in just one country is a prescriptive judgment going to the constitutional factor that frames this study. In other words, whatever lesson here that connects the two countries is more indirect than direct. Secondly, the tabling of the lesson here as one common to the three countries is to accent the point that, while it is a necessary condition, constitutionalization is not a sufficient condition in the journey toward harmonizing the complementary doctrines of sovereignty and self-determination. Ethiopia shows the possible influence of unforeseen forces embedded in the shifting dynamics of ethnic power relations in the period following constitutional entrenchment of the right to selfdeterminization requiring, as stated in Chapter 1, a government more well versed in statecraft.79 Entrenching the right is the beginning of the story, not the end. This is not to suggest that constitutionalization is not important, for it is. The incorporation of the right to self-determination in the Ethiopian constitution may have been strategic. As one study of the history of the secession clause poignantly points out, this was motivated out of the fear by the Tigray people’s Liberation Front, the ruling party then, at the conclusion of Ethiopia’s civil war in 1991, that the Oromo, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, would not join the transitional government if not granted a right to secede.80 Whatever the reason, it is hard to

78 See Chapter 2, note 138, and accompanying text. 79 See Chapter 1, note 25, and accompanying text. 80 Alem Habtu, “Multiethnic Federalism in Ethiopia: A Study of the Secession Clause

in the Constitution,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 35 (2005), 313, 322.

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minimize the constitutional accomplishment embedded in the entrenchment. Such is the importance of the entrenchment that we went as far as branding Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution as the Article 39 constitution,81 after the numerical section of the charter containing the provision. Where the right to self-determinization is not constitutionalized, aloof national leaders have little incentive to respond creatively other than cite indivisibility to proponents of self-determination and argue non-intervention abroad. This was the case in Nigeria and Cameroon. Constitutionalizing self-determination sets forth parameters and guidelines for its use to protect sovereignty, to the benefit of all constituencies, both those at home and in the diaspora. In all three countries that form our case study in this book, national integration has been maintained by sheer political force, rather than the force of law.82 This is inefficient. To the contrary, constitutionalizing self-determination can lay the foundation for protecting this group right for eligible groups and shoring up its standing in International Law vis-à-vis sovereignty. The Counterproductivity of Cracking Down on the Free Exercise of Self-Determination Unlike the previous lesson, this last one is an obvious one that applies equally to all three countries. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. This wisdom is apt here. As is our habit, we begin with Ethiopia. Repressing the selfdetermination campaign in Eritrea was a long winter of troubles for Ethiopia spanning three calamitous decades through internal decomposition and self-immolation, including the disbandment of an empire, popular uprising and revolution, military takeover and brutal dictatorship, and the defeat of the Mengistu regime, clearing the coast for “a new birth of freedom” emblematized by the successful secession of Eritrea in 1993.83 The changes came to a head in 1995 with the creation of a federal

81 See Chapter 3, first paragraph under section titled “Article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution.” 82 Ginsburg and Versteeg, note 18, p. 938. 83 The expression “new birth of freedom” comes from Abraham Lincoln. See, for

example, Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

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republic under a new constitution which entrenched the right to selfdetermination for eligible ethnic groups. The Tigray War brought similar troubles, albeit nothing resembling the damages from the Eritrean War of Independence, yet not insubstantial for a country still trying to recover from a long-drawn war merged with famine and related disasters. Where the leaders lack vision, the people perish.84 Given the unpredictability and uncertainties associated with any war, it was unwise, if not reckless, for the Ethiopian national government to conduct a military invasion of Tigray,85 for a seeming insult embedded in a refusal to follow instructions by holding regional elections despite an advisement against such polls because of pandemic concerns related to COVID-19. Another lesson for Ethiopia, drawing on the experience of Nigeria where Biafra 2 seems like a continuation of Biafra 1, if not properly addressed, an agitation for self-determination can flare up again if its root causes are not properly addressed, even where that right is constitutionalized. For Nigeria, Biafra 1, the self-determination campaign that doubled as a civil war, was completely avoidable, given that the Aburi Accords, imbued with positive ramifications for devolution of powers, would have made the conflict unnecessary. Similarly, Biafra 2 still ongoing could be stemmed through peaceful means short of violent crackdowns. The campaign seems to be a continuation of Biafra 1 within another generation, every bit like the flareup of a prior self-determination campaign whose root causes festered unaddressed. More than half a century after its civil war, the ghosts of Biafra still haunt Nigeria.86 No different from 84 Parody of The Holy Bible, King James Version, Proverbs 29:18 (“Where there is no vision, the people perish”). 85 Wars are exceedingly destructive undertakings that should be used only when all available peace options have been used up. As the story goes, during the Third Punic War in 146 B.C., more famously known as the “Siege of Carthage,” Rome wiped out Carthage. Adrian Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC (London: Phoenix, 2006). 86 Paul Adepoju, “The Ghosts of Nigeria’s Civil War Still Haunts, 50 Years Later,” [G]ood [G]overnance [A]frica (March 4, 2021), https://gga.org/the-ghost-of-nigeriascivil-war-still-haunts-50-years-later/. Riding on this train of thought, there are analysts who argue that, faced with its many incompatibilities, “Nigeria has always seemed like an impossibility.” See Uzodinma Iweala, “Nigeria’s Second Independence: Why the Giant of Africa Needs to Start Over,” Foreign Affairs (June 21, 2022), https://www.for eignaffairs.com/articles/africa/2022-06-21/nigeria-second-independence (recommending peaceful dissolution and a fresh start as the possible solution to the many nation-building problems that Nigeria confronts in this century). For a news story on the article, see Wade

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Blacks and some other minority groups in the US, the trust level of the Igbo with the Nigerian state remains low.87 How many more conflicts will Nigeria endure to forge “unity” with a group like the Igbo that, over 50 years after the brutal war of Biafra 1, did not develop a psychological attachment with Nigeria that marks citizenship?88 The challenge for the Nigerian national government is to find a middle road, if any, in-between the challenge of letting the Igbo go and “keeping an unhappy people in the union [….].”89 Regime influence on this matter is indicated by the fact that under President Jonathan from 2010 until 2015, a noticeable diminution occurred in the tempo for proBiafra activities.90 In Cameroon, cracking down hard on mass protests in November 2016 produced a declaration of independence in October 2017, less than a year later, after the protesters became convinced that appeals to Cameroonian officialdom in Yaoundé for restoration of two-state federalism had become

Odunsi, “Okonjo-Iweala’s Son, Uzodinma Suggests Nigeria’s Dissolution Months to 2023 Elections,” Daily Post (Lagos) (June 20, 2022), https://dailypost.ng/2022/06/28/oko njo-iwealas-son-uzodinma-suggests-nigerias-dissolution-months-to-2023-elections/. 87 Regarding the US, see, for example, “Public Trust in Government: 1958–2022,” Pew Research Center (June 6, 2022), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/ 06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/ (“[t]hroughout much of the Republican presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump, White Americans were substantially more likely than Black Americans to express trust in the federal government”). 88 See John Campbell, “Nigeria’s Northern Elders Forum: Keeping the Igbo is Not Worth a Civil War,” Council on Foreign Relations (July 1, 2021), https://www.cfr.org/ blog/nigerias-northern-elders-forum-keeping-igbo-not-worth-civil-war (echoing the position of Nigeria’s Northern Elders Forum that blocking secession “will not help a country already burdened with failures on its knees to fight another war to keep the Igbo in Nigeria”). 89 Simon Kolawole, “The Many Complications of Biafra,” Cable (June 19, 2021), https://www.thecable.ng/the-many-complications-of-biafra. See also Chudi Offodile, The Politics of Biafra and the Future of Nigeria (Morrisfield, NC: Lulu Press, 2016), 157–168 (“MASSOB, IPOB, BILIE Human Rights Initiative”) (stating that it is an uphill task to hold an “unwilling people hostage in any country”). 90 Seun Opejobi, “Biafra: Why Jonathan Never Arrested Nnamdi Kanu—IPOB Lawyer, Ejimakor,” Daily Post (Lagos) (May 27, 2023), https://dailypost.ng/2023/05/27/ biafra-why-jonathan-never-arrested-nnamdi-kanu-ipob-lawyer-ejimakor/ (stating that the Jonathan administration “understood that self-determination was not a crime,” compared to the subsequent Buhari regime which criminalized self-determination campaigns).

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futile. Cameroon offers itself as a textbook example of a mismanaged self-determination response indicated by the crossover of a demand for restoration of a preexisting federation arrangement into agitation for separate statehood, using the relative pedestrianism of a dispute over language use in Southern Cameroon classrooms and courtrooms. Cracking hard on self-determination, as we see in each of the case studies, is counterproductive because it makes matters worse. In contrast, negotiation is king and the viable way to go in many circumstances: serious negotiation, with all issues on the table, shorn of dictates, such as invocation ex cathedra, of unity and related preconditions or “no-go areas.” True, in an imperfect world, some agitators for self-determination may choose, for whatever reason, to conduct their campaigns non-peacefully. However, few started that way, “only turning to violence after being rebuffed.”91

Conclusion This chapter pulled together various object lessons arising from the case studies of Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, presented at length in Chapters 3–5 of this book. Some of the lessons are so obvious that, as the saying goes, they speak for themselves in their obviousness. These include privilege of sovereignty over self-determination to the point of reification, failure of power devolution indicative of a love of concentrated powers, failure of social justice, and the counterproductivity of cracking down on the free exercise of self-determination. Even so, with respect to Ethiopia, the application of the privilege of sovereignty over selfdetermination needed explanation, given its constitutionalization of the right to self-determination. Yet, we found flashes of that privilege in the AU agreement ending the Tigray War. Next to failure of social justice, this was also an indictment against Ethiopia, even though the country is measurably less politically corrupt than oil-rich Nigeria, and Cameroon. Some of the lessons are more deduced than obvious or did not seem to apply equally to all three countries. The two lessons in this category are bad structure, and the need to go beyond constitutionalization of self-determination. With respect to bad structures arising from European colonialism, there was no country in Africa that the effect of

91 Waters, note 71.

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this phenomenon or its still-lingering impacts did not touch, not even Ethiopia, which was never colonized in the strict sense of the term. Last on the need to go beyond constitutionalizing the right to selfdetermination, although this lesson on its face appeared to apply more to Ethiopia, which constitutionalized this right, vis-à-vis the other two that did not, on closer reading, this lesson applied nonetheless equally to all three countries, given the value of this factor in the light of this book and the experience of Ethiopia in the wake of that entrenchment. With this underbrush of object lessons out of the way, the train of this study moves to the next stop, the all-important blueprints assembled together in Chapter 7.

CHAPTER 7

Blueprints for the Midcentury

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.1 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also the interests of others.2

Introduction In Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire (1992), the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that self-determination under the ACHPR (the Banjul Charter) may be achieved only in a manner that is consistent with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Zaire,

1 Holy Bible, Romans 12:18. 2 Holy Bible, Philippians 2:4.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_7

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now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).3 Building on this quasi-judicial enjoinment,4 this chapter assembles small-steps-to-peace blueprints,5 aimed at harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination, the two complementary doctrines of International Law at issue in this book, in postcolonial Africa, by midcentury, guided by the “auxiliary precautions” of an aiming target.6 Three entities to whom the blueprints are addressed are groups everywhere striving to use the right to selfdetermination, aloof central governments everywhere bent on stopping or curtailing such usages, and a variegated international community, including UN institutions, former colonizers, and other major powers, caught in the crossfire of the gladiation between national governments and agitators for self-determination. Several concerns simultaneously drive this chapter. These include: the dilemma that arises when ethnic groups “utilize self-determination to escape oppressive colonial regimes[,] but must live with subsequent, homespun, oppression”7 ; and the dilemma indicated by the fact that groups in Africa who need the protection of the right to selfdetermination as a matter of life and death are forced “to choose the certainty of post-self-determination confusion and conflict over the other equally unpalatable option of doing nothing at all.”8 Other concerns are an uncertainty as to whether the exercise of a right which produced

3 Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire, African Comm’n on Human & Peoples’ Rights, 1995 Comm. 75/92, Eighth Annual Activity Report, 1994–95, 31st Session (1995). The decision has immense normative value because it is the Commission’s first decision directly addressing the right to autonomy in the postcolonial context since it began operations in 1987. 4 Quasi-judicial enjoinment because the African Commission is a quasi-judicial body, rather than a court. See Organization of African Unity (OAU), African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter), CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (June 27, 1981), art. 45, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3630.html (laying out the mandates of the Commission). 5 A blueprint is a coherent plan that explains how to do or develop something. “Blueprint,” Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/eng lish/blueprint. 6 The expression comes from the US founding father James Madison. See James Madison, “Federalist Paper No. 51,” Bill of Rights Institute (1788), https://billofrig htsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist-no-51. 7 See Chapter 1, note 23, and accompanying text. 8 See Chapter 1, note 32, and accompanying text.

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successful decolonization in African countries also “entailed a right of peoples within those countries to become independent”9 ; and an apprehension that, with respect to Africa, the international community has not shed the baggage of “attitudes and strategies toward self-determination that were developed before and during the Cold War.”10 In their accumulation, all of these dilemmas create the unedifying scenario where, against their will, individuals and groups in Africa live under regimes devoted to purposes “hostile to their own.”11 Following the Katanga Peoples’ Congres s decision with which we started this chapter, some scholars expressed the hope that the holding in the case will facilitate realization of the right to self-determination in the wake of the ruling.12 That belief has remained just hope, the reason being that no group that we are aware of has claimed the right to self-determination based on that holding. In addition to this introduction and the normal conclusion, this penultimate chapter comprises an elaboration of the three parties here involved, a list of fourteen blueprints, and a word of justification relating to the emphasis in the book on midcentury. Per the Biblical wisdoms prefacing this discussion, international peace and security, marked by more altruistic considerations in an interdependent world, are the lodestars that drive the blueprints propounded in this chapter.

Tale of Three Parties It takes three to tango. The three parties implicated in this tango involving the interplay between sovereignty and self-determination are central governments across Africa and elsewhere, agitators for selfdetermination in Africa and elsewhere, and the variegation of the international community, as elaborately below in this chapter.

9 See Chapter 2, note 176, and accompanying text. 10 See Chapter 1, note 36, and accompanying text. 11 See Chapter 2, note 200, and accompanying text (citing Woodrow Wilson). 12 See Chapter 2, notes 80–82, and accompanying texts.

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Central Governments The central governments include those of the three countries here under examination, namely: Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon. More instructively, the term is defined to include governments anywhere in Africa and elsewhere facing or likely to face campaigns of self-determination of the types, whether armed or peaceful nonviolent, described in this book. Agitators for Self-Determination The agitators are defined to include groups currently agitating for selfdetermination. As of 2022, the self-determination campaigns in Ethiopia have ceased; of the three countries the two remaining are Nigeria and Cameroon: Biafra 2 in Nigeria, and Ambazonia in Cameroon. Guided by the principle requiring us to define terms robustly to facilitate their job of analysis, like with central governments, agitators are defined to include groups anywhere, including any of the five subregions of Africa, North, South, East, West, and Central, seeking to exercise the right to self-determination in the future. Consistent with the doctrine of capable of repetition, yet evading review, from US jurisprudence,13 the definition also takes care of supposedly concluded agitations that can flare up in the future, like Biafra 2, or new campaigns not present that can rear their agitational heads in the future. International Community From a theoretical standpoint, many scholars of international law and politics consider the term “international community” to be an amorphous concept.14 In the same vein, back to the end of World War II in 13 See Chapter 1, note 127, and accompanying text. 14 These scholars include Gleider I. Hernández, Victor Tsilonis, Alex Veit, and Jin-Hyun

Paik. Hernandez wrote that there is no consensus among international lawyers regarding its actual meaning. Gleider I. Hernández, The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2014), 194. For him, from a doctrinal standpoint, the term remains a constructive abstraction in need of proper definition. Ibid. Tsilonis views the term as “nebulous” and “misty.” Victor Tsilonis, The Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (New York: Springer Nature, 2019), 23, 173. He believes that the term “does not have the meaning one would expect, i.e., the representation of the majority of States; on the contrary, the term skillfully implies the representation of the interests of the most powerful states.” Ibid., p. 7. In the light

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1945, in practical terms, a mature international community has evolved. We may conveniently view that community as comprising the collectivity of all the countries in the world under the aegis of the UN. In September 1952, an international community consisting of the Allied Powers and the UN created the failed federation partnership between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The same international community closed the deal on the separate statehood of Eritrea after its successful nearly 30-year war of independence against Ethiopia, with its admission into the UN in July 1993. In 1961, the same international community permitted the two-state federalism between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroons. Similarly, an international community resolved the trustee issue related to South Africa’s illegal occupation of Namibia, leading to the country’s independence in March 1990. Same with the implementation or actualization of majority rule in South Africa in 1994. Most recently, the same international community resolved the issue of South Sudan, leading to its independence from Arab Sudan in 2011. And the membership of that community continues to grow with the addition of new states, as we saw in Appendix A to Chapter 1 containing a list of dozens of new states admitted to UN membership since the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the end of the Cold War, in 1989. From the formation of China in 1523 BC as the first recorded nation in history, the world today has nearly

of the nebulousness he complained about, Tsilonis advised analysts to refrain from using this and related terms when their subject or point of reference is “all the recognized States in the world,” rather than “simply the seven to ten” most powerful countries in the world. Ibid., p. 173. Veit observed that “[t]hrough the expansion of peacebuilding and related practices, the term international community has been modified.” Alex Veit, Intervention as Indirect Rule: Civil War and Statebuilding in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Frankfurt, Germany: Campus Verlag, 2010), 50. While it still essentially designates “the collection of states,” “[m]ore recently, it is often used to describe world society.” Ibid. But as world society “cannot constitute an actor, the latter meaning seems to serve mainly as a legitimating term for the former. […] The international community is a group of actors that claims to employ a common consensual perspective.” Ibid. Last but not least is Paik and his coeditors who consider the term “vague.” Jin-Hyun Paik et al., Asian Approaches to International Law and the Legacy of Colonialism: The Law of the Sea, Territorial Disputes and International Dispute Settlement (New York: Routledge, 2013), 145. For them, usage of the term “amounts to failure to take due account of the basic Charter principle. […] While it is clear that the term […] does not comprise all States, or even a majority of them, there is no indication to which States that term […] is intended to refer.” Ibid.

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200 countries. In 1920, there were just 50 independent countries in existence15 ; today, that number has skyrocketed to nearly 200.16 Taking the cautionaries regarding the nebulousness of the term and the reality indicated by the imperfect existence of the community in an anarchic international system shorn of one centralized institution able to implement compliance vis-à-vis domestically,17 as used here, this third group comprises the UN bureaucracy, former colonial overlords in Africa, and major Western and non-Western powers. UN bureaucracy is defined to include the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and the UN Secretariat headed by the UN Secretary-General. Former colonial overlords, in the context it is used here, comprise the seven Western countries which held colonies in Africa, namely: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Of the seven countries, the ones implicated in the three countries under examination in this book are Italy (for Ethiopia), Britain (for Nigeria), and Germany, Britain, and France (for Cameroon), in the case of Ethiopia not with depth with respect to Italy. Major Western and non-Western powers, in the sense the term is used in this book, include Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, and the US. For the US, the world’s lone superpower, the challenge is how to design a policy for African countries individually and collectively in the post-cold war period that is based on equitable common interests, free of ideological competition of the past,18 whether against Russia or now, China. Arguably, theoretically, the AU (the OAU’s successor) ranks among these global institutions. However, the AU follows UN leadership on critical issues of international relations, such as the ones here, an occurrence

15 “How Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World,” Council for Foreign Relations, https://world101.cfr.org/how-world-works-and-sometimes-doesnt/buildingblocks/how-self-determination-shaped-modern-world. 16 Ibid. 17 For one definition of “anarchy” in International Relations, see James C. Roberts,

“Anarchy,” Internet Encyclopedia of International Relations, https://web.archive.org/ web/20150511160306/http://www.towson.edu/polsci/irencyc/anarchy.htm. 18 See David F. Gordon et al., The United States and Africa: A Post-Cold War Perspective (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1998), 15 (observing that for four decades, what primarily shaped US policy was its instrumentalist rivalry with the Soviet Union within the context of the cold war).

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which, as indicated elsewhere in this book, renders its role secondary, if not nugatory.19 The UN touts itself as “a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of [various] common” purposes, among them: maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations based on equal rights and self-determination, drumming up international cooperation for tackling global problems, and promoting human rights.20 To facilitate achievements of these purposes, back to its formation, the UN is outfitted with key organs like the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice (World Court), and the Secretariat.21 The all-important role of the UN Secretariat the modest way Ban Kimoon, eighth Secretary-General of the UN (2007–2016),22 phrased it in 2016 in a key UN speech is that “[w]hile the primary responsibility for preventing conflict and protecting human rights lay with Member States, the United Nations could help countries meet their national challenges and uphold their responsibility to protect[,]” including offering assistance for countries to build up the national capacity they need to identify and address atrocities like genocide.23 This supportive or coordinative role is capacious enough for our purpose in this book since it fits with the broad mission of the UN. That mission, as Ki-moon himself specified

19 See Chapter 1 (under Significances of the Book; Statecraft in Africa and Contradictory Messages from Global Institutions); and Chapter 2, note 15, and accompanying text. 20 United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945) [hereinafter UN Charter], art. 1(1)–(4), https://treaties.un.org/ doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf. 21 Ibid., art. 7. 22 See, for example, Patrick Worsnip, “U.N. Council Recommends 2nd Term for Ban

ki-moon,” Reuters (June 17, 2011), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-election-idU STRE75G42820110617; and Bryan Walsh, “Can This Guy Run the U.N.?” Time Magazine (October 8, 2006), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1 543932%2C00.html (“Inoffensiveness is Ban’s outstanding quality. He has spent 36 years as a diplomat, almost all of them outside the spotlight”). 23 “Speakers in Security Council Urge Balance between UN Role in State Sovereignty, Human Rights Protection, But Differ over Interpretation of Charter Principles,” United Nations (February 15, 2016) [hereinafter “Speakers in Security Council Urge Balance”], https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12241.doc.htm.

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it, involves bringing the promise of the UN Charter, focused on international peace and security, along with socioeconomic values that back that pacific agenda, to the most vulnerable peoples in the world.24 The commitment to bring the promise of the UN Charter to the world’s neediest peoples came in the wake of Kofi Annan’s appeal, referenced before in this book,25 for UN member states, to take a broader view of their national interests, one that, in the light of the myriad challenges facing humanity in the contemporary period, induces them “to find greater unity in the pursuit of common goals and values,” specifically embracement of collective interests as national interest.26

Collage of Fourteen Blueprints Table 7.1 embodies a list of the fourteen blueprints analyzed in this chapter. Here, as elsewhere in this book, the discussion begins with prefatory observations or caveats. First, the list is a sample that does not exhaust the universe of possible blueprints. Second, just like the object lessons, these blueprints overlap, in some cases, considerably. Therefore, for the best result, these blueprints need to be synchronized, rather than implemented sequentially. Last but not least, just like with the object lessons, some of the blueprints generate more discussions than others, an occurrence that by itself, does not make them more important than others since, in its own right, irrespective of length, each blueprint is important and part of a seamless whole. And because the proposals mapped out here are “small steps to peace,” rather than grand theories,27 they are reachable by midcentury. Central to their nature, each blueprint is addressed to one of the three parties here involved. However, there are also blueprints that are addressed to more than one party, in which case the role of the other party, usually element(s) of the international community (see Table 7.1), is supportive and backup. The lone exceptions are Blueprint No. 1, respect for the International Law doctrine of self-determination, and

24 See ibid. 25 See Chapter 1, notes 44–47, and accompanying texts. 26 Ibid. 27 Dekha Ibrahim Abdi and Simon J. A. Mason, Mediation and Governance in Fragile Contexts: Small Steps to Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019).

Respect the International Law doctrine of self-determination

Don’t use force against exercise of self-determination Address the legitimate concern of agitators for self-determination Respond appropriately to agitation for self-determination

Take power devolution seriously

Take social justice seriously Put more quality in civil-democratic rule

1.

2.

5.

6.

7.

4.

3.

Blueprint

Central governments

Addressing such legitimate concern is what democracy is all about, plus neglecting to do so does not work Response neither with levity nor impulsive crackdown, shorn of a priori criminalization of free exercise of self-determination Applying this blueprint staves off agitations for self-determination or, if they occur, deprive them the ardor or intensity that could tempt central authorities to resort to excessive force to contain such agitations Like Blueprint No. 5, has preventive value Like Blueprints Nos. 5 and 6, has preventive value X

X

X

X

X

Put the doctrine on equal footing as X sovereignty; all parties should respect it as they would, for example, free speech and assembly in national constitutions that may not be criminalized Using force is legally and morally wrong, X and it does not work

Means

Recap of the blueprints for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination

Item No.

Table 7.1

X

X

Self-determination agitators

(continued)

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

International community

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Conduct your campaign for self-determination with maturity and responsibility Commit yourselves to the pursuit of a qualitatively different state

Practice internal democracy and accountability

Don’t expect quick results

8.

10.

11.

9.

Blueprint

(continued)

Item No.

Table 7.1

To win domestic sympathy and external support, agitators must conduct peaceful and nonviolent campaigns, free of unnecessary propaganda Gives agitators a gristmill for the campaign beyond the generalized complaint of exclusion and human rights violations. The entrepôt to this blueprint is a commitment to social justice. The origins for this commitment date back to Biafra 1 where the agitators for self-determination unveiled the Ahiara Declaration while the war of independence raged on It is ironic, if not counter-intuitive, for groups agitating for self-determination to mount campaigns for autonomy that are shrouded in autocracy From a strategic standpoint, agitators should convince themselves and their followers that they will be there for the long haul—until they achieve the legitimate result they collectively seek to realize

Means

Central governments

X

X

X

X

Self-determination agitators

International community

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Blueprint

Be realistic

Place the right to self-determination on the same or near footing as sovereignty

Don’t intervene

Item No.

12.

13.

14.

Depending upon the goals that drive the campaign, agitators should know when to settle for less than the full prize, rather than go for broke; what to throw away and what to keep, as Kenny Roger sang in his gambler song This blueprint mirrors Blueprint No. 1 and reinforces it. In their variegation, the international community must instinctively make a more conscious effort not to balance off self-determination against sovereignty Rather than a blanket exclusion, the legitimate question here is what act of intervention is permissible and which impermissible within the meaning of non-interference in the essentially domestic affairs of a country

Means

Central governments X

Self-determination agitators

X

X

International community

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Blueprint No. 6, pertaining to social justice, which, in the light of their momentousness, apply to all three parties.

For Central Governments Blueprint No. 1: Respect the International Law Doctrine of Self-Determination Because of its overarching importance in the scheme of things in this book, this blueprint is addressed to all three parties. The blueprint mandates all three parties to put the right to self-determination on the same footing as sovereignty and its corollary norm of territorial integrity. It must be respect in words and conduct that goes beyond lip service. In practical terms, this translates into treatment of the exercise of selfdetermination as a legitimate right, no less than free expression and assembly in national constitutions, that must never be criminalized. In Nigeria, this was what Goodluck Jonathan (president from 2010–2015) appeared to be doing when, in 2011, he ordered Ralph Uwazurike and 280 members of MASSOB, under arrest for participating in an event in honor of General Ojukwu, Head of State of Biafra from 1967 until 1970, to be released.28 It is helpful if all three parties keep in mind, for example, that the right to self-determination gave birth to the doctrine of sovereignty. Because agitators need respect for self-determination to facilitate its successful exercise in conducting their agitation, the problem lies not with them as beneficiaries of this right or guarantee, but rather with the other two parties, especially central governments. Short of intervening in the “essentially domestic affairs” of affected countries, to use UN language, the international community, in this case the UN and all its agencies and former colonial countries (the UK for Nigeria and France for Cameroon), should play critical backup roles in this blueprint.

28 “Jonathan Orders Release of Uwazurike, MASSOB Members from Detention,” Nigerian Voice (August 30, 2011), https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/59371/jon athan-orders-release-of-uwazuruike-massob-members-from-d.html.

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Blueprint No. 2: Don’t Use Force Against the Legitimate Exercise of the Right to Self-Determination Building on the first blueprint and reinforcing it, central authorities should not apply force against the legitimate exercise of the right to selfdetermination, neither to curtail nor to terminate exercise of this right. Instead, they should use restraint, consistent with the rule of law, when they think that sovereignty (and territorial integrity) is under violation or about to be violated. Not using force against the right has moral, jurisprudential, and practical utilities. Morally, it is unjustified to use coercion to suppress a campaign for self-determination, especially in the face of “an overwhelming desire for independence.”29 Jurisprudentially, not using force conforms with respect for the right to self-determination elaborated under Blueprint No. 1. Using force against exercise of the right to self-determination illegally criminalizes the activity. The role of the police should be to protect citizens from crimes and, working with the judiciary, bring criminal offenders to book. And the role of soldiers should be to protect citizens against foreign enemies, which individuals legitimately using the right to selfdetermination, are not. From a practical standpoint, using force is simply counterproductive: it makes matters worse as shown in the discussion on direct lessons from the case studies, summarized in Chapter 6, with respect to all three countries: Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon.30 In contrast, not using force could impel central authorities to try negotiations in an attempt to resolve the grievances that drive protest. For their part, agitators should do well to conduct their agitations peacefully and nonviolently to preclude any justification for central authorities to use excessive force. Because a victim may not participate in his or her own oppression, this blueprint does not apply to individuals and groups agitating for self-determination. This occurrence leaves out central authorities and the international authority as the two parties implicated in this blueprint. The international community’s role is a backup one that complements that

29 Allen Buchanan, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 174. 30 See Chapter 6, item No. 6 (explaining why cracking down on free exercise of selfdetermination is counterproductive).

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of central authorities, free of unwanted intervention into the “essentially domestic” affairs of the affected country. Blueprint No. 3: Address the Legitimate Concerns of Agitators for Self-Determination In addition to not using force because it is illegal, weighed against respect for self-determination in its intersection with sovereignty and that it does not work from a practical standpoint because it makes matters worse, central authorities should also address the legitimate concerns of selfdetermination agitators, the problem(s) that drives their agitation for increased autonomy, whether within or outside the existing states. Not only will central authorities be timely and conscientiously responding to the legitimate concerns of self-determination agitators, they should be seen to be doing so. Isn’t this what democracy, defined colloquially as government of the people by the people for the people, all about? In contrast, through Biafra 1 and Biafra 2, spanning nearly 60 years from 1967, Nigerian national authorities have not taken the time to figure out an answer to the Igbo “relentless effort for secession.”31 At the very least, central authorities should resist the temptation to demonize agitators for self-determination which happens when, for example, they wave their concerns away as those of trouble-makers, “rebels,” or nation-wreckers whose patriotism needs to be questioned.32 Like with force under Blueprint No. 2, assuming a conflict posture each time a group seeks to use the right to self-determination does not work. Such posture does little but betrays the insecurity of the government faced with the challenge related to its performance. Because victims do not participate in their own oppression, this blueprint, like No. 2, applies to central governments as the main party and the international community, the UN and its agencies, along with the applicable former colonial overlords, assuming a backup role, free of any prohibited intervention in domestic affairs, that facilitates achievement of this role. 31 Benjamin Maiangwa, “What Drives the Indigenous People of Biafra’s Relentless Efforts for Secession,” Conversation (July 12, 2021), https://theconversation.com/whatdrives-the-indigenous-people-of-biafras-relentless-efforts-for-secession-163984. 32 Jideofor Adibe, “Separatist Agitations in Nigeria: The Way Forward,” Brookings (Blog) (July 17, 2017), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2017/07/17/ separatist-agitations-in-nigeria-the-way-forward/.

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Blueprint No. 4: Respond Appropriately to Agitations for Self-Determination Unlike the three blueprints above, this one requires central authorities to respond more appropriately to self-determination campaigns, neither derisively nor in a hardline manner. It is important to break down these two categories, rather than lump them together, even though their effect is still the same: antipathy toward the right to self-determination. The first occurs, for example, when national governments dismiss the exercise of the right to self-determination that they do not agree with as distractions or sometimes go so far as to label the agitators as terrorists deserving treatments set aside for criminals. This has been the case in Nigeria and Cameroon, as we saw in the respective chapters as well as in Chapter 6 which pulls together the object lessons from the case studies. In Nigeria, General Obasanjo, President from 1999 until 2007, once mocked proBiafran activists as “miscreants” who deserved to be ignored.33 The second, hardline, approach occurs when central authorities forbid the exercise of right to self-determination by citing “unity” and territorial integrity. Both Obasanjo and Buhari used strong-arm tactics insisting that the unity of the country is non-negotiable. Ditto with Biya in Cameroon. The more appropriate disposition, faced with legitimate grievances, should be to take such campaigns seriously as opportunities to improve their governance through techniques of inclusiveness that adequately address the concerns of the complainants. This means a response neither with levity nor impulsive crackdown, shorn of a priori criminalization of free exercise of self-determination. This blueprint applies to central governments principally, but with the international community, including the UN and former colonizers, as backup to facilitate the achievement of this responsibility, free of possibility of intervention into the essentially domestic jurisdiction of the affected country.

33 See Segun Olugbile and Tunde Odesola, “Pro-Biafra Agitators Are Miscreants—ExPresident Obasanjo,” Sahara Reporters (October 30, 2015), https://saharareporters.com/ 2015/10/30/pro-biafra-agitators-are-miscreants-%E2%80%93-ex-president-obasanjo.

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Blueprint No. 5: Take Power Devolution Seriously Blueprints 5–7 are distinguishable from the four above because they get into what a central government can do to minimize the chances for agitation for self-determination or at least to reduce the intensity of such agitations, when they occur, minimizing any temptation for an unlawful crackdown. This topic and the next were covered in Chapter 6 which assembled together the object lessons from the case studies. To restate, the focus here is what central authorities can do to stave off agitations for self-determination or, if peradventure such campaigns still occur, deprive them of the fire of ardor or intensity that could tempt central authorities to resort to excessive force to contain such agitations. Whether it is federal parliamentary republic, federal presidential republic, or unitary presidential republic, regardless of the governmental system, one orientation that Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon shared in common was a love of concentrated power at the center. In centralizing powers, these countries and others who look like them in Africa buck the global trend toward devolution of powers, evident in decentralization, in even unitary states like the UK and China. Post-World War II, the British government has engaged in a devolution of powers, impressive for a unitary state, that includes repeated referendums for Scotland.34 The scenario bears comparison with Nigeria, a former British colony, federal only in name. In the wake of numerous nonviable states in a country, unlike the US, where these states are created from a fixed geographical entity, the country’s then military leadership created six geopolitical zones (see Table 4.1) superimposed on its 36 states plus a Federal Capital Territory. The government uses these six zones to share offices, but did not include them in its latest 1999 constitution. The zones could form the basis for power devolution and decentralization; they should be constitutionalized and given many of the powers now left in the hands of an overreaching national government in Abuja. Centralizing power in a national government makes it a target by subnational groups which seek to capture the government for selfish, non-altruistic, reasons. This blueprint is addressed to central governments as main

34 Maya Jasanoff, “Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire,” New York Times (September 8, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/queen-empiredecolonization.html. This news story predicted that “[t]he queen’s death could also aid a fresh campaign for Scottish independence.”

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party, but, through noncoercive inducements, the international community, including former colonizers like the UK in the case of Nigeria and France with respect to Cameroon, can lend a critical supportive hand that facilitates the achievement of the role. Blueprint No. 6: Take Social Justice Seriously This blueprint is related to Blueprint No. 5 on power devolution but is distinguished from it because of the economic content that it integrates, although social justice goes beyond the accumulation of economic wealth to include how that wealth is distributed in a political system. Given the economic content of social justice, one way indirectly that leaders can promote it is by growing the economy through various means, including running a less corruption-ridden government. With an economy that international monetary organizations like the World Bank praise as “fastest growing,”35 Ethiopia has an arguable edge here. Given the ethnic diversity of many African states, including Ethiopia, Nigeria, and even Cameroon, the three under examination in this book, social justice should be defined to include managing ethic relations in these diverse societies. This is the sense that, as one analyst pointed out, territorial integrity should not spell just physical unity of a country. Instead, it should be defined more broadly to mean equality in the distribution of national wealth, including increased access to the poor and powerless to participate in wealth creation.36 This blueprint ties to building a qualitatively different state. One means to build that higherquality state is through promotion of social justice, including social protection for the poor and disabled. In the light of its importance in the scheme of analysis in this book, this blueprint is one of two blueprints dedicated to all three parties in this chapter. For groups agitating for self-determination, this blueprint serves as starting point in their campaign to build a qualitatively different state from the one they are campaigning to exit. “A republic, if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin, upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787, famously told a group of citizens who earnestly quizzed him

35 See Chapter 3, note 57, and accompanying text. 36 See Ibrahim A. Gambari, Party Politics and Foreign Policy: Nigeria under the First

Republic (Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980), 145–146.

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regarding the sort of government the delegates had created.37 It gives these agitators the start-up training they need to run a new state, if they win it. Prevention is better than cure; to central authorities, the value of this blueprint is prophylactic. As with Blueprint No. 5, the concern is what these authorities can do to stave off agitations for self-determination or, if peradventure such campaigns still occur, deprive them of the steam of intensity that could tempt these authorities to resort to excessive force to contain such agitations. Here too, as in other blueprints, the international community, including the UN and former colonial powers, the UK and France with respect to Nigeria and Cameroon, respectively, can play a key complementary role, free of the International Law principle against intervention. Blueprint No. 7: Put More Quality in Civil-Democratic Rule In a sense, this blueprint culminates and codifies Blueprints Nos. 5–6 on power devolution and social justice. As this book goes to press, the spate of military coups in Africa climaxed by the one in Gabon on August 30, 2023,38 joined by the contested presidential election in Nigeria in February 2023,39 bring this blueprint to the fore. Despite its touting of a federal parliamentary republic under the 1995 constitution, complete with constitutionalization of the right to self-determination for eligible 37 See Richard R. Beeman, “Perspectives on the Constitution: A Republic, If You Can Keep It,” National Constitution Center, https://constitutioncenter.org/education/cla ssroom-resource-library/classroom/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-cankeep-it. 38 See Gerauds Wilfried Obangome, “Gabon Officers Declare Military Coup, President Ali Bongo Detained,” Reuters (August 30, 2023), https://www.reuters.com/world/ africa/gabonese-military-officers-announce-they-have-seized-power-2023-08-30/; and Kathryn Armstrong et al., “Gabon Coup: Army Seizes Power from Ali Bongo and Puts Him in House Arrest,” BBC News (August 30, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-africa-66654965. Seven countries under military rule, as of this book, chronologically, are Mali (since August 2020), Chad (since April 2021), Guinea (since September 2021), Sudan (since October 2021), Burkina Faso (since January 2022), Niger (since July 2023), and Gabon (since August 2023). 39 See Elliot Smith, “Nigerian Ruling Party Candidate Declared Winner in Highly

Disputed Election,” CNBC (March 1, 2023), https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/01/ bola-tinubu-nigerian-ruling-party-candidate-declared-winner-in-disputed-election.html; and Eromo Egbejule, “Bola Tinubu Wins Controversial Nigerian Presidential election,” Alja Zeera (March 1, 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/1/bola-tinubuwins-controversial-nigerian-presidential-election.

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ethnic groups, Ethiopia has not moved far away from the centralization of powers in Addis Ababa that marked the period from 1974 until 1991 under Haile Miriam Mengistu. Given that, since 1999, Nigeria has been governed by two retired generals who held office for 16 out of 24 years as of 2023, who chose their successors to whom they transferred power in fraudulent elections shorn of any credibility, Nigeria under the Fourth Republic is little better than military rule. Similarly, the quality of democratic rule in Cameroon has been poor. For over 60 years since its independence in 1960, the country has been governed by only two leaders, one of them President for over 40 years since 1982. To take a different path from nominal democratic rule, central governments need to provide good governance that respects all rights equally, including the group right to self-determination. They must demonstrate in word and deed a more inclusive government. Many years in the postcolonial era, inclusiveness remains a problem for numerous countries in Africa.40 Governing inclusively and giving every ethnic group a sense of belonging, carrying each group along, minimizes the chances of disgruntled groups using this right or broad-based insurgency. Exclusion brings resentment that leads to agitation for separation, especially when the exclusion is perpetrated over an extended period where the groups in question begin to believe they will always be excluded—as were the cases with the Igbo in Nigeria and the Bamenda in Southern Cameroon. With respect to Nigeria, one analyst observed that Biafra has become the lens through which many Igbo, both those living in Nigeria and those in the Diaspora, “understand their political predicament[,]” as well as “a proxy for many forms of discontent,” including “unemployment, alienation, underdevelopment,” and the like.41 To this effect, in November 2022, as General Buhari moved close to the end of his second term in office, one influential Nigerian newspaper advised his regime to “stop responding to peaceful separatist agitation with repression,” given

40 Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh Jr., eds., Civil Wars in Africa (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022) (pointing up this factor as responsible for many of the intrastate conflicts in the region). 41 Samuel Fury Childs Daly, “Unfinished Business: Biafran Activism in Nigeria Today,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (April 7, 2021), https://gjia.georgetown. edu/2021/04/07/unfinished-business-biafran-activism-in-nigeria-today/.

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that “[a]gitation within the law is a legitimate right.”42 Given the role of change as a constant feature in human affairs, the editorial stated, “[a] state desiring to maintain the status quo should pursue policies of inclusion, autonomy, devolution of powers[,] and responsibilities.”43 This blueprint applies to central governments as main party, but with the international community lending a complementary backup role. One possible way to provide that support is to encourage free, fair, and credible elections in these countries that meet international standards. Another is to encourage the conduct of referendum, organized by the UN, in persistent cases like the Igbo in Nigeria to gauge broad-base appeal of agitations for self-determination. Like Blueprints Nos. 5–6, the value of this one is preventive: it minimizes the possibilities for agitation, especially for separate statehood, since, as we show in this chapter, running new states comes with responsibilities that agitators need to keep in mind as they engage in their campaigns for a new society.

Self-Determination Agitators Blueprint No. 8: Conduct Your Campaign with Maturity and Responsibility Individuals and groups agitating for self-determination should conduct their campaigns with maturity and responsibility. Two possible ways they can achieve this are by conducting those campaigns peacefully and nonviolently,44 and by minimizing the use of propaganda. With respect to the first, they should use violence only in self-defense (permissible in domestic and international law)45 and only as a last resort the way, for example, it occurred in Biafra 1, where, as we saw in Chapter 4, most of what the Igbo and their fellow Easterners did between 1967 to 1970 was to resist the invasion of the Nigerian government based in Lagos, after the 42 Punch Editorial Board, “Before the South-East Descends into Chaos,” Punch (Lagos) (November 27, 2022), http://punchng.com/before-the-south-east-descendsinto-chaos/. 43 Ibid. 44 Maiangwa, note 31 (advising against the use of armed tactics or strategies in exercise

of self-determination). 45 Onder Bakircioglu, “The Right to Self-Defense in National and International Law: The Role of the Imminence Requirement,” Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, 19(1) (2009), 1–48.

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same government refused to implement the Aburi Accords that could have averted the civil war. Using the peaceful, nonviolent, method is how agitators can win public sympathy domestically and internationally for their campaign—and the causes that animate that campaign. Where necessary and convenient, they should use lawsuits, especially in courts outside the state that they are campaigning to leave. To stay on the message, they should plead for referendum to test the popularity of their campaign, along with the grievances that drive that campaign. The whole idea here is to conduct their campaign within the rule of law, including international norms. Going outside the rule of law will play into the hands of central governments because it will expose them to the use of excessive force by those central governments. Propaganda is any information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, that is used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.46 Excessive propaganda can deprive agitators of the wellspring of public sympathy that they need to maintain their campaign for self-determination. In response to the action of the Nigerian government branding them “troublemakers,” pro-Biafra agitators “label Nigeria [as] a zoo and too often chose to see nothing good in the Buhari government or even concede that the Igbos have benefitted anything from the Nigerian federation.”47 Such are the products of sheer propaganda lacking in maturity and responsibility that are also imbued with little social value for the self-determination campaign of the agitators. In their bid to win external support, agitators of self-determination should apply international norms “strategically to influence the perceptions of foreign actors

46 See American Historical Association, “Defining Propaganda II,” https://www.histor ians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pam phlets/em-2-what-is-propaganda-(1944)/defining-propaganda-ii (“Experts have plenty of trouble in agreeing upon a satisfactory definition of propaganda, but they are agreed that the term can’t be limited to the type of propaganda that seeks to achieve bad ends or to the form that makes use of deceitful methods”). 47 Jideofor Adibe, “Separatist Agitations in Nigeria: Causes and Trajectories,” Brookings (Blog) (July 12, 2017), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2017/07/12/ separatist-agitations-in-nigeria-causes-and-trajectories/.

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about the legitimacy of the[ir]” campaign.48 Hairbrained propaganda militates against this result. Blueprint No. 9: Commit Yourselves to the Pursuit of a Qualitatively Different State and Society Gristmill in the campaign for self-determination in Africa has been anchored on complaints of exclusion, marginalization, and general violation of human rights.49 While these allegations remain important, this blueprint mandates agitators for self-determination to cast their nets more widely by going beyond these allegations with a commitment to a qualitatively different state and society, if they win their self-determination campaigns, not just another state that replicates the known ills and dysfunctionalities of the current state. This is particularly the case given the many states in Africa.50 The entrepôt to this blueprint is a commitment to social justice, one of only two blueprints in this chapter that, given its importance in the scheme of things, applies to all three parties. The origins for this inducement or commitment date back to Biafra 1 where the agitators for self-determination unveiled the Ahiara Declaration while the brutal war of independence was still on. With its central message of social justice, 48 Christopher Brucker, “Finding Foreign Friends: National Self-Determination and Related Norms as Strategic Resources during the Biafran War for Independence, 1967– 1970,” New England Journal of Public Policy, 31(2), article 6 (2019), 1–23, https://sch olarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol31/iss2/6. 49 See Philip C. Aka, “Prospects for Igbo Human Rights in the New Century,” Howard Law Journal, 48(1) (Fall 2004), 266 (arguing for a separate state on the ground that Nigeria lacks a political structure for safeguard of Igbo human rights; instead, in the Nigerian situation, as the article posited, “only a government of the Igbo people, for the Igbo people, and by the Igbo people can protect Igbo human rights”). 50 Obviously, this is the idea that drives the African American doctrine of “black nationality,” the notion that, in opposition to European colonization and neo-colonialism, African Americans “should encourage the U.S. government to help create, protect, and defend black nation-states in Africa and the Caribbean,” as part of their contribution to US foreign policy in the Black quest for universal freedom. Hanes Walton Jr. and Robert C. Smith, American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, 6th Ed. (New York: Longman, 2012), 327, n. 7. For Professor Walton and Smith, the quest for universal freedom which animates this text deals with the notion that “[i]n their quest for their own freedom in the United States,” signified by their opposition to slavery and racial subordination, “blacks have sought to universalize the idea of freedom […] not only for themselves but also for all Americans.” Ibid., p. xiii.

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the Ahiara Declaration was the closest to a constitution that the then state did not have before it folded up on January 15, 1970—and one of the acclaimed silver linings from the war. Using Nigeria as example, pro-Biafrans must run a society day-andnight different from Nigeria. It will be a political community where the government will work tirelessly to ward off unnecessary “want in the midst of plenty,” drawing on pillars of economically-just society, such as expanded ownership of productive assets, limited economic power of the state, restoration of free and open markets, and the restoration of nonstate property (what in Nigeria many call “resource control”).51 Commenting on the social injustice embedded in mediocrity that goes for life in Nigeria, the distinguished novelist Chinua Achebe painted a picture of a Nigeria distinctively lacking in meritocracy.52 However, it is the country that suffers the most when meritocracy takes a backseat as it does repeatedly in the scheme of things because it must “contain the legitimate grievance of a wronged citizen.”53 Blueprint No. 10: Practice Internal Democracy and Accountability This blueprint requires individuals and groups agitating for selfdetermination to practice internal democracy and accountability by infusing their campaign with these features. Doing so achieves two interrelated goals: it provides the training ground that they will need where, upon successful achievement of their goal, they are charged with running the government. Secondly, from a more practical standpoint, it will minimize the incidence of factionalization which can delay progress toward their goal of self-determination. To be sure, some of the factionalization

51 Philip C. Aka, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Promoting Social Justice in Biafra through the Agency and Instrumentality of an Economic Bill of Rights Embedded in an Economic Democracy Act,” Paper Presented at the Conference on the Economic Democracy Act, Held April 29, 2023, at the Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, CT. See also Philip C. Aka, The Imperatives of Socioeconomic Justice in an Interdependent World, Keynote Address to the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA), on the Event Marking the 50th Anniversary of the PWPA’s Founding (June 13, 2023). 52 Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Oxford and New York: Heinemann, 1984), 19 (Nigeria “is a country where it would be difficult to point to one important job held by the most competent person …”). 53 Ibid.

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is finger-able to the divide-and-rule machinations of central governments, but some too is blame-able on a lack of internal self-democracy. This blueprint is significant because it affords agitators for selfdetermination the opportunity to show that when they get the opportunity to run their own state, they will do so better than the leaders of the state they are campaigning to leave, that they will, for example, run a more inclusive government. What goes around, comes around; failing which they could be saddled with new demands for separation within their midst. With humility, under the blueprint of internal democracy and accountability, groups agitating for self-determination should see themselves as an unofficial “shadow government.” In a word, it is counterproductive if not ironic that groups agitating for self-determination should mount campaigns for autonomy that are shrouded in autocracy. Blueprint No. 11: Don’t Expect Quick Results This blueprint cautions individuals and groups campaigning for selfdetermination to be patient and do not seek quick results. In his speech on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advised his followers to resist “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism,”54 but this is not one of those instances. Instead, the agitators should convince themselves and their followers that they will be there for the long haul—until they achieve the legitimate result that collectively they seek. There is a strategic value to this mindset because it could encourage a recalcitrant central government to do something, to, for example, seek a political solution that otherwise it would not be motivated to seek. While they engage patiently, just like the wise virgins in the Bible, lamp in hand, awaiting the arrival of the groom,55 or the servants awaiting the return of their master from a wedding banquet,56 they should work on their drill for a new society qualitatively different from the one they want to exit, in campaigns conducted peacefully and nonviolently, in an 54 Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” (August 28, 1963), reprinted in NPR (January 16, 2023), https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-spe ech-in-its-entirety. 55 Holy Bible, King James Version, Matt. 25: 1–13. 56 Holy Bible, New International Version, Luke 12: 36–48.

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atmosphere imbued with internal democracy and accountability. Visualizing themselves in utmost humility as a possible government in waiting and in training, they should get their agitational hands dirty with simulations on ways to incorporate social justice in government, among other acts of readiness. In a place like Nigeria, they could plead for a referendum. What is good for the British goose in Scottish should be good for the Igbo gander in Nigeria. The point is that, given an international system that “prioritizes (1) territorial integrity, (2) nonintervention, and (3) uti possidetis over (4) national self-determination, (5) human rights, and (6) good governance[,]” all of which six principles are still fiercely contested,57 agitators for self-determination must do all within their powers to find “friends in high places.”58 This means they must bid their time patiently. And they must also be realistic, as the next blueprint elaborates. Blueprint No. 12: Be Realistic In everything in life, some rule of thumb applies. Self-determination is no different. In his famous song, “the gambler,” Kenneth Ray Rogers (1938–2020), the American singer and songwriter, more famously known as Kenny Rogers, crooned that, because “every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser,” a smart gambler knows that “the secret to survivin’ is knowin’ what to throw away and […] what to keep. You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table/There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealing’s done.”59 Although exercise of self-determination is a life activity a whole lot different from gambling, arguably, the same basic logic applies here: groups who engage in selfdetermination and individuals who lead such groups should be realistic and know when to cut their losses, what they throw away, and what they keep. Depending on the goals they aim to achieve in their struggles, groups agitating for independence may make concession for a middle ground 57 Brucker, note 48 (abstract). 58 See Bridget Coggins, “Friends in High Places: International Politics and the

Emergence of States from Secessionism,” International Organization, 65(3) (2011), 437–438. 59 Kenny Rogers, “The Gabler Lyrics,” https://genius.com/Kenny-rogers-the-gamblerlyrics.

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less than full independence. They could throw away full independence for now in place of internal autonomy that they keep, to be used, down the road, as a foothold, money in the bank, toward full independence. Such gains could be secured as guarantees in a legal document. In other words, short of going for broke, such groups should, where necessary, not dismiss opportunities less than full independence that come their way now during negotiation. To use the Ambazonians as example, they can get two-state federalism that they started with in 1961 and work from there. One hiccup here is trust, revolved around the uncertainty whether Francophone Cameroon would not centralize power again as it did in 1972 when it disbanded federalism. But life is full of risk, both known and unknowable. That is where legal guarantees to minimize these risks come in. In the case of external self-determination, such as with the Igbo in Nigeria, negotiations preceding separation should address the reasonable fears of parties opposed to separation and the possibility of accommodating those fears through, for example, guaranteed access to natural resources or access to the sea for landlocked areas without such access. This is where entrenching the right to self-determination in a constitution, as a starting point, comes in, since such provisions could incorporate modalities for departure. Thus, even with their justified bitterness toward Nigeria, following their separation from Nigeria in 1967, Biafrans released a memorandum on proposed future association with the rest of Nigeria on terms “worked out in such manner that they do not compromise or detract from the sovereign rights of the states concerned.”60 The memorandum recognized that common experience arising from numerous years of ties between Biafra and what remained of Nigeria “provides a sound and realistic basis for a fruitful relationship.”61

60 “Biafra: Memorandum on Proposed Future Association” (August 29, 1967), reprinted in A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, 1966–1969, Vol. 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 163. 61 Ibid.

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The International Community Blueprint No. 13: Place the Right to Self-Determination on the Same or Near Footing as Sovereignty Because this blueprint mirrors Blueprint No. 1, most of what is said there applies here too. The recommendation is to place respect for the right to self-determination on the same or near-equal pedestal with sovereignty and its corollaries of territorial integrity and non-intervention. This must be both verbally and in conduct—bearing in mind that the right to selfdetermination gave birth to sovereignty. In practical terms, this means, for example, that they must coax governments to treat the right to self-determination as a legitimate right no less than free expression and assembly in domestic constitutions. In their attempts to balance off sovereignty and self-determination, in the scheme of things, the international community will always engage in a balancing act. But they should strive more consciously not to do so in a manner that minimizes the right to self-determination to the point of evisceration, especially in the case of Africa. They must lead by example in the campaign against non-absolutizing sovereignty at the expense of the comparative doctrine of self-determination. Beginning with the UN, the international community in its variegation, must reduce the contradictoriness in their message bearing on the intersection between sovereignty and self-determination that seems to favor sovereignty and territorial integrity. It must show more support for self-determination, free of political posturing, in deserving cases. This includes the World Court. In sum, with UN leadership, the international community must shed off the baggage of “attitudes and strategies toward self-determination that were developed before and during the Cold War.”62 It must not just say so but also be seen to be doing so. This will be a downpayment on the commitment of the UN to bring the promise of the UN Charter to downtrodden people all over the world.63

62 See note 9 and accompanying text. 63 See note 24 and accompanying text.

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Blueprint No. 14: Don’t Intervene The doctrine of non-intervention, otherwise known as norm of state sovereignty or “strategic independence,” forbids the UN and its member states from interfering into the domestic affairs of another country, without its consent. In its own language, “[n]othing contained in the […] Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the […] Charter.”64 Intervention is a broad term of numerous permissible dimensions. Thus, art. 2(7) of the Charter stipulates that the doctrine of non-intervention “shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll,”65 dealing with “action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.” Similarly, concern for human rights does not negate the principle of noninterference in a country’s domestic affairs because “breaches of human rights, especially gross breaches, are taken out of domestic jurisdiction.”66 The point then is that, just like any tool, intervention is a two-edge sword with both positive and negative blades. To accomplish the job of analysis assigned to it, rather than a blanket exclusion, the legitimate question here is what act of intervention is permissible and which impermissible within the meaning of non-interference in the essentially domestic affairs of a country—bearing in mind the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination at the heart of this book. In answering this question, two sections of the international community we must keep our eyes trained on would be the UN, along with its various agencies, and former colonial authorities who still maintain neocolonial ties and influence within the country or countries in question. First the permissible. We could conveniently focus on the seven blueprints allocated to central governments. Of the seven, two, respect for the International Law doctrine of self-determination and social justice

64 UN Charter, note 20, art. 2(7). 65 Ibid. 66 Francis M. Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996), xviii; and U. Oji Umozurike, The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Alpehn aan den Rijn, Netherlands: Kluwer, 1997), 7.

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are blueprints that all three parties, central governments, agitators for self-determination, and the international community, share in common. The remaining five blueprints are prohibition against the use of force, addressing the legitimate concerns of agitators for self-determination, responding appropriately to concerns that breed protests, taking power devolution seriously, and putting more quality in civil-democratic rules. Rummaging through the seven blueprints, the international community, beginning with the UN and former colonial overlords, should: • work to ensure that all three parties respect the doctrine of selfdetermination of a level that puts it on the same or near footing as the complementary right to sovereignty (Blueprint No. 1); • help encourage central authorities not to apply force against the exercise of the right to self-determination (Blueprint No. 2); • help encourage central authorities, as a matter of prophylacticness, to address the legitimate grievances of groups agitating for self-determination (Blueprint No. 3); • help encourage central authorities not to make light or overreact to exercise of the right to self-determination (Blueprint No. 4); • help encourage central authorities to take power devolution seriously the same way some of these colonizers like Britain and France have done (Blueprint No. 5); • help encourage central authorities to take social justice seriously by supporting poverty-alleviation programs in these countries (Blueprint No. 6); and • help central authorities improve the low-quality democracy in these countries by, for example, encouraging electoral reforms to institutionalize democracy, thereby reducing controversy in the transfer of governmental powers from one regime to the other (Blueprint No. 7). With respect to Blueprint No. 5 relating to power devolution, since World War II, the British government has engaged in numerous acts of decentralization, impressive for a unitary state, that include repeated referendums for Scotland, an occurrence expected to happen again in the

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wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death in September 2022, given her known antipathy toward this process.67 Now to impermissible interventions, one from the past would be the thinly-veiled attempt by the British government then under Harold Wilson to keep Nigeria one country from 1967 to 1970, with no regard for the human costs to Biafrans. Wilson indicated he would let half a million Igbo die if that was what it took to keep Nigeria one.68 The British Prime Minister got more than his wish, given that the war claimed the lives of an estimated 3.5 million Igbo, seven times the number mostly through starvation, famine, and disease from the blockade of food and medical supply.69 As one perceptive observer recounted, British “covert interference” during the war was “huge”: “Weapons and ammunition poured in quietly as Whitehall and the Harold Wilson government lied and denied it all.”70 Forsyth believed that the war could have been avoided if the UK government had not intervened.71 So, as to not violate the norm of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another country, former colonial overlords could provide external assistance in support of, for example, democracy conditioned on these 67 See Jasanoff, note 34, and accompanying text. 68 Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “The Igbo Genocide, Britain and the United States, Part 2,”

Pambazuka News (July 15, 2015), https://www.pambazuka.org/human-security/igbogenocide-britain-and-united-states-pt2. 69 Ibid. 70 Frederick Forsyth, “Buried for 50 Years: Britain’s Shameful Role in the Biafran War,”

Guardian (London) (January 21, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2020/jan/21/buried-50-years-britain-shamesful-role-biafran-war-frederick-forsyth. 71 Ibid. (“with neutrality and diplomacy from London [the war in Nigeria] could all have been avoided”). Queen Elizabeth’s death in September 2022 renewed debates about the legacy of the British empire in Africa and elsewhere. See Edwin Rios, “Queen’s Death Intensifies Criticism of British Empire’s Violent Atrocities,” Guardian (London) (September 10, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/ 10/queen-death-colonies-atrocities-british-empire (commenting on how academics and other analysts are engaging in reassessment regarding the lasting influences of the British monarchy); Tim Cocks and Ayenat Mersie, “Mixed Feelings among Some in Africa for Queen Elizabeth,” Reuters (September 9, 2022), https://www.reuters.com/ world/africa/mixed-feelings-among-some-africa-queen-elizabeth-2022-09-09/ (describing how many persons in Africa “were less enthusiastic about celebrating the life of a monarch whose country has a checkered history in” the continent); and “In Africa, the Queen’s Death Renews a Debate about the Legacy of the British Empire,” Politpost (September 9, 2022), https://politpost.com/2022/09/09/in-africa-the-queens-death-ren ews-a-debate-about-the-legacy-of-the-british-empire/.

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reforms. How can the UK, a unitary state, allow referendum for Scotland while supporting centralized power in Nigeria that it created? That is probably among the logic for the prohibition against intervening in the “essentially” domestic affairs of other countries. It makes matters worse. Interference by former colonial powers who would, for whatever selfish “national interest,” instigate devious change in former colonies they would not allow in their own country. With respect to Nigeria, the UK would allow power devolution all the way to referendum for subnational entities like Scotland that it would not advise for Nigeria. Same too in Cameroon with respect to France. Rather than take such path, beginning with former colonizers, the international community should work for more equitable international relations. This way all parties can promote, in an even-sum way, their own national interests without impeding the legitimate interests of others.

For the Midcentury Changing Demography in Africa This discussion here draws on the creative wisdoms of the preeminent US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and other futuristic thinkers. King described a humanity “confronted with the fierce urgency of now” where tomorrow merges with today within an “unfolding conundrum of life and history,” shorn of lateness, that leaves “no time for apathy or complacency,” just room enough “for vigorous and positive action.”72 Arguably, this is analogizable to Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech on June 16, 1858, themed on “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and aimed at rousing his listeners in Illinois and beyond “to the peril of the times.”73 The setting was whether to extend slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, two territories then nearing statehood, which Lincoln,

72 See Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence, Speech Delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967, in American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobr eaksilence.htm. 73 Nancy Spannaus, “Remembering Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech,” American System Now (June 17, 2019), https://americansystemnow.com/remembering-lincolnshouse-divided-speech/; and Andrew Glass, “Lincoln Laments ‘A House Divided,’ June 16, 1858,” Politico (June 16, 2018), https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/16/lin coln-laments-a-house-divided-june-16-1858-644493.

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running on the ticket of the Republican Party, opposed, vis-à-vis his Democratic Party opponent, Senator Stephen Douglas, who supported the extension.74 Time is of the essence and a stitch in time saves nine. The time-isof-the-essence rider attached to the blueprints in this chapter is dictated by the fact that, due to high fertility rate vis-à-vis reduced mortality rate, by 2050, one out of every four persons in the world will be African, compared to one out of ten in 1980.75 By the same dateline, each of East and West Africa alone will have populations that exceed that of Europe.76 Analysts already predict that this event in global development, so momentous some observers denominate it youthquake, with accent on the term “quake,” will shape many aspects of life as we know it today, including geopolitics, international trade, and migration.77 This changing demography for good or bad bodes consequences for international peace and security that need to be addressed expeditiously, hence the midcentury timeline and landmark central to the message of this book. Ameliorating the Tension in the Interest of International Peace and Security Relieving the tension between sovereignty and self-determination will benefit international peace and security. It is what, in a different context, the UN General Assembly analogized to “strengthen[ing] universal peace in larger freedom[.]”78 As a successor to the League of Nations blamed for its failure to prevent wars, the UN was founded in 1945 with a

74 Glass, note 73. 75 Edward Paice, “By 2050, a Quarter of the World’s People Will Be African—This

Will Shape Our Future,” Guardian (London) (January 20, 2022), https://www.thegua rdian.com/global-development/2022/jan/20/by-2050-a-quarter-of-the-worlds-peoplewill-be-african-this-will-shape-our-future. 76 Ibid. 77 Edward Paice, Youthquake: Why African Demography Should Matter to the World

(New York: Apollo Publisher, 2021). 78 UN General Assembly, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (New York: UN, 2015), https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1654217? ln=en.

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mandate to promote international peace and security, including situations that could lead to a breach of peace.79 Consistent with this mission, the UN has unveiled an agenda for peace embedded in several techniques, including: preventive diplomacy, peacebuilding, peacemaking, peace enforcement, and peacekeeping.80 Preventive diplomacy is designed to prevent disputes from arising and to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts.81 Peacebuilding involves the maintenance of structures aimed at strengthening and solidifying peace to avoid a relapse.82 Peacemaking aims at bringing hostile parties to agreement through peaceful means like negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, or appealing to regional organizations.83 Peace enforcement takes place when the UN dispatches troops to restore ceasefire.84 Since the UN Charter enjoins pacific settlement of international disputes, this technique is the most controversial among these means for promoting international peace. Peacekeeping takes place when a UN force, whether military, police, or civilian personnel or a combination of these means, is deployed to the field, usually with the consent of the parties to the conflict.85 Because over time the boundaries between these categories have blurred, peace operations are rarely limited to any one category or technique.86 For example, whereas “peacekeeping operations are, in principle, deployed to support the implementation of a ceasefire or peace agreement, [peacekeepers] are often required to play an active role in peacemaking efforts.”87 Such is the imperative for peace in an international community riddled with war that non-UN members, and there are few of them, are advised to “act […] so far as may be necessary for the

79 UN Charter, note 20, art. 1(1). 80 See “Terminology,” United Nations Peacekeeping, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/

terminology. 81 See ibid. 82 See ibid. 83 See UN Charter, note 20 (Chapter VI). 84 See “Terminology,” note 80. 85 See “Principles of Peacekeeping,” United Nations Peacekeeping, https://peacekeep ing.un.org/en/principles-of-peacekeeping. 86 “Terminology,” note 80. 87 Ibid.

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maintenance of international peace and security.”88 It all underscores “the interrelatedness of all communities and states” that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about.89 Promoting international peace and security to Africa will be a boon to world peace, given the vastness of Africa. The region ranks as the secondlargest continent in the world, next after Asia.90 Reconciling legitimate strivings for self-determination with the reality of an international system of sovereign states embedded in territorial integrity in the face of artificial borders set up by colonial authorities is a challenge that, for postcolonial Africa, the international community must, in this century, address headon. Following its formation in May 1963, the OAU committed itself to respect of boundaries drawn arbitrarily by European colonial overlords. Yet, there is no major state in postcolonial Africa that does not enclose within its borders a minority with a complaint of exclusion, such as marginalization, and domination, if not worse, like genocide. This is despite the stipulation in the Banjul Charter forbidding “the domination of [one] people by another.”91 This is in an age where the successful secessions of Eritra and South Sudan in 1993 and 2011, respectively, have encouraged oppressed groups in Africa to view secessions as a possible way out.

Conclusion This chapter, last before the conclusion, unearths recommendations dressed up as blueprints, fourteen of them altogether, for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, thereby minimizing the tensions between these two doctrines of International Law by

88 UN Charter, note 20, art. 2(6). 89 Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963), African

Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/ Letter_Birmingham.html. Text of the letter is also available at “(1963) Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” https://www.blackpast.org/african-americanhistory/1963-martin-luther-king-jr-letter-birmingham-jail/. 90 Matt Rosenberg, “The [Seven] Continents Ranked by Size and Population,” ThoughtCo. (Updated April 11, 2020), https://www.thoughtco.com/continents-rankedby-size-and-population-4163436. 91 Chapter 2, note 69, and accompanying text.

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midcentury. Ideally, people do not plan for secession when they form a country.92 The analogy would be contemplating divorce when parties are entering into a marriage. Given the high cost of political divorce, what factors make groups ponder a future in a new state other than the one they find themselves now?93 Secessions are not a one-event phenomena, but rather are borne out of multiple factors of exclusion, including economic disparities, identity crises, and bad blood, among others.94 In the postcolonial period, many ethnic groups in Africa continue to use self-determination to make claims for self-rule.95 Apparently in response to this occurrence, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR or the Banjul Charter) is currently the only regional human rights instrument that permits the right of self-determination to be the subject matter of communications submitted by entities other than states.96 And “in creating the post-Yugoslav republics, recognizing the Baltic States, and recognizing the secession of Eritrea, the international community demonstrated that self-determination is capable of being applied more creatively than one would believe.”97 Yet, the record remains uneven and progress rather slow. Following Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008, the UN General Assembly requested an Advisory Opinion from the ICJ, which gave its opinion in 2010.98 The question presented to the Court was whether the right to self-determination includes unilateral secession in exceptional cases where racial or religious minorities are

92 Farah Mohammed, “The Recipe for Secession: What Makes Nations Leave,” Daily (March 23, 2017), https://daily.jstor.org/the-recipe-for-secession-what-makes-nat ions-leave/. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Mtendeweka Owen Mhango, “Recognizing a Right to Autonomy for Ethnic Groups under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Katangese Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire,” Human Rights Brief , 14(2) (2007), 11–15. 96 See ibid. 97 Joshua Dilk, “Reevaluating Self-Determination in a Post-Colonial World,” Buffalo

Human Rights Law Review, 16(2010), 289, 307. 98 Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. 403 (July 22, 2010) [hereinafter Kosovo ICJ Opinion], ¶¶ 83–85.

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systematically mistreated or denied representation in the national government and for which there is no peaceful solution available.99 The Court answered yes, holding that International Law did not forbid unilateral secession.100 However, it declined to give an opinion regarding the existence of a norm of “remedial secession” for oppressed peoples outside the colonial context.101 At the current period, the tension between self-determination and selfdetermination is “mediated according to the particulars in each case,”102 with an applicational inconsistency skewed against Africa.103 Given the lack of a uniform approach to self-determination claims in the postcolonial period, “the international community’s response has frequently been erratic and untimely, often failing to stop disputes from turning violent and threatening individuals, states, and regional security.”104 While opportunities for eligible groups to determine their political destinies should not be endless, argument “for the supremacy of territorial integrity in all situations would deny the right of self-determination for peoples who have freely chosen independence.”105 Self-determination should be capacious enough to give peoples within a country “a right to be heard.”106 Rather, few rules, if any, exist that specify how peoples can determine their sociopolitical futures vis-à-vis the norm mandating the integrity of colonial boundaries.107 Given “the growing number of [s]elf-determination movements” in the world today, “there is a need to establish a more concise and workable definition

99 Tom Ginsburg and Mila Versteeg, “From Catalonia to California: Secession in Constitutional Law,” Alabama Law Review, 70(4) (2019), 923, 935. 100 Kosovo ICJ Opinion, note 98. 101 Ibid. 102 Wolfgang Danspeckgruber and Anne-Marie Gardner, “Self-Determination,” Encyclopedia Prencetoniensis, https://pesd.princeton.edu/node/656. 103 Dilk, note 97, p. 308. 104 Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 102. 105 Dilk, note 97, p. 308. 106 Ibid. 107 Danspeckgruber and Gardner, note 102.

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of the right to self-determination.”108 The answer to this unwholesome scenario is a systematic recognition of the freedom of eligible groups “to secede and create a new country,” one sensitive to the democratic features of the right to self-determination, preserves it as tool “for protecting ethnic minorities and strengthening nationalism in the hopes of preventing another conflict,”109 and as a “forward-looking” vehicle for the protection of vulnerable groups.110 In short, it is about time the UN redeemed its image by minimizing its contradictory messages with respect to the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination at the expense of the latter. Specifically, there is need to alter “the scope and interpretation of self-determination” “to fit the new problems facing the post-colonial state. Such changes need to be consistent, easy to conceptualize, and be as applicable in Africa as they would be in Eurasia, South America, or anywhere else.”111 For its part, the US needs to change its policy bearing on this topic.112 It is a policy “run by an insular elite that operates by mouthing rhetoric to please domestic constituencies,” impervious to the reality of a quickly changing world.113 Exercise of the right to self-determination may be justifiable “in response to gross and systematic violations of human rights and when the entity is potentially politically and economically viable.”114 However, “the inattentiveness of the world community often makes what is, in fact, a gradual process [to] seem very sudden.”115 It does not have to be. Instead, prompt attention to problems of self-determination will help the international community to head these problems off before they fester

108 Patricia Carley, Self-Determination: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Right to Secession, Report from a Roundtable Held in Conjunction with the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, March 1, 1996), ix, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/pwks7.pdf. 109 Dilk, note 97, p. 292. 110 Ibid. (referring to Woodrow Wilson’s concept of self-determination). 111 Ibid., pp. 307–308. 112 Fareed Zakaria, “America’s Foreign Policy Has Lost All Flexibility,” Florida Keys (March 28, 2023), https://www.keysnews.com/opinion/columns/americas-foreign-pol icy-has-lost-all-flexibility/article_417cfb2c-c7e0-11ed-ba67-6bee648ffda2.html. 113 Ibid. 114 Carley, note 108, p. ix. 115 Ibid.

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into violence, given the large number of self-determination movements in the world today, especially in Africa. Using Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Camerion as window into the world, this book robustly contributes ideas in the search for a workable definition that facilitates exercise of the right to self-determination in its intersection with sovereignty. It is appropriate that we close with a look at the Biblical excerpts that graced this chapter. There is no peace in a world consumed by the pursuit of selfish interests completely lacking in altruism (the two excerpts together). And because there is no zero-sum scenario suggested by the second excerpt, a party can look after its interest without negating the interests of others. There is no suggestion in the excerpt that the party abandons its enlightened national interest, only that it also keeps the interests of other parties in mind when pursuing that national interest.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusions and Prospects for the Future

Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa Broadly speaking, this book is an inquiry into the extent to which domestic autonomy sufficiently guarantees the rights of minority groups.1 Because it is the fountainhead for the securement and enjoyment of individual (or personal) freedoms, the right to self-determination ranks as the mother of all human rights.2 However, a tension exists between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, at the expense of self-determination, that calls for timely resolution. The tension occurs because of statecraft domestically in many African states, complicated externally by inconsistent application of the right to self-determination in global institutions, including the UN Secretariat. The express purpose of this book was to map out measures, in the form of small-steps-topeace blueprints, to reduce the tension between the two complementary doctrines of International Law in the world’s second-largest continent, to the benefit of international peace and security. Thirty-something years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, signaling the end of the Cold War, statecraft in Africa remains firmly stuck against 1 See Chapter 1, note 24, and accompanying text. 2 See Chapter 1, note 22, and accompanying text.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4_8

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secession, with leader after leader mouthing and mounting sovereignty in defense of territorial integrity. However, marginalized groups who need the protection of self-determination do not have “to choose the certainty of post-self-determination confusion and conflict over the equally unpalatable option of doing nothing at all.”3 Due to the criticalness of selfdetermination denominated above in the previous paragraph, invocation by a central government of sovereignty and its corollary of territorial integrity rings thin in the face of egregious and systematic violations of the human rights of a group. An unprecedented dilemma of modern international relations theory and diplomacy that decolonized Africa currently confronts, is how to harmonize sovereignty and self-determination. Similarly, a challenge the international community confronts today, one as pressing and momentous in International Relations theory as the study of war and peace (or why nations go to war), is how to redress the imbalance between the two complementary doctrines of International Law. The UN was created at the end of World War II as successor to the League of Nations to promote international peace and security. We live in a world filled with challenges, the most pressing today of which are green growth, resource depletion, food insecurity, climate change, terrorism, cybersecurity, the scourge of mental health disability, rights of disabled persons, and changing patterns of disease.4 In the post-Cold War era and as the world inches its way to midcentury, the least the global community needs are avoidable conflicts emanating from separatist struggles in Africa. Guided by the UN’s pacific mission, this book propounds blueprints, embedded in conflict resolution techniques, for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination. This final chapter ties together the achievements of the work, along with a statement on prospects for the future bearing on this topic, including assessments of a group of three international lawyers on the doctrinal status in International Law of the right to self-determination in the wake of South Sudan’s successful secession in 2011.

3 Joshua Dilk, “Reevaluating Self-Determination in a Post-Colonial World,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, 16 (2010), 289, 291. 4 See Jerome C. Glenn, “[Fifteen] Global Challenges for the Next Decades,” BBVA Open Mind, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/15-global-challenges-for-thenext-decades/; and “Top 20 Current Global Issues We Must Address,” Human Rights Career, https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/current-global-issues/.

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Factors Which Lent Urgency and Exigency to the Proposals in This Book Taking three countries in Africa that are live scenes of separatist activities as a window into the world, this book propounded fourteen blueprints addressed to three parties, namely: central governments, agitators for self-determination, and the international community (made up of UN institutions, former colonial overlords, and major Western and nonWestern states) for harmonizing the tension between sovereignty and selfdetermination. The three case studies encompassed five self-determination campaigns, embedding both armed struggles and nonviolent civil disobedience techniques. Of the five, two were from Ethiopia (Eritrea and Tigray), another two from Nigeria (Biafra 1 and Biafra 2), and one from Cameroon. All of them but Biafra 2 are shrouded in armed conflict. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, forty territories, spelled out in Appendix B at the end of Chapter 1, have gained independent statehood, each sealed with admission into the UN. Of the number, only three states, representing over 7 percent of the total, are from Africa—each preceded by long and bloody struggles for self-determination. This occurrence leaves the impression that, compared to other world regions, peaceful, nonviolent campaigns for self-determination are practically impossible in Africa. Put differently, self-determination struggles in the world generally end nonviolently—except in Africa where, unlike other world regions, it is still not possible to move borders without a war. This is an unwholesome situation that needs correction by midcentury in the interest of international peace and security. This factor lent urgency and exigency to the proposals for harmonizing sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa in an interdependent world featured in this book. Secondly, the book was designed as a response to clarion calls for new approaches for comprehending the contours of post-Cold War international politics, including the role of the international community. Specifically, it was billed as a less contentious contribution in the search for a harmonious relationship between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, one aimed at increasing sensitivity to the doctrine of sovereignty as responsibility, away from absolutizing the state as purveyor of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Absent this harmonization, the talk about realizing human rights in Africa by moving these rights from inspiration and declaration to impact through implementation, from international norms to local reality in the enjoyment of these rights, will remain just talk. A third factor is the need to contribute

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understanding to the still sparse quantum of existing knowledge on the influence of constitutional law in the interplay of sovereignty and selfdetermination, including the impact of different constitutional design choices on secessionist disputes. Achievements of the Book This book developed its argument in eight chapters, organized into three complementary parts. Part I, made up of two chapters, was dedicated to threshold matters, including the argument of the book and its organization. Part II, comprising three chapters, collected case studies of three scenes across three subregions of Africa engulfed in self-determination struggles. Instructively, it also embodied the proposition of this book anchored on the necessity of constitutionalizing the group human right of self-determination as a point of departure in resolving the conflict between sovereignty and self-determination. Part III, made up of three chapters, comprised object lessons from the case studies and proposals for solution mapped out as blueprints. As indicated already, Chapter 1 laid out the argument of the book. Two of several points in that argument revolved around justification of the constitutional analysis in the book and the claim of a “secessionist deficit” in Africa. Regarding the first, Constitutional Law offers itself as a ready tool for moderating the tension between sovereignty and selfdetermination. The analyses in Chapters 3 to 5, the case studies on Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, amply demonstrate how, as perceptive scholars contend, secession, a topic in International Law, indeed implicates questions of constitutional structure and related constitutional provisions.5 Given its importance in the scheme of investigation in this book, the utility of Constitutional Law deserves a bit of extended analysis. Sovereignty and self-determination are international law doctrines accorded attention in the field of International Law of the type that Constitutional Law, the process by which people constitute themselves and their values in a binding legal document adaptive to new conditions not present when the document was created, does not receive. Convinced regarding the still neglected role of Constitutional Law in

5 Chapter 1, note 111, and accompanying text.

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minimizing the conflicts arising from the tension between sovereignty and self-determination, each case study in the book integrates extensive constitutional analysis, including the politics of constitutional engineering. Moreover, vis-à-vis the relatively constrictive domain of International Law, methodologically speaking, Constitutional Law offers a vaster domain for analysis of the intersection between sovereignty and self-determination, bolstered by the comparative perspective adopted in this study. The International Law component of the right to self-determination draws enhanced attention because it is more obvious, even more dramatic, especially when it gives rise to a separate state complete with a UN flag. But there is a complementary component, indicated by the constitutional dimension of the right to self-determination, no less important that this book calls attention to. For, regardless of whether the outcome is increased internal autonomy or a hoisting of a new national flag at the UN, the right to self-determination is a process, rather than a onetime event. More than the International Law portion of the doctrine, the Constitutional Law aspect elicits that process. In its interplay with sovereignty, this is a long-drawn process that leads up to constitutionalizing the right to self-determination, as we saw in Ethiopia, but also an issue that continues to draw attention, again as Ethiopia shows, after entrenchment of that right in a constitutional document. That long drawn-out process helps us understand why such right did not crystallize in Nigeria, with similar background scenario as Ethiopia and the changing dynamics of autonomy in Cameroon revolved around two-state federation that more recently crossed over into demands for a separate state. As shown in this book, the constitutional angle lets us follow the story in the interplay between sovereignty and selfdetermination even when, as in Nigeria and Cameroon, the dynamics did not lead to full expression of the right to self-determination, whether internally or as separate state with representation in the UN. There is also the issue of what happens in sites of successful self-determination attempts, such as Eritrea and South Sudan, matters outside the scope of this book, which shows how far Constitutional Law,6 the process through which people codify their values in a written legal document, takes us. 6 See regarding South Sudan, “UN, International Partners Concerned about Escalating Violence in South Sudan,” Business Standard (New Delhi) (Last updated December 29, 2022), https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/un-int-l-partners-concer ned-about-escalating-violence-in-south-sudan-122122900079_1.html.

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Based on the case studies, there is no question that “when the constitution creates a legal avenue to secede, it reduces the need for violence to advance secessionist claims.”7 Next to the claim of a “secessionist deficit,” the hypothesis had little basis in reality. This is due to the rifeness of conflicts in postcolonial Africa, evident in the multitudinous campaigns for self-determination in the continent, coupled with the fact that a good number of the conflicts in the contemporary world linked to struggles for self-determination takes place in Africa. Chapter 2 sketched and unveiled the conceptual framework of the book comprising two main elements, namely, indicators of the tension between sovereignty and self-determination tied to the three countries under examination in this book, vivified by six human rights instruments; and comments on the nature of the relationship between sovereignty and self-determination. One takeaway from the discussion was that in its early evolution, sovereignty assumed a more harmonious relationship with self-determination than its strict application today in Africa focused exclusively on territorial integrity makes out. This is what Timothy W. Walters meant, when in his contribution below, he observed that President Woodrow Wilson “advanced the […] notion that people define their political community, not the other way around.”8 Chapter 3 focused on Ethiopia, the state whose constitution, adopted in the aftermath of the demise of military-rule socialism in the land and the independence of Eritrea, entrenched the right to self-determination. Given the importance of the event, the discussion included a separate statement on article 39 of Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution which entrenched the right to self-determination. For Ethiopia, an intriguing issue that called for explanation was the outbreak of the Tigray War from 2020 until 2022, despite the entrenchment of the right to self-determination. Several scholars blame(d) the occurrence on supposed ethnic federalism, an explanation we had difficulty with. Ethiopia also demonstrated the possible influence of unforeseen forces embedded in the shifting dynamics of ethnic power relations that calls for governance skills beyond the constitutional entrenchment of the right to self-determinization. The

7 Chapter 1, note 115, and accompanying text. 8 See note 31 below and accompanying text.

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takeaway from the chapter was that constitutionalizing the right to selfdetermination is a necessary but insufficient condition in harmonizing the tension between sovereignty and self-determination. Like Ethiopia, Nigeria (Chapter 4) embodied two struggles for selfdetermination that, for analytical convenience, we bifurcated into Biafra 1 and Biafra 2. Unlike Ethiopia where both campaigns were conducted via bloody armed conflicts (even though in one instance, like in Biafra 1, the group agitating for self-determination was a sitting government), one of the campaigns, Biafra 1, involved an unprecedently gory armed conflict, while the second, still ongoing, is being conducted using nonviolent civil disobedience methods. However, the occurrence did not immunize the agitators from violent repressions all the way to extrajudicial killings from the national government. For Nigeria, an intriguing issue calling for explanation was why its rulers did not lead the way for Africa, matching the bill for its status as giant of Africa, in constitutionalizing the right to self-determination, given its civil war experience under Biafra 1. We anchored that explanation on two synergistic failures: that of power devolution and of social justice. Chapter 5 on Cameroon involved a methodology nearly similar to Biafra 1 in the sense of the unilateral declaration of independence and the use of a methodology involving armed conflict. However, unlike Biafra, there was no legitimized government conducting the self-determination campaign. Partly because Southern Cameroon, which now goes by the name Ambazonia, was part of Nigeria, there are similarities, including in the use of self-determination techniques like Monday sit-at-homes and instigation of “ghost” communities by agitators for self-determination in both countries—notwithstanding the antipathy of the leaders of the two countries to self-determination campaigns. For Cameroon, the matter calling for explanation was how a struggle for self-determination confined initially to a demand for restoration of a disbanded two-state federal system crossed over into a demand for independent statehood, separate from French-speaking Cameroon. Beginning the search for answers that form the thrust of this book, Chapter 6 assembled the object lessons gleanable from the case studies of the three countries. The lessons informed and complemented the blueprints in Chapter 7. One lesson is the privilege of sovereignty at the expense of the right to self-determination, whether self-determination was entrenched as a right in a constitution or not. The lesson raises a question

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regarding the utility of constitutionalization. The answer to that question, fleshed out in Chapter 7 is that, based on the lone experience with post-socialist Ethiopia since 1995, constitutionalization of the right to self-determination is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for the enjoyment of that right. Chapter 7 assembled small-steps-to-peace proposals, packaged as blueprints, designed to harmonize the two complementary International Law doctrines of sovereignty and self-determination by midcentury. Three entities to whom those blueprints were addressed are groups everywhere spoiling to use the right to self-determination, aloof central authorities everywhere determined to stop or curtail such usage, and a variegated international community (including UN institutions, former colonial overlords, and major powers) caught in the crossfire. Hopefully, the discussion shed helpful light on the intriguing question as to why, despite entrenching the right to self-determination in its post-socialist constitution, the conflict between sovereignty and self-determination remained as real in Ethiopia as in Nigeria and Cameroon. This book contributes importantly to existing studies on “the meaning, process, and effects” of the self-determination doctrine, in its intersection with sovereignty.9 Key takeaways from the work are the intricacies of five self-determination struggles across three countries in postcolonial Africa that it chronicles, six object lessons from the case studies it puts together, and fourteen proposals à la blueprints that it formulates for navigating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa. By propounding proposals for redressing the troublesome disharmony between sovereignty and self-determination in postcolonial Africa, this book simultaneously contributes to four distinct genres of academic literatures, each imbued with immense comparative significance in the light of the teachable lessons it holds for regions beyond Africa: • the debate on the ever-evolving nature of sovereignty • the debate related to continuing barriers in Africa and globally to legitimate exercise of the right to self-determination that some commentators legitimately equate to underdevelopment of the doctrine in this world region. 9 See Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander, “Introduction,” in SelfDetermination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions, eds. Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (London and New York: Routledge, 2019 [1980]), xiv.

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• studies on the constitutionalization of the right to selfdetermination, and • broad-ranging, garden-variety, studies on conflict resolution in the post-Cold War era. This book is a product and exemplar of the qualitative method,10 within the best tradition of comparative analysis.11 It is a mixture of descriptive and prescriptive analysis. It describes five self-determination campaigns from three countries in Africa, two from Ethiopia, two from Nigeria, and one from Cameroon, vis-à-vis attempts by central governments to contain or constrain those struggles in the name of territorial integrity. Based on these factual descriptions, the book then prescribes proposals, dressed up as blueprints, for resolving this tension in the interest of domestic tranquility and international peace. Prescription is also indicated by the fact that both case studies and blueprints are wrapped in the cloth of Constitutional Law, an option borne out of a subjective conviction regarding the role of this value in moderating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination.

Prospects for the Future Analysis of Three Voices on the Recognition of the Right to Self-Determination as a Matter of International Law On July 14, 2011, South Sudan was admitted into the UN as the 193rd member of the organization.12 This was eighteen years after the prior admission of Eritrea. The admission was in the aftermath of a referendum 10 Saul Mcleod, “Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research Methods and Data Analysis,” Simply Psychology (Updated July 31, 2023), https://www.simplypsychology.org/qua litative-quantitative.html (discussing the difference between qualitative and quantitative research). 11 On comparative analysis, see, for example, Dickovick, J. Tyler and Jonathan Eastwood, Comparative Politics: Integrating Theories, Methods, and Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Frank L. Wilson, Concepts and Issues in Comparative Politics: An Introduction to Comparative Analysis (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996). 12 “UN Welcomes South Sudan as 193rd Member,” BBC News (July 14, 2011), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14151390; and Patrick Worsnip, “South Sudan Admitted to U.N. as 193rd Member,” Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/uksudan-un-membership/south-sudan-admitted-to-u-n-as-193rd-member-idUKTRE76D3I 120110714

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organized by the UN from January 9 to 15, 2011, at which 99 percent of South Sudanese voted to separate from Arab Sudan.13 Prospects for the future discussed here are anchored on introspective arguments by three international lawyers, Timothy W. Waters,14 Stephen Tierney,15 and Dapo Akande,16 on the doctrinal state of the right to self-determination in the wake of the referendum on independence in South Sudan. All three views converge around recognition of the right to self-determination, mediated through secession, as a matter of International Law. Expressed twelve years ago, all three contributions summarized here are still relevant to this conversation. Timothy W. Waters Of the three views chronicled in this subsection, Waters’ contribution is the most elaborate. The view received more elaborate treatment in his book Rethinking Borders, States, and Secession in a Democratic World, published nine years later.17 This is all part of his broad argument about the negotiability of sovereignty and self-determination.18 Waters disagreed with the notion that challenging boundaries can open up a Pandora’s box of troubles, what other scholars liken to Balkanization, a term which refers to the situation in the Balkans circa 1873–1913 when the European section of the Ottoman Empire split up into small

13 “South Sudan Referendum: 99 [Percent] Vote for Independence,” BBC News (January 30, 2011), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12317927. 14 Timothy Waters, “Let His People Go: Sudan’s Lesson for Secession,” EJIL: Talk! (Blog of the European Journal of International Law) (January 24, 2011), https://www. ejiltalk.org/let-his-people-go-sudans-lesson-for-secession/. 15 Stephen Tierney, “Referendums Today: Self-determination as Constituent Power?” EJIL: Talk! (February 9, 2011), https://www.ejiltalk.org/sudans-lesson-for-secession-acomment/. 16 Dapo Akande, “The Newly Independent State of South Sudan—Should We Rethink the Right to Secession?” EJIL: Talk! (July 15, 2011), https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-newlyindependent-state-of-south-sudan/. 17 See Timothy W. Waters, Boxing Pandora: Rethinking Borders, States, and Secession in a Democratic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2020). 18 See Timothy William Waters, “How to Move Borders Without a War,” The Atlantic (October 20, 2022), https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/borders-sec ession-independence-negotiation/671791/.

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warring states.19 He stated that “the belief that fixed frontiers reduce internal violence is more assumed than proven,” because borders themselves can be the problem.20 “Fixed borders create permanent minorities and majorities” that democracy does not resolve because a minority can be voted down forever and rights do not provide adequate protection because those rights must be negotiated and without the auxiliary precautions that an exit affords, minorities get suboptimal deals.21 Next is the argument that tolerance is dangerous in the sense that concessions to minorities will lead to more demands.22 However, he said, countries like Canada and Britain which acknowledge the right of their people to leave are peaceful states, compared, for example to countries like China and Burma which make such options difficult.23 “And it is not true that tolerant states are doomed to dissolve: The fact that Quebecois and Scots know they could leave helps them stay.”24 True, some agitators for self-determination conduct their campaigns violently.25 However, few started that way, “only turning to violence after being rebuffed.”26 He also expressed some discomfort with the notion that some states are just too fragile to withstand talk of secession which for him is “just another way of saying their own people don’t want to live in them.”27 For Waters, the referendum for independence in South Sudan “shows that the world needs a radically new approach to secession,” keyed to recognition of this right.28 He said that territorial integrity has eviscerated the right to self-determination and with “a global norm of democracy now in place,” it is time the world reassessed sovereignty

19 See “Balkanization,” Encyclopedia Britannica (Last updated August 9, 2016), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Balkanization. 20 Waters, note 14. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Waters, note 14.

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and its corollary of territorial integrity.29 He argued that the international community needs “to make the ad hoc approach taken in Sudan permanent, with a rule empowering communities to negotiate secession. Territorially compact, self-defined communities should have the right to vote in plebiscites to form new states. Claimants would need to commit to human rights and negotiation with the government, as South Sudan did. But they would enjoy international supervision, and make their claim as a right.”30 Waters said this idea is not as novel as it seems at first sight, given that during World War I, then President Woodrow Wilson “advanced the […] notion that people define their political community, not the other way around.”31 A right of secession won’t solve every conflict, and would make some worse. But it could bring a net decline in violence, since states could no longer treat separatism as a pretext for oppression, just as decolonization norms delegitimized European colonial empires. Nor would this lead to endless fracturing: While some minorities would secede, others would use their leverage to negotiate better terms for staying. […] And it would be more just: The right to rule oneself has value all its own. […] New borders are no guarantee … But they are a chance.32

In his view, “the real danger to peace” in the world is not the desire of agitators “to form [a] new state[,]” using the right to self-determination, but rather in the willingness of central governments and their sympathizers at home and abroad to resist that campaign with violence, in the guise of sovereignty and territorial integrity.33 Stephen Tierney Stephen Tierney, like Water, argued for recognition of the right to selfdetermination as a matter of International Law doctrine, particularly in the light of what he characterized in the modern time as “a subtle re-balancing of emphasis away from the inevitable default of territorial 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. Emphasis added. 33 Ibid.

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integrity” toward self-determination. In the wake of the referenda in South Sudan and Montenegro before it in 2006, he said, the world “must re-think the standard trope of the post-war world which has sought to circumscribe the application of self-determination as mere toolkit for decolonization.”34 Try as one may to disguise or sweep it aside, selfdetermination “re-emerges, case by case, in situations of deep ethnic conflict, to unsettle international actors particularly in cases where there is sufficient energy for international intervention,” he contended.35 In such situations what happens in effect is “a subtle re-balancing of emphasis away from the inevitable default of territorial integrity […] toward the legitimacy of disaffected peoples seeking to exercise constituent power by the mobilization of direct democracy.”36 Dapo Akande Akande pointed out that the 1964 resolution by the then OAU, committing member states of the organization to respect colonial boundaries,37 did not rule out the possibility of changes in colonial boundaries, achieved through inter-State adjustments or through the granting of independence by States to particular parts of the State.38 This observation, he said, is important because that resolution was often interpreted as prioritizing the principle of stability of boundaries nay territorial integrity over the right of self-determination.39 Indeed, it is often used as an argument to support the view that the right of external self-determination, meaning secession, does not exist for minority groups or outside the colonial context.40 Truly, on its face, that resolution does not speak to relationship between the State and its constituent entities but rather to the relationship between

34 Tierney, note 15. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 See Chapter 1, note 74 and accompanying text. 38 Akande, note 16. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

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States.41 At the same time, there was nothing in the resolution itself that precludes the possibility of changes in those colonial boundaries, whether through inter-State adjustments or through the granting of independence by States to certain parts of the State.42 Final Word This said, the mood in Africa and elsewhere then was to confine the principle of self-determination, at least to the extent that it might confer a right to secession, to the colonial context, meaning the setting of racist or alien domination.43 But South Sudan (and Eritrea before it) changed all this. South Sudan suggests that there might be cases where African states are willing to consider secession, unfortunately after the weary of lengthy wars.44 This scenario then raised the question whether the international community should rethink external self-determination to allow not just for the possibility of secession but a right of secession.45 Given dutiful provisions in regional and international human rights instruments, few scholars today question the status of self-determination as a human right for eligible groups. Where the proverbial rubber hits the road is in application. Faced with a choice in the intersection between sovereignty (with its corollaries of territorial integrity and non-interference), state actors and international organizations will always engage in a balancing act. But they must more consciously resist the temptation to do so in a manner that minimizes the right to self-determination, at times to the point of evisceration, especially with respect to Africa. A key starting point this book sought to sensitize is to constitutionalize the right to self-determination. For, as perceptive scholars like Ginburg and Verstag point out, when a national constitution “creates a legal avenue to secede,” “the need for violence to advance [a] secessionist

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid.

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claim[]” diminishes.46 Because self-determination embeds democratic features evident in the channel it affords for securing a government based on the consent of the people and therefore legitimate in their eye, this book provides some answer to the call for the reappraisal of the doctrine in its intersection with sovereignty “in a fully postcolonial world.”47

46 Chapter 1, note 115, and accompanying text. 47 See Dilk, note 3, pp. 290, 291.

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Index

A Absolutizing sovereignty in Africa, debate against, 4, 8, 39 Achievements of the book, key takeaways, 398 Addis Ababa (hitherto known as Finfinne) became capital of Ethiopia in 1892, 100 Africa, Cold War in the region, 5, 391 Africa, crisis of homelessness in the region embedded in refugeehood, 7 Africa, loci of separatist movements in the region, 4, 44, 97, 174, 262 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), 25, 26, 64, 68, 285, 354, 387. See also Banjul Charter African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, The, quasi-judicial body, 64, 354 African Union, The, Constitutive Act of the, 53, 67

Africa, self-determination struggles in the region, 38, 393, 394 Africa, troublesome tension between sovereignty and self-determination in the region, 4, 8 Akande, Dapo, 43, 400, 403. See also Recognition of the right to self-determination as a matter of International Law, tale of three voices; Tierney, Stephen; Waters, Timothy W. Ameliorating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in the interest of international peace and security, 9, 11, 32, 384. See also Changing demography in Africa; For the midcentury, two reasons Analysis as springboard to action, 325. See also Marx, Karl Annan, Kofi A., former UN Secretary-General, 14, 304, 360. See also

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. C. Aka, Navigating the Tension Between Sovereignty and Self-Determination in Postcolonial Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48131-4

473

474

INDEX

Sovereignty-as-responsibility debate, different voices

B Banjul Charter, 26, 64, 65, 66, 353, 354, 387. See also African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Benedict XVI, Pope, 77. See also Buchanan, Allen; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973); Sovereign state, circumscription of; Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617) Berlin Conference on partition of Africa (1884-1885), 21, 83, 269, 343 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 4, 23, 38, 47, 357, 393 Berlin Wall, fewness of African states admitted to UN membership since 1989 as evidence of slim chance for peaceful, nonviolent self-determination campaigns in postcolonial Africa, 38 Berlin Wall, new sates admitted to UN membership since the fall of the wall, 47, 357 Blueprints, collage of fourteen proposals (table and analysis), 360 Blueprints, concerns that animate the proposals, 90 Blueprints, proposals 1-7 addressed to central governments, 368 Blueprints, proposals 8-12 addressed to agitators for self-determination, 226, 356, 361, 366, 381

Blueprints, proposals 13-14 addressed to the international community, 41, 365, 381 Blueprints, small-steps-to-peace, 42, 354, 391, 398 Blueprints, three parties to whom proposals are addressed to, 355, 360, 364, 381, 393 Bodin, Jean (1530-1596), 72, 73, 74. See also Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679); Luther, Martin (1483-1546); Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527); Sovereign state, rise of Book, purpose of, 391 Book’s contribution, four genres of academic literature work contributes to, 41, 398 Book’s proposals, factors which lend urgency and exigency to the blueprints, 42, 393 Book, significances of, 4, 8, 359 Buchanan, Allen, 78, 365. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973); Sovereign state, circumscription of; Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617) C Cairo Declaration (1964), 63. See also Organization of African Unity [OAU], Border Disputes Among African States (1964) Cameroon, agriculture, 274. See also Cameroon, contribution of crude oil export to the economy; Cameroon, mainstay of economy Cameroon, Ahidjo, Ahmadou (1960-1982), 271, 274, 280, 285, 294, 295, 297, 322. See also

INDEX

Cameroon, Biya, Paul (since 1982); Cameroon, politics of constitutional engineering Cameroon, Ambazonia, 38, 44, 262, 309, 312, 318, 321, 322, 356 Cameroon, Bakassi, 262 Cameroon, Biya, Paul (since 1982), 272–274, 280, 281, 285, 287, 290, 294, 296, 306, 307, 322, 333, 367. See also Cameroon, Ahidjo, Ahmadou (1960-1982); Cameroon, politics of constitutional engineering Cameroon, constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, tale of three high(er) laws, 261, 278, 318. See also Cameroon, constitution of 1961; Cameroon, constitution of 1996; Cameroon, constitution of 1972 Cameroon, constitution of 1961, 279, 281. See also Cameroon, constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, tale of three high(er) laws; Cameroon, constitution of 1972; and Cameroon, constitution of 1996 Cameroon, constitution of 1972, 36, 273, 280, 281, 285, 289, 291, 294, 296, 302, 333, 345. See also Cameroon, constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, tale of three high(er) laws; Cameroon, constitution of 1961; Cameroon, constitution of 1996 Cameroon, constitution of 1996, 280. See also Cameroon, constitutionalism from 1960 to 2008, tale of three high(er) laws; Cameroon, constitution of 1961; Cameroon, constitution of 1972

475

Cameroon, contribution of crude oil export to the economy, 275. See also Cameroon, agriculture; Cameroon, mainstay of economy Cameroon, declaration of independence by Southern Cameroon as Federal Republic of Ambazonia, 309 Cameroon, etymology of, 262 Cameroon, example of sovereignty and self-determination in a non-constitutionalized setting, 173 Cameroon, geopolitical feature and demographic profile, 264 Cameroon, International Crisis Group’s 2017 report on the Cameroonian crisis, 298 Cameroon, key dates in constitutional and self-determination histories, 321 Cameroon, mainstay of economy, 274. See also Cameroon, agriculture; Cameroon, contribution of crude oil export to the economy Cameroon, major ethnic groups (table), 267 Cameroon, nature of international response to the crisis in the country, 328 Cameroon, negating the proposition that abolishing federalism affirmed the political maturity of Cameroon: multiple voices (individuals, separatist organizations, political parties, and all-Anglophone conferences), 297 Cameroon, political history from precolonial through colonial to

476

INDEX

the period since independence and after, 268 Cameroon, politics of constitutional engineering, 261, 280, 318. See also Cameroon Ahidjo, Ahmadou (1960-1982); Cameroon Biya, Paul (since 1982) Cameroon, portraiture as “Africa in Miniature”, 262, 276 Cameroon, regime change as possible solution to the Cameroon crisis, 345 Cameroon, ten regions (table), 266, 267 Cameroon, the national government’s crackdown on peaceful demonstrations, 307. See also Cameroon, the national government’s response to Southern Cameroon’s declaration of independence Cameroon, the national government’s response to Southern Cameroon’s declaration of independence, 298, 304, 309, 311, 316. See also Cameroon, the national government’s crackdown on peaceful demonstrations Cameroon, the Southern Cameroon (or “Anglophone”) problem, crossover into demand for separate state, 309 Cameroon, the Southern Cameroon (or “Anglophone”) problem, demands for restoration of federalism, 261, 297 Cameroon, the Southern Cameroon (or “Anglophone”) problem, disconcerting new phase, 304, 306

Cameroon, UN Security Council meeting in 2019 on the crisis in the country, 318, 322 Changing demography in Africa, 383. See also Ameliorating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in the interest of international peace and security; For the midcentury, two reasons Charter of the United Nations, The, 3, 53, 61, 359 Common Article 1 of the ICCPR and ICESCR, 59 Concepts, nature as “abstract mental images”, 51 Concepts, nature as “fuzzy and imprecise”, 51 Conflict resolution mechanism, importance of Constitutional Law as a tool, 34, 35 “Constipation constitution”, 281. See also de Mbanga, Lapiro Constitutional law, definition of, 208, 294 Constitutional provision at the intersection of sovereignty and self-determination, based on the case studies of Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Cameroon, 394 Corfu Channel Case (1945), 71. See also Sovereignty, World Court’s definition D de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987), 76. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; Buchanan, Allen; Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973); Sovereign state, circumscription of; Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617)

INDEX

de Mbanga, Lapiro, 281. See also “Constipation constitution” determination on sovereignty and its corollary of territorial integrity, 10, 392, 402 Discussions relating to sovereignty and self-determination, need for more Constitutional Law, 32, 33, 35 Disgruntled minorities abound in many African countries despite the Cairo Declaration, the OAU commitment in 1964 to respect colonial boundaries, 403 Doctrine of flux or “everything flows”, 79. See also Heraclitus (535-475 B.C.) E Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and Dire Dawa, as chartered cities equal in status to national regional states (NRS), 104 Ethiopia, admission into the League of Nations in 1923, 101 Ethiopia, art. 39 of 1995 constitution, multiple achievements of the article, 167 Ethiopia, art. 39 of 1995 constitution, two unavailable criticisms of provision, 133 Ethiopia, as an economically poor country, 108 Ethiopia, as Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), 113, 126, 127, 163, 164, 172 Ethiopia, as federal parliamentary republic, 18, 327, 334, 370 Ethiopia, Battle of Adwa (March 1896), Ethiopia’s defeat of Italy, 100, 171 Ethiopia, constitutionalism from 1931 to 1995, Kebra Nagast and Fetha

477

Negast as supreme law before 1931, 115 Ethiopia, constitutionalizing the right to self-determination shed off country’s character as a “prison of nations”, 168 Ethiopia, Dergue (Provisional Military Administrative Council, PMAC), 109. See also Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile, Red Terror; Ethiopia, Ogaden War with Somalia (1977-1978); Ethiopia, social revolution and popular upheaval after Selassie; Ethiopia, Soviet military and economic assistance Ethiopia, eleven national regional states (NRS) (table), 104 Ethiopia, Eritrea, basic facts on, 98, 139 Ethiopia, Eritrea, collapse of federal experiment with Ethiopia, 144 Ethiopia, Eritrea, referendum on independence monitored by UNOVER, 153 Ethiopia, Eritrea’s war of independence (1961-1991), 110, 138, 140, 143, 152 Ethiopia, Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), 156 Ethiopia, etymology of the country, 98 Ethiopia, example of sovereignty and self-determination in a constitutionalized setting, 97 Ethiopia, founders of the country, 100, 168. See also Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile, emperor from 1930-1974; Makeba, Queen of Sheba; Menelik I (progenitor of the Solomonic dynasty in

478

INDEX

Ethiopia); Menelik II, emperor from 1889-1913 Ethiopia, gauging the status of the right to self-determination in the country since 1995, trouble with the theory of ethnic federalism, 155, 164 Ethiopia, geopolitical features and demographic profile, 101 Ethiopia, Great Famine (1888-1892), 100 Ethiopia, history, and denouement of federalism in the country, 104 Ethiopia, key dates in constitutional and self-determination histories, 171 Ethiopia, mainstay of the economy, 105 Ethiopia, major ethnic groups (table), 103 Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile (1977-1991), 135, 210. See also Ethiopia, politics of constitutional engineering; Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile (1930-1974); Ethiopia, Zenawi, Meles (1991-2012) Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile, Red Terror, 110. See also Ethiopia, Dergue (Provisional Military Administrative Council, PMAC); Ethiopia, Ogaden War with Somalia (1977-1978); Ethiopia, social revolution and popular upheaval after Selassi; Ethiopia, Soviet military and economic assistance Ethiopia, moniker as “land of the Blue Nile”, 98, 113, 114, 199, 278 Ethiopia, 1931 constitution, external influence, and key elements, 120, 171

Ethiopia, 1955 constitution, possible external influence, key elements, and suspension by the Dergue, 135 Ethiopia, 1987 constitution, prelude, external influence, and key elements., 130 Ethiopia, 1995 constitution, prelude, external influence, and key elements, 35, 98, 113, 130, 132, 156, 169, 396 Ethiopia, Ogaden War with Somalia (1977-1978), 111. See also Ethiopia, Dergue (Provisional Military Administrative Council, PMAC); Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Miriam, Red Terror; Ethiopia, social revolution and popular upheaval after Selassi; Ethiopia, Soviet military and economic assistance Ethiopia, People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) (replaced the TGE), 111, 113, 171 Ethiopia, politics of constitutional engineering, 98, 135, 169. See also Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile (1977-1991); Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile (1930-1974); Ethiopia, Zenawi, Meles (1991-2012) Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reforms, 156, 172 Ethiopia, Prosperity Party (2019) (replaced the EPRDF), 156, 172 Ethiopia, ranking by the World Bank as fastest growing economy, 107 Ethiopia, role as “linchpin of regional security” in the Horn of Africa, 98. See also Horn of Africa, as an

INDEX

“inherently unstable” subregion of Africa Ethiopia, Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1935–1936), Italy defeats and annexes Ethiopia, 100 Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile (1930-1974), 109, 135. See also Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile (1977-1991); Ethiopia, politics of constitutional engineering; Ethiopia, Zenawi Meles (1991-2012) Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile, emperor from 1930-1974, 97, 103, 108, 118, 119, 121, 143, 145, 171, 210, 334. See also Ethiopia, founders of the country; Makeba, Queen of Sheba; Menelik I (progenitor of the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia); Menelik II, emperor from 1889-1913 Ethiopia, social revolution and popular upheaval after Selassi, 108. See also Ethiopia, Dergue (Provisional Military Administrative Council, PMAC); Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Miriam, Red Terror; Ethiopia, Ogaden War with Somalia (1977-1978); Ethiopia, Soviet military and economic assistance Ethiopia, Soviet military and economic assistance, 111, 149 Ethiopia, TGE and the national charter (temporary constitution), 112 Ethiopia, theory of ethnic federalism vis-à-vis 1995 Constitution and criticism of theory, 155 Ethiopia, Tigray War (2020-2022), 155, 157, 161–164, 168, 221, 328, 331, 350, 396

479

Ethiopia, Zenawi, Meles (1991-2012), 112, 136. See also Ethiopia, Miriam, Mengistu Haile (1977-1991); Ethiopia, politics of constitutional engineering; Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile (1930-1974)

F For the midcentury, two reasons, 353, 383. See also Ameliorating the tension between sovereignty and self-determination in the interest of international peace and security; Changing demography in Africa Framework, conceptual, 9, 38, 40, 52, 88, 89, 396 Frontier Dispute Case (Burkina Faso v. Mali) (1986), The, the World Court’s, 11, 81

G Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608), 76. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; Buchanan, Allen; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973); Sovereign state, circumscription of; Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617) Graphics of case study materials from Chapters 3 to 5, recap in (table), 327

H Heraclitus (535-475 B.C.), 79. See also Doctrine of flux or “everything flows” Herodotus, Greek historian, 99

480

INDEX

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), 72, 73, 74. See also Bodin, Jean (1530-1596); Luther, Martin (1483-1546); Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527); Sovereign state, rise of Horn of Africa, as an “inherently unstable” subregion of Africa, 98. See also Ethiopia, role as “linchpin of regional security” in the Horn of Africa Human rights, definition of, 26

I Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), 27, 28, 31, 233–235, 237, 239, 240, 256, 334 Indigenous Peoples, definition of, 82. See also UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) International community, The, key role of the UN Secretariat, according to Ban Ki-moon, then UN Secretary-General, 359 International community, The, theory and practice, and elements, 360 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), The, 28, 53 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), The, 53 International Law, Constitutional Law, and conflict resolution, intersection from prism of the three case studies, 4, 8, 39 Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana), 100, 140, 171

J Jewish Holocaust (World War II), 76, 89

K Katanga Peoples’ Congress v. Zaire (1992), African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 64 Kebra Nagast and Fetha Nagast, constitutional legitimization functions in Ethiopia pre-1913, 115 Kosovo (2020) case related to conformity of unilateral declaration with International Law, significance of the World Court’s advisory opinion for the doctrine of self-determination, 88

L League of Nations, its contributions to self-determination vis-à-vis United Nations, 80 Luther, Martin (1483-1546), 72. See also Bodin, Jean (1530-1596); Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679); Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527); Sovereign state, rise of

M Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527), 72. See also Bodin, Jean (1530-1596); Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679); Luther, Martin (1483-1546); Sovereign state, rise of Makeba, Queen of Sheba, 99. See also Ethiopia, founders of the country; Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile, emperor from 1930-1974;

INDEX

Menelik I (progenitor of the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia); Menelik II, emperor from 1889-1913 Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973), 76, 77. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; Buchanan, Allen; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Sovereign state, circumscription of; Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617) Marx, Karl, 325. See also Analysis as springboard to action Menelik II, emperor from 1889-1913, 100 Menelik I (progenitor of the Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopia), 99, 115, 120. See also Ethiopia, founders of the country; Ethiopia, Selassie, Haile, emperor from 1930-1974; Makeba, Queen of Sheba; Menelik II, emperor from 1889-1913 Multiple factors which lent urgency and exigency to the proposals in this book, 393

N New states admitted to UN membership since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 4 Nigeria, agricultural sector, 190 Nigeria, as federal presidential republic, 18, 335, 368 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), Aburi Accords, 217, 223, 228, 230, 348 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), Ahiara Declaration and its message of social justice as silver lining, 224, 249

481

Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), depiction of war as “cruel”, 219 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), improved international responses to humanitarian emergencies as silver living, 88 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), Medecine Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders), 227 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), ogbunigwe (Ojukwu rocket), as part of the hidden creativity the war unleased within the Igbo, 226 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), Research and Production Organization of Biafra (RAP), 226 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967-1970), three immediate aftermaths of the war against the Igbo, 212 Nigeria, Biafra 1 (1967), technological possibilities the war made possible, according to General Ojukwu, 215, 217 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, “Kaduna Declaration” of 2017 supposedly expelling Igbo from the North for pro-Biafran activities, 236, 238. See also Nigeria, Kaduna Declaration (2017), text of document Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, coterminous-ness of Igbo ethnicity and Biafra, 173, 240, 251 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, crackdown on peaceful, nonviolent, agitation

482

INDEX

under General Buhari (2015-2023), 371 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, crackdown on peaceful, nonviolent, agitation under General Obasanjo (1999-2007), 236, 367 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, difference between the two Biafras, 212, 397 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, Igbo self-determination campaigns under IPOB since 2012, 237 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, Igbo self-determination campaigns under MASSOB from 1999 until 2011, 236 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, Igbo states of Nigeria (table), 241 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, indefinite detention and illegal prosecution of Kanu, including rendition from Kenya, since 2021, as example of Buhari’s crackdown and criminalization of self-determination campaigns, 28, 235, 239 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, MASSOB and IPOB as two representative Igbo self-determination movements, 235 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, Ralph Uwazurike, and Nnamdi Kanu, as leaders of the two self-determination movements

(MASSOB by Uwazurike and IPOB by Kanu), 236, 364 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, storming of Kanu’s home in 2017, example of Buhari’s crackdown and criminalization of self-determination campaigns, 239 Nigeria, Biafra 2, since 1999 under the Fourth Republic, two failures—power devolution and social justice—as factors why Nigeria did not constitutionalize the right to self-determination after its civil war, as Ethiopia did, 252 Nigeria, constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999, the 1960 constitution, 201, 322 Nigeria, constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999, the 1963 constitution, 201, 203, 206 Nigeria, constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999, the 1979 constitution, 36, 203, 209, 246, 332 Nigeria, constitutionalism from 1960 to 1999, the 1999 constitution, 35, 36, 194, 207, 246, 331, 332, 337 Nigeria, contribution of crude oil to agriculture-based economy, 190. See also Nigeria, agriculture sector; Nigeria, mainstay of economy Nigeria, demographic features and profile, 186 Nigeria, displaced India in 2018 as poverty capital of the world, 249, 340

INDEX

Nigeria, etymology: from “amalgamation” to British Crown colony, 175 Nigeria, example of sovereignty and self-determination in a non-constitutionalized setting, 261 Nigeria, from three regions to thirty-six states and a federal capital territory (table and analysis), 183, 184, 209, 328, 337 Nigeria, independence, republicanism, and the experience of federalism since independence, 180 Nigeria, justifying the moniker of “giant of Africa”, 196, 199 Nigeria, Kaduna Declaration (2017), text of document, 174, 241, 255 Nigeria, Kanu, Nnamdi, extraordinary rendition of from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021, 27 Nigeria, Kanu, opinion of the UN Working Group related to, 28 Nigeria, Kanu saga from Nigeria, as a textbook example of the problem this book addresses, 26, 39 Nigeria, Kanu saga, takeaways from the, 4, 32 Nigeria, Kanu trial, latest denouement related to the case, 30 Nigeria, key dates in constitutional and self-determination histories, 253 Nigeria, mainstay of economy, 190. See also Nigeria, agricultural sector; Nigeria, contribution of crude oil to agriculture-based economy Nigeria, major ethnic groups (table), 188

483

Nigeria, navigating native resistance through a semblance of constitutional reforms, 178 Nigeria, Obasanjo, Olusegun, General (1975-1979), 337. See also Nigeria, politics of constitutional engineering Nigeria, oil theft and debt fees from excessive government borrowings as two interrelated events that compound Nigeria’s dire economic conditions, 193 Nigeria, politics of constitutional engineering, 173, 208, 250. See also Nigeria, Obasanjo, Olusegun, General (1975-1979) Nigeria, State Security Service (SSS), secret police, 30 Non-intervention, definition, and tie to sovereignty, 89 O Object lessons from the case studies, collage of six (table and analysis), 329 Organizational of African Unity (OAU), The, image as “dictators club”, 64 Organization of African Unity [OAU], Border Disputes Among African States (1964), 25, 64. See also Cairo Declaration (1964) P Plebiscite, British Cameroon, 272 Pogge, Thomas. Views pertaining to circumscribing the sovereign state, 77, 78 Political cohesion in postcolonial Africa, poverty and elusiveness of, 6

484

INDEX

Postcolonial Africa, rifeness of self-determination conflict in, 5 R Recognition of the right to self-determination as a matter of International Law, tale of three voices, 43, 399, 400, 402. See also Akande, Dapo; Tierney, Stephen; Walters, Timothy W. Relationship between sovereignty and self-determination, nature of the, 15, 26, 40, 89, 173, 261, 393, 396 Right to change the national government, but no right to walk away from it, 36. See also US jurisprudence relating to secession S “Secessionist deficit” in Africa, claim of and rebuttal of thesis, 394. See also “sticking together“ Self-determination, as fountainhead for the securement and enjoyment of individual (or personal) freedoms, 9, 391 Self-determination, as mother of all human rights, 9, 391 Sovereign state, circumscription of, 69, 76. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; Buchanan, Allen; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617) Sovereign state, rise of, 69, 71, 72, 76, 89. See also Bodin, Jean (1530-1596) Sovereignty and self-determination, moderating influence of self-, 346, 394

Sovereignty and self-determination, relationship between the two doctrines, 52, 55 Sovereignty-as-responsibility debate, different voices, 15, 393. See also Annan, Kofi A., former UN Secretary-General Sovereignty, principle or norm, 3, 52, 57, 83, 88, 89 Sovereignty, role in US legal history and constitutionalism, 74 Sovereignty, World Court’s definition, 89, 379. See also Corfu Channel Case (1945) “Sticking together”, 7. See also “secessionist deficit” in Africa, claim of and rebuttal of thesis Suarez, Francisco (1548-1617), 76. See also Benedict XVI, Pope; Buchanan, Allen; de Jouvenel, Bertrand (1902-1987); Gentili, Alberico (1552-1608); Sovereign state, circumscription of T Tension between sovereignty and self-determination, indicators wrapped around three countries, 52, 53 Tension between sovereignty and self-determination, statecraft in Africa and contradictory message from global institutions as contributory factors, 4, 8, 10 Tension between sovereignty and self-determination, survey of six human rights instruments, 88 Tension, defined, 9, 53 Territorial integrity, definition, and tie to sovereignty, 70 Tierney, Stephen, 43, 400, 402, 403. See also Akande, Dapo;

INDEX

Recognition of the right to self-determination as a matter of International Law, tale of three voices; Waters, Timothy W.

U UDHR, The, as document which established the idea of human rights as “the ideology of our time”, 56 UDHR, The, as foremost global charter of human rights, 52 UDHR, The, as instrument which popularized human rights, 56 UDHR, The, as wellspring of the six instruments analyzed in the book, 56 UDHR, The, document’s connection to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s doctrine of four, 56 UDHR, The, foundational role of the declaration relating to the six instruments under examination in the book, 56 UDHR, The, fundamental freedoms embedded in the instrument, 52, 90 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960), 59, 80 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007), The, Significance of the declaration pertaining to self-determination, 53, 233 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 10,

485

62, 82. See also Indigenous Peoples, definition of UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), The, its oversized role in Africa’s economic development, vis-à-vis other world regions, 55 UN Human Rights Council, an intergovernmental agency, 26 UN, purpose of, 57, 70 UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, The, 26 US jurisprudence relating to secession, 36. See also Right to change the national government, but no right to walk away from it Uti possidetis juris (maintenance of artificial colonial boundaries), 11 W Waters, Timothy W., 43, 251, 344, 350, 400, 401, 402. See also Akande, Dapo; Recognition of the right to self-determination as a matter of International Law, tale of three voices; Tierney, Stephen Westphalia, Treaty of, the (1648), 70, 83, 344 Wilson, Woodrow, US President, “Fourteen Points” speech pertaining to autonomy and minority rights, 80 Wilson, Woodrow, US President, incipient contributions to self-determination, 80 Y “Year of Africa”, 21