The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) and the Avoidance of Responsibility: Ending Atrocity Crimes in Northern Nigeria

The Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria’s North-East and the activities of Violent Extremist Groups (VEGs) in the Northcentral and Northwest regions have caused a humanitarian disaster and commission of significant human rights violations by insurgents and state security forces in counterinsurgency. Under international law, the intent and method of these violations confirm them as atrocity crimes. The inability of the Nigerian Government to end the insurgency thereby sustaining the perpetration of these crimes against civilians, puts the United Nations within its rights to intervene in protection of Nigerian civilians through the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). Yet it demonstrates no zeal for the RtoP option. Applying desk research, we argue, the non-authorisation of RtoP in Nigeria, is rooted firstly, in controversies linked to the RtoP preventing it from attaining norm status. This lack of ‘normhood’ makes efforts at authorization controversial, polarising and nearly impossible. Secondly are perceptions of the RtoP when authorised, as a Trojan horse used by powerful western states to pursue national interest including regime change as inferred from the actions of France and allies in the 2011 Libyan intervention. Lastly, the divisive outcome of RtoP interventions, Libya in focus saw the country spiral into anarchy with critical implications for security not only in Sub-Saharan Africa manifest as heightened insecurity fuelled by increasing and entrenching Islamist fundamentalism but the intensification of a migratory wave of displaced civilians towards Europe contributing to its refugee problem. The study concludes that considering Nigeria’s immense population located within a volatile and deeply divided society as well as its role as a region stabilising hegemon, the authorization of RtoP considering its unpredictable outcomes, holds unpredictable implications for SSA stability because a destabilised Nigeria like Libya, may trigger the onset of a humanitarian and refugee crisis to which European and Western governments would rather avoid but be forced to respond.