By Agwu Ogbonnaya, Esq.
Nigeria’s Constitutional Abdication, Foreign Intervention, and the Jurisprudence of Failure.
If sovereignty confers rights, it equally imposes duties. A State does not merely exist to parade a flag, occupy a seat at the United Nations, or chant patriotic hymns; it exists fundamentally to fulfil its first, most sacred, most irreducible constitutional covenant: the protection of lives, property, and territorial dignity. Where that fails, sovereignty becomes not merely weakened but morally hollow—an empty throne upon which legality sits without legitimacy.
Thus, when America acts, whether wisely or arrogantly, it does so against a background truth: Nigeria is no longer able to guarantee the security of those who dwell within its jurisdiction, including foreign nationals whose safety rests upon international assurances.
If the architecture of Nigerian sovereignty remains theoretically intact, its operational reality has decayed. This is the tragedy.
I. The Constitution Betrayed by Its Custodian
In every civilized republic, the State exists because the people surrender certain liberties in exchange for ordered protection.
This is the foundational “social contract” articulated by Hobbes, refined by Locke, and sanctified by Rousseau. In Nigerian constitutional jurisprudence, this philosophical contract finds solemn expression in Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution:
“The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
This provision is not ornamental rhetoric. It is an existential command.
Where the State is unable to prevent bandits from establishing alternative sovereignties; where citizens live under the dominion of terror rather than the dominion of law; where murder becomes casual, kidnapping becomes currency, and fear becomes the anthem of daily life—then the State stands in breach of its constitutional mandate. It becomes a sovereign in default.
In jurisprudential language, the State becomes culpa in omittendo—guilty not by direct commission of evil, but by omission, neglect, paralysis, and failure to act.
II. When Sovereignty Becomes A Shell: The Doctrine of Functional Erosion
Sovereignty is not merely geographical possession. Cicero argued that a state exists only when “a commonwealth is bound together by justice.” Augustine declared that a state without justice is merely “a band of robbers.” Plato, in The Republic, insists that state authority collapses not by external defeat but by internal moral disintegration.
Thus, where Nigeria cannot protect life, it quietly surrenders moral authority even while retaining ceremonial sovereignty. Philosophically, such a State remains sovereign de jure (in law), but ceases to be sovereign de facto (in functioning reality).
At this moment, the United States did not merely act arbitrarily. It acted because the host nation has, through incompetence and decay, created a vacuum. And as nature and geopolitics both teach, power abhors a vacuum.
III. Invitation, Not Invasion: The Juridical Distinction
The crux of the counter-argument lies in one determinative proposition:
If Nigeria invited or consented to the operation, then the act ceased to be aggression and became cooperation.
International law recognizes State consent as a legitimate legal basis for foreign military presence. The International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v. United States (1986), while condemning uninvited intervention, clarified that operations undertaken with sovereign consent do not amount to unlawful aggression.
Thus, if Abuja authorized or silently endorsed the strike, Nigerian sovereignty was not violated. Instead, Nigeria outsourced a responsibility it could not discharge—a humiliating but lawful reality.
This introduces a grave philosophical irony:
Nigeria remains sovereign in theory, yet rents protection like a failed landlord incapable of securing his own estate.
IV. The Doctrine of Sovereign Responsibility and the Shame of Moral Bankruptcy
Gandhi famously warned that power devoid of conscience is tyranny; but power devoid of capacity is tragedy. Nigeria stands not as the tyrant, but as the tragic sovereign: powerful in paper proclamations yet powerless in practical governance.
Here lies the true humiliation—not that America acted, but that Nigeria could not.
Not that a foreign power deployed force, but that Nigeria forced them to by her incapacity.
If the President of the Federal Republic, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, presides over a government constitutionally mandated to protect lives, yet Nigerians and foreigners alike remain perennial victims of terror, then Nigeria’s shame is self-inflicted.
To paraphrase Cicero:
It is better to die bravely as a state that defends dignity, than to live pitifully as one perpetually dependent on foreign guardianship.
V. A Socratic Interrogation of National Conscience
Socrates would not merely condemn; he would ask: “How did Nigeria descend to such frailty that foreign militaries must do what her soldiers cannot?”
Is it corruption? Weak institutional structures? Political timidity? Ethnic fragmentation? Moral fatigue?
A Republic fails not suddenly but gradually—first in leadership, then in institutions, finally in dignity. Plato called this decay the “progression from excellence to decadence,” while Aristotle termed it katastrophē politeias—collapse of the polity.
VI. Between America’s Interest and Nigeria’s Shame
Let us be clear: the U.S. did not act out of charity. Nations do not operate on compassion; they operate on interest. But interest does not negate legality where consent exists. Assistance does not erase humiliation where incompetence reigns.
Nigeria invited help not because it is collaborative, but because it is incapacitated.
Nigeria accepted intervention not as a proud partner, but as an overwhelmed debtor of security.
VII. Moral Verdict: A Sovereign That Failed Its Mandate
In the tribunal of history, judgment will not primarily condemn America’s intervention; it will indict Nigerian governance for having created the conditions that made such intervention “necessary.”
Nigeria stands condemned on three philosophical counts:
Negligent Sovereignty – failure to secure lives.
Constitutional Breach – betrayal of Section 14(2)(b).
Moral Abdication – outsourcing dignity to foreign might.
Until Nigeria can protect the Nigerian, no complaint against foreign intervention carries convincing moral weight.
Conclusion: A Call Not to Fury, But to Reform
This is no time for empty outrage. This is a time for sober reflection.
Nigeria’s humiliation is not merely external. It is internal, systemic, structural, and self-inflicted.
Socrates would urge self-examination. Plato would demand virtue. Cicero would insist on courageous statecraft. Gandhi would call for moral reconstruction.
Until Nigeria reforms: until security architecture is modernized, until leadership prioritizes competence over politics, until corruption is treated like treason, until governance rises above mediocrity,
foreign militaries will continue to perform duties that constitutionally belong to Abuja.
And each time they do, Nigeria loses not only control of its skies and soils, but fragments of its dignity.
The painful truth stands thus: America did not merely intervene because it could.
America intervened because Nigeria failed when it must not fail.
History will remember this. And history is an unforgiving judge.
(Agwu Ogbonnaya is an Abuja based Legal Practitioner, Public Affairs and Political Analyst)
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