TITLE:
Civil Military Relations in a Post-Colonial State: An Interrogation of Nigeria’s Military Internal Operations
AUTHORS:
Chukwuemeka Enyiazu, Onyedikachi Madueke, Casmir Chukwuka Mbaegbu
KEYWORDS:
Human Rights Abuses, ICC, Medium Force, Army Constabulary Corps
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.12 No.2,
March
3,
2022
ABSTRACT: The current corps of
Nigerian army are products of top tertiary military and policy institutions.
They have demonstrated their prowess internationally, especially, in peace
keeping and peace enforcement. Forty-four years (44 yrs) after the Nigerian
Afro-Beat Maestro (Fela) sang, “…they leave sorrow, tears and blood…”, the
Nigerian army is still riveted in gross human rights abuses. Recently, it is
competing with Boko Haram on who comes first on the list of International
Criminal Court’s (ICC) human rights abuses. Given that the army is trained to
use maximum force and the fact that post-colonial states’ crises, especially in
Africa, and specifically Nigeria are internal. There
has been the debate on the establishment of medium force outfit in Nigeria,
which led to the establishment and subsequent disbandment of National Guard in
the 1990s. The debate continued to rage in this Fourth Industrial Revolution
era. But the cost implication of running such a paramilitary outfit has posed a
major hindrance. To fill this gap, this paper joins the debate and argues for
the establishment of an Army Constabulary Corp (ACC), a medium force between
the army maximum force and the police minimum force. The paper uses the Feaver
Agency theory of civil military relation as its theoretical framework. The study
collated data through documentary methods. In analysing the data, the
qualitative data were transcribed, interpreted, and analysed through systematic
logical inductions.