An Assessment of the Role of International Non-Governmental Organisations in Nigeria's Counter Terrorism War

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Nigeria's war against Boko Haram. NGOs have become major actors in international relations, and their activities now pose challenges to the Westphalia concept of territorial state sovereignty. Operating behind the cover of the twin concepts of humanitarian interventions and universal jurisdiction, NGOs now assume a self-imposed responsibility of holding states and their functionaries accountable to international norms and conventions, in the areas of promoting good governance and preventing violation of human rights. Having accepted the reality of NGOs as competing actors on the global scene, not a few states including Nigeria, are averse to their intrusion into areas that are considered to legitimately fall within domestic jurisdiction. In line with the realist theory, the problem encountered by this paper is how to strike a delicate balance in such a way that the operations of NGOs in Nigeria will not prejudice the primary role of the Nigerian state in safeguarding national security. This paper relies on secondary sources of data largely due to the problem of access to the combat zone in north-east Nigeria. It notes that some of the activities of the NGOs, especially their sources of funding, are shrouded in secrecy, which further compound the challenge of policing the ungoverned space in the country. The paper recommends that the federal government should establish a framework for monitoring the operations of NGOs in Nigeria in order to ensure that their activities are not inimical to national security.