Posted by ccld201
23 February 2026The post-colonial Nigerian society is built on a promise of human dignity made in 1960 by the first president of independent Nigeria, Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe, and repeated in the 1979 and 1999 constitutions and the 1981 African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights. As argued in this blog, the promise, however, has yet to come into fruition. Despite strong legal protection, human dignity in Nigeria remains underutilized and inconsistently enforced — a persistent gap between promise and practice.
A Nation founded to restore the dignity of man in the world: Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Vision
As argued by Ronald Dworkin, democracy is dependent on respect for human dignity[1], often invoked during transitions from authoritarian rule: from the 1949 German Basic Law, to the 1996 South African constitution and the 1989 Hungarian revised constitution[2]. In a similar spirit, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria’s founding fathers and the first Premier of the Western Region, emphasized in 1960 that “the healthy growth of a democratic way of life requires an enlightened community, guided by people imbued with an all-consuming desire to defend, uphold, and protect the human dignity and legal equality of their fellow men.” [3] After independence, Nigeria entered a new democratic phase in which dignity was invoked and shaped by its anti-colonial struggle.
In 1960—famously called the “Year of Africa,” when seventeen African countries gained independence—Nigeria, as Africa’s largest democracy and the world’s largest Black nation, set a precedent for how Black people could be treated and perceived globally – a responsibility that Nnamdi Azikiwe clearly understood. In that year, Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president and governor-general, delivered his inaugural address to the newly independent nation, entitled “Respect for Human Dignity”. He noted that ‘the lack of respect for human dignity has led to the political bondage of man by man in Africa,’ and declared that ‘under no circumstance shall we accept the idea that the black race is inferior to any other race.’ Azikiwe called on the other founding fathers of the Nigerian nation and told them that they have ‘a duty to restore the dignity of man in the world’.
Nigeria prioritised this duty in its early years as an independent state, notably by domesticating the 1949 Geneva Conventions in 1961 – one of the earliest African countries to do so. The domestication of the 1949 Geneva Conventions through the Geneva Conventions Act provided Nigeria’s first legal framework that implicitly recognized and protected human dignity during armed conflict (under common Article 3). Yet despite this ambitious commitment, the first Nigerian republic fell six years later, and there was no explicit reference to human dignity in the 1960 and 1963 constitutions. Even Azikiwe, once a staunch Pan-Africanist Nigerian nationalist, grew disillusioned during the Nigerian Civil War.
The fundamental challenge to the protection of dignity during this period was that, within post-colonial Nigerian constitutional law (1960–1978), dignity was not explicitly articulated as a standalone constitutional right. Instead, it functioned primarily as an underlying principle, implicit in provisions prohibiting inhuman or degrading treatment. As a result, dignity operated more as a guiding democratic ideal than as a clearly defined and judicially developed doctrine, with its content largely derived from international human rights law rather than from independent constitutional interpretation.
Military Rule and the Systematic Erosion of Dignity
Notwithstanding domesticating the Geneva Conventions including the protection of dignity within armed conflict, Nigeria experienced some of the worst military dictatorships in Africa and world. Under General Yakubu Gowon (1966–1975), the Nigerian Civil War resulted in the Biafran genocide claiming an estimated 500,000 – 3 million lives. General Olusegun Obasanjo (1976–1979), under whose military government Nigeria promulgated its first constitution explicitly referencing human dignity also presided over grave human rights violations. This included the 1977 Kalakuta Raid, which fatally injured the mother of Nigerian feminism, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Later, as a civilian president (1999-2007), Obasanjo faced criticism for human rights abuses, including restrictions on press freedom and the suppression of political dissent. From 1983 to 1985, the late Major General Muhammadu Buhari, as a military ruler, jailed journalists and suppressed civil liberties including allowing for indefinite detention. As a civilian president from 2015 to 2023, he continued to engage in very similar activities including banning twitter. In 1986, under General Babangida’s rule (1985-1993), journalist Dele Giwa was assassinated by a letter bomb at his home – the first of its kind in Nigeria. Widely regarded as Nigeria’s most brutal military ruler, Sani Abacha (1993-1998) dismantled the legislature, authorised extrajudicial killings, carried out arbitrary arrests, and used special military tribunals to execute Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, actions that led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth and the imposition of international sanctions.
Under military regimes (1966-1979 and 1983-1999), violations of human dignity and human rights were blatant, exemplified by the Suspension and Constitution Modification Decrees[4]. During military rule, the constitution and judiciary were suspended and replaced by tribunals led by untrained military personnel who often ignored the law[5].
Conclusion
In his discussion of postcolonial theory, Achille Mbembe argues that postcolonial Africa and its democracies “do not develop in a closed orbit; their progress is neither smooth nor linear but moves in multiple directions at once. These processes unfold at different speeds and timescales, taking the form of fluctuations and destabilizations – sometimes very sharp – periods of inertia, and spurts that may seem random, but actually combine multiple regimes of change: stationary, dynamic, chaotic, and even catastrophic.”[6] Nigeria’s experience reflects this non-linear trajectory: legal recognition of dignity has coexisted with cycles of authoritarianism, weak enforcement, and social instability.
Nigeria’s post-colonial journey illustrates the tension between aspiration and reality, between the moral and legal commitment to human dignity and the lived experience of its citizens. From the visionary speeches and initiatives of leaders like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo, to early laws such as the domestication of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the nation set a strong foundation for dignity as a guiding principle. Yet decades of military rule, weak institutions, and inconsistent enforcement have left the promise of dignity unfulfilled, creating a persistent gap between principle and practice.
Ayobami Ruth Olufemi-White. Esq LLB, BL is a lawyer, writer, political commentator and human rights advocate focusing on the intersections of international law, dignity law, legal theory, feminist theory and critical race theory. She earned her LLB with First Class Honours from the University of Exeter, receiving the Peter English Dissertation Prize. She was called to the Nigerian Bar in September 2025 and is a qualified Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
[1] Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Harvard University Press 2011), 320.
[2] Catherine Dupré, The Age of Dignity: Human Rights and Constitutionalism in Europe (Hart Publishing 2015) 157.
[3] Awo Obafemi Awolowo, The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Cambridge University Press 1960) 255.
[4] Ibid 202.
[5] Alka Jauhari, ‘Colonial and Post-Colonial Human Rights Violations in Nigeria’ (2011) 1(5) International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 54.
[6] Achille Mbembe, On Private Indirect Government, in On the Postcolony (University of California Press, 2001) 66.