Introduction

The end of the Cold War had brought about a transformation in regional

action to march that in UN action. This regional action is governed by three articles

in Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. Article 52 provides that regional arrangements

or agencies may deal with such matters relating to the maintenance of

international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action provided

their activities are in consistence with the purposes and principles of the UN. Also

article 53 allows the Security Council to utilize regional arrangement or agencies

for enforcement action but they are not permitted to take enforcement action

without the authorization of the Security Council. Article 54 required such regional

arrangements to keep the Security Council fully informed of their activities for the

maintenance of international peace and security [1].

One of such regional groups is ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), a

peacekeeping force which was sent to Liberia to mediate a year-old civil war in an

effort to finalize a peace settlement and establish a government acceptable to all

Liberian factions. [1] ECOWAS nations comprises of almost all the West African

states though some few members of the organization have come and gone over the

years. In 1976 for instance Cape Verde joined ECOWAS, but in December 2000

Mauritania withdrew, having announced its intention to do so in December 1999

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[2]. Peace keeping which simply refers to the preservation of peace, especially as a

military mission in which troops attempt to keep formerly warring armed forces

from starting to fight again [3], is a type of effort that originated with the

appearance of international organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the

smaller international regional organizations like (African Union) AU and

(Economic Community of West African States) ECOWAS especially after the

Second World War.

These International regional organizations are created through treaty

arrangements that commit member states to act together for certain specified goals.

At the height of the cold war, a number of such groups came into being as security

organizations—that is, organizations whose chief purpose is to encourage joint

military planning for common defense i.e., (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

NATO but since the end of the cold war, there arises many functional regional

organizations, like the ECOWAS, which solely intended to provide a unified

approach to the solution of economic and social problems of the region, this type

of organizations have now grown and, in some cases, flourished. Their functions

include loose customs unions, free-trade areas, and common markets.

Such multipurpose organizations also, combined to some extent the security

and functional goals, although usually in somewhat more loosely knit

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arrangements. Here, emphasis is strongly upon harmonizing political relationships

among the members as well as on attempting to provide a common front to the

outside world. Relatively, the UN, in its Agenda for Peace, did not set forth any

formal pattern of relations it and the Regional Organizations or set any specific

division of labour. UN however argued that regional organizations possessed a

potential that should be utilized for preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping,

peacemaking and post-conflict peace building while the UN keeps its primary role

of the maintenance of international peace and security, in what could be described

as decentralization, delegation and cooperation between the UN and the regional

organizations’ peace efforts. This in the process lightens the burden of the UN and

at the same time contributes to a deeper sense of participation, consensus and

democratization in the international affairs’ of the world [4].

The role of Nigeria in regional Peace keeping

Nigeria which since independence had been focusing on the need to preserve

her territorial integrity as well as those of her sister African States had also been

committed to world peace and justice. As such it had began to commit itself in

Peace Mission Operations since independence when in dispatched over 6,000 of its

troops to Congo under UNOC to help in brokering peace in newly independence

nation that plunged into political and militant crisis, first between 1959-1960 and

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then again in 1964. Ever since, till date Nigeria had partaken in over 30 other

peacekeeping operations in different troubled spots of the globe mostly under the

auspices of the United Nations. Some of these peacekeeping efforts includes; Indo-

Pakistan Observer Mission in 1965, Peacekeeping Operation in Lebanon, from

1978 to 1983, Chad Operation Harmony I and II in 1979 and 1981-1991

respectively, the United Nation Transition Assistance Group in Namibia from

1981-1990, United Nations Angola Verification Missions I, II, III, in 1989-1991,

1991-1992 and 1992-1995 respectively, United Nations Mission for Referendum I

in Western Sahara 1991, United Nations Iran-Kuwait Observer Mission in 1991

also. Then there was the 1991 United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo

following the disintegration of Yugoslavia, followed by the United Nations

Transitional Authority in Cambodia 1992-1993, then United Nations Operation in

Somalia I and II and also the United Nations Protection force in the former

Yugoslavia as well as the United Nations Operation in Mozambique all of which

took place from 1992 to 1999 [5]…

However, when in December 1989 a group of dissidents in Liberia began an

uprising, and it became apparent that the crisis may spill over to other parts of the

region, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) spearheaded

by Nigeria decided to sent its troops as a monitoring group known as the

ECOMOG to create a condition for a peaceful settlement of the crisis by creating a

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buffer zone in which only the ECOMOG forces can carry arm and every Liberian

could safely entered in the zone. The American electronic-encyclopedia,

Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD], had recorded the following (with some

modification by the researcher) regarding the West African regional peacekeeping

effort;

… the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), the rebel group led by Charles Taylor, with its ill-trained army of about 10,000 men, had within weeks over run much of the countryside. And then there was a split among the insurgents which only increased the violence as fighting continued into 1990. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) monitoring group (ECOMOG) sent as a peacekeeping force, initially failed to halt the fighting. Doe was however eventually captured and executed by a splinter group of the NPFL in September 1990.

The war spread through Liberia, as the NPFL battled ECOMOG, the Liberian army, their splinter group the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), and the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO), composed of former allies of Doe because the NPFL see ECOMOG force as a barrier to its goal of achieving power but by early

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1991, ECOMOG held Monrovia and the NPFL controlled the rest of the country. In October 1991 ECOWAS and the NPFL agreed to disarm and establish an Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU). The NPFL began to disarm in early 1992, but clashed with ECOMOG forces, and in August was attacked by ULIMO from Sierra Leone. In September the NPFL launched an all-out assault on ECOMOG forces in Monrovia, recruiting boys as young as eight to fight, and executing civilians who refused to join. The siege temporarily shut down all transportation in or out of the capital and killed thousands of civilians in the crossfire. ECOMOG succeeded in pushing the NPFL back into the countryside by January 1993. In the meantime, ULIMO had captured much of western Liberia, but had split along ethnic lines into two warring factions, ULIMO-J and ULIMO-K.

At a peace conference in July 1993 the leaders of IGNU, NPFL, and ULIMO-K drew up a plan for a Liberian National Transitional Government, led by a five-member Council of State consisting of one NPFL leader, one ULIMO-K member, one IGNU representative, and two other civilians. A cease-fire was implemented but progress towards lasting peace was hampered by the appearance of a new armed group, the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), and by the refusal of ULIMO-

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J to disarm. By mid-1994 the cease-fire had completely failed, and fighting raged between the LPC and the NPFL, between ULIMO-J and ULIMO-K, and between ULIMO-J and ECOMOG. The United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) was deployed to cooperate with ECOMOG in March. At this time the United States issued a report condemning widespread human-rights violations in Liberia.

The leaders of the factions secretly met in August 1994, and negotiated a timeline for disarmament and the institution of a Council of State based on the 1993 plan, but with six members. A cease-fire in December was interrupted by skirmishes until a formal peace accord was signed in August 1995. The peace was broken in April 1996 when an uprising by ULIMO-J in the outskirts of Monrovia quickly spread into the capital, sparking street-to-street fighting and looting. Another cease-fire was declared in August, and Monrovia was reclaimed by ECOMOG forces. In all, more than 150,000 Liberians died in the seven-year civil war, and well over 1 million people were displaced.

An ECOMOG disarmament program was initiated under the August 1996 peace agreement. Despite some minor skirmishes and an assassination attempt on Taylor, the disarmament proceeded relatively

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smoothly. ECOMOG forces cleared land mines and reopened the country’s roads, allowing refugees to begin returning from neighboring countries and humanitarian aid to reach the previously inaccessible interior. The disarmament program was declared a success in January 1997. Under considerable international scrutiny, presidential and legislative elections were held in July. Charles Taylor, the man who instigated the Liberian Civil War eight years earlier, was elected president by a landslide, and his political party, the National Patriotic Party, won a majority of seats in the National Assembly. The elections were judged free and fair by international election observers.

Taylor pledged to forge national reconciliation and appointed leaders of rival factions to various government positions. After the last ECOMOG forces withdrew from Liberia in 1999, however, Taylor’s security forces were criticized by international groups for alleged human rights abuses against members of the opposition. Beginning in 2000 government forces shut down several independent newspapers and radio stations.

In 2001 the UN imposed economic sanctions against Liberia for aiding rebel groups in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor’s administration also allegedly aided rebels in both

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Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. Taylor accused Guinea of supporting a new Liberian rebel group called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and retaliated with several attacks on Guinean border towns. LURD rebels gained control over significant amounts of northern Liberia by 2002, soon limiting Taylor’s authority to little more than Monrovia. After months of fighting and international pressure (notably from the United States), Taylor agreed to step down in August 2003 as part of an overall peace agreement, and he went into exile in Nigeria. A Special Court, jointly administered by the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government, later brought war crimes charges against Taylor, and in June 2007 he went on trial in The Hague (see War Crimes Trials). In October, Liberian businessman Charles Gyude Bryant was sworn in as Liberia’s new president, charged with overseeing a two-year power-sharing transitional government. The bicameral legislature was replaced temporarily by an interim National Transitional Legislative Assembly. Under the 2003 peace agreement, the United Nations Security Council formally established a peacekeeping force known as the UN Mission in Liberia.

In November 2005 elections Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an economist and longtime political dissident, was elected president. She became the first

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female head of state of an African nation. Elections were also held for the restored bicameral legislature. Johnson-Sirleaf defeated George Weah, a popular former soccer star, winning more than 59 percent of the vote [5]…

Based on the coated Encarta statements and the attached appendix, it

could be noticed that Nigeria had recorded a high casualty rate because it

went beyond the traditional peace-keeping operation by getting involved

actively in the conflict in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. This had proved

Ramesh Thakur’s statement cited in an article of a book titled ‘’History

unlimited’’ where he was coated as saying:

International peace keeping forces express and facilitate the erstwhile belligerents’ will to live in peace; they cannot supervise peace in conditions of war. Turning them into a fighting force erode international consensus on their function, encourages withdrawals by contributing contingents, converts them into a factional participant in the internal power struggle, and turns them into targets of attack from rival internal factions… [6]

In another dimension of the Nigerian regional peace efforts, it had

played a dominant role in some mediation of inter-state types of crisis, like

the boarder crisis between Liberia and Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Mali,

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and that of Togo and Ghana which Nigeria mediated peaceful settlement of

their disputes. These are some pointers to the Nigerian peace building roles.

Above all these however, is the Bakassi Peninsula dispute between Nigeria

and Cameroon which they inherited from their colonial rulers (Britain and

Germany respectively) before to the First World War, in spectacular example

Nigeria, respected a World Court verdict when it gives the disputed area to

Cameroon, as an extreme restraint of the Nigerian authorities and a show of

the Nigerian supreme quest for peace [7].

An appraisal

Nigeria is the single largest contributor to the ECOWAS’ ECOMOG

effort in that crisis. It is estimated that in addition to thousands of lives lost,

Nigeria has spent more than $US 14 billion [8]. Nigerian interest in this crisis

could be to prevent a spillover of the crisis into Nigeria itself or at least create

a situation that can keep as many as the Liberian people in Liberia as possible

because already by the time the peace keeping assignment commenced,

thousands of Liberian refugees were trooping out into the neighboring states,

yet the driving force that gives Nigeria the confidence to try what it does was

the petro-economic buoyancy it has especially coming from the oil windfall

that resulted from the Gulf War period. Nigeria wants the international

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community recognized her as a regional power which is good for her economy

and diplomacy.

Nigerian Government had some indirect financial gains from this type

of peacekeeping operation especially when the United Nations are involved, it

is said that for every $US 100 the UN gives to a soldier, that Nigerian

government usually retained $US 60 and give the soldier $US 40, although

the remaining will be given to the soldier later.ton return. Because of that it is

common to see soldiers building houses and possessing car on return from

such peace mission operation. Another important aspect of this regional peace

keeping is that the operation due to the close proximity of the trouble spot

with the home base of the troops usually served as an eye opener to some

business minded individuals who may after retirement usually involved

themselves in some sort of business ventures across the sub-region.

Again nothing is without its peculiar problems, as such, some of the

problem associated with this type of assignments includes language barrier,

lack of adequate equipments like helicopters and some kinds of specialized

equipments. Other problems identified include organizational problems which

can sometimes be very costly in terms of lives and even materials. For

instance, reference to the appendix, there use to be cases which un-

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identification of fellow soldiers that went to help or reinforced their follows in

combat zones led to the situation in which those who went as reinforcement

get mistakenly killed by the same people they went to help just because there

was no proper communication between them.

Conclusion

In conclusion to this work, the researcher wish to point out that

although some critics of this Nigerian international peace keeping roles were

of the view that Nigerian is in the overall view of the whole exercise not

actually economically gaining but loosing as such Nigeria should shy away

from that type of sacrificial assignments. However that notwithstanding the

researcher is of the view that this Nigerian supreme sacrifice in both human

and material coast, is in the overall good of the nation. The pack that Nigerian

intervention had saved lives and restored established order is in its self a great

service to humanity and thus a moral gain which earn it respect and even

sympathy now that the country is having its own internal conflict.

It also gives Nigeria respect in the eyes of the international community

and attracts some indirect economic gains in the form of United Nations’

appointments or even reconstructions contracts from the troubled nation

concerned.

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Notes

1. Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004. p.282.

2. Ibid, p. 283.

3. Encarta Dictionaries, 2009.

4. Christine Gray, International Law and the Use of Force, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004. p.282.

5. "Liberia." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft

Corporation, 2008.

6. Celestine O. Bassey "Nigeria and challenges of peace support operations in

Africa" in Professor Adednego Ekoko (ed.), History unlimited, Benin City:

Mindex Publishing, 2021, p. 112

7. Bola Akinterinwa, Nigeria New Foreign Policy Trust: Essays in Honour of

Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji, Ibadan: Vantage Publishers, 2004.

8. Kelechi Johnmary Ani, "Nigeria and the Need for Economic-Driven

Strategic Peace-Keeping Operations" in Ojong Ecum Tangban and

Chukwuma C.C. Osakwe (ed.) Perspective in African Historical Studies,:

Essays in Honour of Professor Ubah, Kaduna: NDA Press, 2013, p. 193

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