Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations: Building the Record of a Moral Superpower.

• Author: Ruth, Christian
• Position: AFRICA - Book review

Aka, Philip C. Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations: Building the Record of a Moral Superpower. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017.

Philip C. Aka's Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations is an attempt to chart a course for the future of one of Africa's most important nations. As Aka explains, while Nigeria vies for the top spot economically and politically on the continent, it suffers from a dizzying array of internal problems that hold it back from achieving further greatness. The solution that Aka offers is centered on human rights, which he claims offers avenues to correct many of the systemic issues that plague the nation-building process in Nigeria. Aka, a professor of political science, has developed a comprehensive theoretical framework to bring about substantive change in Nigeria by using human rights as his guiding star.

Aka creates what he calls a "temple" of Nigeria's human rights foreign policy, a simple methodological construct that organizes the...