THE CONCEPT OF SOVEREIGNTY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: ISSUES CHALLENGES AND LESSONS FOR NIGERIA

New trends and innovations in modern communications and commerce have dealt a great blow on the political boundaries of states otherwisereferred to as Sovereignty. Sovereign equality presupposes that eachstate enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty. This seems to be the basic principle of international law equally recognized by the United Nations. Sovereignty is the central pillar of the contemporary international system. No wonder, within the United Nations (UN) itself, sovereignty is not regarded as an obstacle to the maintenance of peace or the protection of human dignity. The lowest common denominator envisaged by this opening paragraph is that sovereignty is the basic principle of relations between states thus promoting non intervention, sovereign equality, inviolability of frontiers and the possibility of peaceful change. There is no doubt that, while respect has been accorded independent states particularly in the area of non intervention in their domestic affairs, new issues have continued to emerge in international law and that is the area of human rights protection. Thus human rights has made a significant impact on international law. More recently, allegations of the possession of weapons of mass destruction, protection of democracy amongst others have variously been listed as grounds upon which the sovereignty of a state was tempered with. These new issues have no closed category and have variously threatened emerging states of its survival as this concept no longer possesses the limitations which it earlier had. More also civil unrest’s and factional fighting as in the case of Liberia, Si