Enforced Disappearances in Nigeria: Toward a Domestic Legal Framework and Accountability Architecture

This doctoral research examines enforced disappearances in Nigeria as a distinct and severely underaddressed category of human rights violation, developing an original domestic legal framework and accountability architecture for prevention, investigation, and remedy. Enforced disappearances, defined by the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) as the arrest or detention of persons by state agents followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or to disclose their fate, have been extensively documented in Nigeria in connection with counter-insurgency operations, police detention practices, and politically motivated abductions. Nigeria has not ratified the ICPPED, and domestic law contains no specific offence of enforced disappearance, creating a near-total legal vacuum. The research employs a doctrinal methodology that constructs an original legal framework by synthesizing the ICPPED's definitional and accountability standards, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence on enforced disappearances (the richest global body of relevant case law), and comparative national legislation from Argentina, Colombia, and Spain. Empirical data from NEMA, Amnesty International, and families-of-the-disappeared civil society groups in Borno, Katsina, and Imo states document the scale and pattern of disappearances in Nigeria. The dissertation proposes an original Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Accountability Act for Nigeria, incorporating a national register of detainees, a specialized investigation commission, civil liability provisions, and ratification of the ICPPED. Keywords: enforced disappearances, ICPPED, accountability, domestic law framework, Nigeria.