Owuzonoyen Felicia Ebeigbe

Nigeria has been proclaimed a federation. A cursory study of the constitutional provisions shows that it has been aptly described as such. Many have attempted to posit that Nigeria does not practice Federalism in the true sense of the meaning of federalism. However, others have argued that federalism is unique to the country practicing it as there is what is known as American Federalism different from the Swiss Federalism or German Federalism. Thus, they described the type of federalism practiced by Nigeria as Nigerian federalism. As much as we have tried to agree with the latter opinion that Nigeria practices federalism, however, we believe that there are constitutional errors in the structure of the federalism practiced in Nigeria. These errors could be traced to the history of Nigeria’s federalism and the influence of her colonial master’s form or structure of governance passed down or inherited. These errors, unfortunately, has been deeply entrenched.

The world has witnessed series of international armed conflicts and non-international armed conflicts which has resulted in the commission of international crimes against humanity by both state actors and non-state actors in the waging of such wars. Most heinous crimes have been committed by such actors dating back to First World War (WWI), Second World War (WWII) and other conflicts like the Yugoslavia and Rwanda to mention a few. Efforts have been made by world leaders to address the occurrence of such crimes by setting up ad-hoc tribunals at various times to bring perpetrators of such international crimes to justice. In order to permanently address this scourge, world leaders in 1998 adopted the Rome Statute leading to the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over such crimes instituted by the Statute in order to bring individual perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice. The Court exercising its jurisdiction has been confronted with challenges that is capable of impeding its relevance to combat international crimes such as its jurisdiction, issue of bias against the Court by some state parties leading to the withdrawal of such state parties from the Statute, refusal of super world powers like the United Nations Security Council permanent members to accede to and ratify the Statute. This paper attempts to examine the significance and challenges confronting the ICC from performing maximally and it shall recommend ones that will make the ICC to be of relevance to the overall development of the society in order to have a society where the rights of humankind are not trampled upon with impunity such as enforcing national justice systems to fully participate in the investigation and prosecution of cases while ICC mainly focus on technical assistance and provisions of additional mechanisms to States to enhance complementarity and cooperation.