CHAPTER ONE
1.1       Introduction
“Globalization represents the reality that we live in a time when the walls of sovereignty are no protection against the movements of capital, labour, information and ideas nor can they provide effective protection against harm and damage” (Higgins, 1999).
This declaration by judge Rosalyn Higgins, the former president of the International Court of justice, presents the contraventional wisdom about the future of global governance. Many view globalization as a reality that will erode or even eliminate the sovereignty of nation-states.
The typical account points to at least three ways that globalization has affected sovereignty. First, the rise of international trade and capital markets has interfaced with the ability of nation-states to control their domestic economies.
Second, nation-states have responded by delegating authority to international organizations. Thirdly, a “new” international law, generated in part by these
organizations, has placed limitations on the independent conduct of domestic policies.
This development has placed Nigerian sovereignty under serious pressure. But the decline of national sovereignty is neither inevitable nor obviously desirable, Nation-states (Nigeria) maintain the current world order.
Sovereignty allows nation-state to protect democratic decision-making and individual liberties or international cooperation.
The new international law, the rise of international trade & capital market, the power of international organizations forced Nigerian sovereignty to cooperate and obey the principles of globalization.
In fact, over the past decades, globalization has become an ubiquitous term in as wide-range of academic and popular discourses.
It is a concept that ha snow been used to describe almost every aspect of contemporary life, from the complicated machinations of contemporary capitalist, to the erosion of the nation-state system and the rise of
international organizations and cooperation, to the threat posed by global culture to the local culture and tradition to the communications revolutions introduced by the new technologies such as the internet, the terms seems to capture a genuine sense of the changes that have transformed the world.
It is important to emphasize that globalization though refers to the present but it is imperative to highlight that the phenomena it describes are hardly new. For instance, there has been discussion about the possibility of a global economic order or system, a world culture or a world literature.