In 1948, the United Nations Organization (UNO) adopted a convention known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Declaration are incorporated in the constitutions of UNO member countries. Nigeria is not an exception.

Nationalism in the African context may be defined as the struggles by Africans to free themselves from foreign rule, and to determine, after independence has been won, their own future. In the period before the Second World War, nationalism was aimed at resolving certain grievances of the elites.