From Chagos to Greenland to Nigeria: Modern Colonialism, Strategic Sovereignty, and Constitutional Lessons for Post-Colonial States

Abstract

This paper integrates historical, anthropological, and legal scholarship on Chagos to illustrate that contemporary colonialism endures not through formal empire, but through strategic security arrangements and legal fragmentation. It places recent political actions, especially Kemi Badenoch's opposition to the UK-Mauritius settlement and Donald Trump's proposal for Greenland, within a larger trend of "transactional sovereignty. The Chagos Archipelago conflict exemplifies the adaptation of colonial authority to modern international law via territorial separation, population displacement, executive exceptionalism, and technocratic administration. The paper conducts a comparative analysis of Nigeria as a former British colony, deriving constitutional insights related to land tenure, federalism, mineral ownership, and security governance as established by the 1999 Constitution. It contends that Chagos serves as a jurisprudential caution for Nigeria: when security discourses overshadow community rights and elite negotiations supplant participatory governance, colonial dynamics resurface in novel legal frameworks. The paper concludes that sovereignty in the modern world order must be redefined not merely as territorial control, but as constitutional accountability to the populace.