European Journal of Social Sciences ISSN 1450-2267 Vol. 58 No 3 September, 2019, pp.211-222 http://www.europeanjournalofsocialsciences.com/ 211 From Civilization to the Dark Ages: Addressing Violation of Human Rights in Northeast Nigeria Eteete Michael ADAM Faculty of Law and Security Services Babcock University Goodnews OSAH Department of Political Science and Public Administration Babcock University David Oladimeji ALAO Department of Political Science and Public Administration Babcock University Abstract The landscape of our world today has been badly altered by acts of terrorism. The utility of violence to create a state of fear and a sense of insecurity has occasioned gross abuse of both public and private human rights. Unfortunately, there is a seeming helplessness of the legislative regulatory instrument in Nigeria. The objectives of this study are to examine the regime of existing national and international laws affecting deployment of terror; and to investigate how best to reinvent the extant regime of law for the purpose of addressing the violent violations of human rights in north-eastern Nigeria. This study addresses questions such as, what are the contributing factors to the seeming impotence of the existing legal regime to effectively combat the current social crisis in northern Nigeria? In what ways have social injustice, educational imbalance, inequilibrium of access to economic resources and a high index of youth unemployment contributed to the challenge of insecurity in north-eastern Nigeria? The methodology adopted is purely qualitative. The study found that these atavistic occurrences represent a regression from the advancement of civilization and sadly a plunge back into the unwanted era of the dark ages of global history. It concluded restructuring of the federation, free education and payment of social security to the marginalized will bring a reversal and tranquility to the Nigerian state. Keywords: Terrorism, Extremism, Human Rights, National Security, International Law regime Introduction The world is changing at a faster pace than ever in human history and the turbulent mixture of evolution and revolution is dramatically evident everywhere in the world. Violence and terrorism has been forced to become part of the day to day vocabulary of the social, cultural, economic and political global contemporary milieu (Crenshaw, 1981). The world today is puzzled at the unprecedented and almost atavistic upsurge in the use of terror as a method of retaliating for social, economic, religious and political disagreements and injustices whether real or imagined. Thus, scholars in the realm of international law, politics and international relations are disturbed by the growing menace of terrorism