Humanitarianism is crooked timber. I appropriate Immanuel Kant’s famous observation about humanity, later popularised by Isaiah Berlin, that “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Kant was wary of idealism but still believed in the possibility of moral progress. Berlin, writing in the long shadow of 20th-century utopias that produced immense cruelty, used the phrase to defend a vision of community that respects human dignity without pretending that perfection is possible. Few ideas capture the moral ambiguity of modern humanitarianism better.
Nowhere is this crookedness more visible than in contemporary conflict zones, where compassion and calculation walk side by side. In Nigeria, humanitarian action has become entangled with insurgency, counterinsurgency, and political economy. What began as emergency relief in response to Boko Haram’s/ISWAP devastation in the Northeast has gradually morphed into a permanent feature of governance, security, and survival. Aid no longer merely follows crisis; it shapes it.
Over the years, Nigeria has attracted a dense ecosystem of humanitarian actors: UN agencies, international NGOs, local organisations, donors, consultants, and contractors. Their presence has saved lives, no doubt. Millions would not have survived without food aid, health services, and shelter. Yet alongside this life-saving role has emerged a troubling narrative: that the continuous flow of humanitarian assistance, combined with massive defence spending, has created perverse incentives that make insecurity profitable.
This is not an abstract accusation. Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State has repeatedly raised concerns about the operations of humanitarian organisations in insurgency-affected areas. In 2021, his government restricted certain NGO activities in newly resettled communities, arguing that prolonged aid was entrenching dependency rather than rebuilding self-reliance. By February 2024, he went further, questioning the activities of over 250 NGOs operating in the state and alleging that some had indirectly exacerbated insecurity, including claims that were highly contentious about services rendered to wounded insurgents who had not surrendered.
Whether one accepts or disputes these claims, they reveal something deeper: humanitarianism in Nigeria is no longer seen as neutral. It is perceived as political, implicated, and contested. Aid workers are no longer just helpers; they are actors in a crowded field of power, suspicion, and survival.
This is not unique to Nigeria. History offers grim reminders.
In Bosnia and Rwanda, neutrality and independence—the core principles of humanitarian action were later condemned as excuses for inaction. The very principles designed to save lives appeared to enable mass death. Even Médecins Sans Frontières, long committed to separating humanitarianism from military intervention, supported armed intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide. In moments like these, humanitarianism’s moral compass wobbles. Doing nothing becomes a choice. Doing something becomes political.
Once the war ends or stalls, another dilemma emerges. Should humanitarians pack their bags and move to the next crisis, leaving survivors with a final ration and polite goodbyes? Increasingly, the answer has been no. Aid agencies have expanded into post-conflict reconstruction, governance reform, human rights advocacy, democracy promotion, and peacebuilding. What was once taboo, engaging politics has become routine.
This expansion has consequences. Humanitarian organisations now exercise power. They shape institutions, influence policy priorities, and sometimes substitute for weak states. In Nigeria’s North-East, humanitarian actors provide services that government agencies struggle to deliver, blurring the line between emergency relief and parallel governance. The state becomes both partner and bystander. Citizens are helped, but also subtly repositioned, not as rights-bearing political subjects, but as beneficiaries.
Michael Barnett describes this evolution as humanitarianism’s turn from saving lives to governing lives. The question it raises is uncomfortable: did humanitarianism humanise politics, or did politics quietly capture humanitarianism? Aid agencies now reach more people, in more places, in more ways than ever before. But states fund this work not purely out of moral awakening; they do so because it serves strategic, security, and reputational interests.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan or even Ukraine made this painfully clear. Humanitarian aid was openly folded into military strategy. Neutrality collapsed. Independence became conditional. Many aid workers later described this as a Faustian bargain: access purchased at the cost of credibility. Humanitarianism, once imagined as standing above politics, was revealed as deeply embedded within it.
Nigeria sits uneasily within this global story. The insurgency economy, fuelled by defence contracts, aid flows, and emergency budgets, creates winners alongside victims. In such a landscape, humanitarianism risks becoming part of the problem it seeks to solve. Prolonged emergencies justify prolonged interventions. Crises become routinised. Temporality hardens into permanence.
Yet to dismiss humanitarianism entirely would be both unfair and dangerous. To paraphrase James Madison, we live in a world of devils, not angels. Humanitarians must get their hands dirty. They must make compromises. They must operate in imperfect systems with imperfect tools. The perfect, as the saying goes, must never become the enemy of the good.
Humanitarian organisations survive in a marketplace of attention. They must tell compelling stories, mobilise haunting images, and sometimes “profit” from suffering—not for greed, but because donations follow emotion. Good intentions alone do not save lives. Logistics do. Funding does. Access does.
The problem, then, is not humanitarianism itself, but the crooked world it inhabits. A world where aid is needed because politics has failed; where relief substitutes for justice, where emergency becomes normal. The danger lies in forgetting this crookedness, pretending that humanitarian action can be clean, apolitical, or morally pure.
Nigeria’s challenge is not to reject humanitarianism, but to interrogate it honestly. Who benefits from a prolonged crisis? Who defines success? When does aid empower, and when does it pacify? At what point does saving lives today undermine building peace tomorrow?
Out of crooked timber, no straight thing was ever made. But that does not absolve us from trying to build better structures; ones that acknowledge imperfection, confront power, and refuse comforting illusions. Humanitarianism must remain humble about what it can achieve, vigilant about what it enables, and honest about the politics it cannot escape.
Taoheed Dauda is a MasterCard Foundation Scholar at the University of Edinburgh
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