Democratizing Nigerian Polity Through Popper’s Critical Philosophy

by Open Science Repository Philosophy
(February 2015)

Abstract

The political history of Nigeria can be characterized as the history of the country’s tortuous attempts at democratic governance since her independence in 1960. It is against this backdrop that the country has often been described as a fledgling democracy. To graduate from a fledgling democracy to a stable democracy, Nigeria needs to democratize all her institutional processes and practices. Popper’s critical philosophy is recommended as a recipe to Nigeria’s floundering attempts at democracy because it presents the most powerful theoretical justification of the case for freedom and democracy ever made. The upshot of Popper’s critical philosophy is that all knowledge is tentative and should be held undogmatically, giving room for improvement. This is evidently the intellectual counterpart of what is, in the practical sphere, the outlook of liberalism or democracy in the pristine, strict sense of the term. It is hoped that the lofty and liberal values espoused by Popper’s critical philosophy should be imbibed by Nigerian policy makers and executors in particular and Nigerian citizenry in general.

Keywords: Nigeria, Democracy, Philosophy, Polity, Criticism.

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Democratizing Nigerian Polity Through Popper’s Critical Philosophy