PHILOSOPHY, THE CHURCH AND QUEST FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC LIBERATION IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Nigeria as a nation is plagued by a lot of socioeconomic challenges, including poverty, unemployment, ethnicity, youth restiveness, terrorism, secessionist agitations, electoral fraud, political injustice, sectionalism, insecurity and militancy. Many scholars have invested great amount of energy attempting to work out how these problems can be resolved. This study is one of these attempts; it used philosophy as a midwife for the church to realize her potentials as an institution. Particularly, the study adopts the historical method of documentary analysis to investigate the possible roles the Church/Christianity in Nigeria can play to achieve socioeconomic liberation for the country. This was based on the philosophical assumption that the Church has a radical potency and capacity for confronting and transforming unjust social order. To this end, the paper discovered that at the center of Nigeria‘s socioeconomic problem is the failure of leadership and as such any effort to liberate the country from its present condition must be political in nature. However, maintaining the ecclesiastical paradigm that the Church as a body should not get herself involved in partisan political activism, the paper outlined some possible functions by which the Church in Nigeria can contribute immensely towards the desired liberation. These included prophetic denunciation of the oppressive mechanism; promoting programs of raising social consciousness among the masses; practical alleviation of the conditions of the oppressed masses; peace building through positive reconciliation of the oppressed and oppressive members; and personal conversion of the ordinary man. The paper concluded that a combination of the task of spiritual and social liberation enhances the Church, more than any other institution, to influence the socioeconomic life of the Nigerians.