Kehinde Olorunwa Amosu

Individual rights in African communitarian thinking are regarded as compatible with African moral and political reality. This assumption is predicated upon the idea that African societies are basically communitarian with justification for collective rights. As such it does not recognize nor accommodate individualistic claims to rights and liberty. This inherent communitarian value neither guarantees nor safeguards individual rights, though it argues that rights are protected in the notion of human dignity and conception of human nature in African communitarian theory. The idea of collective rights as separate from individual rights is of philosophical interests. Individual rights are subsumed and attributable to the collective to the extent that it seems possible to assume that there are no such things as individual rights. This idea of collective rights as distinct and separate from individual rights is of philosophical interest. Thus, this article argues that a moral and political philosophy that prioritizes individual rights over collective or group rights would better guarantee and safeguard collective rights. This approach makes it easier to attend to issues which may be wrongly presented. Reducing rights to rights of individual members of a community or group also gives room for better explanation of collective or group rights as the aggregate of individual rights. The individual seen as integral part of the whole informs the collective or group rights necessary for peace and justice in modern African societies.

The principles and praxis of democracy involve not merely constitutional provisions or legal framework enumerating the procedures for leadership recruitment, power relations and role distributions, but also protection of salient social and political values. These values would include appropriate notion of public office (obligation and responsibilities), rule of law, and the matrix of leadership-followership relationship and so on. Arguably, the concept of western democracy as it is being practised in most new African states is bedevilled with several grave anomalies which can be traced to what we may describe as incongruities or contradictions in the ethico-cultural dimensions of enabling democratic environment. Thus, we may have to examine whether the principles and practice of Western "liberal" democracy in Africa do not involve spoliation of some fundamental principles of traditional African political value system, which also reveals the dilemma of assimilating the tenets of democracy to at least give a semblance of these tenets in the political experience and democratic process of postcolonial African societies. This paper asserts that the successful entrenchment of democracy and good governance in Africa lies in a constructive discourse of both the past and present in African political history.

This paper hypothesizes an uncommon idea of justice for the Rohingyas using Igor Primoratz‘s notion of moral disaster. The objective of this paper is to reject Primoratz‘s moral disaster which justifies terrorism as a response in situations like that of the Rohingyas. Primoratz in his ethics of terrorism conceptualised as moral disaster argues that terrorism can be justified if there is a threat of extermination or ethnic cleansing of a people. The Rohingyas have no doubt faced threats of extermination and ethnic cleansing from the Myanmar State and could be(using the view of Primoratz) justified, if they resort to terrorism. The paper argues that Primoratz‘s moral disaster has weighty theoretical and practical costs just as it is imbued with ideas that engender a state of persistent insecurity by emboldening non-state agents interrorism. In the contemporary state of global insecurity, concerted attempts ought to be made to stem the blight of terrorism from all quarters rather than seek avenues to justify terrorism as Primoratz‘s conception presages.

This paper shows that African identity cannot be treated in isolation; it requires the acknowledgement of both the eurocentric and Afrocentric idea by virtue of Asouzu's transcendental existential conversion. The eurocentrist holds that European race is superior to other races on the basis of ethnocentric thinking and others ; on the other hand, the Afrocentric scholars defended their identity on the basis of ethnocentric thinking and others. While both the eurocentric and Afrocentric scholars commit the fallacy of dogma by virtue of their conservative ideas of identity, Asouzu's transcendental existential conversion establishes a complementarity idea to show inconsistency in the ethnocentric tendencies in the eurocentric and afrocentric scholars‘ thinking. The paper, therefore, argues that there is a need to resituate the thinking of the Africans through Asouzu's transcendental existential conversion, which involves seeing reality through the means of missing links of reality rather than as absolute mode of existence; for every being is a missing link that serves other missing links in a complementary mode of existence.

This chapter critically exposes and evaluates the social problem of sexual harassment in Nigerian tertiary institutions from an ethical perspective. It argues that sexual harassment is a social problem, which if not given serious ethical examination will sooner than later become a normalized institution in Nigerian citadels of learning. From the standpoint of Applied Ethics, the chapter exposes the problem of sexual harassment in its various dimensions and its causative factors in Nigerian tertiary institutions. It conceptually analyzes the intricacies involved in the act of sexual harassment and critically evaluates its moral justification using egoism, utilitarianism, deontologism and principlism. The findings of the chapter reveal that sexual harassment is a perverse and grotesque display of immorality in teachers/non teachers to learners' relationships, students to students' relationships and in the patriarchy structure of the Nigerian educational system. The chapter establishes that sexual harassment does not respect the right, freedom and dignity of the victims; it fosters injustice in educational assessment and human relationships; it stifles effective learning and destroys academic ingenuity and creativity; and it reinforces oppression and hostility in the academic environment, which consequently spills over to the larger society.

The morality of human action has come under serious assessment from scholars far and wide. There is not a doubt that the morality of human action is a very serious issue and has generated different positions. The central task of this paper is to address the origin, nature and foundation of morality of human action from the African perspective. It is argued here that humanism is actually the springboard of the morality of human actions as opposed to other areas of research that believes that it is religion. This does not rule out the fact that ontology also plays a very crucial role in the assessment of human actions. This paper submits that both ontology and humanism serve as the foundations for assessing the morality of human actions from the African perspective, and peculiar to them is "communal consequentialism," which considers the collective consequences of actions irrespective of the initiator of the actiions, for there exist a causal relation built on a communitarian existence, connecting all lives in the universe. In approaching the set goal, critical exposition and analysis would be employed as our methodology.

This study explores the issues and prospects which emerged, following the activities of the youths in the last general elections in Nigeria and Lagos State in particular in February 2023. The T political atmosphere of Lagos politics was confronted with a shift in paradigm which saw youths actively involved in the transition of power thereby bringing in a 'third force' in the history of political transition of the state. The study examines the challenges of social justice and political inclusion agitated by the youths as a vital force, which led to youth agitation. It is on the basis of search for accountability and good governance that this study through the methods of quantitative and qualitative analyses involving the use of questionnaire and oral interview to engage 2500 students across the Lagos State University, Ojo and Epe campuses; Lagos State University of Technology, Ikorodu Campus; and Lagos State University of Education, Ijanikin and Epe Campuses respectively, in January 2024. The research aimed at showing the motive behind the youth activism and rigorous participation in the transition process, which was discovered not to be based on political hooliganism and aggrandizement, but a genuine agitation for social justice and better accountability in governance. This study ultimately recommends the utilization of the vibrancy of youths in contemporary knowledge and technological advancement at various levels of policy and decision making to ensure a better society.

The fundamental issues that prompted the postulations of Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism are a result of the persistent tension between the individual's agitation for the assertion of his rights and expression of his interests on the one hand and the community’s demand for conformity to its values and authority on the other. In the course of finding ways to address the inherent tensions in the relationship between the individual and community, which were not adequately addressed by various theories of individualism and communitarianism in their extreme forms. Kwame Gyekye proposes Moderate Communitarianism as a theory for balancing the extremist and absolutist positions held in the various theories before it. However, this paper finds Kwame Gyekye’s theory inadequate for balancing the conflict between the individual and the community. Though it argues for equal moral balancing of individual rights and the common good. He was unable to follow the logic of his position to the end. It is against this backdrop that this paper aims to reconstruct Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism using cultural dialectics as a framework for resolving the conflict of interests and responsibility respectively. The paper adopts conceptual and critical analysis as a method of approaching the issues raised in thework. This reconstruction is significant for affirming the possibility of harmony and peaceful coexistence among people with or without similar cultural orientations and also for evaluating the problems arising in the course of individuals' quest for liberty and its expressions.