Religion, Politics and Democracy in Nigeria
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The conflict between religion and politics in Nigeria is older than the Nigerian state. Religion formed the basis upon which the Fulanis invaded the Hausa homelands and established the Sokoto Caliphate. It also served as a forerunner of colonialism from the coast as it paved the way for the British to overrun the southern coastlands, exploit its economic resources, abolished the peoples’ traditions and socio-cultural practices, and implanted Christianity. Nigerians therefore became religious before their unification into the modern Nigerian state in 1914 by the British. One way or the other, people do seek meaning in life, a sense of purpose that politics cannot adequately provide but can be provided by religion. However, religion itself cannot provide the organizing mechanism through which the society can deal with the perennial issues of power and the need to adapt to changing circumstances. This paper therefore examines how religious practices have endangered the development of democracy in Nigeria. It finds out that the multiplicity of ethnic groups in the country gives rise to social conflicts over resources, and that these social conflicts are cloaked under religion; and that religion is used as an instrument of internal colonization and disenfranchisement in Nigeria; and these have militated against the development and consolidation of democracy in the country which if unchecked would lead to the disintegration of the country. The paper therefore recommends the secularization of the state to guarantee the institutionalization of democratic practices in the country; and; guarantee fundamental rights of the citizens and the independence of and the survival of the state. Key words: Religion; Politics; Democracy; Religious fundamentalist; Ethnicity; National question; Contending elites; Dominant elites; Political financier; Political client
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".