Machiavellian Philosophy of Wealth Acquisition in Contemporary Nigeria: A Critique
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper argues in defence of the thesis that the Machiavellian principle of the “the end justifies the means” is the philosophical basis of wealth acquisition for some Nigerians. The paper strongly argues that the philosophy of wealth acquisition currently in vogue for some Nigerians today is the philosophy of “steal and grow rich but don’t be caught” and maintains that this is a direct offshoot of the Machiavellian principle of “the end justifies the means”, where the end is made a justification of any means to the end in question. Our paper argues that the Machiavellian philosophy of wealth acquisition is the bedrock on which corruption (the cankerworm that has eaten deep into the socio-economic fabrics of Nigeria) is built. This is so because the principle of “steal and grow rich but don’t be caught” which is a reformulation of the Machiavellian principle of “the end justifies the means” strongly propels the actions of corrupt Nigerians. This Machiavellian philosophy, our paper insists, makes some Nigerians to think that it is almost impossible for anyone to acquire wealth in Nigeria today without getting involved in one shady deal or another. As a result of this Machiavellian philosophy of wealth acquisition, some Nigerians today believe that moral uprightness and wealth acquisition are two parallel lines that can never meet. Consequently, in their distorted opinion, those who want to be morally upright must give up the ambition of becoming wealthy because, according to them, it is for the corrupt. And those who want to be wealthy must give up the possibility of moral uprightness because, according to them, it does not promote wealth. Our paper strongly argues for a total rejection of the Machiavellian philosophy of wealth acquisition. In its place, the paper emphasizes and recommends principles for the acquisition of morally upright wealth in Nigeria. Key words: Philosophy; Wealth Acquisition; Nigeria
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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 | 0.006 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| 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".