Core Social Values in Governance and Politics

Abstract

For years, decades and generations, people have wondered how negative values like racism, anti-semitism, religious phobia and cultural disagreements crept into national politics and governmental policies.  How did the United States of America [USA] and Britain build the infrastructure of race and denial of opportunities into the architecture of governance [against people of color]?  How did the Islamic nations of the far middle east, Asia and North Africa build pervasive, corrosive and hostile anti-West sentiments into the structure of their respective nation-states? Pundits and analysts have attempted, through behavioural theories and neo-observationist paradigms to explain the infiltration of societal sentiments and core values of leaders into the politics and governance of nations.  In this write-up, we shall attempt to show how the dominant Fulani values, the Yoruba egalitarianism and the Igbo republican beliefs found expression in the politics and governance of Nigeria.  This paper also devoted some time to other nations and climes where similar observations have been made.  The archival and library documents from erstwhile regional governments of the past together with the cinematic and photographic evidence of the 1^st republic in Nigeria provided abundant evidence for the conclusion herein.  Nnamdi Azikwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Aminu Kano all typified the core values of their respective ethnic groups and each of them carried such values into politics and governance. However, such core values are not common among the new breed politicians, thus, this paper recommends good values of discipline, honesty, integrity, transparency, justice, e.t.c, among the present political class.

Keywords: Core values, Societal sentiments, Dominant culture, Governance and Politics.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-23-03

Publication date: December 31^st 2021