JOHN RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRAISAL

Résumé

Two major cardinal principles of democracy are liberty and equality and every genuine and authentic democracy promotes these two eternal norms or ideals. John Rawls, the 20th century American philosopher espoused these cardinal principles in his unique conception of justice, a conception he uniquely coined “justice as fairness” which greatly coveys the indubitable truth that the principles of justice as the basic structure and pivot of society are determined in an original setting or situation of liberty and equality. Through his theory of justice, Rawls made concerted efforts to resolve the arduous challenges of distributive and social justice which craved and clamored for the fair and equitable distribution of goods and services in the society. This paper philosophically appraises John Rawls theory of justice and tries to show its relevance to contemporary Nigerian democracy, a democracy that has been bedeviled by numerous challenges of various proportions and magnitudes. The paper posits that Rawls theory of justice can copiously be incorporated and mainstreamed into contemporary Nigerian democracy to give it a humane and humanistic face for the overall benefit of the citizenry.