INVESTIGATING THE FOUNDATIONAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND MORALITY: A NIGERIAN PERSPECTIVE

Résumé

The issue of moral decadence in both our private and public life in Nigeria is no longer news. Everyone knows it and perhaps everyone decries it. Typical of the African, instead of an informed intelligent discussion on the causes of such moral decadence and informed practical solutions to it, Nigerians, led by their religious leaders, Christians and non-Christians alike, take recourse to praying and conjuring religion to come to our aid as if religion has a magic wand for guaranteeing morality not to talk of restoring one that is lost. This article goes to examine the underlying presumption in this prevailing attitude, that of a foundational relationship between morality and religion and the consequent expectation that religion should or ought to guarantee morality and to curb such moral decadence when and where it manifests itself. The verdict of this investigation is that both the assumption namely that morality is necessarily founded on religion, and the expectation namely that religion should therefore guarantee morality are grossly unfounded and misguided.