RELIGIOUS FANATICISM, POLITICAL EXTREMISM AND THE QUESTION OF DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

Résumé

An ethic of civic virtues or ideals together with religious precepts thoroughly grounded in the citizenry is the foundation for growing democracy. That is to say a set of ideals shared or subscribed to by the nation, and to which its members have committed themselves. Scholars have shown that the practice of democracy in Nigeria lack this kind of commitment resulting to the appearance of religious fanaticism and political extremism alongside social intolerance and leadership/followership conundrum. So, there was need to interrogate the idea of morality and religious beliefs in the formulation of the desired foundation for the practice of true democracy in Nigeria. To do this, the paper employed documentation method to collect data. Secondary data were sourced from published works on religious fanaticism, political extremism and democracy in Nigeria and elsewhere. Data were contently, historically, philosophically and comparatively analyzed. Therefore, the paper submits that the God-oriented religio-moral approach is urgently needed to revive the commitment of Nigerians to our nascent democracy in accordance with standard practices all over the world.