AMAMIHE Journal of Applied Philosophy

Oftentimes, the clashes between State authority and the natural right of citizens to assert themselves in their individual and group rights to economic aggrandizement seem to oppose the legal bounds of both State and citizen. In Nigeria, the clamour for resource control seems to fit into the natural logic of indigenous rights to ownership of land and its natural reserves, but also contests the constitutional and legal authority of the State to superintend the affairs of all citizens and ensure social and distributive justice for all. The problem does not lie in the inability of the state and citizens to attain the same goals through organized and legitimate means of fair distribution via well-established socioeconomic institutions and policies, but on the continued manipulation of the process by a few political and capitalist-oriented elites who, through corrupt means, systematically deprive the populace of their economic benefits as bona fide members of the society. It is due to this failure of the State to guarantee individual and group economic rights that Nozick was spurred to insist on minimal State authority. Featuring specifically the continued agitation of some Southern states of Nigeria to be allowed to control their own natural resources, this piece adopts Nozick’s argument in a constructive way to serve as a panacea for resolving the longstanding issue of marginalization and social injustice in Nigeria. The methods adopted here are textual analysis and philosophical critique. It was discovered that to resolve the issue of resource control in Nigeria, genuine diplomatic appropriation of State, Community, and General welfare of all citizens should be integrated in seeking the desired justice.

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