Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

Nigeria’s return to civilian rule or democratic governance since 1999 signaled hope to a number of her citizens, especially ethnic nationalities. Since this democratic dispensation, ethnic nationalities have been at the centre stage of agitations for one form of reform or the other. Perceived injustices, corruption, nepotism, hegemonic assertions, religious fanaticism and triumphalism, and a wide range of insecurities have spelt doom for the country. In fact, there is a surge in economic stagnation, political instability, and lack of societal peace in Nigeria. To come out of these quagmires, demands for economic resource control and political restructuring have saturated public discourses in recent times. Regrettably, very little attention has been given to formation of loyal and patriotic citizens that will run and enjoy these economic and political reforms. Although, copious literatures abound on various aspects of resource control and political restructuring, not much has been done on civil religion component in Nigeria. Our aim therefore is to investigate the imperative of civil religion as an essential accompanying variable in the resource control and restructuring of Nigeria. The research methodology adopted was both descriptive and explanatory. The method of data collection was derived from secondary sources gotten from books, journals, newspapers, and policy reports. Observation as a primary source was equally employed. The data gathered were analyzed descriptively and sociologically. The paper observes that without patriotic and loyal citizens, resource control and restructuring may as well be a mere structural change and superfluous without accompanied individual transformation to sustain it. The paper concludes that civil religion, resource control and restructuring are an inseparable social trinity for a robust nation-building in Nigeria.

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