Ochendo: An African Journal of Innovative Studies

The State is commonly described as a nation or an organized political community under one government. It is a foremost concern of justice theorists how the State should relate with her citizens; is the relationship supposed to be one of absolute domination or one that respects the absolute liberty of the masses? To what extent is the state supposed to interfere with the personal life of the citizens including their rights to ownership of property? Will the state be acting legally if it claims total ownership of all the properties within her territory? Are the laws of the state supposed to engender the freedom of the citizens or promote the absolute power and domination of the state over all? Robert Nozick’s theory of justice provides logical answers to the concerns expressed in the above questions through the principles of acquisition, transfer and rectification. Effort is made in this article to expose these Nozickian principles and apply same to resolving the injustices in the Nigerian state due to unjust management, control and distribution of state resources. The article finds out that in Nigeria there is almost a blatant disregard by the state for what Nozick describes as justice in acquisition and transfer. This justice abuse is a consequence of ethnic and religious chauvinism. This has led to dissatisfaction among some ethnic affiliation in the country who considered themselves neglected by the state. The article presents Nozick’s notion of justice as a corrective to this misrepresentation of justicein the Nigerian State.

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