THE PLACE OF MORAL SANCTIONS IN NIGERIAN SOCIETY: SOCIO-RELIGIOUS PERPECTIVES

Abstract

The search for the emergence of a thriving Nigerian society has remained a recurring decimal in our collective quest for survival and relevance among the comity of developing and developed nations. These search unfortunately which has spanned several decades appear to  be moving  the nation in  an anti- clockwise direction  due  to  the problem of unending  economic under development in  Nigeria  which is driven by poor socio-political and  cultural values. It is against this backdrop that this work seeks to examine the place of moral sanctions in the Nigerian Society. The work employed a survey approach. This work discovered that there is an upward rise in religious violence, murder and so on. Unfortunately it further identified that only the law enforcement agencies or the application of the constitution which has been in use to tackle these evils have not done much.    Consequently it called for the incorporation of moral sanctions education into our educational curriculum as a part of citizenship education as a means of promoting moral awareness and accountability. Besides it submitted that moral sanctions should draw from objective platform or ethical foundation that cuts across cultures or are universally acceptable to protect same from local or regional abuse. Moreover the work called on the government to create National Ethics Committee which should be charged with promoting and sustaining quality control in the deployment of moral sanction as a developmental platform. Equally the religious community, industries, institutions, community and government must work in partnership to develop a common sanctionable conducts and their appropriate penalties. Most importantly it stated that the people in political leadership must provide the motivation for good conduct by ensuring that moral sanctions are not deployed to punish only the poor and non-powerful members of the society.