ESSENCE: Interdisciplinary- International Journal of Concerned African Philosophers

This paper offers a hermeneutic engagement with Robert Nozick’s theory of the minimal state as articulated in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It situates it within the concrete political, constitutional, and socio-historical realities of Nigeria. Rather than treating Nozick’s libertarianism as a prescriptive policy model, the paper reads it dialogically following Gadamer’s notion of the fusion of horizons, where Nozick’s late-twentieth-century libertarian critique encounters Nigeria’s postcolonial statehood, federal structure, and constitutional commitment to security and welfare. The analysis examines key points of tension and convergence around coercion, redistribution, taxation, regulation, and consent, highlighting how Nigeria’s expansive state functions challenge Nozick’s night-watchman ideal while simultaneously exposing the normative limits of regulatory maximalism. The paper argues that although a strictly Nozickean minimal state is neither feasible nor normatively adequate for Nigeria’s conditions of insecurity, inequality, and institutional fragility; Nozick’s rights-based minimalism offers critical resources for diagnosing state overreach, patronage, and means-ends slippage. The study concludes by proposing a modified minimalism; one that preserves Nozick’s emphasis on inviolable rights and limited interference while acknowledging Nigeria’s constitutional, cultural, and historical imperatives of welfare, inclusion, and communal responsibility.

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