NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

This paper carefully examined R.M. Hare’s prescriptivism and the question of good governance in Nigeria. A critical look at democratic governance in Nigeria shows a deficient system engulfed by lack of accountability, transparency, among others, by leaders, and this has continued to eat deep into the fabrics of democratic practice and governance in Nigeria; thus, raising concerns on the question of good governance in the Nigerian polity. The paper adopted the qualitative research design. Data were sourced from books, periodicals and the internet. The expository, analytic and evaluative methods of research were used. The expository method was used to expose ethical prescriptivism and, particularly, the prescriptivism of R.M. Hare. The analytic method examined, in detail, Hare’s notion of prescriptivism. The evaluative method was also employed in giving reasoned value judgment on Hare’s prescriptivism in juxtaposition to good governance in Nigeria. Significantly, the paper understood that good governance champions a common cause for the common good of the people so that they are economically, socially, psychologically, intellectually and otherwise stable. But a system devoid of this results in abuse of power, educational and infrastructural decay, poor welfare and health care provision and many more. The paper thus submitted that in Hare’s description, value judgment or moral statements are basically prescriptive in the sense that such moral judgments or statements contain in them the direction for one’s action. In view of this, the paper recommended that when a leader comes to power on the whims of brilliant and promising manifestoes, such a leader is duty-bound to fulfill such promises. The paper concluded that for good governance to thrive in Nigeria, the action of leaders must be a consequence of, or proceed from, their moral statements or judgments.

Open Full Text (PDF)