UBUNTU AND CHILD POVERTY IN NIGERIA: AN AFRICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF COMMUNAL RESPONSIBILITY

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

Nigeria's child poverty crisis is widely interpreted through economic anddevelopmental lenses, yet such interpretations leave the moral andmetaphysical dimensions of the crisis largely unexamined. This studyadopts qualitative philosophical analysis, using conceptualinterpretation, textual analysis, and comparative ethical analysis ofAfrican philosophical traditions and religious literature. We draw onUbuntu, the African relational philosophy of personhood, to argue thatthe persistence of severe child deprivation in Nigeria should beunderstood primarily as a failure of communal responsibility rather than amere shortfall in income or service delivery. Read alongside its Nigeriancultural expressions in Omoluabi (Yoruba), Omenani (Igbo), andTarbiyya (Hausa-Fulani), Ubuntu discloses a sustained, indigenousmoral tradition that has historically treated the child as a shared trustrather than a private burden. The paper traces how social, economic,political, and religious changes have eroded the communal structures thatonce enacted this conviction, leaving millions of Nigerian childrenexposed to hunger, educational exclusion, labour, displacement, andneglect. It concludes by proposing Ubuntu, read together with the ethicalresources of Christianity, Islam, and African Traditional Religion (ATR),as a constructive framework for rebuilding social solidarity. The papercontributes a philosophical reframing of child poverty as a problem ofcommunal failure, with implications for religious engagement, culturalrenewal, and public policy in Nigeria and beyond.