Paper short abstract:

This paper locates the problem of civil societies in the contemporary African democratic dispensation on the ‘fundamental modality of human interaction’ and the problem of ‘ethnic primordialism’. The paper argues that the solution to this problem is the development of moral resource of trust.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the normative problems undermining the realization of the social objective of civil society in modern Africa. The problem of civil society is premised on two factors, which are the 'fundamental modality of human interaction' and the problem of 'ethnic primordialism'. These divergent phenomena are interconnected in creating social solipsism, isolation and atomized individuals bound together precariously by the cash nexus which has deleterious consequences for democratic progress in Nigeria. This paper employs the research methods of conceptual and content analyses, reflective argumentation and reconstructive procedure to examine the notions of civil society and to provide a theoretical rethinking of the notion of civil society in a plural African state. The thesis of the study is that civil society is fundamentally a socio-moral association necessary for the realization of the set objectives of the state. And for it to intervene in the course of states' social history and emerge as a sustainable association, it must develop a moral resource of trust. Thus, the moral resource of trust is an essential ingredient of civil society. The paper articulates the elements of the moral resource of trust to argue that their application would close the cleavage created by the 'modality of human interaction' and 'ethnic premordalism' in achieving a moral civil and political society for sustainable development in Nigeria.