Rational Cooperation and Nigerian Politics: A Gauthierian Analysis

Abstrak

This paper identifies the persistence and increasing complexity of cooperation failures in Nigerian political systems despite numerous attempts at institutional reforms and democratic consolidation. These problems include endemic corruption, ethnic competition for resources, a breakdown of trust between citizens and government, and the failure of formal democratic institutions to generate sustainable political cooperation. As a result of these political dysfunctions, democratic relationships are strained, and political legitimacy is undermined because orientations of rational cooperation are not given sufficient attention in political actions, governance failures, and proposed solutions. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of David Gauthier's rational choice contractualism, through its emphasis on constrained maximisation and morals by agreement, in understanding and potentially resolving certain cooperation problems confronting Nigerian politics and comparable postcolonial contexts worldwide. The methods adopted are philosophical analysis and phenomenological investigation to examine Gauthier's theoretical framework and interpret its applications, showing both its particular relevance to Nigerian contexts and its universal insights for understanding rational cooperation in diverse political systems. The paper concludes that a critically modified approach integrating Gauthierian rational choice principles with African communitarian cooperation traditions would address the limitations of purely individualistic rational choice models, which constitute a major source of cooperation failures. This approach must be thoughtfully grounded in indigenous collective decision-making traditions while incorporating Gauthierian insights about rational cooperation for more effective outcomes in addressing governance challenges.