The coronavirus pandemic, though primarily a health issue, has had significant social, economic and political implications across the world. There are reasons to believe that some of the changes occurring are likely to be permanent even in a post-pandemic world, and there are even suggestions that the world may be entering a phase in which pandemics become recurrent. Making sense of all that the pandemic has brought has by no means been easy, even for scientists who have had to review and revise their claims as new discoveries about the virus are made. One of the fallouts of the pandemic has been a proliferation of conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, as well as efforts to contain it. Summed up, these theories of various shades allege that certain powerful forces are behind the pandemic, in pursuit of some narrow ends that range from the political to the religious. In this paper, I analyse conspiracy theories and the motivations behind them. Situating conspiracy theories within the pandemic, I argue that they are best understood not within the framework of a single theory but by an understanding of how diverse motivations generate different, even contradictory conspiratorial accounts. I argue that whereas conspiracy theories have become a feature of modern society, and have been amplified in the age of technology, they have low credibility value in explaining the pandemic, while having significant implications. I also argue that if left unchecked, conspiracy theories have the capacity to further undermine governments’ capacity to respond to big crises in Africa in the future. I conclude that conspiracy theories are best managed in a pandemic through consistent, transparent engagement rooted in trust-building between the people and governments, especially in Africa.
John Mbiti, in his attempt to disprove the charge of paganism by EuroAmerican ethnographic and anthropological scholars against African Traditional Religions argues that traditional African religions are monotheistic. He insists that these traditional religious cultures have the same conception of God as found in the Abrahamic religions. The shared characteristics, according to him are foundational to the spread of the “gospel” in Africa. Mbiti’s effort, though motivated by the desire to refute the imperial charge of inferiority against African religions ran, I argue, into a conceptual and descriptive conflation of ATRs with monotheistic faiths. In this paper, I challenge the superimposition of Judeo-Christian categories upon African religions. I argue that monotheism is just a strand, out of many, that expresses belief in God(s), and that it differs substantially from the polytheistic pre-colonial African understanding of religion. I provide a panentheistic paradigm using traditional Igbo ontology and religion to refute Mbiti’s generalization.
Keywords: Monotheism, African Traditional Religion, Igbo, Paganism, Theology.
Central to most intellectual debates on political organization is the issue of human nature, for one's understanding of it influences one's prescriptions on how best society can be governed. This paper examines the contractarian theories of Hobbes and Locke in their attempts to identify the conditions for social order. Deploying a critical and comparative method, the paper identifies the failure of the two theories to recognize the complexity of human nature, a complexity which forecloses the plausibility of a descriptive straitjacket. The paper further argues that contrary to Hobbes' pessimism and Locke's optimism towards human nature, the individual has qualities which point to a delicate balance of both. Consequently, the paper highlights the imperatives of social order in a manner that accommodates the complexity of human nature. It concludes that it is on the basis of the appreciation of these dimensions of human nature that we can hope to evolve an enduring social order.
Adeolu Oluwaseyi Oyekan
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