THE IDEOLOGY OF AFRICAN COMMUNALISM AS A SOCIALIST PATHWAY TONIGERIA’SNATIONAL INTEGRATION

Prior to the advent of westernization and Westerners into the African soil, Africans in their closely knit communal villages and amphictonies maintained an appreciable social cohesion, control and unity. Granted that there were still inter-tribal disagreements and conflicts yet, tribesmen in their traditional setting considered themselves members of the same household. Each individual was his brother's keeper and communal interest was held paramount in their socio-political, economic and spiritual considerations. However, the overthrow and subversion of traditional African values by slave-trade, colonialism and their associated ideologies, replaced an uncouth but stable space with a divisive, dominant, discriminative and politicized one. This loss of communality along with values that make for social integration and control combined with the total embrace of possessive individualism coincidental with capitalism, to pitch hitherto brothers against one another in an unhealthy competition. It also, with its characteristic exploitative instruments, introduced in Nigeria, artificial but deep ethic divisions, rivalry, and mutual hatred – all of which tend to helplessly grind the wheels of the country to a halt. Consequently, violence, ethnicism, religious intolerance, nepotism and corruption now becloud and blindfold her nationalist spirit. Against this backdrop, this paper proposes a re-invention of African communalism and therefore explores this ideology, as an alternative socialist instrument for national integration. The author adopts the literary analysis method of enquiry for this research.