No justice, no progress: Contemporary African leadership and society in Plato’s crucible

Abstract

Virtue and vice, courage and cowardice, wisdom and folly are tendencies common to all humans without historical, geographical, colour, or gender exceptions. Granting that the aforesaid statement is tenable, this article engages Plato’s idea of a just city and a just soul in the Republic and considers how these might speak to contemporary African leadership deficits and societal ills. This appraisal is predicated upon the notion that a just city and a just soul or their approximation are attainable and worth pursuing in contemporary Africa. Thus, as answers are sought for the colonial legacies still haunting Africa, self-examination is necessarily part of the process. In the Wretched of the Earth for example, it is easy and maybe legitimately so, to focus on Franz Fanon’s fiery critique of the colonialists and miss his self-critical appraisal of African intellectuals and leaders whom he calls “[s]poiled children of yesterday’s colonialism and today’s governing powers” that “oversee the looting of the few national resources”. More than fifty years after colonialism, this critique still remains valid. I therefore explore Plato’s answers (or questions) to this age-old human crisis of self- and public governance currently amplified in Africa and hampering common good and progress. In the search for a just city characterised by common good, this article spotlights Nigeria to buttress Plato’s emphasis on state of the soul rather than class, colour or creed as a precursor to leading a just and eudaemonic life and good self- and public governance.