Christianity, Women and the Nigerian Commonwealth

Abstract

It is obvious in Nigeria that Nigeria’s economy has since its inception been under siege and under control by a few rich Nigerians who find themselves in governance and in positions of power. This set of opportunists have for years cornered the Nigerian commonwealth for purposes of enriching themselves. Consequently, majority of Nigerians now suffer hunger, deprivation and discrimination. In particular the women gender, who are often than not seen by society as not being good enough to mann major positions of power and governance, seem to be the worst-hit victims in the sharing of the country’s commonwealth. Most scholars are of the opinion that ethnic sentiments lies at the centre and it is the rallying point in the distribution of the Nigerian commonwealth, this paper sees gender inequality as key. This, rather than be a service to Nigeria, the current paper argues that gender inequality regarding the sharing of Nigeria’s commonwealth is instead, a disservice which is also counterproductive to the development of the country as a whole. From the findings of the paper, women are the ones who experience greater discrimination, marginalization, exploitation, oppression and all kinds of violence and deprivation. This implies that women hardly benefit if at all they do benefit from the commonwealth of Nigeria. The paper therefore, call attention to Christianity is a religion which can better guide Nigerians towards ensuring that all citizens, irrespective of ethnic origin, political class or gender, can benefit maximally from the nation’s commonwealth. This, in the view of this paper, can he achieved through the religious tool of conceptualization. The methods used to gather material are qualitative and survey methods. The M.L.A. style of documentation is adopted throughout this paper.

Keywords: Commonwealth, gender inequality, discrimination,  marginalization, oppression, exploitation, violence, conscientization, feminization of poverty, patriarchy, inheritance, colonialism.