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Abstract

The question of what constitutes a stable and secure state has occupied political 
philosophers for centuries. A stable and secure state is defined by security of life and 
property of its citizens in the absence of which life will be “brutish, short and nasty”. 
Thomas Hobbes is one of the leading modern political thinkers whose notion of 
overarching power of the state is encapsulated in his world famous concept of Leviathan. 
Nigeria state is unfortunately ever under the threats of centrifugal forces of ethnicism, 
fear of religious and cultural domination, which once precipitate a civil war (1960 – 
1970). Nigeria political history is a history of management of these forces of ethnic, 
religious and cultural domination. This research seeks to employ the positive aspects of 
Hobbes's Leviathan as a philosophical foundation of a strong Nigeria state. The research 
argues that a strong state is defined by strong political institutions. The research 
employed the method of philosophical analysis and finds that terrorism, banditry, 
separatist agitations, struggle for ethnic, religious and cultural domination among the 
constituent peoples of Nigeria federation constitute centrifugal forces militating against 
stable, secure and economically viable state in Nigeria. This research argues that the 
idea of a strong state advocated in Hobbes's Leviathan is a solution to Nigeria state 
crisis. The research makes the conclusion that the positive aspects of Hobbes's Leviathan 
is a veritable tool of state-building and a panacea to centrifugal political forces 
bedeviling the Nigeria Federation.

Keywords: Stable state, overarching power and strong state.

Introduction
The failed state syndrome of the Nigeria state is a political reality seeking for an urgent 
resolution. It is a state where the citizens' right to life, freedom of movement and 
association are not guaranteed due to the weakness of the institutions saddled with the 
responsibility of maintaining the state structure.  The collapse of the state would be so 
devastating that it would take us back to the state of nature. Whereas, the fall of Nigeria 
state will be a highly upsetting reality that would set ripple effects and templates for the 
balkanization of sovereign states in the Africa continent. This is what Thomas Hobbes' 

THOMAS HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 
FOR NIGERIA STATE

Ejinike Emmanuel Umeh.
Department of Philosophy,

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
emmanfrancos@gmail.com

&
Ifechi J. Ndianefo, PhD.

Department of Philosophy,
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
 ndianefooifechukwu@gmail.com

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view of sovereignty or overarching power of the state aimed at forestalling and which is 
the crux of this philosophical essay.

The Implication of Hobbes' Leviathan for Nigeria State
Hobbes' commonwealth was built with the assurance of security of life and property of 
the citizens. His concern was to show a necessary relation between order, political power, 
autonomous authority, and political obligation. Therefore, his Leviathan state was a 
creation to end the lawlessness and threats to life of the state of nature. Without a state 
power and authority (sovereignty), each man becomes his/her own judge and legislator 
and when majority were governed by their own reason, there is nothing one can make use 
of which will not be of a great help to him in conserving his life against his adversaries. 
Within this context, nature allows each man to seek for self-preservation and to do what 
he/she believes is necessary to actualize this end. Consequently, each man turning against 
the others and in this state, life then becomes solitary, poor, nasty, animalistic and short (as 
cited in Bagby, 2007:31). Hobbes argued that since no man can safely rely on his own 
strength alone in safeguarding him/herself, men's objectives under this law of nature to 
refrain from harming one another must be subject to collective guarantee else, for anyone 
to abstain in the competitive struggle would be to jeopardize his/her life. There is no 
dependable guarantee to the safety of everyone unless all parties agree not to exercise 
their natural right to all effects, but to submit unconditionally to a sovereign authorized to 
act on behalf of each of them, with the facility to help them keep their agreements. 
Collective restraint would also be a duty. Hence, according to Borchert (2006:140), the 
supreme duty of the state is the preservation of peace and forestalling the war of all 
against all as witnessed in the primitive state. This duty entails that the sovereign becomes 
the necessary common power demanded to maintain peace and security. With the 
authority given to the state by every man within its governance, the state can use 
legitimate right to force his people into a state of peace and this would make life, liberty 
and property possible. 

By acceding to the Leviathan state all the powers, Hobbes' argument would mean that 
more sure and harmonious exercise of political authority plus obedience to the sovereign 
is directly tied to peace in all realms. The covenant needed the state to empower the 
sovereign to run the state, to determine controversies through proper adjudication and 
phrasings of laws. The Leviathan Commonwealth is one in which the state does not lack 
the political temerity of leveraging on the overarching power of the state in protecting the 
fundamental rights of the citizens via guaranteeing their safety and quelling uprisings, 
terrorisms and secessions but maintains the harmony within the state as its prominent 
duty among all. There was no lurking fear of attacks of fundamentalists in the Leviathan 
state because the state possesses the requisite power to forestall anything that can revert 
the standard back to the state of war of all against all. There is a lesson here for Nigeria 
towards building its state power and authority. The incessant armed confrontation by 
bandits, terrorists and separatist movements against the Nigeria state raises up the 
question of how sovereign is the Nigeria state sovereignty and its sustainability. When the 
government which is an apparatus of the state is unwilling to draw the overarching power 
of the state in ensuring a prevailing peace for the Nigeria state and where citizens now pay 
taxes to terrorist groups instead to the Nigerian state, in order to ensure their safety 

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(Adewale, 2022:43). A situation where the terrorists are overwhelming the apparatuses of 
the state, annexing territories and there is no guarantee of security for the citizens to ply 
their trade were not what the Leviathan state would have condoned.
It is noteworthy that for Bagby (2007:9), in the Leviathan state, there is this assurance of 
security from the lurking fear of the state of nature because of the sovereignty of the state 
which resides not just on the government but also on the willingness of the state's 
institutions to draw the state's overarching powers. Hence, Nigeria state could borrow a 
leaf from Hobbes' Leviathan to make for a strong state which could bolster Nigeria 
statecraft, legitimacy of the government and the confidence of the Nigeria citizens in the 
Nigeria project. Thus, ensuring that the essential functions of the state seen in Hobbes' 
Commonwealth are maintained. When the weight of the state is utilized, it will reassure 
the faith of Nigerians in the viability of the Nigeria state, and ensuring that the Nigeria 
State as a unified entity would be preserved, and the balkanization of Nigeria state 
guarded against. When the citizens cannot ply their trade without fear of attacks from one 
of the terror groups holding sway in the country is worrisome. Even to transverse the 
length and breadth of the country is not safe due to the activities of the non-state actors, 
because no means of transportation in Nigerian is now insulated from the attacks of the 
terrorists, be it air or train. The horrors of the Kaduna attack of March 26, 2022, where 
heavily armed men numbering over 200 attacked the International airport in a major city, 
killing security personnel and temporarily halting flight movements remains vivid to 
memory (Adewale, 2022:43). The situation was even worsened by the train attack of 
March 28 2022, where many citizens traveling to Kaduna were either killed or abducted 
by terrorists. How can the Nigerian state not leverage on the modern technological 
gadgets like GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and satellites in ensuring the security 
of its territorial space? This certainly, the Hobbes' Leviathan would have done, if it were 
to be in our days.

Hobbes's Leviathan and Nigeria Polity
The Leviathan has acquired for itself a notorious name in the socio-political 
philosophical cycles, and this notoriety is not what this work is out to defend rather trying 
to grill out a positive aspect from it and that aspect is the notion of the overarching power 
of the state and how best its utilization would be of a greater benefit to the Nigeria polity. 
Nonetheless, a state was needed because of the fact that no existent is self- sufficing given 
man's selfish ambitions and expectations. Having all these ambitions, we call on one 
another's help to conciliate them and when we have collected a number of comrades to 
live together in one place, we call that agreement a state. Supposing that the state owes its 
actuality to the human requirements which are to bridle the selfish tendencies of man to 
dominate and maim and the first and the topmost need being the provision of food to keep 
us alive and the shelter. Still, for Hobbes, the state was a creation of the acceded will of the 
people in order to be suitable to escape the horrors of the state of nature. The fear of the 
state of nature is the starting point of Hobbes' construction of the state and for Schmitt 
(1996:31), the boundary is security of the civil stately condition. Every state is surely 
pioneered on a covenant and this forms a harbour for the conformation of the guiding 
principles for the civil state. 
Hobbes' social contract and state of nature would become important models for doctrines 
of human nature and politics in centuries to come. “Covenant,” as Hobbes calls it, 

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according to Popkin & Stroll (1993:76), consists of an agreement among people to abide 
by a selected set of rules, or conventions. These constitute what we now call the guiding 
principles of the state (Popkin & Stroll, 1993:92). Nevertheless, the emergence of the 
Nigeria state was shrouded in miry shadows because it never followed the paths sculpted 
by the studies of Hobbes rather, it was a product of a forceful amalgamation of the 
Southern Protectorate with the Northern Protectorate in 1914 by Lord Fredrick Lugard 
for the economic gains of the British Crown (Ebizie & Eloanyi, 2020: 94).  Be that as it 
may, an imposition is never a creation of the people's wish and would as such not augur 
well for the people, instead the compressed strange bed fellows will perpetually struggle 
to stampede each other out. Nonetheless, we found ourselves with this reality and thus 
became the citizens of the Nigeria state. Following the mandate for civil state as stated in 
Hobbes' social contract, the Nigeria state is expected to live in unity and harmony as one 
indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation provided that the sole aim of opting for a 
civil state is not compromised.

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan had left a lasting influence on political thoughts of 
subsequent philosophies. His idea of sovereignty and his thoughts on the role of state led 
to more investigations like this discourse. He recommends that people should submit 
themselves almost completely to the will of a sovereign power, a will that represents the 
people's will (Bagby, 2007: 30). He wants people to see the logic of submitting to a 
sovereign of almost limitless power and accept his authority willingly even if that 
authority is not always pleasantly applied, as far as the authority is willing to safeguard 
the state and its citizens from external aggression. In accepting this contract, the people 
will have no right to revolt against their sovereign, no right even to complain unless, 
where the state is failing to keep its end of the contract, which is hinged on the provision of 
security of its citizens (Bagby, 2007: 33). Because the state's failure to keep to its own end 
of the contract will create the situation of war of all against all which was what Hobbes 
tries to avoid by opting for a sovereign state. Therefore, the only right which the people 
will retain is the right to try to protect their own lives if they are threatened with death, for 
no one can take the right to self-preservation in any case because, it represents the 
survival instinct and it is the whole reason for entering the social contract in the first place 
(Bagby, 2007: 32).

The security concern of a state is indisputably as ancient as the state itself and it is the 
bedrock for the formation and opting for a civil state, thereby escaping the dreads of the 
state of nature where life is brutish, solitary, and short. As could be drawn from the 
constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, (Constitution of the Federal Republic of 
Nigeria. Section 14, article b and c.) It declares that the security and welfare of the people 
shall be the primary purpose of the government and the participation by the people in their 
government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this constitution. This 
points that the spine of the Nigeria commonwealth revolves around the provision of 
security for life and property to advance the fortunes of the state and its citizens. However, 
Ujomu (2018: 31), maintained that security is more than just safety from the violence, it 
means the absence of any form of violence, whether it is economic, sexual or military. For 
Ujomu (2018: 32), “the central feature in the quest for natural security is the concern for 
the desire and capacity for self-defense or as the preservation of the borders of a state”. 

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Thus, a constitutional state is a state where within the confines of the state, laws and extra-
legal laws aimed against the state cannot exist. Only a state established by such 
constituent assembly is constitutionally a lawful and constitutional state (Schmitt, 1996: 
68).  
As Hobbes' Leviathan state witnessed tranquility (pax humanae) through the 
instrumentality of the overarching power of the state.  So, the Nigeria state via its 
institutions like the armed forces, the legislature and judiciary is expected to witness a 
pervading tranquility and stability within the jurisdiction of the Nigeria commonwealth. 
But, this is not yet achieved and therefore puts a question against Nigeria sovereignty. In 
the thoughts of Collins (2005: 11), stable sovereignty was the most elevated of human 
achievements, for it secures what he considered the abiding end of political life: peace. 
The state then is saddled with the responsibility of maintaining law and order within its 
borders and also promotion of peaceful coexistence of its populace. 
Then, how tenable are the primary objectives of a state within the Nigeria state? Has the 
Nigeria state the political temerity to ensure the optimal security of lives and properties 
within its borders? The overarching power of the state demands obedience to the rule of 
law. Utilizing the overarching power of the state to provide constitutes real freedom in all 
its ramifications- emotional, economic, social-political and cultural well-being of the 
state and its citizens and ensuring that the secular status of the Nigeria state is not 
trampled on the altar of religious bigotry. This will form the bulk of the analysis in the 
succeeding subheading as we focus more on the state-building in Nigeria as informed by 
the Hobbes' Leviathan.

Hobbes' Leviathan and a Strong Stable Nigeria
Where the state is too weak to wield its constitutional sovereign powers, non-state actors 
like the Boko Haram, ISWAP, Bandits, Fulani Herdsmen, and separatists will question 
the sovereignty of the state. When the government seems to have ceded partial control of a 
vital state function to terrorists like amassing new territories and collection of taxes and 
tributes as the Boko Haram and the Bandits are doing now is one of the signs of the 
urgency of a strong state as could be seen in the Leviathan state.  The irrefutable fact about 
the Leviathan State is the fact that it surfaced to foster confidence in the state and 
encourage co-operation among its citizens. It is herein that there sounded to be some 
situations of core social values in the Leviathan state similar as trust, co-operation, 
compassion, justice, forbearance to insure that the colorful situations of the state could 
effectively manage the human cum natural resources for the overall security, peace, 
prosperity and well-being of all within its borders (Ujomu, 2018: 32). The Leviathan state 
was a political creation of the masses via a binding covenant. This covenant consists of an 
agreement among people to abide by a particular set of rules, or conventions. Rested on 
this covenant is the capability of the Leviathan state to moderate the over-ambitiousness 
of people which is substantiated on the continual trouble of safety and security of all 
others, this Hobbes believes is inimical to the peace of the state. When our national assets 
could not go round for the good of the citizens because of corruption and embezzlement 
by a group of people in the corridors of power, is just but taking us back to the state of 
nature which was modernity exited through opting for a civil state. Where the 80 percent 
of Nigerian crude oil is stolen and the greater percentage of the oil revenue ends in private 
pocket (Obiezu, 2022) and the Nigeria state is hapless, is unhealthy for the survival of the 

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statehood of Nigeria. Besides, it is due to the government's lack of political will and 
leveraging on the overarching powers of state as seen in Hobbes in checkmating the crime 
against the state because of a religious belief that is very dangerous and worrisome.

In order to avert this, Hobbes advocated for a state power to moderate the capricious 
drives of men (Bagby, 2007: 9), so as to insure a secured atmosphere within the bounds of 
its jurisdiction and ensure that religion is far removed from the scope of state politics 
because of the secular status of our democracy (Lawhead, 2002: 224). It is within this 
context, that we take the statecraft as the construction of the state institutions defined by 
their monopoly of use of lawful violence in a given territory. And this conception does not 
indicate that the state is the only actor actually using violence but rather that it is the only 
actor that can legitimately authorize its use (Munro, 2013: 116). These institutions 
include the parliament, the judiciary and the armed forces controlled by the state. The 
state can grant an actor the permit to use legitimate violence without losing its monopoly 
as long as it remains the sole source of the proper use of legitimate violence as could be 
seen in the functional engagement of the armed forces and still maintains the capacity to 
apply this licit monopoly (Munro, 2013: 117). The armed forces is a central feature of the 
state vested with the primary ideal of securing the territorial integrity of the state. The 
central idea of security provided by the fortified forces was according to Ujomo 
(2018:32), a heritage of Westphalia Treaty of 1600s. So, due to the essential attribute of 
sovereignty of the state, it becomes all the more necessary for the state to have a modern 
armed forces utilizing the modern security gadgets in ensuring that it maintains its 
sovereignty, territorial integrity, and citizens' protection from internal and external 
adversaries. One of the comparable characteristics between the Leviathan state same and 
the Nigeria state is the premium placed on security, like it is in every animal kingdom 
which is the logical warrant and precedent to the propagation and survival of the species. 
Ukhun, (2018: 86) noted that indeed in the lower beast fiefdoms, security is a conditio 
sine qua non for survival because it is a serious business. Security has always been a 
deciding factor for the food and durability of human civilization. The Nigerian budgetary 
security allocation since 2012 till date had be the highest in the percentage when 
compared to other critical sectors on the state. Why then is it so difficult to rescue the 
Nigeria state from this impending collapse. While, Hobbes advocacy for a civil state via 
the Leviathan was in a bid to alleviate the dreads of the state of nature in which life was 
solitary, poor, nasty, animalistic and short and the emergence of the Nigeria state should 
have been for the effective maximization of the richness of our both human and natural 
resources. And not to allow the festering of ethnicity, religious fundamentalism and 
terrorism which are inimical to the sovereignty of the Nigerian state as they constitute the 
chunk of the forces trying to tear the Nigerian state apart. 

Within the Nigerian geopolitical terrain, public security is the safety of the state and all its 
factors. A state is safe when its territory is not violated, its sovereignty is not threatened, 
its wealth is not despoiled and its citizens can conduct their licit business on the corridors 
of tranquility and harmony (Umeh, 2023: 54). The rising nature of the terror conditioning 
of the Boko Haram, and ISWAP in the Northern Nigeria, coupled with the enterprising 
moves of bandits and worsened by the Fulani herders despoiling around mutilating lives 
and properties in an unbounded manner point to some latitude of sympathy within the 

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dimension of those that should wield the powers of the state. This is in discrepancy to 
what the Hobbes Leviathan advocates for the safety of the state. Because, Hobbes' 
Leviathan was neither swayed by political permutations nor lacked the political will to 
wield the tool of the state.  Citizens cannot transverse the length and breadth of the 
country for their businesses freely because of the terror conditioning of these non-state 
actors. They kidnap citizens in droves unbounded whether it is on the Kaduna-Abuja 
Express Way or in Katsina and Zamfara. As if their coward act were yet to brim over, they 
have moved towards adding some part of the Nigeria territory in their shot to declare a 
caliphate, this becomes the most grueling attempt to the Nigeria sovereignty. 

Why is the Nigeria government so amenable to these terrorists? Is it that Nigeria has lost 
the sense of requisite overarching power of the state? Why is the Nigeria state not using 
the system applied to quell the dare threats of the IPOB in the East that led to the 
successful conduct of the November 6th 2021 gubernatorial election in Anambra State, 
the Yoruba secessionists in the West and the militants in the South? Hence, the urgent 
need to borrow the overarching powers of the state as supported by Hobbes in crushing 
these apostates to insure the non-collapse of the Nigerian state. With the appreciation of 
Hobbes' Leviathan we can begin to think of a Nigeria beyond banditry, kidnapping and 
endless circles of violence that have engulfed the Nigeria state.

What about the economic terrorists, who have planted themselves at the corridors of 
powers and doing away with our common heritage through pillaging and embezzlement, 
thereby, threating the profitable viability of the Nigerian state and pushing it to ruin and 
eventual collapse. For Ebo (2018: 119), the enormity of the economic terrorism to the 
sovereignty of the Nigeria State is unappreciable. This ranges from endemic and 
institutionalized corruption, embezzlement of public funds, cyber related crimes and 
advanced fee fraud of what is now termed “yahoo-yahoo or yahoo plus”. Thus, there is the 
necessity for the utilization of the overarching powers of the state as advocated by 
Hobbes to ensure all round security which is attained based on the principles of justice 
and fairness.  

On another note, the other powerful institution of the state is the legislature. The 
legislature is the arm of Government saddled with the responsibility of formulation of 
laws that will guarantee the peace-building of the state and shield the state from the 
tyrannical propensity of the members of the executive arm of the Government and protect 
the sovereignty of the state and the supremacy of the constitution from internal threats as 
would have been the case with Olusegun Obasanjo's Third Term Agenda, which was 
killed on the floors of the plenary. Thus, motivated by the drive to uphold the statehood of 
the Nigeria State through a waxing and formidable state, the Legislative arm of the 
Government ensures that laws that can enhance the legitimacy of the state's monopoly of 
violence are formulated and implemented through the various windows of governance- 
checks and balances and oversight functions.

Lastly, the judicial arm of the Government as the temple of justice and altar of equity and 
fairness, armed with the sacred edits of the state becomes the last hope of the common 
man, ensures that there is legitimacy in the state acts of both the executive and the 

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Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan And Its Implications For Nigeria State      -    E.E. Umeh & Ijechi J. Ndianefo



legislative. Wielding further its constitutional power of the review, the judiciary becomes 
a veritable institution of the state whose contribution to the statecraft is unquantifiable 
(Umeh, 2023: 57). The members of the bar and bench had contributed immensely to 
deepening the strong state advocated in this thesis through their various pronouncements 
and judgements because it aids in statecraft and ensures the stability of the polity and 
peaceful coexistence. Finally, armed with the lessons from the Leviathan state, Nigeria 
can wriggle out of its sorry state by enforcing the secular status the Nigeria state as to give 
each citizens the necessary freedom from the shackles of confusion over the status of 
religion and the state in a plural democracy and ultimately preserve the unity of the 
Nigerian state and prevent its eventual collapse.   

Evaluation and Conclusion
In the course of this philosophical discourse, it is very evident that Thomas Hobbes 
critically gave us a clear picture of how a society without a government would look like 
and the principles that were at work in such a society. Man's life there was in solitary, poor, 
very nasty, brutish, short and worst of all, in continual fear and danger of death. However, 
the civil state was an evolution from a state ruled by nature. And the quintessential nature 
of the state of nature is none other than civil wars which can only be prevented by the 
overarching might of the state. Exacting the overarching powers of the state whenever the 
situation compels. This philosophical discourse also examines how to strengthen the 
Nigeria State using Hobbes' idea of an overarching power of the state against the hydra-
headed security challenges threatening Nigeria and its core formation. It considers those 
incidents that threatened to hold the Nigeria state to a standstill only to be minimized with 
the stepping in of the overarching tool of the state.

 This discourse in a subtle manner appreciates the crux of the foundation of the state as the 
escape from the brutish condition of the state of nature into the safest condition that 
guarantees right to life, freedom of movement and association and above all, the security 
of life and property. This essay buttresses the fact that the state is the only legitimate base 
that possesses a monopoly of licit violence and saddled with the responsibility of 
protecting its territory and inhabitants within its territory from every illegitimate violence 
as orchestrated within the ambience of the charter of civil state creation. Hence, it is only 
Thomas Hobbes among all the state and social contract theorists who is so emphatic about 
the notion of the overarching power of the state in his socio-political philosophy which 
this research work rated to be a very positive aspect that should not be discarded due to the 
notoriety of the Leviathan.

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