

























THE NEXUS BETWEEN MORALITY 
AND POLITICS

Gregory Ebalu Ogbenika

Abstract
In the midst of the present political dispensation in Africa, in 
which issues of justice, equality and fairness are been 
called to question, the issue of the connection between 
morality and politics is been brought to the limelight again, 
considering the fact there are a lot of practices going on the 
political landscape in Nigeria today that are totally at 
variance with the norms and prerequisites for the conduct 
of such actions. The basic principle is that people must 
practice leadership with integrity and values. 
Contemporary political practices show that there is a large 
number of active political issues as a foundation for right 
and proper conduct of state politics. For instance, in 
Nigeria, issues such as corruption, vote buying and selling, 
campaigns bereft of ideas and main issues, certicate 
forgery and numerous doubts about the integrity of political 
actors occupy the centre stage of the political life. A 
thorough consideration of the issues mentioned above calls 
for reassessment of the way politics is fast being separated 
from morality, which has led to the popular saying that 
“politics is a dirty game.” Due to this anomalies that are 
prevalent today, this paper calls for the stringent 
implementation of the ethos of political engagement be they 
electoral or constitutional. The assessment is that religious 
institutions might play a crucial role in the formulation of 
rules that can inuence the political establishment, when 
making policy decisions and implementing them. The paper 



shall adopt the expository and analytic approach in 
accomplishing its task.

INTRODUCTION
The issue of morality in politics is an issue that has attracted so much 
attention among philosophers, scholars, politicians and citizens 
through the ages.  It is particularly topical in times of dramatic 
political developments that put under severe strain moral constraints 
on individual and collective choice and action.  Today, we are facing 
an array of pressing issues in both national and international politics, 
which raise difcult moral questions.  At the same time, our trust in 
political leaders who are entrusted with devising and implementing 
solutions to these issues is sorely tried by their words and actions. 
 Under these circumstances, the problem of the relation 
between politics and morality takes is of paramount importance.  In 
the light of this, this paper attempts to explicate the relationship 
between politics and morality.  It seeks to answer important questions 
like; can politics and morality be active at the same time? Can a 
politician be moral? What determines political policies, morality or 
political will? just to mention a few.  Thus, we shall reexamine the 
meaning of morality, politics and the relationship between politics 
and morality.

THEORITICAL ELUCIDATION
MORALITY
To think that one denition of morality will be adequate enough is 
baseless.  The reason for this is that morality seems to be used in two 
distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense.  
 However, in this work, we shall be discussing morality in the 
normative sense.  In the rst place, morality refers to the set of 
standards that enable people to live cooperatively in groups.  It refers 
to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets 
certain intellectual; and volition conditions, almost always including 

1the condition of being rational.
 That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by 
saying that the person counts as a moral agent.  However, merely 
showing that a certain code would be accepted by any moral agent is 

166 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



not enough to show that the code is the moral code.
 Morality is dened as a human behavior that is freely 
subordinating to the ideal of what is good, right, and appropriate, this 
is not about discovering new principles, but the better application of 
those that already exist and are accepted. Morality is often associated 
with ethics, but also with the church and religious belief in general.  
 According to the Biblical view, morality derives directly from 
God's revelation to mankind, as it has been described in the Bible.  
The relationship between morality and religion is often discussed, 
and ethical philosophy believes correctly that moral action depends 
on religion.  “Divine Command Theory includes the claim that 
morality is ultimately based on the commands or character of God, 
and that the morally right action is the one that God commands or 
requires.  All versions of the theory hold in common the claim that 

2morality and moral obligations ultimately depend on God.”

POLITICS
The word politics comes from the Greek word polis, meaning 
everything that concerns or belongs to the polis, or city-state.  Since 
the city-states no long exist, the modern form of this denition is what 
concerns the state.  Thus, politics can be dened as the study of the 
state, its aims and purposes, the institutions by which those are going 
to be realizes its relations with its individual members and with other 
states.  Politics is also dened as the study of the government a 
collection of ofcers who make, interpret and enforce rules for the 
whole community.  This denition of politics offers a highly 
restricted view of politics.  According to this denition, politics takes 
place just within the government departments, cabinet rooms and 
legislative chambers.  This means that politics is the matter of 
politicians, civil servants and lobbyists.  According to this view the 
vast majority of the people are not involved in politics.  All the 
institutions that are not engaged in running the country are regarded 

3
as non-political.
 This denition can, however, be narrowed still further.  This 
is evident in the tendency to treat politics as an activity carried on by 
certain designated organization (parties).  In other words politics is 
regarded as an activity connected with political parties.  Thus, only 

167The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



politicians are considered as political, whereas civil servants are seen 
as nonpolitical.  In the popular mind, politics is associated with the 
activities of political parties and politicians.  This extremely narrow 
view of politics helps to explain why negative images have so often 
been attached to the word politics.  Politics is often described as a 
negative phenomenon because only politicians are seen as decision-
makers.

POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Is politics something associated solely with government and state?  
The term is widely used in other context than that of the government 
and state. People are often said to be acting politically in their 
relations with their bosses and colleagues in an ofce, or in the 
management of the club of some kind, or in many other situations in 
which government, state and political parties are not mentioned.  
Nevertheless, much western political thinking rests on a distinction 
between the public realm and private life.  The distinction between 
the political and the non-political coincides with the division between 
an essentially public sphere of life and private sphere.  How can we 
differentiate the public sphere from private sphere? The traditional 
division between the public realm and private realm conforms to the 
distinction between the state and civil society.  The institution of the 
state are considered as the part of the public sector, whereas the civil 
society belong to private sector.  Thus, public sector is regarded as 
political, whereas the private sector is considered to be nonpolitical.  
Thus, politics is an essential public activity and it does not take place 
in private sphere of life. It does not have right to infringe upon private 
affairs and institutions.

THE BOND BETWEEN POLITICS AND MORALITY
Politicians and philosophers have always pondered the potential 
connection between politics and morality, going back to the earliest 
stages of intellectual thought. Additionally, they were supposed to 
address the issue of where to situate those notable concepts that are 
directly related to the discussion, such as right, good, virtue and vice, 
personal liberty, and the public interest. But the crucial query is: 
Should politics be governed by conventional moral precepts and 

168 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



demands? In fact, this question has produced two opposing points of 
view. The Aristotelian and Machiavellian schools of thought are 

4excellent examples of these two diametrically opposed camps.
 For Aristotle, the hallmark of human actions including 
politics is the pursuit of moral virtue, which in turn will guarantee 
common happiness for the individual and the society at large. The 
Machiavellian advice to "The Prince," in contrast, saw no need to 
elevate the concept of morality in politics because neither human 
nature nor the workings of politics call for it. He advised leaders and 
aspiring politicians to avoid thinking about the potential role of 
morality in politics. Whatever stance one chooses to adopt, the fact 
remains that morality and politics appear to be related in some way. 
Politics and morality both contribute to the control and direction of 
human behavior. Politics regulates relationships between groups, 
various socio-political organizations, and the state with the control of 
state power as the focus, whereas morality regulates interpersonal 

5relationships and interactions between person and group.
 The difference between private and public morality in social 
life can be found in the exibility of the relationship between these 
two concepts. The idea being conveyed is that each person is a moral 
agent with a private and public life. Politics and morality are 
intertwined within each individual. When a person transits from a 
private to a public life, the crucial connection between politics and 
morality is highlighted. Without dening the place of individuals 
within the political enterprise, it is meaningless. The scope and 
justication of politics are determined by the people's actions. The 
importance of political activities to people is largely justied by their 
moral standing. When the major players in politics have no moral 
inhibitions, we can ask ourselves what effect politics will have on the 

6lives of people living in a society.
 The early theories of morality and politics distinguish very 
little if at all between these two ideas. In their moral and political 
ideas, Plato and Aristotle did not distinguish between these two ideas. 
For them, politics and ethics go hand in hand. According to Aristotle, 
issues with political institutions and individual morality are 
intertwined. Aristotle held the teleological belief that human deeds 
should be assessed according to their results. The achievement of 

169The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



7universal happiness is the highest good for him.
 In his book "The Leviathan," Thomas Hobbes contrasted 
Aristotle's ideas. He argued that people have a self-interested nature. 
He illustrated this with his famous idea of "war of all against all," 
which he believed would occur in the state of nature where there 
would be a devastating competition between men. Hobbes is arguing 
that in such an environment of chaos and conict, moral and just 
principles has no place. Henry Cudworth and Samuel Clarke, two 
early intuitionists, both disagreed with Hobbes' point of view. They 
believe that morality is universal and objective. This claim sparked a 
discussion in moral philosophy about whether morality should come 
from reason or feelings. Other theorists, such as Hume and Hutches 
on, contended that moral judgment cannot be based solely on reason 
that reason can only serve to aid us in recognizing moral actions and 
not to motivate us to carry them out.
 Another participant in this discussion Vassil Prodanov claims 
in his article morality and politics in a changing world that the 
"moralization of politics and politicisation of morality" is to blame 
for our inability to establish the proper place of morality in politics. 
He made the case that academics and theorists frequently assess 
moral issues politically and political issues morally. This, in his 
opinion, has helped to intensify the conversation about the interplay 
between politics and morality. This essay and those who are 
interested in seeing the art of politics have a moral anchorage face a 
challenge as a result of these controversy: the growing need to nd the 

8
place of morality in politics.

POLITICS AND MORALITY: ANY RELATIONSHIP
Political science, in general, aims to discern and resolve many 
ideological conicts.  One of the issues that is constantly at the top of 
political discourse is whether morality and ethics should be pivotal 
factors for the political decision-making process in contemporary 
societies. The core values that stimulate moral political debate are 
deeply rooted in the personal belief system of the individual, 
determining how he or she denes his or her own place in the society. 
Those values of primary identity are race, gender, sexual orientation, 
and especially religion, which is the basis of many of individual's 

170 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



9most fundamental values.
 Moral politics pulls us out of the area where facts and 
reasoning dominate, and social scientists – especially those 
specializing in political science feel more comfortable in the realm of 
the value system. Moral policies are for the most part dealing with 
values, especially those values that are accepted by society or the 
state, and those values that are dened by the society or the state as 
perverted. “As we have changed from a commercial society to an 
industrial one, we have developed a new set of values in which self-
control, impulse renunciation, discipline, and sobriety are no longer 

10such hallowed virtues.”  The state acceptance of values reinforces 
the social status of certain groups, and reduces the status of others
 The subject of political analysis in contemporary life today is 
a special matter of consistency of personal values and attitudes, and 
political practices, when the faithful is in a position to exercise power.  
The basic principle is that the faithful must practice leadership with 
integrity, and his personal values and attitudes must correspond and 
be consistent with his political views and decisions, even at the cost of 
losing the support of the electorate. The contemporary political 
practice shows that there are a large number of active political issues 
as a foundation for right and proper conducting of state politics.  This 
eld is subject to pressure of the type leading to serious 
compromising with that which is worthy and carnal, thus 
compromising with God and His instructions.
 The possibility of re-moralization poses some signicant 
questions: Where do moral values come from, and what, in particular, 
are the sources of moral values in a postindustrial society?  This is a 
subject that, strangely enough, has not received much attention (…) 
Most people would say that values are either passed along from 
previous generations through socialization, or are imposed by a 

11
church or other hierarchical authority.
 The answers to these questions will still have to be sought 
after deep in the sphere of spirituality of God.  The assessment is that 
religious institutions might play a crucial role in the actual imposition 
of views to the public in order to inuence the political establishment 
when making policy decisions.
 According to the morality point of view, there is a need to 

171The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



stress the principle of not making or carrying out any political 
decisions, pertaining issues deeply tied in with morality and laden 
with moral scruples, in an exclusively secular sphere, and without any 
participation of the spiritually-oriented segment of society and 
without taking into account the opinion of the religious faith sector. 
Any issue that contends ethical or moral elements is an issue that 
should be delegated to the spiritual and religious camp, in order to try 
to offer more adequate solutions in a given historical context. My 
understanding is that answers to moral questions or issues with moral 
character in it, must have a moral source, and accordingly for this 
point of view that is the Bible. Fukuyama concludes that:

The virtues of honesty and reliability, which are keys 
to social cooperation and are intangible compound of 
mutual trust and engagement, are called 'social 
capital'. Many people have argued that such virtues 
have religious sources, and that contemporary 
capitalist societies are living off the cultural capital of 
previous ages- in America, chiey its Puritan 
traditions. Modern capitalism, in this view, with its 
amoral emphasis on prots and efciency, is steadily 

12undermining its own moral basis.

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
Morality and ethics as social categories are crucial for generating a 
sound political culture in any society. Through the process of political 
socialization, these categories inuence not only the culture in a 
nation but its political ideologies as well. Even though there are 
differing views in regards to the source of moral foundation which 
concern the societal realm outside of the religious or theological 
environment, it is this religious i.e. theological environment that is 
the only viable sustainable milieu for moral existence. The principles 
of morality and ethics established as societal standards are the bases 
of individual and societal development. The outstanding illustration 
of the fusing and separation of the provinces of ethics, law, and 
theology is the growths of the doctrine of Natural Law… Rules based 
on reason were law by nature or natural law. In this way began the 

13
identication of the legal with the moral.

172 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



 Their impact upon society is sizable, and if we look at the 
jurisprudence segment of society, that which is apparent is the 
existence of an eminent moral and ethical human characteristic 
responsible for the appropriate preparation of a legislation founded in 
ethics and morality. This is not always the case, due to the secular 
public overtones and the predominantly secular political sphere. 
Notwithstanding, repeatedly throughout history, these two categories 
of ethics and morality have made a huge benecial impact driving 
forward the positive societal development is many segments of 
society. Even if religion cannot tell us anything about what the 
specic moral rules ought to be, is it necessary in order to secure the 
observance of the moral code?... Still, the belief in an all-knowing and 
all-judging God remains a tremendous force in ethical conduct today.
 We may underscore the substantial impact that these two 
categories of morality and ethics have played in shaping societies in 
general and political relations in particular. It is morality that digs 
deep inside a man's personality or inside a person's heart, for his or her 
benet in general. The morality in politics or the concept of moral 
politics has the potential to pervade the political scene and to become 
an indispensable factor in proling the political life in contemporary 
societies.
 Politics must found the people's power on stable ethical 
principles in order to reproduce and maintain it in the long term.The 
ethical principle derives from the ethical demands that human beings 
place on themselves. And what human beings mostly demand, 
according to all historical examples, is that they have the ability to 
exercise their free will. This is the fundamental criterion behind 
Machiavelli's set of virtue ethics which constitutes the benchmark for 
political conduct. Free will is a presupposition of virtue, but it is not 
virtue itself. Virtue requires the ability to constrain free will, and in an 
Aristotelian note, the good practical judgement heavily depends on 
this ability. In addition, it might be limited by circumstances, or 
fortune, but in the end free will cannot be ruled out because of fortune.
 In the same manner, Aristotle argued that, in nal analysis, 
responsibility for moral and political agency lies with the individual 
irrespective of the circumstances and the social context within which 
the individual acts. In a few words, the amoral conception of free will 

173The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



understands free agency as unlimited and irresponsible self-assertion 
based on power, whereas the ethical conception of free will 
understands free agency under the “laws” of self-restraint. In the rst 
conception free agency will be naturally heavily depended on 
fortune, whereas in the second conception circumstances are 
irrelevant to one's ability to be self-responsible (they might change 
the actual outcome of one's conduct but not its ethical premises). For 
Machiavelli self-restraint was a prerequisite for freedom, as for Plato 
self-discipline was a prerequisite for happiness.
 Machiavelli's political philosophy, proposes an argument 
according to which the innate capacities of human beings for free 
agency, along with their imperfect moral natures, constitute the basis 
for political ordering. Legitimate authority depends on acts of 
consent, not on the quality of orders irrespective of how they are 
established, i.e. the ends do not justify the means under any 
circumstances. Thus, Hampshire here agrees, the answer to 
Machiavelli's problem may be that there is a recognizable basic level 
of common decency, which he explains as procedural justice, and that 
even in weighing in, politically, conicting moral claims and 
competing conceptions of the good this level of common decency can 
never be violated. The interdependency of politics and ethics is 
therefore inferred by Machiavelli from the fact that the ethical value 
of exercising free-will must translate into the general principle of 
authorization; i.e. always seek consent and consultation, regardless of 
the relative power of agents and subjects.
 Utilitarianism and idealism would simplify the problem of 
politics and morality by focusing, respectively, on how to achieve 
political outcomes regardless of moral costs for the agents involved, 
and on how to achieve the salvation of moral integrities regardless of 
practical costs for the collectivity. They both underestimate the 
importance of the mediating agent's moral decisions; the political 
gure who personies the conict between political, public and 
private morality and understands and endures the moral predicament, 
notwithstanding the absence of a philosophical solution. It is this 
outcome from the union of the political role with the moral character 
which best represents the seriousness of the problem and reveals the 
insufciency of monistic explanations of morality. As we have 

174 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



already mentioned, the existence of widespread lying and deception 
in politics is not, in itself, enough to justify the conclusion that there is 
a conict between morality and politics, or that politicians are 
morally worse than us. This latter view is an over-simplication, and 
one reason for this is that, when politicians lie, it may not be in order 
to further their own ends; it may be in order to secure important and 

14desirable political ends.  'In order to do the right thing, one has to do 
the wrong thing; in order to be or do good, one must also be or do evil'. 
 On the other hand, doing the wrong thing in order to do good 
does not wipe out the moral wrongness of the action. This is the kind 
of moral dilemma politicians usually have to face and this is why the 
problem of the moral character is so pressing. How a political gure is 
going to respond to a moral conict and what would be the outcome of 
this response depends on their moral disposition and their 
understanding of ethics. In the face of such moral dilemmas, 
politicians themselves may feel both that they have sacriced their 
integrities and that it is politics that has demanded that sacrice of 
them. Alternatively, politicians may act as there is no moral dilemma 
at all, either because they do not accept the peculiar moral demands of 
politics (a case of moral absolutism), or because they believe moral 
integrity is irrelevant (a case of unlimited utilitarianism).

NECESSITY OF MORALITY IN POLITICS
In politics, the importance of morality cannot be overemphasized for 
although Machiavelli states that morality has no place in politics, that 
is eventually impossible because the individual himself is his own 
moral agent and so every action he takes is inuence by his own 
notion of right and wrong and of good and evil but, whether this can 
be translated to the public sphere is not a topic that will be discussed in 
this paper. 
 Now, in the Nigerian political landscape, it is the absence of 
morality in politics that has led to so many social and economic ills 
like poverty, corruption, nepotism, tribalism, and so on.  This is seen 
on the side of the politicians and the electorates.  On the side of the 
electorates, it can be seen in political thuggery, vote selling, stealing 
of ballot boxes, rigging and so on while on the side of politicians, we 
can see this act of immorality displayed in corruption, vote buying, 

175The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



not keeping to electoral promises, inated contracts, nepotism, 
cronism, religious afliations, et cetera.
 Political thuggery is a phenomenon whereby some citizens 
allowed themselves to be used or weaponised to use the politician to 
instill fear and cause violence and commit other political crimes in 
order to achieve a certain political result which in most cases swings 
the election to their favor, not much explanation is needed in 
explaining why this is an immoral act as it consists in abled body men 
and women committing crimes or enacting crimes for money.
 Vote selling is a situation whereby some members of the 
electorate sell their vote measly amount of money.  This is mostly 
caused by ignorance, poverty and greed and it goes beyond just 
selling vote it is about selling their dignity and future and one does not 
need a prophet to show how much harm this has caused Nigeria. This 
situation is however mostly caused by the politicians as they 
sometimes make the economic situation of Nigeria so bad that the 
poor man will not think twice when asked to sell his vote for money.
 Rigging of election is a political phenomenon whereby false 
or fake votes are put into the ballot boxes after they must have been 
stolen in order to sway the election in favor of whoever paid the thugs 
to commit the act. This act shows immorality on the side of both the 
electorate and the politicians in the sense that it is the politician that 
pays for such an act to be done and it is members of the electorate that 
are paid to commit the act. This immoral way of getting votes has 
caused many unjust and corrupt and individualistic people to lead 
Nigeria and this in turn has led to a lot of self-evident problems in 
Nigeria such as poverty, ignorance due, to lack of education, lack of 
jobs and basic social amenities as the money meant for these have 
been embezzled and siphoned by corrupt leaders whom vote selling, 
political thuggery and rigging have helped to put in power.
 One of the prime examples of Immorality in the Nigerian 
Politics is the Issue of broken promises with regard to the policy of 
Rotation of Power between the major Ethnic Groups and the 
proclamation of Manifestoes. A prime example of the former is the 
promise made by the PDP chairman to step down, that if the next PDP 
presidential candidate is from the North. The next candidate became 
Atiku Abubakar, who is a Muslim and Fulani and all of a sudden, the 

176 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



PDP chairman decided to retain power instead of stepping down as he 
previously promised. A prime example of the latter is the various 
promises made by Buhari and previous presidents to change Nigeria 
for the better. But in most cases, the most recent being, the case of 
Muhammadu Buhari, who as President has done the exact opposite 
and pulled Nigeria deeper into a rabbit hole, that it is only now 
struggling to get out of with the hope of the new political dispensation 
that will bring about the desired leadership change that will usher in a 
better social, political and economic dispensation.
 In addition, there is the issue of the morality behind the 
process of selecting politicians to occupy political positions in the 
polity. 
 Instead of election, it is usually selection mainly backed the 
survival of the richest. This was manifest, during the primaries of the 
major political parties in Nigeria before the campaigns began. The 
effects of what happened during the primaries are still having a ripple 
effect on the political harmony in the country today because of lack of 
transparency in the entire process. The rules that were supposed to be 
used for these processes which were never properly implemented fall 
into the same domain of morality. Hence, the call for the stringent 
implementation of sanctions when people are found guilty of 
offences, irrespective of tribe, religion, class, position, age and 
personality. If this is properly done, obedience to lay down ethical 
codes will surely improve tremendously.
 What are the sources of our laws? This also plays a major role 
on how people respond to laws that are made for public interest or 
common good. There has been this clarion call for the need for a new 
constitution in Nigeria. Philosophers, political scientist and even 
scholars of other disciplines have called the drafting of a new 
constitution altogether. It was this clamour that led to the national 
Conference that was held under Jonathan's regime, whose report 
never saw the light of day, not to talk of the implementation of the 
content of such a conference. If the desired changes are not effected in 
the polity, the clamours for a new constitution will never see the lght 
of day. The argument is that the 1999 constitution is a product of 
Decree 24, which was promulgated by a military regime. It means 
therefore, that our constitution is a product of military regime and as 

177The Nexus Between Morality and Politics



such it did not emerge from the collective will of the people of 
Nigeria. Using the military laws to govern a democratic system is an 
aberration of the highest order. The above also falls within the realm 
of morality.
 In conclusion, this paper subscribes to a codication of ethical 
norms that could guide society life. Such recommendation in the past 
has been rejected on the basis of the avoidance of the implementation 
of the morality of a particular religion. It is obvious that morality 
cannot be divulged from social, political and economic life, that is 
from public affairs. As such, common objective moral norms can be 
codied conventionally to meet needs of social life today. A refusal to 
go this way will spell doom for micro and macro societal life. I join 
Aristotle to uphold the fact that, “the guarantee of human actions 
including politics is the pursuit of moral virtue,  which ows from the 
moral law, which in turn will guarantee common happiness for the 
individual and the society at large. It should not be a product of 
individual and relative morality that are subject to the whims and 
caprices of powerful individuals or groups who attempt consistently 
to hijack societal ethos for their own selsh ends.

ENDNOTES
1 Mendus Susan,Politics and Morality. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 

63
2 Austin, Michael, Divine Command Theory. The Internet Encyclopedia 

of Philosophy, in https://iep.utm.edu/submit/100-most-desired-
articles/ Accessed April 24, 2022.

3 Long, D. Stephen, Christian Ethics: A very short Introduction, (Oxford: 
Oxford University press, 2010), 31. 

4 M. Garrnet: Introduction to Politics and Morality, (New York: Winston 
Press Limited 1980), 30.

5 M. Garrnet: Introduction to Politics and Morality, 36.
6 M. Garrnet: Introduction to Politics and Morality, 38.
7 M. Garrnet: Introduction to Politics and Morality, 39.
8 M. Garrnet: Introduction to Politics and Morality, 45.
9 Button, James, Private Life, Public Conicts, (New York: CQ Press, 

1997), 5-6.
10 Guseld, Joseph, Symbolic Crusade: Urbana-Champaign, (Illinois: 

University of Illinois Press, 1963), 6.

178 Ekpoma Review, Volume 9, 2022



11 Francis Fukuyama, How to re-moralize America, (Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1999), 32.

12 Francis Fukuyama, How to re-moralize America, 32 
13 Henry Hazlitt,Foundations of the Morality;(Ludwig von Mises 

Institute, 199), 62.
14 John Parrish, Paradoxes of Political Ethics, (Cambridge University 

Press, Cambridge 2012), 1-2.

179The Nexus Between Morality and Politics


