Righteousness Exalts a Nation
Today is Ramadan Kareem. Nigerian Muslims join millions of Muslims across the world to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammed. Last week was Easter. Nigerian Christians joined their fellows across the world to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Nigerian government typically declares public holidays to respect the religious sensibilities of its citizens who are adherents of the two historic religions. Many countries in the world will in diverse manners acknowledge the importance of these religious celebrations in, perhaps veiled, acknowledgement of the important of religion to national development.
This piece is inspired by these sacred and inspiring moments. The question is how much religion contributes to economic and social development. The point I want to argue is that the two aspects of religion that matter for development are belief and morality. Of the three major religions in the world, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, two are dominant in Nigeria. All these religions are called ‘Abrahamic Faith’ because they all trace their origins from Abraham. The Christians are followers of Jesus Christ, who is a son of Abraham. Muslims are followers of Prophet Mohammed who is traced to Ismeal, while Jews are descendants of Abraham through Isaac. One can argue that the 10 Commandant or a variant of its define the three religions. These are moral codes that stipulate the right social morality for the society.
A moral code, like the ones articulated by both the Old Testament and the Koran, shapes how people behave and underlines both the purpose and character of social institutions that define economic and social transactions. These moral codes are part of institutions. As Professor Douglas North puts it, institutions are humanly designed constrains to human activities. They could be both formal and informal. Informal institutions include religious beliefs and practices. Those practices can determine how the society manage the various opportunities and constraints it faces. The real effect of these moral codes is to establish a righteous society, a society that embodies what Aristotle called the virtues. He identified 12 such virtues that define a good society. They include courage, temperance, magnanimity and friendship.
The title of this essay is ‘Righteousness Exalts a Nation”. This is taken from a passage in Proverb, a book in the Old Testament. A subtitle could have been ‘Examining the theological insights in the political economy of development’. The question is whether we can construct an explanation about the success and failure of nations from their religious character. Many scholars have inquired into the cause of the success and failure of nations. Some trace it to geography. The argument is that somehow the people in particular geography of the world lack development because of the effect of geography. Jeffery Sachs is famous for offering this explanation for the lack of development in Africa and the rest of the left-behind continents. There has also been arguments about the negative effect of resources. Countries who have the misfortune of being abundant in natural resources at some point in their history are doomed to be poor as the effect of ‘Dutch Disease’ undermines the development of inclusive institutions.
But the examples of Norway and other resourceendowed countries in the west negates the resources argument. Being rich in natural resources does not predispose to poverty. It actually offers an opportunity to match towards wealth creation. The more persuasive insights arising from the work that institutional economists have done is to locate the divergent outcomes of resource endowment in Nigeria and Norway is the quality of institutions that moderate the use or misuse of resources. Those countries that have evolved differently from extractive institutions to inclusive productive institutions are unaffected by the resources curse. I argue that one of the major causes of this divergent evolution is the nature of religious sentiments and practices in the countries.
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