DAVID HENRY THOREAU'S CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND STRIKE ACTIONS: A JUSTIFICATION OF LABOUR STRUGGLE IN THE NIGERIAN CIVIL SERVICE

摘要

The concept, civil disobedience was introduced and developed by David Henry Thoreau in 1849 sequel to his experience in the fight against slavery in USA. This concept was popularized by Gandhi in India in 1966, in his Satyagraha, and later by Martin Luther King Jr. in his civil right movement of non violent resistance. Civil disobedience aims at bringing changes to government policies and has been in existence since the 18th century. In developed countries such as the United States of America (USA), civil disobedience is used to demand justice from the government and remains an effective tool for fighting political despotism. Henry David Thoreau is conventionally considered as a towering figure who advocated and practised nonviolent resistance against social evils. Thoreau's height of conscientious integrity in an era of social conformism, his passionate opposition to the institutional degradation of human life and values, and his enduring literary production as an author, public speaker, and natural scientist, placed him at the heart of the era now known as the American Renaissance alongside his distinctive prose style, classical and personal life. Consequently, because of the complexity associated with the readings, understanding and the application of the paradox of Civil Disobedience as contained in Thoreau's On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, this work adopted a hermeneutic method which is basically the philosophical method of interpretation of texts, ideas, etc. from another's or author's point of view to interrogate the crisis of strike in the Nigerian labour especially her civil service. This is apt especially now that the Nigerian state has become a state of despotic-lawlessness, living citizens and Nigerian Labour at large at the mercy of their selfish leaders. Thus, it is the findings of this piece that corruption, failed leadership, institutional decay, and poor exploration of the rich tenets and techniques of civil disobedience as has been demonstrated globally and politicization in the Nigerian labour that are responsible for the bane of efficient service delivery both in the Nigerian civil and public services. It is concluded that unless there is a conscious, deliberate, and effective exploration of the concept of civil disobedience especially as it has been demonstrated globally, the crisis of strike and industrial disputes rocking labour in Nigeria would remain a perpetual burden of political history.