Africa’s Bonny Kingdom Sans the State of Nature! How the Origin of the Kingdom was Synonymous with the Birth of Its Sustained House System of Public Sector Governance

Abstract

In the realm of history, economic and political philosophy, particularly in the framework of humans and the evolution of society, the ‘state of nature’ may be considered as indicating the real or hypothetical condition of human beings before socialization and thus without political association, namely the absence of Organized Government (Public Sector Governance), especially the absence of state sovereignty (the sovereign state), which evolved from the social contract of governance between government and the governed. According to the renowned English philosopher of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Thomas Hobbes, the state of nature was characterized by the ‘war of every man against every man’. The state of nature featured a constant and violent situation of competition, whereby each individual had and exercised natural right to everything, regardless of the right and interest of other individuals. The basic law that prevailed during the period was that of self-preservation, on the basis of which each individual catered for his or her welfare and security. Consequently, Hobbes characterized the state of nature as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. This study examines how and why Africa’s Bonny Kingdom (also variously called Bonny Kingdom, Ancient Grand Bonny Kingdom or Grand Bonny Kingdom [Ibanise]) did not experience the era of the state of nature, given that the origin of the Kingdom was synonymous with the birth of its sustained Welfarist House (Canoe House) System of Public Sector Governance, which was midwifed by the social contract of governance between the Kingdom’s primaeval rulers and the governed (the rest of the primaeval citizens of the Kingdom). It discusses Bonny Kingdom, as a primordial African sovereign state and famous primaeval Ijaw City and Trading State of modern Nigeria, which was originated by its Founding Ancestors from the Ijaw heartland of Central Niger Delta, where the civilization of the Ijaw ethnic nationality originated, and thereby reveals that the origin of the Kingdom in the context of ‘the state of nature’ adds value to existing scholarly literature and thus a contribution to the worldwide knowledge industry about the same concerning the origin of Public Sector Governance in the Kingdom.