The Ethics of Memory and Historical Injustice: Philosophical Obligations Towards Nigeria’s Victims of Colonial Violence

This study provides a philosophical analysis of the ethics of memory and historical injustice, examining what moral obligations the Nigerian state and contemporary Nigerians bear toward the victims of colonial violence and their descendants in the South East and South South geopolitical zones. The philosophy of historical injustice addresses whether acts of injustice perpetrated in the past generate moral obligations in the present for those who benefit from those acts, even if they did not commit them. A mixed-methods philosophical design is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of historical injustice ethics from Jeremy Waldron, Janna Thompson, and African ancestral philosophy with a qualitative study of 35 interviews with historians, reparations advocates, and philosophy academics in Enugu, Port Harcourt, and Calabar, supplemented by documentary analysis of colonial violence records. Findings establish that the philosophical case for obligations arising from colonial historical injustice in Nigeria is strongest when framed in terms of unjust enrichment rather than backward-looking guilt, because the Nigerian state and some ethnic communities continue to benefit from institutional structures and resource allocations established through colonial injustice. The study contributes an original philosophical framework that synthesises historical injustice theory and African ancestral obligation philosophy to ground contemporary reparations and memorialisation duties. Keywords: historical injustice, ethics of memory, colonial violence, reparations, African philosophy.