Epistemic Democracy and the Philosophy of Public Reason in Plural African Societies: An Original Framework from the Nigerian Federal Context

This dissertation develops an original epistemic democracy framework adapted to the conditions of deep religious and ethnic pluralism in African federal societies, using the Nigerian federal context spanning all six geopolitical zones as the primary philosophical laboratory. Epistemic democracy theory, associated with David Estlund and Helene Landemore, argues that democratic procedures are justified by their tendency to produce epistemically better political decisions than alternatives, but this theory was developed without attention to the distinctive epistemic challenges of deeply plural African societies where religious epistemologies, indigenous knowledge systems, and secular rationalities compete as sources of public reason. A three-phase philosophical methodology is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of epistemic democracy and public reason theory with African philosophy of knowledge, followed by empirical grounding from 80 interviews with political philosophers, religious leaders, traditional rulers, and democracy theorists across all six geopolitical zones, and constructive philosophical synthesis. The dissertation proposes the Plural Epistemic Democracy Framework as an original contribution, which specifies how democratic institutions in deeply plural societies can achieve epistemic democratic benefits while respecting irreducibly diverse knowledge traditions without collapsing into either liberal secularist imperialism or uncritical cultural relativism. Original contributions include the framework itself, a critique of Rawlsian public reason from an African plural epistemology standpoint, and constitutional design proposals for Nigerian democratic reform. Keywords: epistemic democracy, public reason, African pluralism, political philosophy, Nigerian federalism.