Heidegger, African Ontology, and the Question of Being in Nigerian Philosophy: Towards an Original Afro-Heideggerian Analysis

This dissertation develops an original Afro-Heideggerian philosophical analysis, systematically engaging Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology with Nigerian indigenous ontological traditions from the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani philosophical heritages across the South West, South East, and North West geopolitical zones, to produce new philosophical insights that neither Heidegger nor African philosophy has generated independently. The encounter between Heidegger's question of Being and African ontological traditions has been attempted fragmentarily in global African philosophy but never systematically executed in the Nigerian context, constituting a significant theoretical gap. A three-phase methodology is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of Heidegger's fundamental ontology from Being and Time and later works alongside African Heidegger scholars including Emmanuel Eze and Lewis Gordon; deep ethnophilosophical investigation of ontological concepts in Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa-Fulani traditions through 80 interviews with traditional philosophers and academic philosophers across the three zones; and constructive dialectical synthesis developing the original Afro-Heideggerian framework. The dissertation proposes the Communal Being-in-the-World concept as an original contribution, arguing that African ontological traditions reveal a mode of being-in-the-world that is irreducibly communal, ancestrally constituted, and temporally cyclical, in ways that both challenge Heidegger's individualist dasein concept and enrich African ontology's understanding of its own structure. Keywords: Heidegger, African ontology, fundamental ontology, Afro-Heideggerian philosophy, Nigerian philosophy.