Communal Living in Acts 2:42-47 as a Paradigm for SocioEconomic Liberation in Nigeria

The Nigeria without doubt is blessed with human and natural endowment enlivened with diverse cultural heritage for its sustenance. However, the same nation blessed with rich diverse cultural heritage, human and natural endowment is daily confronted with variety of challenges which include: poverty, unemployment, hardship, corruption, insecurity, poor basic amenities, misappropriation of public funds, abuse of power, discrimination, economic sabotage and other societal vices such as cyber-crime, kidnapping, drug abuse, drug trafficking, armed robbery, terrorism, etc. While these issues persist in the Nigerian society, the stability of the nation’s socio-economic, political and religious spheres is daily threatened and the reality of the nation is on the verge of collapse without hope of survival for the future generation. Against this backdrop, this paper centres on communal living in Acts 2:42-47 as a paradigm for socio-economic liberation in the Nigerian society. What is communal living? What is the African perspective on communal living? What are the socio-economic situations in the Nigerian society? How did the early church manage their socio-economic affairs which led to exponential growth of the Church in the New Testament times? Moreover, how can Acts 2:42-47 be appropriated in the Nigerian socio-economic spheres for liberation and stability of the Nigerian polity? This is the thrust of this paper. The paper employs a contextualized reading and liberationist approach and maintains that the widespread suffering, hunger, hardship and poverty being experienced by Nigerians and other socio-economic problems prevalent in the Nigerian society could be abated through communal living as exemplified in Acts 2:42-47. The paper recommends communal living, good governance, zero tolerance to class system, fair and equal distribution of shared resources and provision of basic amenities to Nigerians.