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Combined part (1) and (2) of culture of anti-intellectualism
Nigeria and the culture of anti-intellectualism (1)
KAYODE KETEFE
A recent incident just reminded me of a rather mischievous joke I heard sometimes ago. The joke has it that four friends from four continents, (Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa) won lottery of $1million each. "I will invest the money in shares and in five years time, I will be in wealth" enthused the European.
The American said he would start a small company and in five years he would be a great entrepreneur. The Asian from Japan said "I will invest this money in technological researches, in five years, my company will spearhead major breakthroughs in science and technology."
The African, from em, em, Federal Republic of Nigeria, said "Thank God! I will use this money to marry more wives, in five years time, I will be a father to countless number of children." Incidentally, at the end of five years, they all became successful in their missions but the African is so much stricken with poverty, hunger and diseases that by the end of the fifth year he is begging his other three friends to send him money.
Imagine one million dollars plus five years ending in misery!
While this joke may appear self-denigrating, the underlying message, beyond the harsh satire, is instructive as it speaks to the undeniable reality of our society in relation to what we treasure, value and glorify. There is simply no denying the fact that the emphasis we place on human development projects and intellectual endeavours in this clime, vis-avis other mundane issues, is abysmal. In particular terms, our society would appear to be remarkably anti-intellectual with entrenched systemic hostility to intellectual pursuits.
To start with, the last national honours bestowed on numerous Nigerians on November 14, 2011, was basically an exercise in glorification of mediocrity and mockery of intellectualism as there were more intellectual nitwits and lightweights than the cerebral savants among the honorees.
But national awards apart, even the traditional honour of chieftaincy titles were more commonly bestowed on moneybags than on those who distinguished themselves by the powers of their intellect.
Our universities gates are shut continually as Academic Staff union of Nigerian universities embark on strikes in endless circles. Students rendered idle by these forced recesses found ready employment in all kinds of appalling vices. Yet, this is not seen as a national calamity but a mere regular occurrence that should not distract the government from things of "greater" priorities. Very sad!
Qualified and skillful job-searching graduates are forced to roam the streets uselessly – their years of learning in the universities, in the view of our policy makers, means nothing to the developmental quest of the nation. In the social circle, universities professors are not as respected as illiterate but wealthy businessmen. Scholars are poorly paid and are mostly impoverished while every mediocre in the showbiz is adored.
Our corporate organisations are steeped in the culture of enlisting movies stars, beauty queens, sportsmen and women or other possessors of mundane qualities as their corporate ambassadors whom they give mouth-watering multi-million naira contracts termed "endorsement deals"
This writer has never heard of graduates who emerged with First Class degrees from their respective universities or those with doctorate degrees in some fields particularly beneficial to the society being offered such deals. That alone speaks volume of the value we attached to the intellectual enterprises. Why can't we make celebrities of the people with superior acumen?
Even in the political circle the same old story of discounting the powers of acute human intelligence in preference for "mere" money holds true.
This writer finds it appalling that when politicians want to make selections or vote in their primaries for elective offices, intellectual depth and resourcefulness of the potential contenders is rarely factored-in rather criteria that are far inferior to keen intellect are unwittingly embraced.
What is important is how "loaded" the candidate is, even if the sources of the wealth is cloudy. How many times have you heard of anybody being put up for the elective offices on account of being the first person to obtain a doctorate in a particular uncommon discipline in his community?
Yet, the process of intellectual development is a laborious one that requires a lot of discipline and commitment to continual drilling for excellence, and its effect is the potential capacity to lift the society from ignorance to knowledge, stagnation to development and poverty to sustainable prosperity. Countries like Israel, Japan and Taiwan between themselves have either remarkably insufficient natural resources to sustain an economy or virtually no resources at all, yet all of them are giants with vastly developed economies on account of the sheer strength of the intellect of their citizenry.
Nigeria society is anti-intellectual and until this attitude is changed, our quest for development would remain a mirage. The human intellect is the spring of all development and no nation can develop beyond the extent of the intellectual dynamism of her people.
Now, let me share with you the incident which I said reminded me of the joke at the beginning of this article, which inspired this piece, with a view to thrash out its implications on Nigeria's quest for development.
-To be continued-
Nigeria and the culture of anti-intellectualism (2)
KAYODE KETEFE
Now, let me share with you the incident which I said reminded me of the joke at the beginning of this article with a view to thrash out its implications on Nigeria's quest for development.
This is the finding from a study conducted and recently released by a team of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D) - a finding with mystifying implications!
The study shows there is inverse correlation between performance on intelligence of children from different countries and the fortuitous incidence of abundance of natural resources possessed by their countries. The test used, called "Program for International Student Assessment" (PISA), tested mathematics, science and reading comprehension skills of 15-year-olds in 65 countries vis-a-vis the total earnings on natural resources as a percentage of G.D.P. for each of the participating countries.
The conclusion inferable from the test, according to the Overseer of the test, Andreas Schleicher, is that it shows "a significant negative relationship between the money countries extract from national resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school population" in short, it shows (albeit with a negligible variation) that the more natural resources a country has, the dumber the citizenry!
Commenting on this report, a columnist with New York Times and serial Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Thomas L. Friedman, extrapolated the story of Taiwan vis-à-vis this interesting finding thus "Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live on — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women!"
This finding seems at once counter-intuitive. One should have thought the wealth of those nations would serve as the necessary raw materials to ignite the passion for intellectual endeavours with a correlational all-round upsurge in all indices of development. But after ruminating on the Nigerian situation, the riddle seems automatically solved!
Look at it this way, there is a lot of wealth in our land which are concentrated in the hands of a very few, with some of this wealth finding redistribution outlets through corruption.
Our youths continually observe, through daily experiences, so many corrupt people become millionaires overnight with no efforts and they are mentally entrapped with a resultant extinguishing of all inclinations to mentally-sapping endeavours.
Why belaboring yourself by taking the torturous paths when you can short-circuit your ways to success? They would ask.
Many youths and adults alike are thus being indoctrinated into false "success model". The age-old formula of success through hard work now looks obsolete. Spending long years in school to acquire necessary skill for future gainful employment, to many, now looks laughable.
Thus, the fantasy of easy wealth created and sustained by the abundance of the natural resources continues to nurture mental laxity and adherence to anti-intellectual lifestyle.
Just imagine we had no oil, and there are no easy money to pick by anybody anywhere, the people would have been acculturated into the philosophy of "No work no success" with a resultant respect for the virtue of dignity of labour.
Our government would have leant to place great premium on intellectual powers of human resources to create wealth and the nation would be on the right path for sustainable development.
As a measure of encouraging adherence to the only established mechanism for sustainable development which is intellectual endeavours in all its ramifications. This writer would want a situation where at primary, secondary and tertiary school levels, every best student in each of the 774 local governments is given automatic scholarship annually.
This would translate into three automatic scholarships for indigenes of each of the774 local government every year.
A particular fund could be established into which each tier of government make some contributions and the fund should be managed by a team of tested scholars operating as the board of trustees. This would make the project automatic, sustainable and permanently built into the system – not amenable to caprices of political decisions.
Fortunately, agitations for further amendment of 1999 Constitution have been resuscitated; this opportunity should be seized to amend section 131of the constitution that makes a secondary school education "or its equivalent" the minimum qualification for the aspirant to the office of President of Federal Republic of Nigeria. Modern realities have made that basic educational requirement grossly inadequate, especially in the light of complexities of Nigerian situation. This writer would suggest that tertiary education, even if not at a university, should be made the minimum requirement.
Only three of Nigerian Presidents, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Umar Yar'Adua and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, have been university graduates since independence. By comparison, five of the first seven American presidents had a degree. As a matter of fact, since 1869, every American President (with exception of Grover Cleveland and Harry S, Truman) has had a degree! President Obama is the seventh American President with the prestigious Harvard degree while Yale University has produced five American Presidents.
That is an example of a country that treasures human intellect.
Concluded
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