Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: ARE WE FALLING OFF THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE MAP?

Sublime essay by Olukotun.

His identification of Pentecostal pastors Adeboye, Kumuyi and Oyedepo, as icons of a marriage between rationality and Christianity, however,  is very problematic.

A number of these Pentecostal pastors have degrees, some advanced degrees, but their culture, as represented by what they preach and how they live, often  represents the most arrant superstition and desperately callous exploitation of the cognitive poverty and poverty of environment suffered by their  flock.

There is a world of difference between the dominant strain of Western Christian culture, even during the centuries gone Middle Ages and Nigerian Pentecostal Christianity.

The Middle Ages and its Church dominated culture is the bedrock of modern Western thought and science which now rules the world.

In that period a  magnificent  synthesis was achieved between classical Western knowledge as mediated through the Arab world and Christianity, and the product of this fusion is what we now know as Western thought, its fundamental configuration persisting through all developments since that time, and resonant in the works of even the masters of the Scientific  Revolution, such as  Isaac Newton and Rene Descartes.

Even with the Enlightenment, it is not possible to adequately grasp a pivotal figure such as the philosopher Immanuel  Kant  without understanding his deep religious spirit, which empowers his work with an imaginative and passionate   depth as he develops a style  style of reason that demonstrates a sense of the numinous character  of nature, of reason and of the very fact of existence.

The University of Paris, Europe's oldest university, perhaps , Oxford and Cambridge, some of the world's greatest institutions, are products of the Church of the Middle Ages.

What do we have  as the dominant strand in Nigerian Pentecostal Christianity  represented by the pastors Olukotun mentions?-

A fanatical irrationality based on a world-view  where witches are ever after you,   and no effort at serious discourse on the metaphysics of the classical African religions  they seek to overthrow.

A sheer hatred of anything to do with classical African cosmologies, a hatred  based on abysmal ignorance.

Feeding off their flock through a culture of fear in the midst of poverty described as due more to evil forces than to social and personal factors.

Absurd  amassing of wealth by these pastors, exemplified by the culture of private jets in the midst of grinding poverty, infrastructural decay and the near absence of social security safety nets.

The Catholic Church has long suffered various forms of  corruption but it has never  failed to operate as  a cultural centre,  and to some degree, a cultural catalyst. The older Protestant churches, the Church of England and others, represent a cultural bulwark of  European achievement.

Having noted these points, I acknowledge that the Nigerian Pentecostals, at their best,  truly understand  what the Catholic church describes as the priesthood of the laity, they demonstrate a dynamic style of prayer, worship and preaching  that suits many temperaments, have developed a robust relationship with Jesus' ministry of exorcism, a vital need since there truly exist strange phenomena that suggest negative spirit activity and which need specialized intervention to deal with, and they are deeply rooted in close study of the Bible as revelatory and spiritually potent text, all essential to robust Christianity.

They also represent hope  and refreshment in the midst of infrastructural breakdown and social despair.

At the same time, however, they lack a significant cognitive culture, and are often anti-intellectual, and in a shallow way.

Questions about relationships between faith and reason, the role of religion in relation to science and technology, the place of religion in national development, a grounding in global Christian history, not to talk of significant engagement with other religions, even a knowledge of Christian imaginative literature as central to shaping culture, among their flock and in what they preach, perhaps even the question of  a   grasp of the scope of Biblical hermeneutics,  all these are like water flowing off the back of a duck in their sense of superior  spiritual entitlement as 'saved' people.

If I am wrong I would like to be informed.

As for their running universities, there is education and there is education.

What quality of knowing  is being advanced in those locations? What cultural scope do they represent?

I wont pretend to know. I'm arguing that running a university is  not equivalent to developing a  significant cognitive or intellectual  culture.

The true contributors to profound Christian discourse in Nigeria are the Catholics and older Protestant churches,  who are not loud  like the Pentecostals, but are  serious scholars, writing, publishing and making available in Nigeria deep thinking Christian literature in various aspects of the faith, from spirituality to theology,  with some luminaries among them, such as Cardinal Arinze  and Bolaji Idowu  being strong figures  in studies in classical African philosophies  and religions.

Thanks

Toyin

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Michael Afolayan <mafolayan@yahoo.com> wrote:

Beautiful write-up - so beautifully written, all I could say was "Amen" after reading the last sentence of the critique. It's so good and so true that it brought tears to my eyes.  From Karin Barber's observation, to the appraisal of Femi Taiwo's book (including its error of illicit simplification of Christianity), and the worthwhile indictment of our nation (Nigeria) in its abysmal failure to capitalize and institutionalize its natural cum cultural artifacts, Professor Olukotun was right on the money. His is the proverbial praying mantis who laments on discharging her filial duty of birthing her baby, noting that the skill of dancing or a lack thereof, is in the hands of the youngster. If any gap at all, it would be in the list of iconic names of previous and current Ibadan residents conjured to indict Nigeria of short-sightedness. I was hoping to see names like Akinwumi Isola, Chinua Achebe, Adelabu Adegoke "Penkelemeesi" and many more. But I can understand; the list is endless but the space is limited. This small gap takes nothing from the sacrosanctity of the write-up. This essay is a classic discourse of one of a million things wrong with Nigeria and until that time comes when Nigeria is blessed with true leadership, these would continue to be nothing but beautiful music in the ears of the hearing impaired, and water in the back of the duck. But people like Olukotun should not be discouraged because someday their cries would be heard and their dreams of Nigeria would become a reality. The mountain called Nigeria has a summit, and someday, we shall be there.   Until then, keep writing, keep talking, keep hoping, keep hiking, keep moving . . .

M. O. Afolayan
USA

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From: "ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com" <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:39 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: ARE WE FALLING OFF THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE MAP?

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.

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From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 16:09:54 +0100 (BST)

To: ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>

ReplyTo: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>

Subject: ARE WE FALLING OFF THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE MAP?

ARE WE FALLING OFF THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE MAP?

 

Ayo Olukotun

 

"Regrettably, Nigerian governments do not fund documentation and safeguarding.  Government implements economic injunctions from the World Bank but neglects those on culture, which is the foundation of sustainable development and modernisation" – Professor Karin Barber 2013

 

     Have you read Professor Femi Taiwo's latest book: 'Africa Must be Modern?' The question was put to me in a gentle whisper by G. G. Darah, Professor of oral literature and folklore at last week's Conference of the Nigerian Oral Literature Association (NOLA) held in Ibadan. At Darah's beckoning, I sat next to him in one of the plenary sessions.  Sitting close to Darah and myself was renowned Kenyan academic and poet, Professor Chris Wanjala who in the course of his trip would later weep for Nigeria when he saw the desolation that had overtaken the National Arts Theatre, Iganmu since the Festac colloquium of 1977 when he last visited the country.

    Answering Darah's question, I said, "No, I haven't but Taiwo mentioned the book to me in the course of our ecstatic reunion in my office at Lead City University last month." Femi Taiwo is one of Nigeria's finest minds and Professor of philosophy at Cornell University in New York. Of course, I needed no further prodding to grab a copy of the book at the earliest opportunity and to race through its brilliant, polemical, sometimes actively debatable contents for the next two days. It turned out that one of the most interesting sections of the book, at least for me, relates to the search for indigenous narratives and tropes on which to anchor our development experience and scholarship – one of the key themes of the Oral Literature conference.

     Obviously, the matter of creating a knowledge society in Nigeria, and by implication, a modern one is related to emerging concerns about how knowledge generation, transmission and sharing are context bound activities.  In other words, folklore, cultural and linguistic diversities are increasingly viewed as central to and affect the architecture of knowledge systems. 

     Let us illustrate this with reference to the way in which farmers adopt or reject high yielding crop varieties introduced from the industrialised West.  A rural geographer and international development expert, Dr. Oluwayomi Atte told the story once of how shocked some development experts were when farmers in a particular locale, unanimously opted for a local grain variety rather than an imported version which grew rapidly and boosted production.  Upon interrogation of the farmers on this apparently irrational behaviour, the experts were told that the farmers could put the local grain to a variety of culinary uses which the imported variety did not afford. The dialogue between the experts and the farmers resulted in the adoption of both varieties of grain, one for export and the other to cater to the different food tastes of the farmers.

    This buttresses the point about different knowledge cultures in which in the words of one expert 'knowledge is understood to gain meaning as a result of the way it is used in the context of interaction.'  This also provides the context for Taiwo's critique of our universities as externally oriented to the extent that its workers are more inclined to 'garnering honours from outside' than producing knowledge that will impact on Nigerian on African problems.

      A knowledge society is one which sets out to employ knowledge to ameliorate the human condition and one in which knowledge is prized as a principal resource both for its own sake and in problem solving capacities. We are, Taiwo insists, not developing knowledge communities constituted by expertise on Nigerian and African conditions; enriched by debates on local problems and developing policy competencies around indigenous puzzles. To illustrate his point, Taiwo refers to the insistence of our universities that the results of researches on local themes should be published in so called 'international journals' to be recognised.

      He argues, first of all, that all international journals are local in their countries of origin.  There is also, he maintains an element of self devaluation in appealing to experts' validation in a context where most of these experts are not very informed about Africa.  Taiwo's position, which must of course be weighed against the possibility of the rigging of internal evaluation criteria ('man know man') is of more general application in our national life.

     If Nigeria were a knowledge society, Taiwo says, the city of Ibadan, location of several momentous events in Nigerian history such as the assassination that preceded the second military coup of 1966 would have generated its own academic mini-industry.  Similarly, the activities of the charmed circle of writers and iconic artists such as Wole Soyinka, Ulli Beier, Chinua Achebe, J. P. Clark, Duro Ladipo, who at one point all flourished in Ibadan, would have produced several memorable studies.

     In contrast to such expectations, Taiwo laments that, "Ibadan, as far as I know, does not even have a historical society, has no bodies for historical preservation; and hosts no archivist of its intellectual and material artefacts." What is true of Ibadan, one of the largest cities on the continent is also true for the rest of the country and reflects just how much taste or attention we have for documentation, storage and retrieval.  Is it any wonder then that young Nigerians educated abroad, write with reverence about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other American founding fathers but know next to nothing about Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo or Ahmadu Bello?

     Taiwo, like several eminent Nigerian academics, is in my view mistaken, however, when he sees the spreading embrace of Christianity as "a slide to 'irrationality' and the manifestations of a 'virulently anti-knowledge society'". Taiwo must know having lived in the United States for many years that the universities of Harvard, Yale and Princeton were founded by Christian ministers. Princeton's motto, 'Deisub nomine viget' (Under God she flourishes) underlines its Christian origins.  In Nigeria, the educational antecedents of Pastor Adeboye, Pastor W. F. Kumuyi, Bishop Matthew Kukah, Bishop David Oyedepo all of who not only have doctorate degrees but are in the main founders of universities speak to enlightening  auspices. What then is 'irrational' or 'anti-knowledge' about balanced Christianity?  

    Interestingly, Taiwo mentions the divorce between intellectuals based outside the universities and those in the Ivory Tower as an index of weak and incoherent knowledge system. I perfectly agree with him on this score and have often wondered why our Mass Communication departments have no need of the proven journalistic skills of the late Alade Odunewu, Tony Momoh, Mohamed Haruna, Dele Sobowale and Doyin Abiola among others? In Britain, star journalists are appointed to academic departments to 'brand' and legitimate the impartation of knowledge; whereas in Nigeria they are kept at arms' length.

   What then is the way out? It should be noted that our prospects of successfully driving to a knowledge society is bound up with the emergence of visionary political leadership, which will implement policies that will make the ongoing ASUU strike, for example, unnecessary; and which understands that a society that undervalues scholarship disqualifies itself from being a part of the emergent innovation-driven system of the global knowledge economy. Is anyone listening?

 

 

 

Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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