China Achebe |
Something sad has happened
and is happening, and is getting worse in our society: the decline of public
intellectualism. And so I ask, where are the public intellectuals? Once
upon a time in this country, the public arena was dominated by a ferment of
ideas, ideas that pushed boundaries, destroyed illusions, questioned
orthodoxies and enabled societal progress.
Those were the days when
intellectuals exerted great influence on public policy, and their input into
the governance process could not be ignored. Ideas are strong elements of
nation building, and even where interests are at play, you know the quality of
a country by the manner in which a taste for good thinking propels the
leadership process.
Public intellectuals are at the centre of this phenomenon: they include
academics who go beyond their narrow specializations and university-based
scholarship to take a keen interest in public affairs and who use their
expertise and exposure to shed light on a broad range of issues. They also
include journalists, writers and other professionals who question society’s
direction, and offer alternative ideas. The beauty of public intellectualism is
that the intellectual at work is a disinterested party, he is interested in
ideas not for his own benefit, but for the overall good of society, and he does
not assume that his opinions are the best or that he alone understands the best
way to run society and its organs. The product of this attitude is that
discourse, a culture of debate, is encouraged and in the cross-pollination of
ideas, a good current of thought is created; truth is spoken to power.
Public lectures were organized which attracted persons who were just interested
in ideas. Writers did a lot more than the professional task of producing
novels, poems and plays and wrote public essays. The vendor’s stand every
morning attracted not just buyers and free readers, but also young Nigerians
who every morning debated major topics of concern. On television also, there
were debates and those in the corridors of power also took ideas
seriously. So influential were intellectuals in the public space that
they soon got invited to be part of government and although the military had
always opposed intellectualism, at least one government, the Babangida
government had the largest collection of intellectuals in office since
independence. Many who lived during that era will remember the debates over the
IMF/Structural adjustment Programme.
As the years went by however, public intellectualism began to decline. In 2006,
Jimanze Ego-Alowes published a book titled How Intellectuals Underdeveloped
Nigeria and Other Essays, an allusion to the complicity of intellectuals in
the crisis that had by then engulfed the country. Four years later,
Rudolf Okonkwo in an article titled “The Comedy of Our Public
Intellectuals” observed as follows: “the world of the Nigerian public
intellectual is a zoo. It is a zoo full of nihilists. Some are sectarian in
their outlook and others are humorless. Some are eccentric while others are
comical. But one thing they all have in common is an over-inflated ego of their
importance in the scheme of things.”
I don’t know about over-inflated ego, but I do know that the flame of public
intellectualism in Nigeria is now almost a flicker. There are extremely few new
significant voices, saying anything of consequence, the soldiers of old have
become old, the fire in their belly, now subdued. It is as if our
academics have lost interest in public affairs, as only a few of them maintain
a column or write an occasional piece or take on public issues in the manner of
the likes of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Segun Osoba, Claude Ake, Bade
Onimode, Ola Oni, Mokwugo Okoye, Mahmud Tukur, Yusuf Bala Usman, Ayodele
Awojobi, Biodun Jeyifo, Femi Osofisan, Stanley Macebuh, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi
Osundare, Chinweizu, Kole Omotoso, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Bode Sowande, Patrick Wilmot…The
opinion pages of the newspapers are no longer vibrant. There is so much “opinionitis”,
but debate is rare and rejoinders are always self-serving.
What has happened is that politically neutral intellectuals have now
become scarce; the typical intellectual of today is not public in the sense in
which that word is used; he is in reality affiliated to partisan and sectional
interests. The intellectual influence in Nigeria’s affairs is thus
diminished because of obsession with individual interests: academics are now at
best “acadapreneurs”: the intellectual as an entrepreneur. Business and
partisan interests have compromised media houses; those once vibrant platforms
are no longer offering vibrant ideas. Within the cultural sphere, there is a
total dumbing down. Where are the creative writers? They are still
writing, but few want to get involved in the issues of the day and offer ideas.
The effect is that we are in the age of clichés, of jargon writing, of mundane,
unimaginative commentary. Whatever appears intellectual is written off as
arrogant and there is no quality debate on anything because people have
resorted to making fashionable statements that suit the moment and every one is
locked in their own little corner, not willing to listen to the other side of
the story. The reading public, whatever is left of it, is also not
interested in ideas or anything that requires rigorous thinking. We have thus
lost a critical element of public intellectualism: an audience. The people are
interested in easy stuff, in fashionable opinions that align with their own
partisan interests. Nobody wants to read any long commentary; there is an
obsession with short thinking, and whereas brevity may be a good technique,
there are certain ideas that just cannot be reduced to a tweet. It is
really sad that today, intellectualism is seen as a threat.
Even when corporations and politicians in power draw intellectuals close; they
end up usurping the powers of the intellectual, compelling him to hold his
intelligence within the scope of the definition of his assignment.
Intellectuals can be inside or outside, and there are classical cases of
intellectuals in power making a difference, but that age appears ended, the
disdain of intellectualism has turned politicians and corporate gurus into wise
men that they are not, and the intellectual into an organic element of power.
The greatest power of the intellectual lies in his freedom; when he is denied that
under any circumstance, society turns off its energy source and gradually, it
is the self-imposed wisdom of clowns that prevails.
The gap that has been created seems to have been easily filled by internet
gladiators who spend the day shuffling from Instagram to Facebook to Twitter
and other social media threads. These new culture activists project a
democratic impression of public intellectualism - and yes, there is a sense in
which everyone is an intellectual, from the village priest to the village
idiot- but I don’t see the rigour, the breadth and depth and the
aesthetic alienation that can elevate this genre and its promoters to the grade
of public intellectualism. For the most part, social media in Nigeria is
predominantly at the level of tabloid sensationalism, and it accommodates and
offers the same degree of freedom to the ignorant and the mischievous, as well
as the entrepreneur and the uncouth. There is no doubt however that its
content and the quality can be raised, but that will require innovation, the
intervention of thinkers and the creation of new audiences that will be
interested in something more than the quick and formulaic.
What we have lost is not the intellectual, as there are many educated Nigerians
who are experts in their narrow fields, what we have lost is active
intelligence as a tool for social progress. The rub is in the intelligence part
of being intellectual. Being intellectual is about living a life of ideas and
using those ideas to engage society intelligently in a committed manner.
In addition to other reasons, it may well be that our intellectuals are tired
of engaging Nigeria. Having tried over the years to engage the governance
elite with ideas and to show that only good ideas should govern society and
having been spurned by the politicians, Nigeria’s intellectual elite seems to
have become so frustrated, it has retired largely into a state of indifference
and inertia. What is the point knocking one’s head against a wall? But
intellectuals in society cannot take such a stand. That will amount to an
abdication of responsibility: when intellectuals do no more than make righteous
noises, the harvest in the long run, is counter-productive.
Another factor is the emergence of a “climate of fear,” and a culture of
silence/co-optation/acquiescence. Politicians distrust intellectuals; they
can’t tolerate anyone around them speaking truth to power or raising disturbing
questions. The intellectual is expected to keep his ideas to himself and respect
constituted authority. He is expected to enjoy his freedom in his head and dare
not go public with it. Ideas cannot thrive if the man of ideas is afraid
to think, and whisper or speak. Rather than insist on the freedom to differ,
many academics, journalists, writers and thinkers have since dropped the baton,
and surrendered the public space.
But that is unhelpful cowardice. Those who know better must continue to
engage the public vigorously with ideas about governance and public policy, and
encourage open debates, for the good of the entire society. Those ideas
must however, be relevant for them to be of any value; they must not be
abstract theories that disconnect with the people’s realities, but ideas that
offer intelligent solutions to practical problems.
Right now, there are critical areas where such intervention is needed: budgets,
economic planning, handling a currency crisis that is fast turning into a
nightmare (France has declared an economic emergency and yet was not in as bad
a position as we are in…Argentina made changes to its export taxes to address
its own dilemma…). We have had schizophrenic interventions by the Central Bank
of Nigeria and yet where are the intellectuals to come up with analysis and
desired alternative views, beyond bellyaching? Where are the inorganic public
intellectuals to guide public thought? Who are those thinking for
government, the opposition and indeed the public space?
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