A former university course mate of mine from Liberia gave me a call recently. He was among several students from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Namibia and South Africa that Nigeria offered scholarship to study in the country in the 1990s. Yes, Nigeria was really the big brother of Africa back then. We played a key and strategic role toward the end of colonial rule in South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Angola and Mozambique and in the end of apartheid in South Africa.
We were also a staunch supporter of the Frontline States of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe which was established to achieve democratic rule in South Africa. Back then we had a robust foreign policy thrust with Africa as the “centerpiece.” This was the major reason most Nigerians were saddened that we were not duly recognised and accorded our dues and earned respect during the burial of Nelson Mandela.
My ex-course mate expressed sadness at the state of insecurity in the country. Because of the Liberian civil war, he travelled to Guinea as a refugee from where he came to Nigeria and was granted scholarship by the government. He is one grateful Liberian that sees himself as a Nigerian any day.
“Are Nigerians aware of what they are toying with?” was his question to me after we finished discussing old times. “The untold misery I witnessed in my country and Sierra Leone is better imagined. I hope Nigerians will rise up and nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand. Nobody is safe during a civil war; we are still battling to put ourselves together over two decades after the war. I love Nigeria for giving me a degree and pray this ‘madness’ ends before degenerating into something else. I am eternally grateful for all you guys did for me.”
After I hung up I reflected on some of the gory stories he told about their civil war, some of which I already knew because I have friends who fought in that brutal war, some never came back alive. I must confess that sometimes I feel weighed down, especially with the senseless killings of innocent citizens by elusive “herdsmen.” And now IPOB has been added to the dangerous mix just when we are trying to shake off Boko Haram.
Surely, we all hope Nigeria pulls through. But that should not be taken for granted or to underscore the gravity of the issues the country faces in the context of a changing global order and the need for deep thinking and strategic action. This is time to put on our thinking cap on and be reasonable for once.
Samuel Huntington once noted that the force that seems to be moving the world these days is not political ideology, but political identity. Everyone is asking the question: Who are we? And who are we not?
The question is imperative for today. While answering the former may be contentious because of inflamed ethnic, regional and religious tensions in Nigeria today, the latter can be answered immediately that we are not suicide bombers neither are we terrorists or murderers.
In the midst of this it appears our intelligentsias have gone to sleep. Gone are the days when our ivory towers use to be a beehive of heightened intellectual activities. Gone also are the days when economists, sociologists, historians and political scientists gather to take interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex national problems that the government often find very useful.
This is why it is frightening that deep thinking is sorely missing in Nigeria and the need to urgently popularise it again. When the bombs started to go off in the Northeast, Abuja and elsewhere, there were no serious workshop and strategic meetings organised by groups to rethink the social and political currents of the new wave of terrorism. Apart from a touch here and there, we almost never heard insightful expositions by our scholars and social critics. This is a clear evidence of the dearth of public reason.
The sad story is that this grave crisis has not elicited the expected rigorous thinking and analysis from policy and intellectual circles in Nigeria. There have been no high-profile intellectual events to headline a serious commitment on the part of researchers and policy thinkers to properly understand and prepare for what may be a persistent challenge of the 21th Century for Nigeria.
With the exception of some editorials and often biased op-eds, we lack a commendable civic engagement aimed at proffering solutions to our crises. How many seminars, workshops and focus group meetings have been convened to think through our crises? Definitely, the absence of such sort of engagements illustrates the low-energy public intellectualism that defines our public space.
It is also depressing, but true, that it is mainly in foreign think tanks and centres that our crises are receiving the quality attention it deserves from scholars and policymakers. The government, intellectual and civil society actors have not done well in engaging with the challenges of nation building. The danger of this lack of intellectual rigour and vigour is that we may not effectively overcome these challenges if efforts are not made to contain it.
Is because of our ‘underdeveloped’ nature? The predicament of ‘underdevelopment’ approximates to the chronic absence of problem-solving thinking. Whether viewed in terms of the weakness of institutions or the low quality of goods and services, countries that persist in underdevelopment are those that are unable to socially produce quality solutions to environmental, social, economic and political challenges.
It is not rocket science that developed societies have successfully mainstreamed their universities and other epistemic communities with their policymaking institutions. The marriage of knowledge production and policymaking is definitive of societies that are on the forward march.
Prof Nail Fergusson, a Harvard historian, in one of his books: “The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die” said the real issue for societies is the quality of public reason. He shows how the degeneration of western society occurred or could occur. What stands out from his analysis however is that the quality of institutions for coordinating social transactions makes the critical difference between prospering and declining societies. So, when societies think clearly and act intelligently, they create superior social institutions to solve their problems. But when public reason is weak then problems persist or compound.
The dilemma of public reason in Nigeria is very evident and troubling. The quality of debate is also depressing. In the place of logic there is anger and fury. This is where a vibrant civil society comes in. The focus of civil society is formulating policies and programmes that affect social and economic outcomes for the people. It plays its role best when it plays the policy game and not politically partisan. Of course, policy is politics. But that is only to the extent that policy seeks to achieve broader political outcomes. Not just partisan outcomes.
As we grapple with our security challenges, we need to remind ourselves that most of the more difficult problems we face today are not the products of mere partisan politicking. They are outcomes of leadership. And leadership begins with mobilising ideas that could change situations.
Our continued underdevelopment is a product of low quality public reason. If we don’t improve the quality of public reasons, if civil leaders don’t see problems as opportunity for creative thinking and mobilise social engagement in search of solutions, we will wake up after much politicking and many elections and discover we have simply compounded our problems. Just like my Liberian ex-course mate prays, I also pray we don’t get to that stage.
In order to bypass that stage, we need to realise that creative ideas are not generated through superficial one-off encounter; they are generated through persistent, intense, rational and deep thinking. We must realise that solutions to social problems do not end with good ideas alone. There should be great leaders as well who can use the good ideas generated to mobilise citizens toward quality and positive collective actions.
How we need such leaders in these trying times.
