As a professor of pharmacology, why the advocacy on culture?
Because I am, firstly, an African. And I believe Africa is blessed with rich cultural heritage that should not be relegated to background despite civilisation.
There is the fear that with the current global ideological movement christened “globalisation”, if concrete action towards cultural preservation is not done, African traditional beliefs, including some languages, would go extinct…
Completely! And that is the danger. What it means is that Africa would not have anything to contribute to world civilisation in years to come. Civilisation of the world, also known as globalisation, would only be seen in the eyes of the Europe and America; and theirs would be the only ones that would be important. That is the meaning of globalisation. Whereas we have very important ideas and concepts imbedded in our traditional beliefs and practices that should be explored for the world’s benefit. But that is not the case for long time now. See what the Asians are doing with their traditional beliefs and ideas: so much so that the world powers are going there for ideas. And this has been possible because such beliefs have been adopted into their national constitution and made into policies, and has become part of the national consciousness. Meanwhile, we, Africans whose culture and tradition are blessed with lots of scientific and philosophical ideologies that would benefit the world are relegating them to the background due to indoctrination, coupled with the current curriculum that have kept us down. These will continue to keep us from developing.
What are you doing to change that?
At the moment I am working on a book on Traditional African Medicine. In it, I am advocating for the promotion and scientific research and development of the Traditional African Medicine, which is my concern. And one of the very important things that would be coming out of that book is the way we are made to understand malaria disease and what it really is.
Could you share a little of your thought with us with regards to culture?
Culture is a body of knowledge. It is all encompassing, covering the total well-being of the African: body, mind and socially. And from it springs the Traditional African Medicine (TAM) that embodies a great wealth of knowledge of cures to many health problems. ‘Culture is a body of knowledge. It is all encompassing, covering the total well-being of the African: body, mind and socially. And from it springs the Traditional African Medicine (TAM) that embodies a wealth of knowledge of cures to many health problems. It is a tragedy that African doctors who are studying Modern Medicine are not taught anything about TAM. Whereas that ought to be the foundation of Medicine in Africa, because it evolves in Africa’s ecological, geographical and cultural area; so it is very relevant to the health of the Africans. But we ignore it.
I once spoke with professors and advocates of Oral tradition, particularly oral literature, under the auspices of the Nigerian Oral Literature Association (NOLA). I said they must find a way to orientate the policymakers through their organisation, teaching and thinking to include this body of knowledge (culture) because it is very relevant to oral literature. It has all the complex ideas such as beliefs. Take divination for example, people who have not thought seriously about divination would think that it was nonsense or a demonic thing; whereas divination in TAM is very similar to diagnosis in Modern Medicine. Divination is a diagnostic mechanism just like diagnosis is: it is a way of finding out what is wrong with a patient just like you now find some computers screening the body. In Medicine, they are using Science and Technology to do diagnosis, but in TAM, they are using divination. It is a complex process, but it is trying to find out the same thing: you are going beyond what common sense can deduce to something that is beyond common sense. So, in both systems, they are doing the same thing. But people who do not understand divination would turn round and say it is demonic, irrational and superstitious.
Does such attitude have any effect on development?
It is this misunderstanding that we must conquer because these things are very relevant to the self-knowledge and self-worth of the African. If what our ancestor, ancestors handed to us is relegated as rubbish, it means we are not worth much.
How can such misconceptions be changed?
There is need for a re-orientation at all spheres. And the onus is on scholars, beyond those lecturing or researching into oral literature or cultural studies, to put these philosophies and belief systems into practical terms and theories that would give for intellectual exercise. What I have said on Africa’s self-worth and TAM are reflections of what I have been thinking all these years as I taught Pharmacology. I think they should go beyond their current and curricular dictate to researching and producing intellectual materials from the African perspective that would promote this ancient medical knowledge; because oftentimes we are driven to look at ourselves from the Europeans perspective. They came here, saw what we were doing and couldn’t understand it and then, labelled it “superstition” and “irrational”. And nowadays, they say it is “demonic”.
So, it is really up to us as scholars and government to turn this clock around and re-orientate ourselves. So that we are proud of what we have and do not just follow what others have said about us. The African thoughts and beliefs do not separate religion from science, in this case, medicine. You cannot talk about somebody’s health without involving religion or religious beliefs. And Western Science and Medicine tries to dichotomies and separate religion from science; whereas in TAM, both are combined. And that is why they say it is demonic because there is religion in African Thought when talking about Medicine. In fact, Western Medicine is now coming round to the idea that the mind and the body are linked and what goes on in the mind (your emotions) can affect your health which is what TAM is all about. It posits that when you have a serious illness, the origin is in the emotion and that is why they have all these rituals, incantations and divinations, etc. which are meant to diffuse emotional stress. It is very meaningful, rational and very important and Western Medicine is coming round to it now.
What can the government do to re-orientate the masses?
Firstly and most importantly, they should change the National Curriculum. In fact, our whole Educational Curriculum must be changed – from primary school to university – so that these indoctrinations that we have suffered from the colonial period which is still part of our educational system today should be done away with. That would help to release people, starting from an early age, so that they know that our past as Africans was honourable and rational. You would notice that some of the ideas that now form Modern Medicine and those that constitute some of the religions that they have brought back to us originated from Africa.
Like which one?
Let’s not go into that. That is a very big subject. The whole curriculum should be changed. At the moment our children go to school is as if their brains are blank – like a blank slate. This is because the knowledge they first acquired at home is ignored. Aside the government the onus is also on parents and guardians to return to their roots. Most Africans are no longer of the traditional stock, that is to say, second, third generation are thoroughly Christians or thoroughly Muslims and they teach their children such. But we have to go beyond that. Even though you may be Christians or Muslims, it doesn’t mean that the remnants of traditional African culture are not in your system. You may fight every inch of the way to say that you are now a Christian or Muslim and that you are saved by “Jesus Christ” or “Mohammed”, but deep down the remnants of African culture and the beliefs are there. Sometimes, one is forced to think that the beliefs in the existence of the devil, witchcraft are also what drive some Christianity and Islam.
So, what religion do you practise? Are you still a Christian or Muslim?
Laughs (Silence) it is not about my religion. What I am saying is we should re-orientate ourselves. The change must come through the curriculum, if we must carry the young along in this move of self-realisation since it is what they used to indoctrinate us. And with regards to Medicine, my area of interest, they should change the Medical Curriculum so that it would include elements of TAM for doctors, pharmacists and nurses. And there are two main reasons for doing it. One, today, many hospital patients are traditional Africans with the beliefs that we are talking about. If something is wrong with an African, there is the idea that either somebody else is responsible, witchcraft or ancestors who are angry with them and so on. They may say you do not belieVE in such but in reality they do. And they come into hospitals with those ideas at the back of their mind. I think it would be better for the doctors, pharmacists and nurses to understand where the patient is coming from in order to be able to help them; even if it is just to be able to communicate with them, but we ignore it. So, the patients come, and in some cases, while the patient is in the hospital, his/her relative(s) are consulting diviners and babalawos. Sometimes, they even smuggle such medicines into hospital without the doctors knowing. So in order to bring everything into the open, the TAM should be included in the curriculum.
You mentioned that your book would change the way we understand malaria; how so?
We are told that the only way to deal with malaria which we suffer from time to time, is the prescription handed down by World Health Organisation (WHO): take powerful drugs to kill the parasite and sleep under an insecticide net. The question we should be asking ourselves is: “How did Africa people survive Malaria” from the beginning of time before the coming of the Europeans only about 500 years ago. When they came, Africans were bubbling with humanity. And it was because of this fact that they began the slave trade. If Africa was devastated by malaria, they would not have started the slave trade that went on for over 300 years.
So, how did we survive?
We survived it because we have protective adaptation against malaria parasite. We have the genetic adaptation: this means that most adult Africans have either the AS or AA or they have the Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD), an enzyme, in which if it is not in your system then you are protected from malaria. If you combine those elements, you will find why a large number of Africans do not die of malaria. They would suffer from it but it would be like fever.
But experts say malaria is one of the major causes of child mortality in children below five years…
Yes, if we come to children, it is a separate issue which I would come back to later. But still on the adults, there are also herbs that protect them from malaria. You’ll notice I did not say “were” because the herbs still exist today. If a person is already partially immune to malaria and get the fever, you can treat him/her with herbal remedy. The remedy doesn’t kill the parasite but cures the fever. When you cure the fever, the person recovers and that is how we survived malaria.
When it comes to children, traditional African children were fed entirely on breast milk continuously, sometimes for more than a year; there was no formula. And that was how the children survived because if you feed your infants entirely on breast milk, they would not get malaria. They may get the bite but the parasite would not grow and would not survive. You can take my word for it because there is a lot of scientific evidence to this. But WHO comes along and does not refer to any of this. It just says: “buy the drug, buy the insecticide-impregnated net”, which they sell to us and we buy at great cost. Now they have terrified Nigerians to the extent that if people have fever, without even finding out if it is malaria, they rush to buy artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT). It is very expensive and very difficult to take. This is why I say there must be a re-orientation where we are allowed to look inward at solving our own problems, especially medically, from indigenous knowledge and traditional point of view.
