Poverty of intellectualism in­ Nigeria

The award with which I am being honoured today is for Distinguished Academic Leadership, and the organisation bestowing the honour on me is the Convention for Intellectual Co-operation of Nigeria (COFICON) under the leadership of Professor Chiweyite Ejike. Two terms in the name of the Award and the name of the organisation giving it to me have a certain significance for our present purposes, which calls for comments, namely, the words “academic” and “intellectual.”

An academic may be defined as a person engaged in the advancement of higher education and higher learning, whether in the humanities, science, law or other fields, through the medium of a university or other such institution. The dividing line between an academic, as so defined, and an intellectual is a thin one. The two are often used as interchangeable terms. But an intellectual has a meaning wider than an academic.

Intellectualism is concerned essentially with the notion of “ideas”, i.e. the mental ability to comprehend ideas, and to reason or think them out. An intellectual is a person engaged in creative and rational thinking about the world, about humanity, about human relationships, and about the governance of human society; he is a person dedicated to the study and understanding of ideas that govern and shape our world, society, the organism known as the “state”, and generally to intellectual pursuits and interests. The understanding of ideas and the ability to reason and think them out presuppose a society permeated by a culture or habit of reading.

The previous recipients of the award for Distinguished Academic Leadership in 2011 and 2013 can rightly be described as distinguished academics as well as eminent scholars and intellectuals – Prof Mkpa Agu Mkpa, former Vice Chancellor of Abia State University; Prof Ikenna Oyido the immediate past Vice Chancellor of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike, Prof Celestine Onwuliri, formerly Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri; and Prof Bart Okachukwu Nnaji, formerly a professor at Amherst, University of Massachusetts, U.S.A.

The credentials of the previous awardees also clearly establish them as eminent scholars and intellectuals. Prof Mkpa is a celebral professor of Education, Prof Ikenna Oyido, a highly celebrated research scientist in the area of Chemistry, Prof Onwuliri, a distinguished professor of Zoology, with specialisation in Parasitology, and Prof Nnaji, a world renowned professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, with special interest in the development of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
COFICON itself was founded in April 2011, with the concept of “Thinking together for capacity building” as its motto and imperative objective. The creation of first class universities was conceived as providing the tool in the drive towards the realization of the objective. The expectation was that the universities, through their intellectual activities, will serve as a stimulus and impetus needed for the purpose.

Regrettably, these objectives, for the pursuit of which COFICON was founded, have, far from being realised, been dashed in the years since independence in 1960. Notable among the factors responsible for this tragedy is our pre-occupation with the pursuit of money and power and other mundane, money-related things. In the result, the role of ideas, reason and strategic thinking in the life of a people is sadly neglected. We are, as the situation is today, neither a thinking nor a reading nation. We neither think rationally about how to advance the strategic interests of our country, nor do we read books on the matter.

MY INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
I believe that an account of my intellectual development might serve as a stimulus and inspiration to our on-coming generation aspiring to attain distinction as academics and intellectuals. The account is reproduced from chapter 8 of volume 1 of my autobiography (in 3 volumes).

I was quite good in Arithmetic in the primary school, but Geometry, when I was first introduced to it in the secondary school in 1947, was mystifying and puzzling. I performed woefully in it in the first class test. But I was determined to puzzle it out, as it were. Alone in the room I shared with a fellow student. (I had left the school hostel after the first term because the cost was too high for my parents to afford). I tried the test problems in the Geometry textbook. Then suddenly, after I had been at it for several hours, the door of the mystery opened to me. I was able to solve successfully one test problem after another included in the book. It was like magic. I felt an exhilarating sense of triumph. I had become, from that moment, the mathematical “wizard” that I remained throughout my years in the secondary school, 1947 – 50. This may be said to mark the beginning of my intellectual development.

Given the lack of maths teachers in the poorly supported private schools at the time, our maths teacher, Mr Okon, a product of Yaba Higher College, which later metamorphosed into the University College, Ibadan in 1948, used to draft me in my last year in the school to teach mathematics in any of the lower classes without a maths teacher. Because of this, I was given and called by the nickname “Syndicate” by the other students, who thought I had the answers to all maths problems. “Syndicate” was the name of the examining body of the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations.

During the four years I was in the secondary school, maths became my second love. I had, during that period and after, developed such interest in, and passion for, the subject that I had no hesitation in naming it in answer to the question put to me in 1955 by Uncle M.C. Oduah : “what would you like to study abroad?” Upon hearing of my success in four subjects at Advanced Level in the G.C.E. Examinations, Uncle Oduah had driven to the house in Enugu in which I lived in a rented room; he had come to congratulate me and to ask me to get ready to go overseas for further studies. My answer to his question, “what would you like to study?” drew laughter from him. He retorted : “Have you ever heard of anyone going overseas with his own money to study that kind of thing? They study Law, Medicine or Engineering. You will study Law.” That settled it. It was an order, although I had never thought of Law or read anything in it before. After this interview with Uncle Oduah, I got hold of a book titled John Citizen and the Law, and read through it with great interest and relish. It was my first introduction to Law.

The question, sometimes put to me, is whether I ever regret having had to change from Mathematics to Law. My answer is No. Being so intellectually stimulating and offering a life of reflection, Maths is an excellent training ground for the mind, and I love it. I have no doubt I would have distinguished myself in it had I taken to it. Yet, Law is a noble profession, nobler than Maths, and distinguished by the vast learning and understanding of human affairs it imparts to its students. One may rightly say, as I said at a valedictory court session in Calabar in March 2012 in honour of my good friend, Chief (Dr) M.T. Mbu, no other profession really qualifies to have the word “learned” applied to it, certainly not Mathematics. The medical doctors, I there said, have done a tremendous service for humanity, but it is largely detached from the principles of human life and the issues of human relations, and the concepts of ordered human existence. These are the things with which Law deals and which entitle it to be called a learned profession. On the other hand, despite all the intellectual stimulation and excitement it provides, the world of Mathematics is a rather narrow world, and offers limited scope for greatness. The life of a mathematician, unless combined with other worthy pursuits, as in the case of Bertrand Russell, is a solitary life spent more or less in confinement battling with mathematical problems.

But what is more relevant in this connection is the nature of Mathematics as reflecting on the quality of a person’s mind. I have always believed that any student good in Mathematics will also be good in other subjects. Proficiency in Maths reflects the high quality of a person’s intellect. You have to have a good precocious and perspicacious mind to be good in Maths, and that guarantees that, generally speaking, you will also be good in other subjects. A person may not like or have a flair for certain subjects, but the kind of mind required for him to be proficient in Maths rules out his being a poor student in other subjects. That cannot be squared with the high quality of his intellect that makes him good in Maths.

Lord Denning, the incomparably brilliant English judge, is cited as an illustrative example. He had a First in Mathematics – and a First in Law as well. The high quality of the intellect required for a First in Maths is reflected in the high quality of his judgments. Their sheer lucidity, the brilliant analytical dissection and logical presentation of issues, the immense depth of his knowledge and mastery of the law itself all show the high quality of the intellect demanded for a First in Mathematics.

Or take Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell). He too had a First in Mathematics – and in Philosophy as well. It was the high quality of the intellect demanded for a First in Mathematics that enabled him to excel in all his multifaceted pursuits in life, and in particular Philosophy, becoming “probably the greatest of living philosophers”, the “philosopher of the century.”

After Mathematics, Latin, strangely enough, was the other subject that has had a profound effect on my intellectual development – specifically Book II of Virgil’s The Georgics and Book IX of his The Aeneid, both of which I read as prescribed text books for the Senior Cambridge School Certificate Examination in 1950. Publius Vergilius Moro, the full name in Latin, was born in 70 B.C. and died in 19 B.C. He finished The Georgics in four Books in 30 B.C., and devoted the rest of his short life (he was only 51 years when he died) to the composition of The Aeneid in twelve Books, 952 pages in all.

The Georgics excited and stimulated me, both emotionally and intellectually, more than The Aeneid, perhaps because it tells the story of two passionate lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice. It is called “Poetry of the Farm.” The word “georgic” means, according to the definition of it in New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language, a poem on husbandry. Virgil’s father had a bee farm in which Virgil lived a good part of his life. The Georgics, Book II, was built around the experiences of a bee farmer who lost his bees caused by the angry spirits of the two lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, whom he had offended. The cause was revealed to him by means of a consultation with a sea nymph.

The Aeneid describes the fall of Troy to the Greek invaders, and the escape from it of Aeneas, a Trojan prince, with some followers, to found Rome in Italy. Both The Georgics and The Aeneid are great literary epics.

As a secondary school boy in 1950, the beauty of Virgil’s poetry and the epic stories it tells used to set me on fire; it so charmed me. It more than charmed me, it mesmerised me. It casts a spell on me that almost turned my head. I would be reading the two Books at 2 in the morning at the top of my voice, overwhelmed by excitement, which awakened the other residents in the compound, who thought I might have gone naughts.

In my case, I had the two Books of Virgil committed to memory, and could recite them word for word both the Latin version and the English translation of them. I had then what some people sometimes referred to as an electric brain. Today, 62 years after, I can still recite some lines in The Aeneid (Bk IX) climaxing the exploits of the two youths, Nisus and Euryalus, followers of Aeneas, in their desperate bid, through the enemy lines, to reach Aeneas and bring him back to save beleagred Troy from the Greek invaders.

You have to read the stories in Latin to appreciate the beauty of Virgil’s craftsmanship. The description of it by Jackson Knight, the translator of The Aeneid into English, says it admirably : “the music of his Latin is lovely beyond description.”

What I say to myself is this : If Virgil could produce such a memorable classic more than 2,000 years ago, why can’t I, in the 20th century, produce something similarly worthy of acclaim? The twelve Books of The Aeneid, edited and published by Virgil’s friends after his death, became popular reading materials for literate citizens in the Roman Empire. Before his death, in recognition of the influence of his writings in the Roman Empire, he was made by Emperor Augustus the Poet Laureate of Rome, with a stipend.

I have often wondered whether we did the right thing in scrapping Latin from our school curriculum some years after I left secondary school in 1950. I do not share the view of Bertrand Russell who thought it “merely foolish to learn a language that nobody speaks” : Autobiography p. 36. I am inclined to agree with Edward Blyden that the literature and history of the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, not just the language, are more relevant and appropriate to the mental emancipation of Africa than the literature and history of modern Europe. I hold this view for the following reasons. First, because Africa shares with ancient Greece and Rome a religious/cultural affinity based on paganism with striking similarities in rituals, festivals and other observances. In the second place, Greek and Roman civilisation is unequalled by modern European civilisation in intellectual stimulation and inspiration, mental discipline, and even in sheer intellectual edification. “No modern writers”, he (Blyden) maintains, “will ever influence the destiny of the [human] race to the same extent that the Greeks and Romans have done”.1

In the third place, modern European civilization is derived largely from Greek and Roman civilisation, and it seems intellectually more rewarding and emancipating to have resort direct to the fountain head. As he rightly observes, “there is nothing that we need to know for the work of building up this country, in its moral, political and religious character, which we may not learn from the ancients. There is nothing in the domain of literature, philosophy or religion for which we need be dependent upon the moderns”.2 I personally can testify to having learnt more and profited more, particularly in terms of my own mental liberation, from reading the story of Greek and Roman civilization than from reading that of modern European civilisation. I have come to feel that my real education began with my reading of the story of the civilisation of ancient Greece and Rome in volumes II and III of Will Durant’s monumental The Story of Civilisation in eleven volumes, and that no one who has not read those two volumes and Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes can rightly consider himself educated. I sometimes describe those of my friends in the Humanities, like Wole Soyinka who read Greek and English Literature, Emeka Anyaoku who read Classics, and Ayo Banjo who read English, as the really educated (not “learned” in the sense in which that word is applied to the legal profession) and civilised people in Nigeria. But where were these people when classical studies were scrapped or down-graded in our school and university curricula?

Mention must be made of Plutarch (c.46 B.C. – 20 A.D.), the greatest biographer and chronicler of all times, whose Parallel Lives,3 with its “vivid narrative, the exciting episodes, the fascinating anecdotes, the wise comments, the noble style”, has been described as the most precious book left to us by ancient Greece.4 By pairing and comparing great Romans with great Greeks, he hoped to “pass on some moral stimulus, some heroic impulse, to his readers.” In that, he succeeded excellently. For, Napoleon carried it with him for inspiration almost everywhere, and Heine, reading it, “could hardly restrain himself from leaping upon a horse and riding forth to conquer France.”5 A hundred other eminent men – generals, poets and philosophers – have also drawn inspiration and stimulus from the book, my humble self included.

Most important of all, the history and literature of modern Europe are linked and entwined with the transatlantic slave-trade and the colonization of Africa, and all the horrors and degradations thereby inflicted upon Africa and Africans. That era in world history “has produced that whole tribe of declamatory Negrophobists”6 whose views of the negro, as embodied in their prolific writings, have shaped the negro’s whole perception of life and his place in it. For, if people “read books which portray them as inferior, their minds are conditioned to such a reflex.”7 The new generation of Africans should be spared that literature. On the other hand, Greek and Roman literature contains not “a sentence, a word, or a syllable disparaging to the Negro.”8

Blyden’s prescription of Greek and Latin languages, distinct from their literature and history, as necessary subjects of study in African schools, colleges and universities is, however, open to question. Knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, though a powerful aid, is not necessary to the study of Greek and Roman literature and history. His claim that they discipline the mind better and “enable the student in after life to lay hold of, and with comparatively little difficulty, to master, any business to which he may turn his attention”9 is perhaps over-stated, to say the least. In his advocacy of the study of Latin language by African students, Blyden has a present-day disciple in Kamuzu Banda who, as President of Malawi, established a grammer school for the brightest pupils, the Kamuzu Academy, in which Latin occupies a central place in the curriculum, and all teachers are required to have had at least some Latin in their academic background.

Secondary school, which I left in 1950, provided the foundation for my intellectual development. As a clerk in the Federal Civil Service at Enugu from 1951 – 55, I had no avenue or means available to me to further my interest in Mathematics. As earlier stated, I did not have sex until I arrived Enugu in 1951, then aged 20 years. But when I did have it, I found the experience somewhat intoxicating, and threw myself with vigour into the licentious and unrewarding business of running after women. Realising the folly of life spent in this way, I gave it up suddenly in 1953, and threw myself with the same vigour into study and reading, becoming an avid reader. I read everything I could lay my hands on : The Complete Works of Shakespeare; John Milton, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained; King Edward viii’s A King’s Story; Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries; Macaulay, History of England, etc. I combined these with reading novels, which I read at the rate of one or two a week, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novels and of course his Sherlock Holmes Stories in Omnibus Editions. My wide reading during this period reinforced the foundation for my further intellectual development.

In 1955, I entered for the G.C.E. Advanced Level in four subjects, one of which was Economics, in the course of which I came across the name John Maynard Keynes (Lord) and books with titles like Keynesian Economics etc. I became interested in him wondering whether he was a man or a myth. He must be a man, since Bertrand Russell, though ten years his senior in age, knew him at Cambridge and was his close associate. What he (Bertrand Russell) wrote of him in his (Russell’s) Autobiography at page 72 intrigued me deeply : “Keynes’s intellect”, he wrote, “was the sharpest that I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that I took my life in my hands and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool. I was sometimes inclined to feel that so much cleverness must be incompatible with depth, but I do not think this feeling was justified.” I had not at that time read the books in economics with the title mentioned above or what Bertrand Russell wrote of him; it was the name alone and his status in Economics which towered over everyone else that captivated and fascinated me greatly. I wanted to know more about him, and wished to be as distinguished and famous as he was.