Editor’s note: A famous journalist and publisher Dele
Momodu in a piece titled “Where is ex-president Goodluck
Jonathan?” criticizes former president’s silence over the
$2.1bn arms deal scandal.
Reuben Abati, a spokesperson to Jonathan, in what seems
to be the answer to Momodu’s article, blasts public
intellectuals, saying that Nigeria suffers the decline of
public intellectualism.
Where are the public intellectuals?
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 intellectualism began to decline
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 world of the
Nigerian public intellectual is a zoo. The Comedy of Our
Public Intellectuals” observed as follows: “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.”
The flame of public intellectualism in Nigeria is now
almost a flicker
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.
Read the rest here.
This article expresses the author’s opinion only. The views
and opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent
those of Justpye or its editors.
