“You can’t see what science is without having in your head an idea what science should be.” Karl Popper
By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
WED, SEPT 05 2018-theG&BJournal- Now the basics. Aristotle was a Greek, an ancient Greek guy. He is reputed to be the single most important intellectual in human history, [Professor Edith Hall]. All too probably he is. But in all, one thing is sure. It is that Aristotle is one of the greatest practitioners and theoreticians of development as a science. That is if you studied and understood Aristotle well, you are almost on a cruise velocity to development. And this holds true both for the individual and the nation. And Aristotle, like all such great minds, is an inexhaustible mine and not just a gem. Just lately for instance, it is been revealed that Aristotle is one of the founders of computer science. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/aristotle-computer/518697/ via Fregge,
Of course by Emmanuel we mean Udom Emmanuel, the guy who runs shop as governor in Akwa Ibom State, AKS. Emmanuel is a former banker, not an epistemologist like Aristotle. But hold your gun powders dry, yet.
Now, the distance in time, in space and in epistemology between Aristotle and ancient Greece on one hand and Emmanuel and modern Nigeria on the other, is beyond listing. But that is only on the surface of things. If we went deep and sought the ”molecular relatedness” in things, you did be surprised how we are one, how all is unity. There is even a fancy word for it we are told: equifinality.
Before we go a step further some clarifications. Writers and thinkers over time and place have adopted leaders as objects of dedicated inquiries and sometimes admirations. Hegel and Goethe for instance had a Napoleon as a preferred subject of study. And Confucius, an ancient Chinese sage, never had Emperor Shun too far off his tongue. The emperor was for him a model to teach on the emergent Chinese order. And lest we forget our own Achebe fell for Aminu Kano, in error?
The idea was to take on real life examples of men whose virtue or whose ”te” a better Chinese word, can be mined as models. That is the scholars are in the enterprise of leaderships adoptions for the good of scholarship. For instance it is Napoleon that gave Hegel the idea of ”world historical spirit” made flesh.
The point is that we too have adopted our own model leaders and potentates to serve our faculty and writerly purposes. For those who have sufficiently followed our missives, it is clear Bola Tinubu is such as one. We simply have written severally about Tinubu, but strictly for the good of scholarship. And it is on record that we had predicted, far ahead of time, that Tinubu will falter if he strayed beyond his Lagos/Southwest zone for national politics. And all reports seem to bear us right. It is nothing to celebrate. It is just trend modeling. The glory if any, goes to independent logic not necessarily to the scholar.
This is where Udom Emmanuel comes in. We have also adopted him as one of the few, whom we study for the good of scholarship. All that we require to pick up and adopt a helmsman is that he be original and protean in vision. That makes him what lawyers call ”locus classicus.” That’s to say if you studied it/him in depth, you did have achieved a cornering of the market as it were. Literally, one is able to see and seize all the world in a grain of sand. So these great men, these potentates are economical tools of scholars. In other words in studying them, you study less, and you get to know more. That’s essentially what such protean potentates or loci classici gift scholars. That is an economy of perfection.
And just the other day Emmanuel was interviewed. To quote him:
”Some people are saying your predecessor did a lot on infrastructure than you did, but that…”
”Let me say something here. When people do comparison, look at the depth of understanding of those people doing the comparison. Even in financial reporting, there is what we call year-on-year. First, you can’t compare three years with eight years and when you compare, there should be a common denominator. It’s simple; compute how much we have collected in three years and factor in the exchange rate of N365 to a dollar, not forgetting the rate of inflation now and the fact that at some point, dollar rose to N495 and the price of bitumen went up six times, yet we did a lot of transactions. Then, compare that to their eight years when dollar was about N161.7 on the average…. There is no intelligence in what whoever did that comparison did.” https://punchng.com/why-i-wasnt-surprised-by-akpabios-defection-emmanuel-akwa-ibom-governor/
Now take away Emmanuel from the equation. The point remains that the idea and concept of classification and thus comparison, is singularly the most powerful tool in developmental science and achievement. And Aristotle was the guy who first formulated it, especially its binominal -that is two part lock-in. In his own way, Confucius, a Chinese Aristotle if we liked, spoke of the rectification of terms. This is in essence is the same thing. That is at the heart of classification or rectification is the ceaseless pursuit of precision, of excellence. And whether it is Aristotle, Confucius or Emmanuel, they are one and all reiterating the same ideas and ideals in their own time and space patios. This brings us again to the fancy concept of equifinality. And that is just to say that all truths, whether ancient or new, whether from one provenance or another, do not contradict one another. In fact they reinforce one another.
The above is essentially the ”literature or the verbiage” in the narrative. The gist however, is that it is our inability to apprehend and practice the concept of classification that holds us back as a nation. In fact it is safe to say that all development is in the rite of supreme classifications, supreme rectifications – in mathematics and what not.
It is this failure of classification that misleads Nigerian public worriers, concerned thinkers or professionals, to think our problem is leadership. It is this failure that leads them to think that all we need is a great leader to make everybody feel high. We can now assure that such an assertion is just at best fancy ignorance and more properly a failure of comparisons and classifications.
Now, the following. While classification looks ordinary an act, it is not. Classification is actually a never ending and never finishing rite. And nothing illustrates this more than biology which gifted us via Aristotle the formal science of classification, called taxonomy.
To summarize, Aristotle was damn right in the framework but was wrong in some major details. His work was taken over by other guys, including we are told a Swedish chap named Carl Linnaeus. But as we write taxonomy has gone molecular and thus the more precise.
So the role of the scholar, including the Nigerian scholar, is to increasingly invent like Aristotle and Linnaeus, more precise order of taxonomy or classifications. If they did, there will be revelations. To give an example from biology. Termites were long thought to be related to ants, but are not. They are cousins to cockroaches rather than near relations of ants. [See The Blind Watchmaker by Professor Richard Dawkins].
Thus it may be cognitively wrong to want an ant to model its ways after a termite. The two, against your assumptions are unrelated and may not be thus equipped to copy one another. Thus it is only when your classification of Nigeria and country XYZ, say UAE/Dubai are grasped under one common denominator that can you now cross-transfer values, models etc.
Finally, the issue at play is not about these great men, Emmanuel or Aristotle. The real issue is about Nigerian development. Immediately the point of national development and the way out is understood, then we can announce a silver lining.
And we are proud to announce that we have pushed the boundaries of classification, of political taxonomy, to its molecular heights. What Aristotle began and Emmanuel has given domestication we have given conceptual advancement. With our new book, ”The University-Media Complex: As Nigeria’s Foremost Amusement Center”, it may now be illiterate to say that the problem of Nigeria is in leadership.
Ironically we were out at in Abuja and met a group of top federal apparatchiks in a social evening. And the kids, all familiar with Dubai, were pointing out that Nigeria lacked a Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for a leader. At that point it was difficult to introduce new and more precise classifications so we kept our peace. And it served well. After all arguments are won by orators not thinkers. If you have a new revelation to prove, it cannot be by the podium. Podiums are for evangelisms, for received ideas, not for new thinking. New ideas are best argued over books and monographs.
In the coming days the more news will be out and about on this key concept of classification and its advancements by the new book. And Nigerians will get to know how to get around it and get about the business of development.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
