‘’The world is hungry for sources of new light suns, even more than the dawn is for the sun.’’
By Jimanze Ego-Alowes
TUE, FEB 18 2020-theG&BJournal- If like some of us you have been watching the Nigeria scene, you may have been having fun popping into several oddities. Some are really harmless, if not humorous. The rest are of course pernicious.
For the harmless, one may point at the now staple habit of Nigerians. Or have you not noticed that at banks, airports, bus stops, toilets, shopping malls, on wheels etc., Nigerians are busy picking their teeth or romancing tooth picks with their lips. That is of course long after they have had or not had their meals. Some curiously, tooth picks have become a Nigerian fashion accessory, across ”party” and socioeconomic lines.
Today however, our brief zeroes in on one of those harmful exotica. If you kept an eye on it, one of the great peculiarities of Nigeria is this. Nearly all, if not all, dominant and powerful Nigerian public intellectuals happen to be those who have held one prominent government office or the other. As it were, there are no truly independent Nigerian scholars or scholarships. To be heard or given audience, it appears you have to have been cleared by government – ”invited to come and chop.” No public intellectual it appears can stand on his own soles. To be, he has to be propped up by ”inherited” governance structures.
What is odd here is that this Nigerian situation is clearly at cross-purposes with the normative order, and also with what happens in other jurisdictions. However, it is meet to state that these public intellectuals capitalize on the fact that their Nigerian audience is one of ignorant majority. Our abused majoritarian peoples just don’t know what a public intellectual should really be. The Nigerian majority just doesn’t know that what they have is not the order of nature or civilization. It is a purely Nigerian, all too Nigerian, fabrication.
First, let us take a cue from other jurisdictions. From America to the United Kingdom, France to India, you become a public intellectual only on the following citations. First and above all, you must have authored a book. And it is not just any book but one that breaks ground, offers new insights or understandings on cognate issues. In fact, it is on the basis of that alone that the newspapers and television houses search you out for your opinions. Certainly, it plays to your advantage if you are witty with words, and thus a delight of the news headliners. Or telegenic, for this avails greater audiences for same drama.
Just not to sound gossipy, let us lean on the authority of an informed observer. Commenting on Professor Thomas Piketty, John Quiggin, himself a professor, says: Capital in the 21st Century is more data-focused, because where Piketty came to prominence was developing data on the top 1% of incomes. https://fivebooks.com/best-books/learning-economics-john-quiggin/. Simply put, Piketty came to public prominence by authoring Capital in the 21st Century.
Today, Piketty is hotter than snow and on fevered demand at Davos, as he is in Washington or Paris. Such similar situation goes for Dr. Shashi Tharoor of India. But in Nigeria? What you get is orature and no backup scriptures.
It would have all been harmless but for this. These television-actor dons appear to be in the business of being passed off as geniuses, the geniuses they are not. And because their audience is the ignorant Nigerian majority, they are succeeding. To save Nigeria or perhaps the black race, it is meet that they be stopped. As for their human rights television counterparts, well, very well, they are largely entertainers and shouldn’t trouble us.
Besides, the greater points are as follows. The scholar is condemned to obscurity, except he has become self or bioluminescent, like fireflies, as it were. That is, he must generate the light by which he is to be seen, and by which he is to see and help others see the world in sharper reliefs. In other words, the genius scholar can’t be seen in the light of others. The world is hungry for sources of new light suns, even more than the dawn is for the sun.
A great scholar is not like unto a politician or an actor – are the two different? These duo, the politician-actors, are such as may only shine in and by external lightings. That is, the lightings put up by others, the Klieg and studio lights etc.
The scholar however, must be self-luminous or happy in his obscurity. His is to live out his life by the caves and groves – that is what the academe really means. Or, if they have to be seen they must be bioluminescent. This explains why and how we see Einstein in the light of E=MC2, Achebe in the light of Okonkwo, Soyinka in the light of Baroka and all that jazz. Though Achebe, Soyinka and the like, are strictly speaking artists, not intellectuals.
A question is thus indicated for Nigerian public intellectuals. In what light do we see you? In Klieg or in bioluminescent lights? All else is in humor. Ahiazuwa.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes (PhD) is Author and public commentator
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