Yar’Adua

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To break it down, PHD is not a short form for Pull Him Down. It stands for Doctor of Philosophy. To be awarded this aspect of degree in any discipline means that you now possess the ability to analyze, juggle, simulate, stimulate controversy, and dissect an aspect of knowledge. A good PhD holder in most cases has the ability to in the minds of the less informed.

If a PhD holder looks weird or non-conformist, it certainly is not and should not be held against him. He has a serious burden on his wandering mind. His mind has been so stretched, that it will never ever, return to its original dimensions.

While a good PhD degree could enrich the knowledge of men with copious assimilating minds, it could serve as a basin/well of knowledge as well, for the curious minds of the knowledge-conscious. That is why PhD holders are treated with respect and sometimes are awesome in the society. That is why today, sometimes, they are assembled in a confined environment from where they are encouraged to use their eggheads to think for humanity. India, China, the United States and most countries of the western world have taken advantage of the abundance of PhD holders.

The Socratic era was full of men who philosophized. They, it was who laid the solid foundation on which all-modern knowledge (science, arts, music, architecture, etc, etc,) took roots. They may not have been to universities, but apprenticing in their time was similar to what we have today as universities. Then, men of knowledge homes and sanctuaries were like haven for academic disputations. Some lived in caves, some lived ascetic lives which earned them being derided as heretics or rambling soothsayers.

That was why the princes and kings of the time ostracized some of them. With the less discerning mobs in toe, the jealous kings who played gods of the time some times, ordered them to be stoned to death, among other punitive measures. Socrates had to drink a glass of hemlock with serene ease to mock the stupidity of the class of men who denigrated his intellect and subsequently ran him out of town.

For a brief moment during the second term of President Olusegun Obasanjo, it appeared obiageli Nigeria was beginning to get it right. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chukwuma Soludo, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Maurice Iwu, Dora Akunyili – all PhD holders, technocrats and professionals of immense significance were drafted into the administration. While we observe the ethnic concentration of these names, it does not by any means, mean that any ethnic nationality in Nigeria has a preponderance of intellectuals or technocrats. Assisted by El-Rufai of the Federal Capital Territory fame and Nuhu Ribadu of the EFCC, the Nigerian intelligentsia of the later days of the OBJ era did not disappoint.

They proved that the acquisition of sterling academic laurels was after all, the hallmark and pillar on which modern political economy stood. For a short period, Nigeria’s ailing credibility worldwide began to breathe badly needed fresh air. Tellingly, almost at the same time, secretly, Nigeria was collaborating with the Peoples’ Republic of China in a satellite deal - NigComSat -1 -, which launch took the whole world by a surprise.

For a while, Nigeria’s sliding reputation was being rescued or at least seemed to be so. The international community, in recompense, began to take us serious. On the economic side, our annual GDP was moving at something into the double digit. Wall Street cheered us. The IMF clapped. The World Bank thought we were coming of age and because of that, forgave us some of our previous profligate inclinations. Our huge foreign debts were cancelled.

With attendant soaring economy and near stable polity, our image began to shine bright again. So much was the economic climate bright in Nigeria that foreigners began to come into our country in droves. It is instructive to note that they came in with needed foreign hard currency in search of investment opportunities.

Our economy boomed. The middle class, en masse, wriggled out of poverty, which, it had been sentenced to for as long as man could remember. It was not long before the verdict came in: the institutions on which the fundamentals of our economy rested were very strong.

Unfortunately, that period which was only less than two years ago, now looks like a millennium gone past. What went wrong in so short a time? What happened is that with the end of the Obasanjo tenure and the exit of such fine professionals, technocrats and academics from the scene, things began to crack. Their replacement by men and women of lesser intellect (mostly professional politicians), the nation’s affairs began to slide back to inactivity – in every aspect of its life.

The feeling of political and economic insecurity, which we thought were beginning to be behind us, is now beginning to be the order of the day. With what appears to be a calculated or accidental disdainful attitude towards the intelligentsia and technocrats, people are now, beginning to look at that golden period (2003-2007) of Nigeria’s development with nostalgia- as if it was many, many years ago.

Historically speaking, the era of subjugating the intellectual to a place of obscurity in Nigeria began with the advent of the military in Nigeria’s body politic. Then soldiers and their sponsors became everything there ought to be in governance and by a larger extension, the economy. If an Army Major and his junior officers could shoot their way into power what else was left to intellectualize? Having secured power for themselves, they appointed like minds into positions of authority. Non -engineer-soldiers were appointed into sensitive ministries that required expertise in every aspect of engineering. Non-diplomatic-soldiers became ministers for External Affairs and even represented the nation at the United Nations.

To brush up and fill a needed void, the military politicians and pseudo intellectuals simply went to Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPS) in Kuru, near Jos. There, the rejected intellectuals were expected to academically, spruce up the coupists, brush them up and convert them into pseudo military intelligentsia - overnight. Alternatively, they were sent overseas at the expense of the taxpayers, to attend one form of short service course or the other, which became a short cut to the acquisition of intellectual power, howbeit, limited. While those short service-training encounters may have helped, they proved to be no substitute to conventional ways and methods of solid acquisition of superior intellect. The unannounced mantra then, became: what a bloody intellectual can do, the soldier could do better.

They managed to co-opt a few lawyers and journalists to their side. Then the intellectual of the Nigerian nation was on the fringes, fearful of what he said that could lead to his arrest. Majority consigned him to the refuse sack of history and into oblivion and or pitiable irrelevance. Then, the intellectual was only recognized outside his domain because those who ought to have recognized him deliberately ignored him. He was impoverished; had no chieftaincy title(s) not to think of a mansion to call his own. The Nigerian intellectual was on a downward spiral fall.

The Yar’Adua administration must not buy into the philosophy of intellectual haranguing. The Intelligentsia and technocrats should not be consigned yet to the dustbin. They have in the most recent past, proven that given the needed conducive political climate and support, they could break down walls and barriers thereby pushing the space of the nation’s economic progress further to yet to be imagined limits.

Offoaro writes from Lagos.