BY OSA AMADI
Thursday, August 31, was the date for public presentation of the book titled ‘The odd one in’ written by Ayo Adio, and the venue was Ovie Brume Foundation, Gafar Animashau, Victoria Island, Lagos.
It was also an occasion for dialogue and public debate on “The role of social critics and intellectual criticism in improving governance”. The guest speaker was Lai Oso, Professor of Journalism at the Lagos State University School of Communication.
Professor Lai Oso
Professor Oso laid the groundwork for the debate and dialogue by expressing his fascination with the enthusiasm of the author. “He is among the group of Nigerians who are concerned about this country and their own future. But unfortunately for us, those who are running the show are those who have already put their ticket on the train to heaven. That’s a very major problem for us. I don’t know how it is possible to get a 70-year old man to start thinking about what happens in 20 years’ time, because as far as he is concerned, he is already on the train to exit from the problems that we have, even now, not to think of 20 years from this time.
“So it becomes a major issue for young Nigerians,” professor Oso said, “to start pushing issues of the future to the front burner of national debate. Those now in power and those in the corridors of power are only bothered about the future in terms of their persons and of their immediate families, not the collective, and I think that’s one of the major problems we have in this country.”
Professor Lai Oso identified two groups of critics: the popular critics (newspaper columnists, commentators and those who are now engaged on the social media) and the intellectual critics whose criticisms are based more on long-time research. Oso said one of the problems of the popular critics is that many of them are boxed-in so much that you can easily predict what they are going to say. For the intellectual critics, the problem is that their arguments and write-ups are buried in books; they only talk amongst themselves.
Both groups are important, said the Prof. “While the popular critics provide the instant perspectives on issues, the intellectual critics provide us with data and things like that which will now enable the people to engage their government at different levels. The question now is: how do we get our people to be more reflective and think deeper in their analysis instead of taking the daily instant analysis we get in the media as the benchmark of intellectual criticism.”
Continuing, Oso broached another important question: how do we feed these debates into the process of governance? Improving governance means bringing more people into the process, not to come and clap and dance and sing at campaign venues, but to really engage in debates and things like that, which will improve deliveries of what we call dividends of democracy. If politicians are not held accountable; if they are not made to work, they will do things as they deem fit, and that will be basically in their own interest.”
Professor Oso also shared the findings of a content analysis of front page stories of about 5 national newspapers which they did. “It is shocking to observe that about 80 percent of sources of those stories are government people: federal and state government. Also in that analysis, about 90 percent of the main speakers are males. So that tells us that voices that set agenda for us are skewed in one direction. That means we are not really talking of democracy. If you are not at the table, you cannot be part of those who share what is on the table; you will only get the crumbs.”
Jimi Disu
Contributing to the debate, social critic and broadcaster, Jimi Disu said that “The major problem the younger generation have is lack of good foundation. The education is not there, and there are just too many distractions. That’s why the reading culture is virtually gone.
Mr. Disu lamented the erosion of value systems. “The norms that people of our generation used to know and appreciate are almost all gone. Everything is now populist, and the majority carries the day. People have a larger interest in politics, but they don’t understand the issues at all. And that’s why for instance, if you do a referendum now on Biafra, people will be voting yes, but for the wrong reason. It is a new brain out there. We have to admit that we are moving into a new world order that is very dangerous. I think the dilemma is for the young ones to tap from our own generation as much as they can before all of us are gone; and for us too to find how we are going to survive in this because this is where the world is going.”
Segun Agbede
Another panelist, Segun Agbede, a sports analyst, agreed that the world has changed in very disturbing ways. “The Harvey is now a natural disaster in the United States. We don’t have Harvey in Nigeria, but our own natural disaster is leadership. I was very happy when Buhari came in with the change mantra. But the truth of the matter is that from 2015 – 2017, nothing much has happened. Until Nigerian leadership have people with clear idea of what to do…Buhari for me is too old, yes he is a man of honour, he is disciplined and all that, but he is too old, he is set in his ways, he can’t change anything. Until we call a spade a spade, and not an agricultural implement, we will keep on stumbling around like a blind man in a darkroom searching for a light. We have a long way to go, but our hope is in the future.”
Muyiwa Sobo
Muyiwa Sobo, a lawyer, argued that “we have lost the ability to think in this country. The role of the intellectuals is to push people to think. But unfortunately, intellectualism has lost its passion. The intellectuals we have here don’t want to engage at our own level.”
Finally, a question arose about how the on-going important discussions can be passed across to people outside and to those in power. To that question, Professor Lai Oso said “Networking is very important. I think what we really need is to organize a lot. There are a lot of young people out there who have the type of idea Adio has, but many of them are working alone. So how do we create coalitions? Even if it is only one issue you want to push, how do we bring people together to push that one issue?
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