Liberal edu-nation

BY LAWAL TEMITAYO

Yakurr, apart from being a local government in Cross River state, is a group of communities that share common ancestral heritage. It’s a fractured union in that many of the communities like Ekori and Idomi speak different languages but, however, they all respect and give authority to Obol Lopon, the paramount ruler whose palace is in Ugep, the capital. Among its cultural uniqueness of note is that the trademark cultural regalia of the sole ruler of the kingdom whom everybody, rich and poor, reveres and at whose feet they fall is a wrapper, an unclad chest and a towel left dangling over the shoulder. Amazing, isn’t it? Or should I rather say it’s mysterious because the idea of a king, I grew up to know, is that of an extraordinary link between the lands of the living and the dead and whose expensive and kingly traditional attires play second fiddle to none. Then, how can he be a king?!

Whatever inkling of plausibility it might seem the analogy has, it reeks of disguised bigotry and, of course, brazen ethnocentrism which is the uncritical belief in the superiority of a culture over another, using the former as the standard. Literally, that’s a venom that defies all world known chemotherapies but whose only antidote is liberal education.

I define liberal education as a strong belief or conviction in the plurality of opinions, races, religions, political ideologies, ethnicities, lifestyles and orientations. It’s a mind-to-limb understanding of the sanctity of one’s own natural and constitutional rights and the respect of others’. An educationally liberal person understands that we are all wired differently and that it’s historical, biological too perhaps, human to associate with different groups and ideas. It leaves on its recipient a broad cognitive space that easily accommodates all ideas, tolerates dissenting opinions and understands and/or appreciates cultural variations or even differences.

This line of thinking is golden especially with the prevailing realities in Nigeria. We live in precarious times. Tensions are upped, mostly undeservedly. If only hate speeches could be converted to dollars, we probably wouldn’t have FX problems. An ethnic group hates another passionately and even strives to see its end. Another faraway culture, in comparison with ours, is barbaric and should, consequently, be hated and fought. Marrying from another tribe is a taboo and our kin and kith who do so are renegades who should be excommunicated. Our religion is the only way and anybody who does not worship like us will, of course, rot in hell. It is deserving of a disbeliever who’s afflicted with problems and woe betide any of them who dares ask questions or challenge the tenets of our faith- speak of religious intolerance. Certainly, we fail to realise that all of the world would have been adherents of just one religion if God, the creator, wanted it so. He wouldn’t have given us free will and power of reason too. It’s in His place only to judge.

All opinions, apart from ours, are wrong and should be thrown in our arbitrary trash cans. We are now a generation that is unnecessarily rude and which glamorises intellectual perfectionism and righteousness. Our social media engagements perfectly exemplify this. We don’t care in as much as we get loads of likes and retweets from the virtual followers who support because they know or like us and not because of the concerned issue’s merits. Our political discussions, especially online, are heated and intolerant. All a student of philosophy, anywhere in the world, who wants to write a PhD thesis on argumentum ad hominem, attack on personality, needs to do is glance through our online engagement sphere- a repertoire, he will find. This is wrong no matter how hard we try to make it look cool. A beer doesn’t become a monk’s beverage just because it’s poured into a Malt bottle- it remains alcoholic irrespective of the bottle type.

This is not a call for us to ditch religion or even change it to suit dissents’ views. This is neither an admonition stressing the need and benefits of loving other cultures more than ours and compulsorily so. I understand we can never have same political orientations and affiliations and I’m therefore not advocating a unification. It is rather an invitation to peace and harmony. It’s a call to have a broad grasp of the universe and relate with others accordingly. It is a charge for us to agree and coexist on our many similarities and overlook and tolerate our few differences. It is a call to a liberal edu-nation. A country whose citizens understand, cherish and practise all these and more.

Lawal Temitayo, a psychologist and writer, can be reached on Twitter @Lawatem