NIGERIANS DERIDE KNOWLEDGE.
If Albert Einstein was Nigerian, he would have been sold into slavery for proposing the Theory of Relativity! Derision of knowledge is pervasive at all levels of Nigerian society, academic and non-academic.
The newly minted Harvard Ph.D. who goes to the University of Okija to disseminate, cultivate, and nurture knowledge, as currently practiced worldwide, is hounded out of the sacrificial job. Why sacrificial? The enthusiastic, energetic, and knowledgeable newly minted graduate who spurned lucrative job offers at Ivy League Institutions and Fortune 500 companies is derided as ITK (I too know), “smart,” okachamara (all knowing), Albert Einstein and oracle of knowledge.
You are born with a brain without knowledge. Knowledge is acquired through a sense of discovery, hard work, reading, and studying. The naysayers do not confute the knowledge displayed by the new arrival but use derogatory language augmented by sabotage and backbiting to derail the academic progress of the subject. Frustrated, Nigeria’s brain gain turns into a brain drain as the frustrated individual returns to the US!
The same attitude is seen in politics whereby superbly qualified candidates are jettisoned for questionable characters devoid of humanity.
Until Nigerians start celebrating knowledge, instead of deriding knowledge, the country shall continue to wallow in ignorance, poverty, religious chicanery, voodooism, corruption, and underdevelopment. China and India are developing thanks to their nationals who are celebrated for their knowledge acquired in the West.
Africastallestman believes that since this problem is genetic, there may be no easy solutions.
In 17th century, a British philosopher, John Locke asserted that humans are born without any knowledge, that at birth human’s mind are “Tabla Raza”, i.e Clean slate, until experience writes on it as we grow and develop our humanity and ideas, only from experience. This is called empiricism, while his opponents. “The Rationalists”, content that we are born with innate ideas, which according to Plato we simply remember as we grow. For Rene Descartes, reason is all, and from that he formulated his famous “I think, therefore I am” That is how two different schools of philosophy were created, in the Western world. In this,respect, you appear to adhere to the world of the empiricists. The American pragmatists (Pierce, William James and John Dewey) also believed in creating really and interpreting the world of “TRUTH” through the observed “USEFULNESS” of outcomes of propositions from practical application of ideas. More grease to your elbows my friend.