By Tunji Olaopa
When a scholar combines a mentoring frame of mind, and educational energy and a philosophical bent of mind, what you have is a Socratic orientation; what you have is Professor Otonti Nduka. I just met Professor Nduka some months ago, and in that short period, I have had moments of epiphanies and humility in equal proportion. When I think of Prof. Nduka, my mind resolutely revisits Woodrow Wilson’s admonition: “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” Prof. Nduka embodies this admonition as father, husband, scholar and mentor.
As a nonagenarian, Prof. Nduka at 94, embodies memories and experiences, insights and understanding that constitute the stuffs of great wisdom that a mentor, if he so wishes, must dispense to others. I have inserted the clause of the will to mentor because not many have that will or the opportunity or even the charisma to mentor others. This distinguished nonagenarian is an accomplished scholar. But being a great scholar is not the same as possessing the capacity to impart and impact. When Prof. T. Uzodimma Nwala, the erudite African philosopher, delivered his inaugural lecture in 2007, he brazenly titled it, “The Otonti Nduka Mandate.” Rarely can you see anyone who places so much honor on the mentorial trajectory of his life as to dedicate his inaugural lecture to the name and memory of his mentor. Nwala categorically states that Prof. Nduka singularly set him on the course that brought him to that stage of professorial erudition. From a nebulous ambition to study economics, Prof. Nduka told Nwala: “No. you will not study economics. You are a philosophy material.” And the rest is history.
I suspect that when Papa Nduka made that pronouncement, he had not gazed into any crystal ball or saw a vision, order than the conviction that from his assessment of the intellectual precocity of Nwala, philosophy would serve as a better disciplinary mold. Nwala was able to honor Nduka from the pedestal of his achievement as a professor of philosophy. But then, how many more mentees can we count who do not have the privilege of an inaugural lecture, but who have inscribed Prof. Nduka into their memories and stories. Thus, while still alive, Papa Otonti Nduka has already achieved immortality.
The entire trajectory of Prof. Nduka’s coming of age speaks to what we can call the educare imperative: a lifetime of learning educationally, building educational scholarship and educational institutional and educating others, a dynamic which rekindles the memory of another giant educator, Emeritus Professor Pai Obanya of the University of Ibadan. Educare speaks to humanity’s capacity to rehabilitate itself through a consistent learning curve that opens up one dimension of the human to other dimensions in ways that make a human person open to the possibilities of other human persons. And this is an imperative I could relate with because it resonates with my lifelong understanding and pursuit of a learning philosophy that could assist in alleviating some of the terrible practices that keep dogging the heels of Nigeria’s national integration into one and united nation. I have been too committed to educational reforms, as part of my lifelong advocacy of institutional and governance reforms, not to understand the role that the education sector can contribute to the realignment of minds—between the leadership and the followership—to facilitate a civic collaboration that works for patriotism. The Nigerian polity is divided along the ethnic and religious lines. Ethnic jingoism and religious fundamentalism have become the bane of mutual and reinforcing relations that enable us to put to good use Nigeria’s ethnic and generational capitals. This close-mindedness feeds off and emasculates the capacity first to learn, and then second to learn to live together and build together. While Nigerians have learnt to perceive every matter of national development through the ethnic and religious prisms, we keep failing to note the simple truth that our prejudicial relations will keep deepening the fissures in our national life.
From the disciplined and the synthesizing minds to the respectful and ethical minds, those Howard Gardner refers to as the “minds of the future,” we can begin to nurture together a Nigeria of the future; a Nigeria represented by minds like Prof. Otonti Nduka whose mentoring schedule does not discriminate. And this brings me to another fundamental dimension of Prof. Nduka’s life work: the scholarship that intersects philosophy and education. No wonder his 1986 inaugural lecture bore the title, “In the Socratic Tradition.” Socrates it was whose peripatetic wondering brought to light that axiom for all ages and time: the unexamined life is not worth living. And convinced of the need for wisdom by humanity, he gave himself the critical task of inquiring into the very depth of human knowledge, values and practices. And, as the title of the inaugural lecture suggests, Prof. Nduka gave himself the task of unraveling the Nigerian factor which he fragmented into several subspecies—“the north/ south factor, the ethnicity factor, the religious factor, the population factor, the naira factor, ten percent factor and the barrel of the gun factor”—which have all succeeded in derailing Nigeria’s greatness. And the Socratic imperative, for him, consists of synthesizing, from the traditional and modern values, principles and ideas, those which could be refined, rethought and deployed for transforming the Nigerian society.
Prof. Nduka’s lifelong research framework embeds the values of education and an axiological research dynamic in the imperative of building a better Nigerian society. At its core, the Nigerian predicament is a moral one. It can be traced to a gradual but steady disintegration of the value frames of reference by which state and society are ordered in order to produce human flourishing. Unfortunately, and since the dawn of independence, moral, political and bureaucratic corruption have colluded to undermine the best efforts of transforming the Nigerian state. Corruption in all its forms is a moral conundrum. And that poses a deep challenge to our humanity and our scholarship. It is this challenge that Prof. Nduka takes right on and by both horns. When, in 1964, Prof. Nduka published Western Education and Nigerian Cultural Background, the famous (or notorious) Ashby Commission report had been submitted. And the then young graduate of the philosophy of education saw right through many of the Commission’s ill-thought-out assessments and recommendations.
And as was to be expected, Prof. Nduka’s criticism of the Ashby Report stems from its unfounded value (or, precisely the lack of values) orientation that undergirds a vision of Nigeria. And this seminal identification of the source of the moral morass of the Nigerian society did not only motivate research projects, but also led him to the establishment of the Otonti Nduka Foundation for Values Education as a practical push for disseminating research finding as well as creating awareness around the correlation between the corruption epidemic and the success (or failure) of Nigeria’s democratic experiment. If the core of the Nigerian underdevelopment is the lack of values and norms that condition leadership conduct and performance, as well as an ethical code for public servants and government functionaries, then the starting point is to exhume what is lost and reaffirm their potency in reconditioning the Nigerian state for greatness. This allows Prof. Nduka to rethink the War Against Indiscipline of 1983 as one significant but poorly enacted policy by the Buhari-Idiagbon administration in confronting and undermining Nigeria’s moral decline.
Socrates once affirmed: “It is not living that matters, but living rightly.” It is easy to articulate Prof. Nduka’s moral crusade from this singular quote by his intellectual forebear. Imagine a significant percentage of Nigerians, especially the Nigerian leadership in all its dimensions, living rightly. Imagine budgets are not padded, infrastructures are not compromised due to bribes and kickbacks, politicians and citizens do not collude in degrading the Nigerian dream, the electorate is not compromised and debased because of the pursuit of political power, and so on. And all these were the basis of Socrates’ philosophical ruminations and invitation to the youth of ancient Athens: Know yourself. This is the first injunction that carries the possibility of a moral revolution. This is the ethical injunction that underlies Prof. Nduka’s value crusades, in research and in practice.
And yet, quite unfortunately, Socrates met his end in a judicial murder by the same society he was anxious and assiduous to point in the direction of moral redemption. Prof. Nduka’s inaugural lecture also reveals a lot in terms of the anguish of a moral reformer and the societal neglect of the strident cries of a lone wolf. Just as Nigerian hounds and pushes her heroes to the precipice, so it also confines her moral and institutional crusaders and advocates to the dark night of silence and utter neglect. Prof. Otonti Nduka embodies the vision and shape of what a new Nigeria will feel like. This is where I become a kindred spirit with Baba Nduka. And yet, he is unrelenting. I salute that lifelong and continuing strength of purpose. And I salute his existential courage.
Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor of Public Administration .
tolaopa2003@gmail.com
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