Only last month, Western scientists successfully landed
a robot on a comet. This feat was accomplished after 25 years of careful
planning. The robot travelled 6.4 billion kilometers and took 10 years to reach
the comet, which itself was moving at a speed of 56,000 km/hr (or 18km/s).
This is coming at a time when Nigerians are exporting
religion and superstitions to the rest of the world; when our so called
"men of God" assert that the cures for diseases are to be found in
prayer houses rather than laboratories; when our universities have become the
birthing places of pastors and imams; when we have become accustomed to pastors
making extraordinary claims such as driving cars on empty tanks and
resurrecting the dead; when the medieval belief in witchcraft and the practice
of witch-hunting are ever so pervasive; when jihadists are engaged in a
campaign of terror to spread sharia. I can go on and on.
A university is a place of enquiry and enlightenment but
every year, impressionable young minds arrive on our university campuses hoping
to be nurtured in the art and science of enquiry, the tool by which all
progressive societies have advanced themselves; but instead, a great percentage
of their university time is taken up by religious activities such as prayer meetings,
night vigils, evangelism and so on, the result of which is that our
universities have effectively become places for nurturing religious beliefs,
superstitions and other fantastical ideas.
Every year, our universities graduate people who teach
and/or think that prayers can cure diseases, move the economy forward, fix our
bad roads, choose good leaders etc. Rather than spend money on laboratories and
research, our governments, persuaded by the belief in the efficacy of prayers,
choose to build mosques and churches, and sponsor pilgrimages to Mecca and
Jerusalem. The cure for malaria is in the laboratory, not mosques or churches.
Some of our best minds abandon their original degrees and become peddlers of
false hope, enriching themselves in the process.
If they lived up to their purpose, by now, one would
expect our universities would have churned out generations of youth who are
skeptics and critical thinkers. Sadly, that is not the case. Instead, we have
science graduates who believe that cars can run on empty tanks (recall Pastor
Adeboye and his famed journey from Ore to Lagos on an empty tank); that prayers
routinely cure patients of diseases such as cancer, stroke, diabetes, Ebola,
HIV/AIDS; that prayers can even resurrect the dead; that university examinations
can be passed by anointing books, pencils, pens and other study materials with
holy water, olive oil or handkerchiefs. These pastors (and imams) have
corrupted our way of thinking.
Does anyone still doubt, then, that superstitions and
religion are the reins that hold back the progress of Nigeria, and the rest of
Africa? No society with such deeply entrenched beliefs can expect to find cures
for HIV, Malaria, Ebola, or to land robots on comets. It is this type of
societies that habitually rely on foreign aid. Such societies do not innovate -
at best, they borrow or pay for technology.
I think that universities should be somewhere that
people go, to not only acquire job skills but to also acquire the facility for
critical and analytical thinking, and skepticism. By the time people have
graduated from university, they should have shed off a considerable burden of
ignorance and superstitions.
If we were to ever land robots on comets, then we must
start with a change of mindset and attitudes. Superstitions will never get us
anywhere productive. The current methods of instruction in our universities are
no longer fit for purpose. Frankly, I have more faith in the social media as an
instrument of change than in them. And make no mistakes, it will take a while
until this damage is reversed because even university lecturers hold these
preposterous beliefs and have no qualms in openly declaring them.
Elections are right round the corner but I have heard
very little said on education. The recurrent strikes are an issue, but they are
only superficial. The rot is much deeper. It is in our minds and
attitudes!
Source: Ijabla Raymond, Sahara Reporters
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