Creating and Destroying a Deity : Between Nimi Wariboko and Eliot Spitzer in Engaging with Contrastive Ethical Environments : Wariboko Essay Reflection Part 2 [ Edited]

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                                              

                                                                    

                                                                         Creating and Destroying a Deity  

                          Between Nimi Wariboko and Eliot Spitzer in  Engaging with Contrastive Ethical Environments

                                   Reflecting on My Essay Summing up the World View and Language of Nimi Wariboko

                                                                                            Part 2

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                         Compcros

                                                                   Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                          Abstract

A very brief comparison of political culture in Nigeria and the US, mediated through the story of ex-governor of New York Eliot Spitzer,   as framed by an observation in the political thought of Nimi Wariboko. 

In  the course of working on footnotes of an  essay on Nigerian-US philosopher Nimi Wariboko, in the context of a reference comparing his work with that of US philosopher  Reinhold Niebuhr and German philosopher Karl  Marx on the public value of philosophy with particular reference to work, I developed the  insight outlined below, that contrasts the US and Nigeria in terms of Wariboko's work in political theory.

Nimi Wariboko is a scholar who, among other subjects, explores questions of right and wrong, a very basic definition of the philosophical field known as ethics. A more expansive definition  of ethics could describe it as the exploration of how best to live, given the challenges of the world.

Eliot Spitzer is a luminary of US public life who gained fame as US Attorney General, through his efforts at sweeping away unethical practices on Wall Street, the US financial industry, possibly the most powerful in the world,  on which grounds he became governor of New York, possibly the cultural and economic capital of the world.

He resigned shortly into his first term on that job on account of a scandal around his engaging the services of prostitutes. That put an end to a political career that was being perceived as possibly climaxing in his becoming President of the United States of America, the economic, cultural and political capital of the world.

What has Spitzer got to do with Wariboko?

Wariboko's latest book is Ethics and Society in Nigeria : Identity, History, Political Theory, 2019, in which he explores the rights of citizens in relation to the state, with a focus on Nigeria.

To what degree can citizens reject their political leaders in an environment where the power asymmetry is so great between leaders and led, as in Nigeria, is one question he explores.

That question takes my mind to the historic electoral defeat of Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, the first Nigerian President to be removed through the ballot box.

A defeat, however, that was enabled by a convergence between Northern Muslim and Southern, particularly Southwest elite, by delegitimizing  the government through building on the efforts of Boko Haram Islamic terrorism, which began its escalation on the government's  2011 inauguration, as a self described Muslim, anti-Christian and anti-government  army.

This strategy  initially earned the group a foothold in the Muslim North but  later proved unsustainable on account of the high cost of the insurgency, upon which Northern Muslims increasingly  rejected them, leading to the group's increasing attacks on the general populace, an approach they had earlier steadily avoided, focusing on churches, government establishments,  and informants against them.

Therefore the 2015 upset is questionable as a demonstration of people power. This is so  even though the voting patterns were enabled through sustained critique of the government spearheaded by the political and intellectual elite, the press and social media, a unity of effort  clearly absent in the current even greater  challenges facing Nigeria with the government  of Muhammadu Buhari, who took over from Jonathan.

Thus, the kind of social maturity that required an Eliot Spitzer to step down on his  activities being discovered is yet to emerge in Nigeria as various corruption scandals in Nigerian history and even in the current government show, with the President accused of appointing to ministerial posts people facing   ongoing corruption cases.

This where  Spitzer's  story and Wariboko's explorations converge. 

What will it take for Nigeria to reach the level in political organisation represented by the strategy of the Kalabari, Wariboko's ethnic origins, and  the Igbo, as Chinua Achebe describes in his novel  Arrow of God,  carving a piece of wood, ritually imbuing it with certain attributes and relating to it as a deity, and when  the deity becomes too difficult, warning it that "we shall show you the wood you were carved from,"(Ethics and Society in Nigeria, 43, Wariboko personal communication) and if that admonition proves unsuccessful  in getting the deity to re-examine itself, they proceed to de-legitimize the deity, ritually destroying the link between it and the community and rendering its existence meaningless to that community.

This is an example Wariboko deploys in exploring questions of citizen empowerment in the Nigerian polity, an example clearly echoing, though Wariboko does not reference it, Spitzer's choice to resign rather than face further embarrassment and de-ligitimisation in the political equivalent of the deity creation and deligimisation ritual, which may be correlated with processes of democratic elections and rejection of political office holders.

"How are we as scholars to inspire Nigerians to stand up against their deadly leaders?", Wariboko asks in Ethics and Society in Nigeria. "There are many ways and byways of doing this" he continues, "but I have chosen to focus on how we can draw resources from history to inspire and energize resistance.

We can find in the nation’s history what the masses—the people—did to leaders, institutions, or even gods who had become too demanding, violent, or neglectful of their charges or covenants so as to reclaim popular sovereignty." (6).

Furthermore, how does Spitzer's example correlate with the problematic issues in the leadership of US President Donald Trump, problems evident in the stark contrast between immediate past US President Barack Obama and Trump, issues relating to attitudes to racial groups and styles of self presentation that could never have have arisen with Obama, and which, if Obama had demonstrated he is not likely to have become President in the first place but which did not dent Trump's flight to the Presidency?

Deity as mirror of people's values, to adapt the Kalabari example. Shifts in values across time. That which would have been rejected at one time proving acceptable, even embraced by a significant number, at another.

May one not draw such a comparative analysis in this context?

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                                                              

                                                                    

              A Forthcoming Course in the Theory and Practice of the Kalabari/Pentecostal Philosophy of Nimi Wariboko

                                                                          

                                                 

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                         Compcros

                                                                   Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

Inspired by the excitingly meticulous course descriptions of the school of Embodied Philosophy on Facebook, delivering online courses on the theories and practices of Asian philosophies and spiritualities, I am going to design a course on the theory and practice of Kalabari/Pentecostal philosophy of Nimi Wariboko.

He has created a superb interpretation of the relationship between human potential and human achievement using the philosophy and spirituality of his native Kalabari in Nigeria's Niger Delta in harmony with Pentecostal thought and practices.

A very powerful and potentially very practical structure of ideas.

Ideas that can be shown to unify a broad range of conceptions and practices in various philosophies and spiritualities across space and time, from Africa to Asia and the West, and even in contemporary scientific cosmology, correlations I make, with meticulous references, in my essay written to be considered for submission in a forthcoming book on Wariboko organised and edited by the omnivorous scholar Toyin Falola.

Cover Image 

Collage by Myself Showing Nimi Wariboko in Dialogue with Adinkra Symbols from the Akan and Gyaman of Ghana and Explained Using Texts from My Forthcoming Book "Adinkra Cosmos."

Symbol at bottom is He Won Hye, “The Unburnable” or “That Which Cannot be Burnt”, its form evocative of a sliver of light between two embryos, themselves alcoved within a soaring structure seemingly poised for flight, symbolising the dynamic timelessness of the self, which projects itself from to lifetime to lifetime through the portals of birth and death, a continuity, however, not suggestive of mere repetition, but of the opportunity to grow into a range of knowledge and skill through experience, a wisdom and active capacity evoked by the range of ideas evoked by the symbolism of Adinkra.

Symbol at top left is Sunmsum, a term representing human personality, according to Gwame Gyekye, as I have understood him in his "Akan Concept of a Person."

The self is depicted as positioned within its individual physical, mental, spiritual and social universes, subsumed by the larger human and cosmic scheme, all represented by concentric circles, as this image may be interpreted.

The visual form is both dynamic and stable, suggesting the balance of constancy of self and mutation of personality across a lifetime, as well as pointing to aspirations to explore depths of self beyond the conventional, as suggested, again, by the motif of the circle in evoking infinity, this line of interpretation may proceed.

The middle right symbol is Epa, understood as representing captivity, as a stylised depiction of a pair of handcuffs. I am adapting that idea of captivity to suggest, not only material bondage but any form of bondage that prevents the complete actualization of the self, the fulfillment of the full potential of the self as realized in the intersection between the material self and the okra, the inner self that predates birth and outlives death.

For me, therefore, that symbol of captivity also embodies the conception of freedom from captivity. The aerodynamic styling of the design evokes ideas of flight, of unfettered freedom, yet directed by disciplined intelligence.

One could thus see each tip of the two quadrilaterals as representing a vertex, a dimensional interface, evoking conjunction between human consciousness and the coordinates that constitute the framework of the universe.

Within this perspective, the space between the two quadrilaterals is a non-dimensional space into which the would be inter-dimensional voyager projects themselves mentally.

The consequent alignment of the coordinates of consciousness with the points of each quadrilateral, simultaneous with the positioning within the null space of the centre between the geometric forms, may thus be seen as facilitating a cancelling out of what the Akan understand as Nsanmo, a term invented by myself to signify the state of being that makes possible perceivable existence.

Could the consistent contemplation of the symbol in the light of these ideas not lead to a dissociation of consciousness, creating a space between the boundaries of dream, vision and ordinary alertness, enabling a participation in modes of being that mat be sensed but not experienced directly?

May the use of the symbol not go hand in hand with mathematical procedures through which the initiate calculates positions in relation to the dimensional interfaces through which they wish to travel?

"Truth is ultimately about the existence of Absolute Infinity. All that a truth procedure … can do is to put us on a path between potential infinities and actual infinities as we approach the rationally unknowable, unconceivable Absolute Infinity"- Nimi Wariboko in The Charismatic City, 2014,115.

 

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