"All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again"---Johann Von Goethe
Governor of Cross River, Ben Ayade seems to be living ahead of his time, for he inherited a state whose oil wells had been taken away by the Cameroonian territory, Bakassi and Neighboring Akwa Ibom. The only legacy was the tourism sector bequeathed by the erstwhile Gov. Donald Duke. So, Ayade has latitude for all the lame excuses of some governors not pay workers' salaries. Lo and behold, Ayade has paid December salary on the first day of December! I asked, could it be in Nigeria? That reminds me of Platonic concepts.
I am an admirer of Plato, the ancient Greek thinker who committed suicide as a result of injustice meted out to him in Athen city state, Greece by the authority which sexed up trumped-up charges against him that he was misleading the youth and promoting foreign god which had endowed him unusual wisdom. My love for the thinker concerns his evergreen philosophical concepts, of which I am going to mention three in relation with what I intend to write on the politics of economy of Nigeria.
The first Platonic concept is his division of the world into body and soul. In his dialogue, Plato through his intellectually midwifery asserted that soul is an eternal spirit that could not be killed, but body is determinate, and it could be exterminated. So, the good that one must do is to purify the soul and prepare a better place for its transmigration. This coheres with the argument of the theologians that place premium on after life, but also, it is a metaphysical concept that has whittled down the justification for societal evil.
The second concept which endears itself to me, is his position on how the soul works with knowledge. Plato argues that our souls are familiar with all there is to know in the world of form, but while the soul was migrating to the given body, it must pass through River Arête ( river of forgetfulness), a situation that could have made it forget all things. May be, John Locke who describes the mind of a new born baby as "tabularasa" meaning clean state, began the understanding of man's knowledge from the journey after River Arête. This postulation explains while a woman who had suffered terrible labour pain would want to still savour sex again. But, relating this to Nigerian politics, it is save to say that voting for a candidate without questioning their potentials and potentiality could be as a result of forgetfulness. I will come back to it late.
The third is the Plato submission on politics that democracy is the rule of the mob, for people in a given republic may vote a leader based on emotion instead of critical evaluation of what the person could do if entrusted with the mantle of leadership. I heard that Ondo people were not paid for seven months before the last governorship election. So, the election became existential tool instead of free will to choose a leader. That brings us to the detail of the second Platonic concept- Plato divides soul into three floors of pyramid: appetitive stage-this is the first floor that connects all living organism, and the general notion is hunger. Man, animals, even some plants feel hunger, but I am convinced that man is not restricted to this stage, and that compels us to check the second floor which is emotive stage. This is a floor where pain and pleasure are experienced coupled with their result reactions, but animals do feel pain and pleasure too. Though, the fecundity is in degrees.
The third stage, which is at the apex is INTELLECTUAL floor. I am yet to be told that some animals compete with man on this floor, but it is worthy to note that hunger could draw man to the appetitive floor and suspend him there. That could have been the defined concept of "stomach infrastructure" of Ekiti under Ayodele Fayose or "dibo ko sebe" (vote and prepare soup) which Segun Adeniyi of ThisDay newspaper called "pot of soup" democracy, experienced in Ondo under Gov. Segun Mimiko. So, why has Nigeria reduced to the appetitive stage? Why would a governor pay salaries of workers in the first day of month, and another governor will owe his workers for seven months? Why would a governor roll out projects to redefine lives of his citizens, and another governor would have no projects desperately needed by his people and would still not pay workers' salaries? These questions and many others will find answers in the position of Plato on politics, which asserts that democracy is a rule of the mob.
Someone raises a fundamental question that my governor, Rauf Aregbesola has not asserted himself on the salary issue, but I must hold forte for him that he has provided unthinkable projects in terms of roads, bridges, schools, markets, parks and others, despite the minutest federal allocation that is not even huge enough to offset the workers' salaries, and obviously the projects are the priorities of the state. As touching different figures relating to debt profile bandied around by the critics, I think that is the exclusive preserve of the book keepers. However, Ondo is one oil state that should boast of more resources than Cross Rivers; it confounds me to know that the latter pays on the first day of the month, and the former could not pay for seven month.
I think it is high time people rose to their intellectual feet, and refused to be dragged and suspended in appetitive floor, and this could be achieved through intelligent elite who are progressive in nature, and futuristic in manner. I am afraid that might not happen soon. Ah! Who will bail poor people out of this quandary? Ayade has shown that ideas rule the world, that with intellectual property, the desert lime Dubai could be turned to a land of milk and honey; that a non-oil state in Nigeria could pay salaries even before the time is ripe for it. How come Nigerian leaders do not have the culture of copying good things? The answer is in the air.
Butika is an intercontinental journalist.
