What Happened to the Nigerian Intellectual Class?

Sabella Abidde writes..

Intellectual work, as Thandika Mkandawire puts it, is “quintessentially the labor of the mind and soul.” Intellectuals have played a major role in shaping passions, ideologies and societal visions.This is principally true in Nigeria, where for several decades — in spite of military autocracy and repression — intellectuals helped shaped public debates and public policies.

In a formal sense, a few years after the University College of Ibadan was established in 1948, intellectualism, at least public intellectualism, became a feature of the Nigerian public landscape. And for the next three decades or so, Nigerian intellectuals were the doyen of the society; or at least, some of the doyens of the Nigerian society were intellectuals: men and women who earned the public’s trust, admiration and respect as a result of their faithfulness to intellectual pursuit.

From my own recollection and vantage point, most of the early intellectuals remained faithful to their craft. They were the purists, earning their living from the creation of their minds and brains; and were not voracious in their financial accretion. In addition, most detested party politics and also loathed serving in government — especially military government.

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And by the early to late 1990s, the society of Nigerian intellectuals had become mushy, clay-like, adulterated, corruptible, and puerile. It became a laughing stock. Some retained their stellar qualities, but for the most part, the society of Nigerian intellectuals became a pool of nothingness: a shadow of its pious past and now munching off of its past glory.

The intellectual class became as decadent and as rotten as the forces they had opposed for three or more decades. The military co-opted some; the bloody-civilians seduced others with money. The survival strategy employed by the military and the civilians was so effective it weakened the immune and defensive system of the Nigerian intellectual class.

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