By Edwin Madunagu
One of the threads leading to Values Education and National Development can be traced back to Professor Otonti Nduka’s 1964 book, Western Education and the Nigerian Cultural Background. The editors of the current book have described Nduka’s 1964 work as “groundbreaking”. Forty-two years after the publication of that book, that is, in 2006, Otonti Nduka Foundation for Values Education was established to continue, expand and institutionalize the work which started well before 1964 but only attained public knowledge in that year. It was this Foundation, with physical headquarters in port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State of Nigeria, that organized the two national conferences (2008 and 2010) on Values Education whose proceedings constitute the core of the current book, Values Education and National Development.
This 16-author anthology, as any reader
can confirm quite early, was designed for five categories of people: academics
and researchers in the general field of philosophy of education and the special
field of values education, professional educators, policy makers, students and
the general public. The last category is not amorphous. They include - in
addition to uncommitted general readers - public intellectuals, politicians,
social reformers, journalists and writers, social theorists and critics,
radical campaigners and even leftist revolutionaries. I shall be focusing more,
though not exclusively, on the needs of students and segments of the “general
public” as distilled above.
The last two categories of readers
would want to grasp, as early as possible, the general and contextual meanings
of the key concepts in the book: ethics, values, morals, education, values
education as well as other related and derived concepts. The book satisfies
this need abundantly, for each of the 15 essays, as well as the Introduction
and Welcome Address (to the first of the two national conferences which led
this book) gives, not one, but multiple definitions corresponding to the
various dimensions of the subject-matter. Beyond this, Professor Otonti Nduka
tells us in the Welcome Address that “in the taxonomy of values, numerous
clusters of values have been identified” and that these include “clusters of
political values, religious values and political values” (page 21).
I am sure that many members of the
Nigerian public, including the segments I earlier highlighted, who are likely
to search for this book on account of its subject-matter which generates
considerable interest in society, would not have known the differences between
morals, ethics, values and moral ethics or even be aware that differences exist
between them. They use the terms interchangeably and hear and read the terms
being used interchangeably. And yet you cannot fully or seriously engage the
problem of moral degeneracy and disastrous decline of ethical standards in
Nigeria’s private and public life - or begin to reflect on, and constructively
plan - how to practically tackle them unless and until you grasp the
differences in question. Values Education and National Development fills this
gap early in the book, and throughout.
Thus, from the editor’s Introduction we
read: “By values we mean the standards by which we judge or express preferences
with regard to behaviour, attitudes, objects, state of affairs and so on. These
values are passed on to successive generations as a functional moral compass
that guides everyday conduct” (page 12). And Professor Uzodinma Nwala, in his
paper, The Crisis of Ethical Values in Contemporary Nigerian Society (Chapter
2), says that “morality refers to the evaluation of human conduct in terms of
good and bad, right or wrong, acceptable or not – acceptable as they are found
in the moral code and moral discourse in that society”. On the other
hand, says Nwala, ethics “is an intellectual appraisal of the logic,
rationality, systematic character of such evaluations as well as the standard
and basis for such valuations” (page 51).
Still on classification and
differentiation, Professor Nuhu O. Yaqub, in his paper, Values Education and
Governance in Nigeria: How Could the Country Get the Right Balance?
(Chapter 3), says that “values can be classified into moral and non-moral
categories” – something many readers would not have heard or thought of before
encountering this book. Moral values, he says, “are those morals that
openly attract praises, awards, rewards, sanctifications and punishments ....
Moral values that would attract praise, award, reward and sanctification
include courage of immense and heroic proportions,
selflessness, hard work, unique discovery that add value to
society, and empathy” (page 72). Those that would attract punishment
which Yaqub called “bad moral values” include stealing. “Non-morally
defined values”, Yaqub says, “are those values that are not associated with hard
and/or material sanctions. These include courtesies to members of one’s
family, neighbours and acquaintances”.
The example of stealing which Professor
Yaqub classifies under “bad moral values” is also an illustration of the
view held by some people, including my humble self, that discussing
morals and ethic may sometimes lead to passionate ideological disputations –
even on conducts that most people feel should attract total and
universal condemnation and appropriate sanctions. Stealing, says Yaqub,
is “theft and is morally reprehensive regardless of the scale; indeed it cannot
be defined otherwise. A thief is not, for instance, going to say
because they steal a small amount, say N5.00, they should not be punished or
upbraided; or that society’s umbrage should be expressed only when they steal
huge sums of money, say, hundreds of thousands of naira”.
While accepting that stealing is
stealing, whatever the magnitude, and while agreeing that the punishment for
stealing should be measured according to the magnitude and that
punishment should serve as deterrent (as well as being corrective), I
would propose that when it is established that a particular act of
stealing resulted from a situation beyond the thief’s control (such as
hunger, resulting say, from poverty and unemployment), then the
thief should be able to plead “extenuating circumstances” and be pardoned with
appropriate compensation to the victim – provided the magnitude of the theft
is small and it was carried out without violence.
The formulation here can be refined
provided the idea of “extenuating circumstances” remains. By
the way, “extenuating circumstances” is a euphemism for the present
socioeconomic system which allows a Nigerian (or his/her family), who is not on
hunger strike or any other act of self-immolation, to literally die of
starvation or a minor ailment. This is the minimum a highly motivated
book which tends to be (but is not exactly) ideologically neutral, such as the
one before us, can demand.
We may need to remain with this “ideological
neutrality” for a bit longer. This book is about good and bad (evil), right and
wrong and the bases for the distinctions in the universal and Nigerian
contexts. I say the book tends to be “ideologically neutral” in the sense
that the book, taken as a whole, is, for instance, not (at least not
explicitly) capitalist or anti-capitalist or non-capitalist and it does not (at
least not explicitly) advocate capitalism or anti-capitalism or
non-capitalism. That, in my opinion, is one of the strengths of the book,
Values Education and National Development. Let me illustrate this point with
two or three short stories.
The epigraph to the Introduction to
this book is a quote from Albert Camus: “Wisdom, we know, is the knowledge of
good and evil, not the strength to choose between the two”. My reading of
this perceptive statement, not necessarily in the context of Camus or the
editors, leads me to respond that the “strength to choose between the two”
belongs to the sphere of “ideology” or “ideological persuasion”. For, it
is ideological persuasion that can empower a Nigerian and lead him or her to
reach beyond himself or herself, and be prepared to make even the “supreme
sacrifice” for an objective that is largely selfless, altruistic, patriotic and
humanistic.
In his recent book, Africa Must be
Modern, Professor Olufemi Taiwo, says that he was, in part, led to write that
book so as to assist persons of leftist persuasion who may wish “to
change the world” with correct interpretations of what they want to change.
I appreciated the author’s motivation and efforts in this mission – although I
criticized him on some other grounds. But neither the book nor its author
is ideologically neutral; they recommend capitalism. But I still commended
both. The current book, Values Education and National Development,
therefore invites greater commendation not only for its motivation and its
efforts, but also for its “ideological neutrality”; any genuine reformer, of
the Right or of the Left, will embrace this book. No genuine
revolutionary, of the Right or of the Left, will be ideologically put off by
it. And yet the book is rich and powerful; it speaks, as it were, to all
genuine reformers.
* To be continued.
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