If the foundations of logic be destroyed

In July 2005, I was aboard an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Lagos on my way from Saudi Arabia. As we approached the Nigerian air space, the pilot announced that we would be landing in Kano because the Lagos airport had been closed. An airplane had crash-landed and blocked the only runway at the time, leading to the diversion of flights. I found it unsettling as I had meetings to attend and I was unsure of when we would leave Kano. But as we were lamenting over the situation, one passenger said at the top of his voice: “Why will Nigeria not be like this when the country is perpetrating injustice against us in the Niger Delta? Nigeria can never develop until we have resource control!”

That was quite a jump. Some of us were shell-shocked. What is the logical link between Nigeria’s underdevelopment and closure of a runway to evacuate a damaged aircraft? Such accidents can happen anywhere in the world — resource control or not, “true” federalism or not, “fiscal” federalism or not, “restructuring” or not. On the flight, we had been discussing Nigeria’s issues in good spirit. Passengers from different parts of Nigeria agreed that we were bedevilled with serious problems — many blaming the leaders, some blaming the followers, and others attributing the situation to structural issues, but our Niger Delta compatriot completely went off the rails.

It is quite obvious that lack of logical reasoning is a major issue in Nigeria, particularly in matters of social order, public discourse and public administration. At the risk of exaggerating this, I would say it is impacting negatively on our quality of life. Have you ever seen signs of “do not urinate here” in a city where there are no public toilets? Have you ever seen someone on a flight trying to force a rectangular suitcase into a square space? Have you ever visited a website with an image showing only the tie and breast pockets of the featured person because a portrait-size picture has been placed in a landscape space? These are clear indications that something is wrong with our thinking.

My friend, David Adeoye, and I always find ourselves discussing Nigeria during our early morning exercise. We try to reason together on our root problems. I would say this article was largely influenced by his suggestion that we need to amend our elementary curriculum to start teaching logical reasoning at that level. Most students do not progress beyond elementary education. David is of the opinion that our problem-solving capability will improve if we are given to logical reasoning earlier in our lives. It may be of interest here that European countries as well as South Korea and Japan incorporate critical thinking and logical reasoning into their curricula. The difference is clear.

Talking about good governance, we also see that logical reasoning is critical to problem solving. It is vital to policy making. More than anything else, our leaders need to understand logic. When a governor, for instance, wakes up and says he is banning open grazing, the first question I would ask is: so, have you provided the alternative? The easiest thing for a leader to do in the world is to make a pronouncement. The harder part of the job is analysing and preparing for the consequences of the pronouncement. When you want to initiate a policy, you need to sit down, think through it, consult, calculate the costs and plan transition management. That is the logic of a smart problem solver.

How can we tackle insecurity if we do not shut the factory producing bandits, kidnappers, terrorists, robbers, etc? We can budget $10 billion to buy weapons all we like but for as long as children are not going to school and those who go to school end up jobless and idle, the production line for the crimes will remain active. Rather than address the foundations of these endemic issues by applying sound logic to policy making, we are more interested in sleazy and phoney contract awards. And in the warped logic of those milking the system, the money they have made will buy them personal security. They are not asking themselves: how come their mansions in London do not have a fence?

The Lagos house of assembly has asked the state government to enforce the tenancy law which prohibits “unreasonable” rent hikes. “Excessive increment of rents by landlords in Lagos state has led to increase in homelessness,” one member said. “Rents in my constituency have spiked by as much as 200 percent,” another added. Their ultimate solution? Enforcement of rent law in a state with massive housing deficit! Nothing about government building affordable housing estates (as Alhaji Lateef Jakande did in the 1980s), nothing about removing the heavy levies on new constructions, nothing about incentives for private investment. Let’s just enforce the law and rents will crash!

In the area of social order, when Nigerian motorists do certain things on the road — such as parking at a junction or overtaking at a bend — my instinct is to think they are selfish and reckless. But the problem may be deeper. How many motorists actually reason that parking at a junction narrows the space for others to turn? How many motorists reason that when they overtake at a bend, they are unsighted and can run into an oncoming vehicle? They may indeed be selfish or reckless but their thinking faculties also need to be inspected. Some road users just do not have the capacity to think or to anticipate danger. Only God knows how many lives are lost daily because of this poor thinking.

The CBEX catastrophe is yet another scam in our long history of “wonder banks”. I grew up hearing about “money doublers” who would help you turn N10 to N20. The police used to warn us that if the man could truly double the money, he wouldn’t be in that business. He would just be at home doubling money for himself. This scam was modernised by fraudsters masquerading as bankers and investment managers. Is it easy to turn $1,000 to $2,000? You can blame our greed and get-rich-quick mentality for the success of the fraudsters, but we also abandon our brains and fall victim. Our decision-making is ruled by emotions rather than wisdom. Judgment is inevitably often lacking.

Finally, it is not just social order and public administration that are devoid of logical reasoning in Nigeria. Public discourse is starved of this cognitive power. Watch the TV, listen to the radio, read the newspapers and go through social media posts. Anyone who has some respect for logic will puke at the quality of debates and discussions on many of these platforms. I once read a post and comments where people were arguing that it is better to create jobs than to build infrastructure. What!!! It is not just the framing of the question (as if building infrastructure does not create jobs) that shocked me but also the arrogance with which people promoted the ignorance. We are in deep trouble!

In my first year at the University of Lagos where I studied mass communication, one of the compulsory courses was ‘Writing for the Mass Media’. The course lecturer was Professor Adidi Uyo, the greatest English teacher that I know of and one whose teaching shaped my use of language till today. He broke down the English language into atoms, taught us the mechanics and techniques, and guided us on how to apply them to journalism. He broke writing for the media into four blocks: Facts, Logic, Rhetoric and Grammar — which he gave the acronym FLORG. Part of classwork was for us to FLORG newspapers by pointing out the errors of facts, logic, rhetoric and grammar in their articles.

In regular life, we seem to pay attention to rhetoric (figures of speech, use of flowery language, etc) and grammar (parts of speech, is and was, noun/subject agreement, phrases and clauses, etc). However, in argumentation, we tend to neglect the two critical blocks: facts and logic. This happens so often that I have almost lost faith in public debate in Nigeria. We have eloquent and smart people spewing fluent gibberish on TV, radio and social media day and night. They have zeal, no doubt, but they lack knowledge. Zeal without knowledge is hazardous. An argument that is heavy on rhetoric and grammar but light on facts and logic is as dangerous as a rifle in the hand of a deranged sniper.

I read comments on social media posts in advanced societies and I get educated all the time. Yes, they have their lunatic fringe — as is to be expected in any human society — but enlightened voices are not in short supply. For instance, I have read so many arguments on the Trump tariff rampage that I am now better educated on international trade dynamics. There are people making emotional arguments, as usual, but you can see subject-matter experts exploring all the different angles even from their own biases. I am amazed at the respect for facts and logic. If you follow debates on Nigerian social media, you will be crushed by the preponderance of ill logic and twisted facts.

I’m always asked why my social media engagement is zero, even when I am constantly under attack. But how do I engage with someone who says the UN will take over a country if protests last for two weeks? Where do we even start the discussion from? How do I argue with someone who doesn’t know the difference between presidential and parliamentary systems? How do I engage with someone who is arguing authoritatively that it is “people’s constitution” that develops a country when the UK, Canada and New Zealand do not even have a written constitution? How do you engage with those who don’t want to learn but would resort to insult to cover up their shallow intellect?

Indeed, can a country rise above the intellectual capacity of its leaders and its knowledge industry? Can public policy be any better when there is no rigour in the thinking behind it? Can public discourse be constructive and productive when the thought leaders — or the loudest voices — have no respect for established facts and lack the capacity to reason logically? Can the citizens live an orderly life when they do not think before they act or talk? These are interesting questions we need to ponder upon. While I do not know the possible outcomes of improving our IQ by teaching logical reasoning in secondary schools, I am fairly assured that it is an experiment worth undertaking.

AND FOUR OTHER THINGS…

SEC SCANDAL

After the horse had bolted from the stable, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) came out to say CBEX, the digital trading platform that had been scamming Nigerians for a while with promises of out-of-this-world returns, was not registered to operate in the capital market. The regulator said it was commencing investigations after “investors” had reportedly lost N1 trillion. Typical Nigerian regulator. CBEX had been advertising on social media all along, selling double-your-money schemes to vulnerable Nigerians, yet SEC claimed it did not know. This is a big indictment on its surveillance unit. It is very important for the regulator to clean up its act and become more proactive. Negligence.

ON YOUR OWN (OYO)

Oyo state government has decided to surcharge anyone sinking borehole. In the first place, government is supposed to provide water. It has failed so woefully that citizens are now spending their own money to provide water for themselves, despite paying taxes. That should be a shame for the government but our thinking faculty is so impeded that it has instead become a revenue-generating idea: for every meter of borehole sunk, citizens will now pay N14,000. That automatically jacks up the cost of providing water for yourself. States and LGAs, like AMAC, even charge people for using generators. Government is trying to profit from citizens’ response to its own failures. Sickening.

TINUBU IN PARIS

President Tinubu has been in Paris for over two weeks on a “short working visit”. In the meantime, Benue and Plateau states have been witnessing a bloodbath. Prof Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno state, said Boko Haram is gaining more territories. And the Lakurawa terrorists are unrelenting in their massacre of poor Nigerians in the north-west. I remember when the PDP was in power and how the APC used to take advantage of every terrorist attack to issue statements, creating the impression that it was because President Goodluck Jonathan was incompetent. I try to imagine the statements Lai Mohammed would have been issuing today if the PDP was still in power. Politics!

NO COMMENT

Rivers state is fast becoming the drama capital of Nigeria since Chief Nyesom Wike, the former governor, fell out with Sir Simi Fubara, his handpicked successor. The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) moved its annual conference from Rivers to Enugu state to protest against the “illegal emergency rule”. The emergency administration retorted: “In that case, kindly return the N300 million you collected as hosting rights.” But the NBA said the N300 million is but a gift (quite some gift in these hard times). Fellow Nigerians, we would never have known of this secret “gift”. Yoruba elders say something like: may people not discover what we were cooking that set the house on fire. Hahahaha.