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Putting on our thinking caps

Published by The Nation on Sun, 23 Feb 2020


By Oyinkan MedubiIt takes thinkers to beget thinkers. Only a thinking nation can beget a thinking citizenry.Yesterday was World Thinking Day, so I sat down to do some thinking. You must not get me wrong. I think on other days too but not too much. Yesterday, however, I took time to visit those corners of my brain that are critical to my ability to make abstractions from the long list of data fed into it, but which I hardly use. I think mostly, like the rest of mankind close to the thousands of the geographical square metres that make up the perimeters of my surrounding (I think its called Nigeria), I hardly think. I know because as soon as I accessed those thinking cells, I began to have a headache. Obviously, I was straining my thinking muscles.Seriously, help is needed, and fast. I mean, here we are as a nation, carrying on as if not one of us can think. Now, I have confessed to you, havent I, that I can hardly think, and when I try to, my thinking muscles go into overload. What about you, you my intelligent, ebullient and fascinating reader' Surely, you have done a great deal of thinking about this nation and have come to some savoury or unsavoury conclusions. Youyou you get headaches too'! Oh dear, then we are in the same boat, seeing we are equally become thoroughly befuddled by this conundrum.I recently came across a post that had been going round the social media. It was the picture of a cap that is still closely associated with one of the serving ministers. I would have asked to borrow it to use for this article, seeing how very apt it is to our topic but I did not know who to ask. I think the title of the post was who the cap fits or something like that. If I had been privileged to use it, I probably would have retitled it our thinking cap. Honestly, going by present happenings, I think that cap aptly and symbolically illustrates our present thinking level and ability as a nation, which, Im afraid, is really close to zero, if anything.It takes thinkers to beget thinkers. Only a thinking nation can beget a thinking citizenry. Nigerians cannot wear any thinking cap perhaps because they did not have one before, and they have not been encouraged to do so now. Hence, we have all been going around a lot like the Lilliputians, hardly able to make anything of our tall circumstances, or Fidodido, confounded by even the simplest tasks yet with this generous heart.The simplest thing in the world right now is to make electricity; but that is beyond Nigerias ken. It is a light matter too to draw potable water into homes for most nations, because it was done as far back as centuries BC. The books tell us that water was drawn into cities as facilely as armouries were developed in those eras. Yet, in this twenty-first century, we can hardly draw water into buckets using our own technology. Foods were grown with technologies in centuries past that befuddled modern scientists, yet Nigeria has trouble bringing out tomatoes from the soil without fertilizers imported from everywhere. Dairy products and other consumables are produced with deftness, that looks every bit like magic to those of us standing by and watching, by thinking nations to fill markets, yet we are still killing people here to make room for cows to graze. How long shall we go on with bare, unthinking heads, people'I dare say again that our heads are bare because our thinking caps have been stolen or we never had one. Well, the result is that we are grown squeamish and timorous so now we hardly recognise our shadows as our best friends anymore.One of the best assets this country has is its population. As the so-called most populous black nation on earth, this country contains a great deal of human resources it is obviously oblivious of. If properly harnessed and channeled, these human resources can harness and utilise the material resources most efficiently for the benefit of all. In order to accomplish this, we need our thinking caps. That will not only enable us to know how but how to be systematic about it instead of the chaotic system we are running now which benefits individuals at some points but harms society in the long run. Our thinking caps will also help us keep our eyes on the goals and patiently work through our famed impatience to reach that point. We must harness our population for our good.Our thinking caps will assist us to know how to develop a coding system thatll benefit all instead of a few. Itll help us know that building a system for a few (e.g. politicians or Fulani herdsmen) is not only tenuous but counterproductive in the long run. When all our scientific and artistic endeavours are put to effective use for the good of all, then a strong foundation can be laid that will connect the present with the future. This means that even from these ruins, we can build a solid future when we match the brains with the muscles.We really need to think; for, right now, we act as if we are thoughtless. No nation embarks on antiheroic antics and hopes to survive. From all rumours and hearsays filtering into my ears, there appear to be efforts going on to carve an olden day empire from a modern nation. If it were not so sad, it would be laughable indeed. That is why I took it for a hoax. The only problem is that I still have a hard time explaining the senseless killings. Now you know why we need that thinking cap.One of the things that has fueled the failure of reason and instilled the chaotic disorder that we are witnessing today I believe is the economic system that creates uncontrolled insatiable appetite for material wealth. A country that does not seek to build ways by which humaneness can be tucked into the citizens quest for material satiety will soon expire. It will eat itself from within. I think political scientists call it implosion. So when you hear that giant gbum sound, it is not a bomb exploding from outside, it is only the country holding its head because of this giant headache it cannot seem to cure.Most societies get by through the exploitation of the resources of information. This does not mean the simplistic use of machines built through the efforts of others who sat down and did their own thinking. Through their thinking, they brought out something that we have now crudely adopted and are using to disintegrate the society. When a group takes control of a channel of communication and uses it for their own selfish ends, they are disintegrating the society. In short, we are talking about doing enough thinking to devise our own system of information gathering and dissemination and using it to build the society.We end where we began. As the most populous black nation on earth, Nigeria needs to do some thinking. She needs now to find her thinking cap, and were not talking about the one that I saw on social media, the real one. As we mark this years World Thinking Day, we need to think deeply about the country and its future in line with its theme of diversity, equity and inclusion. The life of this nation depends on our putting on that thinking cap. In the process, dont also forget to think about others. For the sake of those others, lets stop fooling around and develop electricity, pipe-borne water and good transportation system. Believe me, these are the basics most people need to raise the quality of their lives. So lets just think think think
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