Mamudu: Sometimes, self-criticism is necessary for us to make progress. You may not agree with what I am going to say about what was wrong with public intellectuals?
The progressive intellectuals and the dilemmas of democratic commitment of a group of Gambian academics, scholars and intellectuals during and the aftermath of the military dictatorship in the Gambia.
The great dull mass of the educated who just don’t care. They have let the Gambia down badly by not providing intellectual leadership to the democratic struggle.
Mamudu: One of the tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between law and moral or ethical rules accepted by a community of people; between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of them tragically divided against themselves.
On the one hand, they proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, they sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are their lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! they talk eloquently about their commitment to the principles of patriotism, and yet their lives are saturated with the practices of treasonable acts.
They proclaim their devotion to democracy, but they sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. They talk passionately about peace, and at the same time they assiduously prepare for war. They make their fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then they tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice.
This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage.
Mamudu: So, former President Yahya Jammeh and his administration were a problem insofar as they appeared to have provoked a huge support from the mass educated of men and women and, more generally, the elite intellectuals, conscientious and conscious citizens. That, however, was the worst of it for the Gambia.
“He who doesn’t know where he came from doesn’t know where is going,” says an African proverb. The Gambian intellectual community were lost; they don’t know where they were going. It seems they were way behind the curve, early to the struggle for democracy in the Gambia and are only playing “catch-up”.
The July 22 military coup caught many Gambians completely off guard. They did not see it coming because they were pre-occupied elsewhere. As a result, they have become irrelevant to the struggle. The youth, who were driving the struggle for change, no longer listen or look up to them. They have failed them. In fact, Africa’s post-colonial record of advancing the cause of liberty in Africa has been abysmal.
Afflicted with “intellectual astigmatism,” they can see with eagle-eyed clarity the injustices perpetrated against Africans by the white colonialists and the West. But they are hopelessly blind to the equally heinous injustices committed by African leaders against their own people.
Too many intellectuals sold their integrity, principles and conscience to serve the dictates of tyrannical and barbarous African regimes. Military brutes could always find intellectuals and professors to serve at their beck and call. Some of them even preferred military to civilian rule.
According to Colonel. Yohanna A. Madaki (rtd), when General Gowon drew up plans to return Nigeria to civil rule in 1970, “academicians began to present well researched papers pointing to the fact that military rule was the better preferred option since the civilians had not learned any lessons sufficient enough to be entrusted with the governance of the country” (Post Express, 12 Nov 1998, 5).
Imagine. Instead of Yahya Jammeh, the mass Gambia’s educated elites and the “public Intellectuals “who enabled him since day one and continue to enable him. The Gambia’s public intellectuals: ” They were their jumping jacks, Yahya pull the strings and they dance. Their talents, their possibilities and their lives are all the property of Yahya Jammeh.
They are intellectual prostitutes” aiding and abetting Yahya to cling to power. They are doing the same for President Adama Barrow.
The business of Gambia’s intellectuals in today’s has always been to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify fawn at the feet of a mammoth, and to sell their country and race for daily bread. They know it and Gambians know it, and the folly is this toasting and serving a dictator.
Alagi, I am sufficiently aware that your good self and a few others on this forum do not respond to questions or comments on your writings but I’d urge you to engage the readership this time around in light of the insinuations that you’ve made in the foregoing piece.
(sic)
“On the one hand, they proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, they sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are their lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! they talk eloquently about their commitment to the principles of patriotism, and yet their lives are saturated with the practices of treasonable acts.
They proclaim their devotion to democracy, but they sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. They talk passionately about peace, and at the same time they assiduously prepare for war. They make their fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then they tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice.
This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man’s earthly pilgrimage”.
Alagi, in a culture where building wealth and lasting security for the family in the honorable way has remained largely elusive, how else would intellectuals that mostly come from not so well endowed backgrounds not be caught in the dichotomous predicament that you referenced? The same problem that The Gambia has with asking rural folks to go back to farming!
I’d also ask your Mamudu that in a culture that is resource poor and typified by uncertainty, as in Naa Fulo, how else would a right thinking “intellectual” or “academic” put their hard earned resources towards an uncertain endeavor that is fraught with risk, muck raking, greed and malice as has been and still typical of Gambian politics? I’d also throw in the long and dirty arm of government reaching into every corne
I’d again say to Mamudu that where, Alagi Yorro, a classic example of a Gambian intellectual adept at “intellectual leadership” and of noble principles would stick his neck out, seek out the collaboration of like minded Gambians and is willing to commit resources to a worthy cause, maybe and just maybe, more Gambians will be emboldened to join that noble undertaking!
Not all Gambians are of the dirty and sweaty hat, thoughtless and simpleton kind. However, our greed and sour egos invariably suck the energy from every room that we gather to exchange ideas! Haven’t we all become “college professors”?
It’ll be a pilgrimage all over again Alagi and may just be what The Gambia has always been itching for!
And you’ll note Alagi that in a pilgrimage where one is headed mostly matters more!
Absolutely true, Alagi.
Taking and example of the said Gambia intellectual, on the ground -in the face of the phenomenon of dictatorship, it’s easily understood even by those on the road that, the Gambia’s learned politicians and leaders, and their political ideologies and ambitions, seems to be on their own ways down dark tunnels going their own ways. A lot might be around this administration but they seem to be doing to little but in the democratization process and the economy and etc.
Other intellectuals with weir visions, who may be aspiring for top office in the future, may end up creating West African version of North Korea when Gambia doesn’t need to go round such a long way. The is precious, you don’t know till you wasted a lot of it.
Playing around in towns and villages, through sand roads and red gravel roads, one should be able to observe that if politics is exactly serving its purpose in the Gambia, the 80 years old grandpa smoking pipe, shouldn’t be looking at his great grandchildren drawing water from the same standpipe that was their since he was five.
Take a look at streets and passages in the Gambia’s urban areas during the rains. You will doubt if there is actually an administration in the country much less dreaming of advancing household sanitation system and even far more fetched dreaming of the centralization septic pipes from households to underground tunnels etc. etc. These examples above, employment, quality education, agriculture, quality health system and count on … are what meaningful political ideologies and agendas would kickstart and no doubt the citizens taking notice as development and life standard get better. Unless political ideologies and agendas are made into matter, politics and governments in the country will always be more a national liability than gains.
*….. seem to be doing little in the democratization …