Browsing by Author "Olatunji, Cyril-Mary Pius"

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    Is primitivism indigenous to Africa?
    (University of Zululand, 2010-01) Olatunji, Cyril-Mary Pius
    To know where one is coming from is to know where one is heading, and to know where one is heading is to know where one is coming from. A statement such as this is often employed successfully to help maintain an indigenous knowledge system. Western scholars, on the other hand, have effectively excluded all non-Western knowledge systems from the domain of science. In Africa, all that seems left is the maintenance of relics of history in the name of African indigenous knowledge system. Like having to decide between the undesired and the impossible, choosing between obsoletism and the ‘impossible African science’ seems to leave Africa with only an option of having to extol primitivism. Is Primitivism indigenous to Africa? Especially in the Western world, culture is often associated with such things as good breeding and finesse in human relations: an educated condition; a well developed taste and capacity for the arts such as music, sculpture, literature ..., in Africa, culture often refers to the way of life of our forefathers. In this sense it is often reduced to an unchanging tradition (Okpokunu 2002, 99-126).
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    A philosophical inquiry into the problem of democracy in Africa
    (2011) Olatunji, Cyril-Mary Pius; Wait, E. C.
    The study acknowledges that there have been attempts by scholars of African politics to explain the problems impeding the smooth running and consolidation of democracy in Africa. The acknowledgement of these previous efforts notwithstanding, the thesis sets out to show the value of a philosophical reaction to the positions of scholars on the issue, as a shift towards a better approach to it. It makes an examination, which exposes the inadequacy of the previous approach to the explanation of the problems militating against the democratic project in Africa. The thesis is not therapeutic. It is primarily diagnostic. Therefore, it did not set out to prescribe some procedural steps to change the ailing political system in Africa. Rather, it has identified the shortcomings of previous approaches to the problem of democracy in Africa, which, has portrayed Africans as mere effects of causes, and incapable of taking control of their own life situations. In the analysis, the scholars had argued that the unstable state of democracy in Africa has been caused by some internal and external factors. That is, by implication, Africa has been caused to be what it is. This study rejects the causal model of explanation taken uncritically from the Newtonian physics by the scholars of African politics in their explanations of the political challenges of Africa. This study argues that by applying the causal explanation, the scholars have implied that Africa is not more than a mere effect of causes, and therefore, incapable of a self-motivated and a free action. They have also implied that their own analyses were either caused or false Consequently, the study proposes that any reliable explanation of the problems militating against the democratic project in Africa must be non-causal in structure. That is, an explanation in which my explanations, as an African, are my own wilful actions. By so doing, the study has initiated a new consciousness of who I am as an African. It initiated the consciousness of the fact that such factors as colonialism and corrupt leadership in Africa may have had serious influences on the trajectory of my own history as an Africa, but they do not determine my situation in the deterministic cause and effect relation in the manner in which the scholars intended.
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    The 'we versus them' divide in Nigeria : rethinking traditional epistemologies
    (University of Zululand, 2011-01) Olatunji, Cyril-Mary Pius
    Ethnicity, religion and politics are undisputedly the root of major problems in many African states. Clear examples of this can be found in Nigeria. Some scholars have argued that politicians use ethnicity and religious differences in order to create unnecessary rivalries and to settle political scores and fuel ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria. Others are of the view that religious and ethnic differences are responsible for political instability in the country. While some scholars suggest that the country should be divided along ethnic or religious lines, others argue that the size and diversity of Nigeria would guarantee enhanced competitiveness for the nation. Without necessarily taking sides in any of these arguments, the author examines the epistemological foundations of sustained ‘schism’ in Nigeria.