Remembering Tai Solarin By Roy Brown

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It is ten years since the death of Tai Solarin, educator, Humanist and activist, social critic and thorn in the side of authority, a man of total conviction and commitment to the cause of Rationalism. His outstanding legacy is the Mayflower School, founded in 1956, now with over 8,000 students, and voted four years ago the best school in Nigeria. But the success of the school is due not only to Tai Solarin himself, but in large measure to the skill, commitment and dedication of his wife and life-long partner Sheila, still active in the school administration, and who has been personally responsible for instilling and maintaining the highest academic standards in the school.

 

The Mayflower campus covers hundreds of hectares cleared from the bush, a few miles from Ikenne, the birthplace of Tai Solarin and the town where he settled with his English-born wife when he returned to Nigeria in 1952. The Mayflower Junior School, with 3,500 pupils, is still privately owned, although the High School, with over 4,500 students, is now state-run.

 

The campus includes classrooms, administration buildings, small houses for many of the teachers, dormitory accommodation for about 2,000 boarders, and a farm, where all children are expected to do their share of the work in providing food for the community. Incredibly, academic standards have been maintained despite massive overcrowding, with some classes now numbering up to 100 students in rooms designed to hold no more than 50.

 

From 31 May to 2 June, 2004, the School played host to an International Humanist Conference, ‘Ikenne 2004’ to celebrate the life and work of Tai Solarin. The conference, which was jointly sponsored by IHEU and the Nigerian Humanist Movement (NHM), was attended by visitors from the United States and from about 13 other countries in Africa and Europe.

 

Our group arrived on the evening of Sunday 31 May to discover about 600 students and staff celebrating Sheila Solarin’s 80th birthday in the school hall. The celebrations culminated in speeches and the cutting of a huge birthday cake. But to the dismay of the visitors, the party ended with a woman in flowing African robes leading the assembled crowd in prayer, with 600 young voices joining in the choruses of “Halleluiah” and “Amen”. The scene was a disgrace, an insult to Sheila Solarin, a betrayal of the memory of Tai Solarin, and a betrayal of the children – but sadly symptomatic of the Christian fundamentalism that seems to have taken over the school. Nevertheless, the academic success of the school continues. The head of the senior school, Mrs Modupe Morafa was named best headteacher in Ogun State for 2003 (although, she claims, she owes the award to God!).

 

Yet despite our sense of shock the first evening, the two-day conference was a success. Many of us left inspired and reinvigorated, and determined to redouble our efforts to fight for Humanism in Africa. We heard speakers describe in detail the extent to which ancient superstitions, witchcraft and ritual killings still lurk just below the surface of Nigerian society. Witch doctors still make an easy living casting spells and foretelling the future, often using human body parts. Ritual killing is still a problem. Several speakers dwelt on the difficulty of working in an environment where deep religious conviction and belief in magic is automatically assumed. The Americans in the audience nodded in sympathy.

 

But Rationalists and Humanists are fighting back. We heard how the NHM is taking the battle into small towns and villages, campaigning against the evils of superstition and witchcraft. We heard of their work on Nigerian campuses and of their current campaign to cleanse school textbooks of violence. From Norm Allen, of African Americans for Humanism, we heard of the support that the Nigerian movement has received from the Centers for Inquiry International for the Center for Inquiry in Ibadan – a vital resource for the Nigerian Humanist and Rationalist movement.

 

During the conference many of the visitors were questioned by students and interviewed for the school newspaper. The students seemed well prepared with deep, existential questions, some clearly designed to trap the unwary atheist. But the children were a delight, their thirst for knowledge palpable and, to western eyes, their discipline remarkable. Discipline in the school is maintained by the kind of treatment that has been unfashionable in Europe and North America for

decades; corporal punishment is still widely used.

 

In a short but moving ceremony on 1 June we laid a commemorative stone at the grave of Tai Solarin.

 

“Madam Sheila” spoke feelingly of Tai’s legacy and her disappointment that Nigeria had heeded so few of his lessons.

 

At the end of the conference, we were pleased to be able to announce the creation of a Mayflower Humanist Scholarship Fund under which IHEU will fund the school fees for up to 100 children from poor families to enable them to attend the Mayflower Junior School. The scholarships will be advertised via the publications of the Nigerian Humanist Movement but selection of the student beneficiaries will be made by the school. A condition of the fund will be that all of the beneficiaries will be exposed to education in Humanist values: self-respect; respect for others, however different; kindness towards the less fortunate; the need to ask questions and to assess evidence for ourselves; and the need for moral behaviour without reference to God. The classes in Humanist values will be offered to all children in the Junior School on a voluntary basis.

 

The Human Development Index, published annually by the United Nations Development Fund, provides a simple comparison of the quality of life in different countries. Top of the list this year is Norway, closely followed by Iceland, Sweden, Australia, and the Netherlands. Nigeria comes 151st of the 175 countries listed. All of the bottom 25 countries in the world in terms of quality of life are in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

The reasons for Africa’s poor showing are complex. They involve history, culture, colonialism, corruption, and war, as well as environmental factors and chronic lack of investment. Even the little progress that was being made until the early 1990s stopped dead in its tracks with the arrival of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

What is to be done? This question is actually not difficult to answer. The features that define a successful state are well known:

 

•  A constitution that separates religion from the state, that treats all people, men and women, as equal, and that protects freedom of expression and the human rights of minorities.

 

•  Free and fair elections at national, regional and local level.

 

•  An independent judiciary.

 

•  Intolerance of corruption in government and law enforcement.

 

•  Investment in education – especially of women and girls – and in science and critical thinking.

 

•  Investment in primary health care, health education, and family planning.

 

•  Economic empowerment, including simple registration of property ownership, the removal of barriers to the ownership and inheritance of property by women, investment in skills training, and the availability of micro-credit.

 

The problem for Africa is not a lack of understanding of what needs to be done. The problem is how to get there from here. When an entire nation believes the answer lies in prayer, what becomes of the will to work for progress? While religiously inspired violence grabs the headlines, the resistance of organized religion to virtually every progressive policy, and its deadening effect on the human will, go almost entirely unreported. It can be depressing to compare Africa’s needs with the current reality:

 

•  Increasing pressure in many states with Muslim majorities to introduce Islamic, Sharia law that institutionalizes discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

 

•  Rigged elections. As Stalin once said “Who cares how many people vote. It’s who counts the votes that matters”.

 

•  The undermining of judicial independence. Zimbabwe provides a recent, chilling example.

 

•  Teaching the Koran parrot fashion to children in a language they don’t understand – not education but indoctrination, the antithesis of education.

 

•  The churches’ stranglehold on the provision of health care in many parts of Africa and the resulting neglect of reproductive health care and sex education.

 

•  AIDS prevention programmes hamstrung by the lies of the Catholic hierarchy and by an unwillingness even to discuss safe sexual practices.

 

•  Few if any slum dwellers with title to their properties. Reform of property ownership law is vital to enable poor people, including women, to accumulate capital and to obtain credit – an idea of little interest to the ruling elites.

 

•  Too many young boys being taught only a single skill –

how to fire a gun.

 

What hope, then, is there for the future? Well, the small and dedicated band of Nigerian Humanists know there is a better way. While Humanism may not have the financial resources to compete with Islam and Christianity, it does have, quite simply, a better message: a more humane and a more rational world view on which to build the future – a world view that values altruism above selfishness, concern for others above greed, and the spirit of free inquiry above superstition.

 

It is a world view that liberates rather than oppresses, that frees the mind from fear and guilt, and that recognizes that we all share a common humanity.

 

But however correct our analysis, however worthy our thoughts, Humanism will have little impact unless we – every one of us – is prepared to get involved. Every problem in Africa has a political dimension. Humanists have a responsibility to work for reason, democracy and human rights. Every one of us – not just in Africa but in the rich countries of the north – should find ways to promote education in Africa. Every one of us should campaign for increased spending on primary health care unfettered by religious taboos. And every Humanist from the rich north should work to raise funds for Humanism in the south.

 

Our first priority must be to help Africa turn away from witchcraft, superstition and the endless prayer meetings of charismatic Christianity: to get up off its knees and, echoing the words of Tai Solarin, to look to its own efforts rather than to divine intervention for its salvation.