Tai Solarin: His Life, Ideas, and Accomplishments (1995) Richard Carrier The most famous and controversial atheist and secular humanist in African history (if not the only one of any real renown) was the Nigerian nationalist Tai Solarin, who sadly passed away at the age of 72 in 1994. I wrote a paper on Tai a year after his death for a course in African History, and I was recently inspired to add this paper to my collection online for various reasons. Africa tends to get ignored in the West as somehow brutal and backward, even though its condition is even more the fault of Western nations than is the condition of other Third World continents like India and South America. We should not allow ourselves to turn our backs on what could become a very important land, a land to whom we owe a sad debt. Because of this ignorance, however, men like Tai are little known in the West, much less anywhere else outside of Africa, so telling their story on the internet is the greatest tribute I can offer. Finally, Tais story tells us a great deal about what it means to be a godless yet selfless humanitarian in a troubled country, and yet even what it should mean in a relative paradise like the United States. He embodies the ideals of Secular Humanism in such a way that stands out even more brilliantly against the background of religion-and-war-torn Nigeria. May there be a million like him, there and the world over. Life Tai Solarin was famous in Nigeria as both a social critic and an educator [1]. Affectionately known as Uncle Tai by his admirers [2], he was usually found wearing sneakers, shorts, and a khaki hunting cap, inspiring some to remark that he looked more like a village eccentric than a great intellectual [3]. Although there are several people and organizations in Nigeria and Ghana attempting to educate the public about secular humanism and its ideals, Tai Solarin is by far the most interesting of them all. Tai Solarin was born in 1922 and had a long and interesting history. A native Nigerian, he was educated in a Nigerian missionary school, served in Britains Royal Air Force during World War II, and finished a bachelors degree in history and geography at the University of Manchester, Great Britain, in 1952 [4]. Tai returned to Western Nigeria to become Principal of Molusi College from 1952 to 1955 [5]. Because Molusis governing board forced him to open each school day with hymns and prayers, and march his students to church every Sunday, he protested and eventually quit [6]. He wasted no time. He started his own school in 1956, calling it the Mayflower School, followed by the Mayflower Junior School in 1959, both located in Ikenne, southwestern Nigeria, where Tai lived for the remainder of his life [7]. He briefly returned to England to pursue graduate studies at the University of London. [8]. Then, in 1976, he turned the original Mayflower school over to the government, though it was still run under Tais direct guidance and innovative principles until his death [9]. Dr. Solarin also became chairman of the Peoples Bank of Nigeria in 1989 [10], a position he held until his death. Tai Solarin married Sheila Mary Tuer in 1951 (who remained with him until his death) [11] and they had two children, a son and a daughter [12]. His mother was a devout Christian, a member of the Church Missionary Society [13], but he always maintained a loving relationship with her and all of his family, loyally fulfilling his brothers wishes by personally overseeing his religious burial in 1965 in spite of Tais personal atheism [14]. Dr. Solarin died in his home on July 27, 1994 [15]. According to Tim Madigan, executive editor of Free Inquiry magazine, Tai Solarin and Kofi Mensah, now the leading secular humanist in Africa, were good friends and were trying to set up an organization together, but Tais death and the increasing unrest in Nigeria have halted those plans for now [16]. Accomplishments Tai Solarin wrote consistently for the Daily Times since 1958 and the Nigerian Tribune since 1967 [17], and he has contributed to numerous other papers in Nigeria like The Guardian [18]. He is the only known Nigerian columnist to have a continuously running column lasting over twenty years, and he routinely wrote well over thirty articles a year [19]. Tai himself could proudly say that there are people in Nigeria who have eagerly read his column for ten straight years or more [20]. Besides his writing, which included several books, Dr. Solarin often joined in public talks and symposia at schools and colleges all throughout Nigeria [21]. As a columnist, Tai was a relentless critic of Nigerian military rule, as well as of corruption in the government and church, and this had a tendency to get him into no end of trouble [22]. Tai was marked for assassination in 1966 by the corrupt civilian government left in place by the British in 1960, but his life was saved by the January 15 military coup [23]. Tai was often jailed for his public remarks, the worst being in Jos in 1984. Lasting seventeen months, Jos was the longest detention he had ever suffered in his life, all for simply suggesting that the military should surrender rule to the public within six months [24]. He was detained regularly again by the government in 1990 for similar upsetting remarks [25]. The government is not the only one that Tais fierce remarks have upset, and he had many enemies in Nigeria and beyond. Some have publicly heaped scorn on him, including the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who once called him an unfeeling, dry-as- dust logic-chopper with no capacity at all for respecting human anguish. [26] (all for merely suggesting that English replace all the native languages of the country). Nevertheless, despite Tais renown as an outspoken atheist, even some religious leaders have had kind words to say of him. Professor Sam Aluko, a Christian consultant and participant in the World Council of Churches, remarks that although he disagreed with Tai on religion, he was nevertheless his best of friends, and often agreed with many of Tais criticisms of both the government and the religious excesses of many groups in Nigeria [27]. Loved or hated, there can be no mistake that Tai was among the best known citizens of Nigeria. He was so well known that a friend, Segun Oyebade, retells a story where an Englishman mailed a letter addressed only as Tai Solarin, Ikenne, Nigeria, and it quickly found its way to Tais house [28]. For nearly forty years, Dr. Solarin has persistently fought for free and compulsory education (from first grade through high school) for all Nigerian children [29]. He established the Mayflower School on January 27, 1956, and seventy students attended that year. By 1992, the attendance at Mayflower had expanded to 1,900, including over 800 girls [30]. The Mayflower Junior School had 1,300 resident students as well as 300 day students by 1992, and both schools are so much in demand that parents petition the Nigerian minister of education to get their children in [31]. Tai chose Mayflower as the name for his school after the name of the ship sailed by the Pilgrims in 1620, because it evoked images of escaping persecution for a new life of freedom. It was to be a school for all children, Tai said, discriminating against none. [32] The original Mayflower is a full high school (junior and senior grades) [33]. In Ogun state, there are over five hundred comparable schools, and Mayflower has ranked first among them all for the past fifteen years. Some have suggested that it may be among the top ten high schools in all of Nigeria. The parents of attending students love the school so much that they raised their own funds to build new classrooms and purchase desks and chairs to fill them [34]. American humanist Norm Allen, Jr., in 1995 the Executive Director of African-Americans for Humanism and Public Relations Director for Free Inquiry magazine, visited Tais school in 1991, and was very impressed with what he saw there. He later wrote of the experience: I was immediately impressed by the seriousness and dedication of the students. Secular messages stressing the importance of education and self-reliance were posted all over the walls of the school. Everyone seemed inquisitive and eager to learn. [35] Dr. Solarin was from the very beginning opposed to white collar education, believing that children should learn to get their hands dirty by mastering practical crafts, alongside their regular education [36]. We go all out to tackle the problems of life, Tai explains, instead of spending several hours of the week explaining the significance of the deity. [37] Only recently has the Nigerian government accepted the fact that primary and secondary education must include technical skills in order for their nation to be truly industrialized. Tai had been telling this to the public for nearly thirty years. True to his own words, he made agricultural science a compulsory aspect of Mayflower education [38]. Boys and girls once built their own dormitories, and continue to make cocoa from home-grown beans, and breed their own pigs [39]. As a lesson in technique and industry, students harvest three seasons of their own corn every year, instead of the usual two seasons harvested by most local farmers [40]. So successful has the Mayflower School been that employers actively recruit from its graduates, because they have earned a wide reputation for hard work and honesty that is not matched by any religious school in the region. In fact, Mayflower produced Nigerias first female engineer, and continues to encourage students to pursue badly needed technical expertise that will benefit Nigeria. Mayflower students who are accepted into foreign universities are urged to take Summer jobs in technical roles such as plumbers, electricians, or tractor drivers, so they can bring that expertise back with them along with their university degrees [41]. Above all, Dr. Solarin teaches self-reliance as well as a commitment to Nigeria as a nation [42]. Tai has made every Mayflower student memorize a poem by William Ernest Henley that ends I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. He makes that the center of his schools curricula, and he points out that such a phrase amounts to blasphemy in Islamic states like Kano, Sokoto, or Borno [43]. Furthermore, as far as Tai knows, Mayflower is the only school that does not teach a particular religion or lead the students in hymns and prayers [44]. He has actively opposed church ownership of the schools since 1952, yet they still remain almost entirely sectarian [45]. Tai remarks that if national devotion to religion is what makes a country great, then Spain and Portugal should have become the greatest nations on earth [46]. Nevertheless, he allowed his Christian students to build their own chapel on the school grounds, as long as no school money went into its construction or maintenance, and no time was lost from their studies [47]. Tai also blames the many sectarian schools for dividing his nation. Because of their innate competitiveness, they undermine any chance of teaching a common Nigerian nationalism [48]. The result is that, rather than rallying behind Nigeria in a national crisis, people rally behind the banner of their particular creed, and that leads to ethnic violence (and has almost led to the brink of civil war) [49]. Because of this conviction, Tais Mayflower students are not taught to give their first allegiance to any god or church, but to Nigeria first and foremost. [50] Ideals As an atheist and vehement critic of irrationality and hypocrisy, Tai Solarin has few kind words for religion in his country. Nigeria is dying today of religion, Tai proclaims, outrageous religious beliefs. [51] Africans, says Tai, are taught by religion and superstition to fear too many things. Witches, angels, the Devil or Satan, thunder, lightning, nocturnal birds are all objects that generate fear. [52] He tells the tale of a magistrate in Lagos who refused to decide a case because he believed juju men were casting spells on him [53], and his successor, Kofi Mensah, recounts tales of taboos and superstitions that have thwarted attempts at halting the spread of disease, the feeding of starving regions, or the controlling of population growth, as well as prevented progress in industry, education, and human rights (especially for women) [54]. The worst bane of African nondevelopment, Tai insists, is chronic dependence on the deity to solve all earthly problems. [55] Dr. Solarin says that blacks hold onto their God just as the drunken man holds on to the street lamp post--for physical support only. H[/b]e paints an interesting analogy from a childhood memory. He made a long journey with his mother once, who gave him a bicycle to help him finish the journey--which was really just a wheel he had to hit with a stick to keep it going. He says that without the bicycle he would never have made the forty mile walk, but upon reflection he realized that he had really carried himself and the bicycle all along. Religion is like that bicycle, Tai says. We only need it when we lack the confidence and determination to face the world alone [56]. To get the young Africans weaned from their almost congenital reliance on fate, Tai says, they must be educated to stand on their feet. And the best way to accomplish that is for the government to copy the Mayflower School throughout Nigeria [57].
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 20:26:24 +0000
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