Nigeria’s Lost Thinkers: Why Intellectualism Needs A Revival
ON a rain-soaked morning in Lagos, a writer set aside his daily walk and returned to an old question that has haunted Nigeria for decades: what does it mean to be an intellectual in a society where truth is often an inconvenience?
The answer, he insists, is simple yet radical. An intellectual is not one who dazzles with eloquence or flaunts academic titles. An intellectual is one who dares to ask questions—even when the answers unsettle the powerful.
But in Nigeria today, that spirit has been smothered.
When Religion Replaced Reason
The nation’s colonial history created uneven foundations for intellectual development. Missionary schools flourished in the South, while the North preserved traditional structures and leaned heavily on clerical authority. The result was a country split between competing traditions of knowledge: theology in the North and Western-style schooling in the South.
Over time, religious institutions, meant to inspire moral inquiry, became arenas of fear and spectacle. Pulpits turned into stages, prophets replaced philosophers, and miracles replaced method. Doubt was condemned as sin, and millions outsourced their thinking to authority figures.
“Religion became a cage for the imagination,” the writer observes. “It hollowed out what was left of Nigeria’s intellectual promise.”
The Social Media Mirage
If the internet offered hope for a new generation of thinkers, Nigeria instead imported its worst tendencies. Social media has become, in the writer’s words, a “neo-pornography of performance.” Visibility is virtue, virality is validation, and the human body is currency.
Parallel to this spectacle is the “money na water” gospel, a culture that glorifies unexplained wealth, mocks honest labour, and elevates optics over outcomes. The result is a generation pressured to perform desirability online rather than pursue ideas in the real world.
“Brilliance is irrelevant if you can buy a Benz,” he quips, capturing the cultural shift with biting clarity.
The Pseudo-Intellectual Trap
Nigeria’s universities, once envisioned as spaces for liberated thought, have become factories of imitation. Borrowed syllabi, borrowed jargon, borrowed accents. Sexual harassment scandals and patronage networks have only deepened the rot.
Intellectualism became a costume—worn by those fluent in English, armed with degrees, but loyal to power. Instead of resisting tribalism, it was recruited into identity politics. Instead of dismantling corruption, it justified it.
“Intellection went on parade,” the writer laments, “but not into practice.”
Why It Still Matters
For all the disillusionment, he insists that intellectualism is not dead—merely buried. And it can be revived, not by institutions but by individuals. By those willing to question their own tribe, their own faith, their own slogans. By those who choose imagination over imitation, clarity over spectacle.
In a society battered by economic collapse, religious fear, and performative politics, genuine intellectuals may be rare—but they are also indispensable. They are the ones who can give the nation’s buried potential the “kiss of life.”
