By Phillip Ojo
His field scares intellectual giants out of their skin, but Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam loves to play on the roughest side of the turf. He does not play in a vacuum though. He says he is a man on a mission – a mission to dress Philosophy in an African attire.
Many hate to hear daring comments like this. Chimakonam knows. But he is never deterred. He maintains single-minded focus on the goal ahead. If he ever looks back, it is to draw strength from the memories of the victories he has recorded since his days as student of Merchants of Light Secondary School, Oba, Anambra State, where he was reputed for his academic excellence.
This early foundation he laid for himself has not failed him since. Very early in life, Chimakonam determined the path he would go. He has always devoted himself to deep, reflective analysis of man and his affairs on earth. And when he had the opportunity to choose a course of study at the tertiary level, it was to Philosophy he turned. At Ebonyi State University, where he graduated in 2005 at just 18, he left no one in doubt as to where he was headed. He did not just come tops in his class; he finished with just a few points shy of a first-class (he even insists he was actually denied).
Then, two years later in 2007, he got a second chance to prove his mettle. He seized it with all the academic muscle he could muster. The University of Calabar flung its gates open for Chimakonam to do a Master of Art in Philosophy. He finished with a distinction at a time he was just 22. It did not take much for the university authorities to know they had a super talent in their midst. They refused to let him go. They threw a PhD temptation at him. An insatiable lover of knowledge, he could not fight the temptation – he picked up the challenge. And he did not disappoint. When he ended his doctorate programme just in 2012, he was just 25. Again, he finished with a distinction, specialising in Mathematical Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics.
In May, Dr. Chimakonam clocks 26. And he has already started to take stock. But what the Anambra-born philosopher gets clearly belies his age. He has not only been retained by the University of Calabar to teach Philosophy and Logic as well as History and Philosophy of Science, he now consults on African thought system. He has special interest in African logico-graphics (the way a given population reasons on reality issues) and logico-dynamics (the variations in the way individual members of a given population reason). For four years, he has been working on the project of "mapping out fully African psycho-logics".
A member of many research organisations, including the International Research and Development Institute, the Nigerian Philosophical Association, the Canadian Philosophical Association, International Organisation of Scientific Research, African Congress on Philosophy and Religion and the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Chimakonam, who hails from Oba, Idemili South Local Government Area, Anambra State, has begun to get the attention of the world. In 2012, German-based Lap Lambert Publishers picked and published his Master's thesis under the title: Logic in Transition: An Historiographic Study of the Development of Symbolic Logic. His doctoral dissertation has also been published by American-based Dissertation.com under the title: Proof in Alonzo Church's and Alan Turing's Mathematical Logic: Undecidability of First-Order Logic.
The founder and later editor of one of Nigeria's most standard academic journals, Filosofia Theoretica: A Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religion, Chimakonam is also a founding member and secretary, African Congress on Philosophy and Religion, founder and president, Logical Society of Nigeria.
Restless with his pen, Dr. Chimakonam has authored many seminal papers in both local and foreign journals. He has delivered many conference papers on different areas, especially on African science, logic and philosophy.
With his achievements, Chimakonam should be satisfied. But he is not. He says he has just started. He insists it his duty to "defend Africa's possession of peculiar thought system and logic different and better than those of the West."
He is not in the battle to defend and revive African philosophy armless. With his book, Introducing African Science, Systematic and Philosophical Approach, Chimakonam champions what he calls "Authentic African Renaissance (AAR)", urging Africans to "engage their intellect in original African ways."
He talks of what drives him as a philosopher: "I belong to the Einsteinian school which holds that imagination is better than knowledge and I subscribe to the new wave of philosophical development, which is experimental philosophy. In line with the above, I structure my papers, lectures and research works to bring forth new ideas and thoughts. I teach and inspire students to think original. I believe the job of the philosopher is to solve problems for the society and to groom the next generation that would solve the problems of the future."
For him, until blacks develop homegrown solutions to their challenges, there can be no future for the continent.
"I have read a lot about black solidarity and belonging and I see a connection between these and the African Studies Institutes in different universities around the world. I wish to submit that the challenges facing the black man in the USA are not essentially different from those facing the black man in say Ghana, Nigeria, Congo or Ethiopia. Such challenges have common roots. In a civilisation hinged on technology and advances on knowledge acquisition, production and distribution, power, influence and authority lie with the man who owns and wields the basic tools of this civilisation. Such tools as thought system and logic, which determine, among other things, how a people reason and look at reality in general, lie at the foundation of the current world civilisation.
"What the Indians and the Chinese are doing is an attempt to break away from the hegemony of the Western thought system and logic in order to be able to do the same thing their own way. A good advantage of this is manifested through originality and creativity. The black man wherever he is in the world is yet to tap into his natural thought system and logic. This was the focus of the paper I presented at the conference organised by the African Studies Institute, University of Georgia, USA on November 8-10, 2012. It is very difficult for one to excel intellectually and creatively when groomed in a strange thought system and logic," he stresses.
"It is my thesis that thought systems and logics fall along racial lines and until we who are dark build our school curricula to reflect African thought system and logic and tutor the African child to reason and study reality like an African, we may not understand that in the current global dynamics we must strive to take black solidarity into the quest for black originality, that is acquiring, producing and distributing knowledge our own way! My recent book, Introducing African Science, attempts to portray an approach to nature through African lens," he asserts.
Via: Sun News Online