SECTION X Chapter 11. Tai Solarin - Secular Humanist "Solarin has fed the poor with food and the ignorance with knowledge. He has clothed the naked. He has suffered personal deprivations for the freedom of others..." --Adebayo Akerele, THE GUARDIAN (Sept 5, 1992) "Every Nigerian is born saddled with a god to worship. It took me almost thirty years to get the sledgehammer to break the shackle around my mind." --Tai Solarin Tai Solarin (d 1994) was a Nigerian leading educator and social critic. Internationally known, and a well-respected writer for such leading Nigerian newspapers as THE GUARDIAN, Solarin was unusual in that he publicly professed BOTH humanism AND atheism in a country, where almost everyone is extremely religious. Solarin was educated through the Christian missionary schools. He completed his education in England, where he discovered the humanist writings of Robert Ingersoll, H.G. Wells, and others. Solarin began to view religion as a tool for keeping black Africans in a submissive role to white Europeans. Solarin returned to Nigeria in 1952, where he was hired as headmaster of a local school. During this time, all schools conducted mandatory religious activities in the classroom-- starting off each day with hymn songs and prayers, and attending Church on Sundays. After differing in opinion on removing religion from the school's activities, Solarin was fired. He went out, and founded his own private secular school in 1956, naming the school the Mayflower. (He chose the name Mayflower because, like the pilgrims coming to America, he thought his action symbolized a new movement.) Solarin determined that the underdevelopment and passivity he saw all around him in Africa was due to the indoctrination every African received as a child--learning that they must submit to a divine deity to solve all major problems of the world. Solarin determined what was needed was a model that taught people to rely on themselves-- ie to become educated, to work hard, and to take risks where appropriate. Per Solarin: " To get the young Africans weaned from their almost congenital reliance on fate, they must be educated to stand on their feet. The worst bane of African non-development is chronic dependence on the deity to solve all earthly problems. Give everybody education for self-reliance and we will vie with the best nations everywhere. Solarin taught his favorite poem to all his students, because he believed it captured this spirit of self reliance: "Out of the night that covers me Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Under the bludgeoning of chance, My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears, Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years, Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." by William Ernest Henley Another favorite quote, was from H.G. Wells, which also dealt with the importance of taking responsibility for oneself: "I shall die, as I have lived, the responsible center of my world." When Solarin first opened his school, in 1956 he had seventy students. In 1991-2, there were 1800 male and female students. It became a state run school in the late 1970's, although the government asked Solarin to stay involved because they recognized his role in its success.-- Its students had the reputation of working harder than average, and therefore employers eagerly sought out graduates from the school. Because the school is not categorized as a "unity" (ie religious based) school, it receives roughly one third to half of the funding that other schools receive. Yet the school is so popular, 4 out of 5 students must still be turned away. Solarin relies on private funding from parents' organizations to finance the difference. The first woman engineer in Nigeria was a graduate from Solarin's school. Solarin's school also boasts the largest number of science and engineering graduates. Catholics and Muslims are the two most powerful sects in Nigeria-- and there have been violent clashes between the two for power in the country. Solarin operates primarily in the Catholic controlled area of the country. He notes that his Mayflower school could easily be copied in other areas of Nigeria--except in fundamentalist Muslim areas--where "it would be tantamount to heresy to proclaim that man is the master of his fate, the captain of his soul." (This is heretical, because the word "Islam" means just the opposite-- "submission" to the Will of Allah.) Solarin was interviewed by Norm Allen, Director of African Americans for Humanism in the Winter 1993-4 issue of FREE INQUIRY. Excerpts from this interview are included below: (Footnote: This article was used as the source material for this entire chapter. Note, some of the interview questions have been completely rearranged in the interests of brevity and focus on Solarin's humanist stand.) Allen: "What do you believe accounts for the deep spirituality of many Africans?" Solarin: "It is their long exposure to spirituality. Take a black African child at birth to live with the Eskimos. He would grow up completely donning the attitude of his cultural background. Nurture is mightier than nature." Allen: How can humanism improve the quality of life on the African continent? Solarin: "It will do for every individual what it has done for me. The first great thing humanism does, I think, to humanity is to make individuals appreciate being master and captain of their fate." Allen: "Why do you believe that so few Africans are humanists?..." "So few Africans are humanists because nonhumanists are laden with a burden that humanists have shed: Fear. Most Africans are taught from birth to fear-- to fear daylight, life, death. Witches, angels, the Devil or Satan, thunder, lightening, nocturnal birds are all objects that generate fear. The African child is brought up not to ask questions. Precocious children are silenced. Any human being so shackled is shorn of the equipment that is strongest in the armor of the humanist--courage. Strip the African of all objects of his fears and he will be as courageous as any other man across the world. Inject education into his or her life and you have led him or her halfway up the ladder of humanism. The most significant aspect of humanism that would, I think, appeal to the African most is the knowledge that his or her prosperity or wealth is none of the business of anybody outside himself or herself; that we can become whatever we choose to be. My friends tell me it is God who makes me successful in my work. When I tell then I share in the responsibility of feeding, in his old age, a clergyman who preached sermons all his life, would they tell me why it was not he feeding me? They have no answer, but hold on, all the same, to their time-honored beliefs." Allen: "Is it likely that humanism will ever become a popular stance in Nigeria?" "Yes. Humanism is not a digestible menu for the illiterate; only the educated could be humanists. Literacy in Nigeria touches only 25 percent of the people. If there is 5 percent illiteracy in America, not a single one in that percentage is a humanist. Let Nigeria climb to 60 percent literacy, and humanism will be seen marching jauntily on its colossal numbers. But forces against broadening of the base of literacy in Nigeria are formidable. Governments in the Third World do not like the masses of the people being educated." Allen: "Many blacks maintain that religion is absolutely necessary for the survival of the black community. They note that in America, for example, religious leaders like Nat Turner and Martin Luther King, Jr., used religion to unify and inspire black people to positive action. They also note that black religion has produced many black colleges and other important institutions, and that a firm belief in God actually helped many blacks through difficult times. What are your responses to these contentions?" Solarin: "The blacks hold onto their God just as the drunken man holds on to the street lamp post--for physical support only. Habit is difficult, but not impossible to break." "The Africa-based American is born in fear and shackled in fear. He has been wakened from his apparent state of stupor or somnambulism by tossing him into the night he fears, holding aloft the light of humanism for him to see with." Allen: "Some believe that only religion can bring about wholesome family values. But your family seems to be happy and stable. What accounts for your success in this regard?" Solarin: "I got married without the invitation of God's intervention: My wife was not to obey me: we are a team. Most of the marriage contracts effected around me during the past thirty years either disintegrated or are in the verge of so doing. Mine has lasted forty-one years and is still going strong. I think I owe my happy marriage to openness and dedication, no fake belief, masquerading, or cheating." Allen: "Please fell free to express any final thoughts you might have on humanism, religion, and the Mayflower School." Solarin: "Even though I never during my twenty years as headmaster of Mayflower School sat the students down to soak them in humanism, they all knew my stand. If an expected rain fell on a Saturday, the students knew that the following Sunday morning would find us planting maize on the field instead of attending the community gathering, secular though this assembly is. I have heard chuckles from students when, occasionally, a visitor gave a word of prayer for the good work we are doing..."