By Anthony Akinwale

Reading what some Nigerians post on social media can be depressing. Instead of exchanging ideas on how Nigeria can become a better place to live in, many are in the habit of hauling insults across ethnic, regional and religious boundaries. The impression one gets is that some Nigerians, and they seem to be many, believe the mere fact that anyone who is not a member of their ethnic community means that person is an enemy.

That goes to underscore the need for leaders who will unite Nigerians across ethnic, regional and religious boundaries. But such leaders do not seem to exist in the current dispensation. If they exist, they are few and far between. Or how else does one explain the fact that, with virtually no exception, aspirants to and occupants of public offices would rather resort to a divisive rhetoric? Their unruly supporters they prefer to leave unchecked.

Not only is there a preponderance of hate speech on social media, there is also dissemination of fake news. There are many who see bandits where there are none. That is why panic, created by frightening insecurity, is compounded by false alarm. Many video clips are on circulation in social media showing “bandits” in operation.

On Saturday, June 20, 2026, despite the fake news of bandit invasion of Pan-Atlantic University in Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos State, I was at a beautiful gathering in the museum on the campus of the same university. It was a gathering to unveil Petals Please, the latest collection of poems by Professor Mark Nwagwu. Professorof molecular biology, Nwagwu is also a prolific poet. At the age of 89, years after retiring from teaching at the University of Ibadan, he is at the point of getting another doctorate. But that is not all.

Professor Nwagwu is a thoroughly detribalised Nigerian. For, while one may lament the haulage of ethnic bigotry that has become our national pastime, his friendship with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who grazed the occasion of the book launch with his presence, is nothing short of inspirational and edifying. Professor Nwagwu is from Mbaise in Imo State, while his friend, former President Obasanjo, is from Ibaogun in Ogun State. Both are detribalised, and the depth of their friendship challenges the unscrutinised but loudly trumpeted assumptions of those whose hobby is ethnic and religious bigotry, especially in social media.

The gathering in the museum at Pan-Atlantic University was a celebration of poetry. Poetry showcases art, and art showcases beauty. Beauty is a hallmark of morality. That point is well illustrated by the people of southwestern Nigeria when they say in Yoruba, “Iwa l’ewa.” “Iwa”, in that saying, is good character. “Ewa” is beauty. Good character is beauty, and beauty is good character. It is a philosophy that espouses the convertibility of beauty and good character. It is a way of saying whoever truly appreciates beauty truly appreciates morality, and whoever appreciates morality appreciates beauty.

Early Christian thinkers like St Augustine of Hippo understood holiness as love of beauty. God, for Augustine, is Beauty Itself. Holiness is desire for the beauty that God is. Augustine wrote in Latin. Greek speaking early Christian writers would speak in the same vein. For them, holiness of life is philokalia. Philokalia is a compound word. It is made up of the word “philia”, translated as “love” in the English language; and “kalia” derived from “kalos”, translated as “beauty. Holiness of life is desire for divine beauty. It is love of the Beauty that God is. That explains why, in his passionate spiritual autobiography, Confessions, St Augustine wrote of the journey of his conversion from a sinful lifestyle as a retarded love of beauty.

In his Confessions, Augustine addressed these words to God:“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was outside in the world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you.

The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You [God] called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

Whoever is filled with desire for beauty cannot but feel disgusted at the current situation of our beloved country, indeed at the current state of our world. Former President Obasanjo, himself a politician, alluded to this in his remarks at the book launch when he said what is going on in Nigeria today is not politics. He ought to have gone further in his remarks. But he did not. It is right but incomplete to say what obtains in Nigeria is not politics. What currently obtains has a name, it should be called by its proper name, and that proper name is brigandage.

Politics, properly understood, has an ethical intent and content. But ethics has been banished from the public square. The intent of politics, properly understood, is the common good, that is, the beauty of intelligent regulation of common life for the sake of the common good. This was what Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle meant when they wrote on politics. Indeed, the titles of their respective works on politics speak volumes.

The title of Plato’s dialogue on political philosophy is The Republic. It depicts a concern for the “res publica”. It points to the fact that the intention of politics, properly understood, is the good of the public. The title of Aristotle’s work is Politics, signifying his intention to treat of the good of the city, the “polis”.

This conception of politics with moral intent and content found in Plato and Aristotle is prolonged in Augustine’s City of God, and in Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy of law. Both would concur with the Greek philosophers that the political project is an ethical project in so far as it concerns ideas and operations intending the common good.

The project of politics of common good would be antithetised by the very title and ideas found in Nicolo Machiavelli’s work, The Prince. While Plato wrote on The Republic, and Aristotle on the city, Machiavelli wrote on the prince signaling that his intent is not the good of the city, not the good of common life, but the selfish interest of the prince, the “politician” who does not have to be good but only needs to pretend to be good.

Brigandage, not politics, is what obtains where and when, by way of a monstrous misconception, textbook Machiavellianism is presented as politics to a largely gullible populace. Where sense of beauty is in recession, art goes unappreciated, ethics into oblivion, and brigandage is paraded as politics.

That, currently, is the state of Nigeria. It begins within parties with self-inflicted allergy for internal democracy and crystallises in an electoral process lacking in transparency. But poetry, such as Professor Nwagwu’s, offers hope that beauty and good character can return to public life.

Father Akinwale is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.