The African Psyche in Nyasani and Force Consciousness in Africa: Neo Perspectives in African Theurgy
Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan, PhD
Department of Philosophy,Faculty of Arts, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
Email: obinyan.valentine@uniben.edu
Charlse Mfon
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Science, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
Email: Charlse.mfon@uniben.edu
&
Olomukoro James
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
Email: olomukorojame@gmail.com
Abstract
Africa, a land flowing with milk,honeyand opportunities,blessed withdiverse cultures, mineral resources, good weather conditions and organized traditional religious practices that still have strong influence in the lives of the present-day African people. Despite these benefits, Africa, over the years, had earned negative and derogatory terms from the western world as a result of the state of their societies which is flooded with corruption on the part of the African leaders and the complacency on the part of some of its people to actively make meaningful and pragmatic contribution for development. Spiritual reality of forces as conscious of by some of the African people breeds this docility hence Nyasani argues for an existential free Africans who would be solely responsible for meaningful development in African societies. However, this work argues for the utility of force towards development as against Nyasani’s proposal that spiritual realities should be done away with. This work would take mainly a critical and a prescriptive method.
Key Word: Africa, Spirit, Forces, Existential, Complacency, Advancement and Mental and development.
Introduction
In recent times, the focus of discourse in African philosophy has been to make the philosophical discipline relevant to the crisis of development in Africa. African philosophy which, according to Bondurin, is” a negative appraisal of received ideas”1 cannot be blind or indifferent to the multi of various social-economic and in fact existential problems in Africa today. There are manycauses ofthese problems in Africa however; this research is limited to the idea that force consciousness could be one of the reasons for Africans underdevelopment. Force consciousness sometimes affects the dispositions, attitudes and actions of the day today lives of the Africans and his/her relationship with others in the African societies. These forces in Africa, rather than being put into use by the Africans for the development and advancement of the African societies, are sometimes seen only as objects of veneration, fear and trembling adoration and mean to perpetuate harm to another.