Nigerian society, greatest abusers of internet technology – Soyinka
Professor Soyinka
Published By: Kazeem Ugbodaga
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka says the Nigerian society is the greatest abusers of internet technology, which is creating new generations of illiterates in the country,
Soyinka spoke at the closing ceremony of CANEX Live Theatre of the 3rd Intra-African Trade Fair, IATF 2023, in Cairo on Friday.
He said the internet technology is a very large subject, and that “we can go on for the next seminars over the next few weeks over this issue. I want us to understand that, on the other hand, there’s a new culture taking place about which we have to be very careful; I call it the Internet culture.”
Soyinka stated that this is a marvelous and liberating technology, saying that the so-called Arab Spring, for instance, among many movements, was able to take life and be successful where they’ve been utilising that culture of instant communication for positive reason.
“However, as a new, tyrannical, insolent, and abusive culture, the culture of submental humanity in our midst, which you can give the rough name of the new Internet culture, in which real creativity is being downgraded, even despised for cheap, populist, nasty, subversive, humanly subversive culture.”
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“It’s creating new generations of the illiterate, who believe it’s up to them that it’s sort of noble, progressive, and populist to despise what I call the real meaningful culture that improves the mind of humanity, expands our horizons, offers numerous alternatives or interpretations of phenomena, et cetera, and leads to a new construct of a genuine new being,” he said.
According to the Nobel laureate, “Now we have to watch this network-facilitated abuse of culture. I speak very specifically to my society, especially the Nigerian society, the greatest abusers of that kind of culture, where you have the real degradation of the real meaning of culture, facilitated by Internet technology.
“So that’s why I said it’s a large subject, which we must not trivialise. We shouldn’t take the easy way out. We shouldn’t go on the axial, black and white, and so on. It’s a work in progress, but we must not let the barbarians get away with this new project,” he said.
