Rotimi Amaechi & Babatunde Fashola |
Rt. Hon.
Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi is not ignorant of the problems facing the country. He
is not a total stranger to the maritime environment either having served as
Governor of Rivers State – a state that hosts the nation’s oldest seaport and
the world famous Onne Port – for
eight years. Ditto Fashola.
The nation’s
two major seaports are located in the state he ran commendably well for eight
years. Barrister Babatunde Fashola’s administration initiated the construction
of the Lekki seaport. He had a clear
understanding of the importance of the waterways. He set up the Lagos Waterways Authority (LASWA) to
encourage the use of alternative mode of transportation by Lagosians. He even
went as far as creating a sort of Coast
Guard for Lagos.
So what does
a man who vastly feels compelled to give advice say to these gentlemen? Aha,
the allegory of the cave! Plato’s allegory of the cave would be apt. The
allegory provides an interesting perspective to life. It was written as a
dialogue between two brothers, Socrates
and Glaucon.
Socrates
begins by asking Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned
from childhood. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are
fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not look around at
the cave, each other, or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and
between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind
which people walk carrying objects or puppets “of men and other living things”.
The people
walk behind the wall so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to
see, but the objects they carry do (“just as puppet showmen have screens in
front of them at which they work their puppets”. The prisoners cannot see any
of this behind them and are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave
wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the shadowed
wall, and the prisoners falsely believe these sounds come from the shadows.
Socrates
suggests that the shadows constitute reality for the prisoners because they
have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are
shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are
inspired by real living things outside the cave.
Plato then
supposes that one prisoner is freed, being forced to turn and see the fire. The
light would hurt his eyes and make it hard for him to see the objects that are
casting the shadows. If he is told that what he saw before was not real but
instead that the objects he is now struggling to see are, he would not believe
it. In his pain, Plato continues, the freed prisoner would turn away and run
back to what he can see and is accustomed to, that is the shadows of the
carried objects. He writes “…it would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by
turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would
believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him.”
Plato
continues: “suppose…that someone should drag him…by force, up the rough ascent,
the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into the light of
the sun.” The prisoner would be angry and in pain, and this would only worsen
when the radiant light of the sun overwhelms his eyes and blinds him.
The sunlight
is representative of the new reality and knowledge that the freed prisoner is
experiencing. But slowly, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. First he can
only see shadows. Gradually he can see the reflections of people and things in
water and then later see the people and things themselves. Eventually he is
able to look at the stars and moon at night until finally he can look upon the
sun itself. Only after he can look straight at the sun “is he able to reason
about it” and what it is. Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner’s
perception would be permanently altered. He would think that the real world was
superior to the world he experienced in the cave; he would bless himself for
the change, and pity the other prisoners and would want to bring his fellow
cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight.
The
returning prisoner, whose eyes have become acclimated to the light of the sun,
would be blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first
exposed to the sun. The prisoners, according to Socrates, would infer from the
returning man’s blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and
that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the
prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who
attempted to drag them out of the cave.
Honourable
Ministers, you’ve been out of the cave a while. You’ve seen the true light.
You’ve heard the true sound and seen the real images. You’re back now to take
this imprisoned generation out into sunshine; please don’t allow the people you
desire to save resist you. Maritime industry confusionists are very loud and
unrepentant. Please don’t let them hold you back. Drag, pull, push and force us
up the rough ascent. Ignore the hues and cries. Make the change happen by all
means. Please. (Source: Businessday)
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