Images of architect Kunle Adeyemi, top left, with his Makoko Floating
School, and Nimi Wariboko, bottom right, juxtaposed with an image of
the Lagos
Makoko settlement, suggesting creative transformations of life
the architect
and the philosopher represent.
Adeyemi is shown with his Makoko Floating
School under construction in the background, created within the space of the
Lagos, Nigeria, Makoko slum, most of whose houses are built on water, adapting
the design culture of the urban space in expanding its educational culture in a
manner that indicates how humanity can expand her living space through the use
of waterspace.
The Adeyemi picture is juxtaposed with an image of Makoko, centre, and of philosopher
Nimi Wariboko, bottom right, a thinker in the use of urban design for
maximizing interpersonal human potential and sensitivity to the cosmic
dimensions of existence, among other themes, as demonstrated by his The
Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion: A Pentecostal Social
Ethics of Cosmopolitan Urban Life.
The creative transformation of possibilities represented by Adeyemi's interpretation of slum architecture as a template for future human development is a theme that unifies Wariboko's work, emerging as it does from his initiatory entry into Pentecostal Christianity amongst the people of Lagos' Maroko slum and his own navigation of the intersections between creative potential and disenabling factors.
I'm working on contributing to demonstrating the value of the work of the philosopher and economist Nimi Wariboko as a guide to living.
Most of Wariboko's work belongs in the rarefied heights of academic philosophy and theology, constructed and consumed by people highly trained in such styles of thought.
Paradoxically, the same man used to be a Pentecostal pastor, a culture that has achieved global penetration through reaching people at their point of need, in their most basic conditions, providing hope in the midst of confrontation with life's challenges as they strike everyone, at whatever level of personal achievement-educational, economic and otherwise.
Can the Wariboko of his many books, the Wariboko who is a professor of philosophy and theology, a person with a PhD in theology, an MBA and a BA in Economics, a consummate member of academia, speak to the general human consciousness, as he once did as a Pentecostal pastor in New York, ministering to African immigrants struggling with the challenges of moving from Africa to the US amidst the myriad issues faced particularly by Africans in a global socio-economic order that cannot be described as constructed with their needs in mind?
Can a person read Wariboko with the same ease as they read Kenneth Hagin, Yongi Cho, Daniel Olukoya, Chris Oyakhilome, and other representative writers and pastors from the US and Nigerian arms of the global Pentecostal movement, people whose words are a lifeline to millions of people?
Such great theologians as the Catholic Karl Rahner combine their academic theology with some text of poetic contemplation, as his Belief Today. The Catholic Hans Urs Von Balthasar is known for a sophisticated sequence of theological works, but he also wrote a beautiful set of poetic meditations on the Stations of the Cross. Thomas Aquinas is best known for his monumental Summa Theologica, but he also wrote poetic prayers. St. Augustine of Hippo is the author of the majestic City of God as well as the author of the Confessions, where poetic prose, emotional outpourings and philosophical reflection combine in the telling of a life story that has inspired many across the centuries, while such thinkers of how to apply spirituality to daily life as Ignatius of Loyola constructed meditations to guide this process.
I see all these possibilities and more in Wariboko's work and have begun to develop them.
Wariboko is also a representative of classical, what some call traditional, African spirituality, a remarkable expositor of Kalabari thought, incidentally taking further than has been done before strategic issues in the resonances amongst classical African philosophies and spiritualities.
These insights should also be appreciated by a broad audience and their applicability to daily life promoted.
The Pentecostal, the African philosophical and the Western philosophical streams converge seamlessly in Wariboko's work as related themes within these bodies of thought are correlated and their possibilities developed in a powerful synergy.
My first major effort in this project is the online publication, with his permission, of selections from the acknowledgements pages of Wariboko's books.
If you want to read something inspiring, something that ignites appreciation of the beauty of life, of the potency of living, these selections are a good place to go.
Great thanks to Toyin Falola, whose effusive description of Wariboko's work introduced me to it. My participation in the conference and books Falola organized on Wariboko's work help me organize my ideas inspired by encountering Wariboko's productivity.
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