“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it”. This Albert Camus’s quote explains how human’s often rationalize inaction or avoid decisions that affects their lives, especially difficult decisions. Camus explored two thematic issues such as existentialism and absurdism during his philosophical journey into human behaviour. He examined the complexities associated with human existence. In doing this, he suggested that some individuals find it difficult to be courageous in decision taking and often adopt beliefs to justify why they fail to take actions concerning their lives. This can be explained using the concept of intellectual excapism where people explain away why they were bound to fail even if they put efforts.
Some rather find philosophies to validate their reluctances to act than face the challenges that are menacing their existence. You can call this defense mechanism, if you so wish to. This rationalization serves as a defense to explain away existing conditions. It is an apparent reason not to face reality.
The determinist argument is that actions are meaningless because everything is preordained(destiny) they therefore excuse their passivity in attending to life’s issues.
In this Camus’ quote, what can easily be deduced is a call for existential responsibility, urging individuals to recognize actions and inactions. Camus challenge is for us to act courageously, confronting the absurdity of life without resorting to philosophical justifications that encourages laxity. This view embraces the importance of the courage to live purposefully despite the myriad of uncertainties and challenges humans are faced with.
This is directly linked to the issue of food insecurity in Nigeria today. The people of the southern part of the nation have since escaped to oil and other unavailable white collar jobs in the urban areas leaving agriculture in the process. The exponential growing population, shrinking of arable farmlands due to urbanization as well as herders altercations with farmers have further dealt serious blow to food production in Nigeria. Everything we are faced corncerning the reality of food insecurity, like Camus deducted in his quote, we escape through some excuses of attacks on farms and all of such responses. One of the most terrorized states in Nigeria today is Niger State, however, that has not stopped Governor Bago, a farmer himself, to ambitiously drive the ideology of food production that ought to be top priority for every single state in Nigeria, especially the douthern states that have been deficient in food production. No farmer, or trader will go to the north with its attendant risk to bring food stuffs for us down south at the cost of 1 Naira per trailor load. If that is our lifelong expectation, we must jettison it for other realistic enterprises. We must be deliberate in food production with collaborative efforts between the now autonomous Local Government Councils, states, individuals as well as investors from the private sector.
The high cost of staple food this year owing majorly to the removal of fuel subsidy should be a learning curve for us in the south. We must decide either on food production or philosophical rationalization on why we want to remain dependant on the oscillatory food prices coming from the north. The choice is ours.
