To colonize a people’s mind, you must first demonize their culture, then their traditions.
This was the assertion of Professor Jerry Orhue, Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Benin, who delivered the institution’s 285th lecture in the inaugural lectures series titled Religion, Science and Tradition: A Tale of Conflict and Harmony.
The lecture, which held on Thursday at the Akin Deko Auditorium of the University of Benin main campus in Ugbowo, a suburb of Benin City, was attended by the creme de la creme of the academia and some personalities that Professor Orhue revealed shaped his early life with their good gestures.
According to him, “a man dies when he begins to see nothing good in himself. The highest form of wisdom is being able to see the good in every bad, and the bad in every good. Nothing is altogether bad, and nothing is altogether good. There is good in every bad, and perhaps bad in every good.”
He asserted that “our views on religion and tradition are so distorted that we often mistake one for the other. Our inability to separate tradition from religion has resulted in a great loss in our collections of traditional medicine of immense benefit to humanity.”
Going further, Professor Orhue, a Specialist in Medical Biochemistry and Clinical Toxicology, stated that “science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.”
Professor Orhue was of the opinion that “creative ideas reside outside the realm of mere mortals and can only be assessed through inspiration.”
In her welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, Professor Lilian Salami praised Professor Orhue for his approach to scholarship.
She said that the institution has continued to grow from strength to strength since her assumption of office with a promise that more successes would be witnessed in the years to come.
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