*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf*
Questions regarding the Nigerian elite are being raised recurrently in public discourse in recent times.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, the elite are “the richest, most powerful, best-educated, or best-trained group in a society.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary also defines the elite as “the socially superior part of society” and “a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence.” The elite therefore provide the model for conduct for the generality of the members of a group, community or nation with respect to different fields of human endeavour. It is, as such, possible to identify the following, among other categories of elite: the economic/corporate/business; the cultural/traditional/religious; the military/security; the political; the legal; the educated/intellectual; and the media.
As Nigeria continues to face serious, almost desperate, problems, focus on the elite continues to be sustained. This may be accounted for by the belief that the specially-privileged citizens are particularly-endowed to steer the country back on course based on the positive models of conduct they are expected to provide. However, as things currently stand, some distinguished Nigerians are not enamoured of or optimistic about the chances of elite remediation.
In fact, Attahiru Jega, former Chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in a 17 December, 2023 lecture on Channels TV titled “[FULL SPEECH] ‘Nigeria is a failing state’: Jega calls for restructuring before 2027” talked about “destructive elite” who have “a reckless tendency … to divide and to rule and to mobilise whether it is ethnicity or religion or regionalism in order to further undermine the State and the positive role that it could play.”
Moreover, commenting on the Nigerian condition, on 11 August, 2024, an over-80-year-old Professor and former Vice-Chancellor noted: “NIGERIA must note that the ELITES haven’t been able to ASSEMBLE the needed ACTIONS to make the nation move forward positively. The NORTH is the BEST example. The SOUTHEAST is also very well known as not doing well. While we in the SOUTHWEST remain WRONGLY unconcerned. I hope the future will be better but a lot needs to be done.” Columnist Simon Abah in an 11 December, 2019 article in The Guardian titled “Nigeria and her educated elite”, declared: “The educated elites are truly Nigeria’s problems. They believe in regional and ethnic pabulum. The elites are too bitty in Nigeria. The leading lights in all regions teach their people to be regionalist and do not inspire pride in nationalism and promote the vision of other places, people and culture.”
In his review of the recent protests in the country, Tatalo Alamu in his 11 August, 2024 article titled “Symptoms of National Distress”, in The Nation, notes about how the government could move forward: “Much will … depend on elite willpower and visionary drive. There is only so much a government – or any government at all – can do to re-engineer a society in the absence of elite amity.” He further states: “So in the long run a lot will depend on elite capacity to forge a consensus about the way out of the economic, political and spiritual morass that has plagued the country for so long. But it is also obvious that elite unanimity cannot be procured at the expense of social and political justice without severe repercussions. Elite consensus in Nigeria is permanently undermined by elite criminality and political delinquency.” He then admonishes the President not to ignore “the possibility and prospects of elite sabotage in a fractious, multi-ethnic and multi-religious conglomeration.”
In his 13 August, 2024 article titled “Tinubu, learning from the past to build the future” in The Nation, Jide Oluwajuyitan counselled: “Based on our past historical experiences, President Tinubu must understand he cannot take the loyalty of his ministers, fellow political elite members as well as our economic, intellectual and military elite who have at different times in the past betrayed our nation, for granted. Driven by greed and not living by their creed is often the source of credibility deficit of our educated elite. And it was for this reason Obafemi Awolowo who lived ahead of his time, once observed that ‘given a choice between Nigerian educated elite, traditional leaders and the colonial masters, Nigerians will choose in reverse order’. For our educated elite, greed for power or living in denial is the name of the game.”
In his column in the 23 February, 2016 issue of The Nation, in a piece with the complexly-punning title “Supreme Curse”, Olakunle Abimbola noted as follows about concurrent elite judicial, religious, media and even bureaucratic perversities: “Want to gauge the health of a nation? First, gauge the moral health of its judiciary (Their Lords Temporal and their officiating lawyers), its clergy (Their Lords Spiritual) and its editors (famed keepers of its Fourth Estate). Indeed, a society that condones corrupt judges, amoral pastors and hustling, integrity-challenged editors is pretty doomed. … But the controversial Supreme Court verdicts, the decadence in the church and the indifferent segment of the media, for whatever motive, are all symptoms of a serious affliction: a supreme curse of moral apathy hovers over the land.” Incidentally, even the intellectual elite do not seem to give cause to cheer. In fact, some of the most ethnically and religiously bigoted persons, who are impervious to new perspectives, that I have known are people of very high learning.
The failure of the Nigerian elite over the years to live up to expectation as a path-charting, pace-setting compass for society and the disappointing superficiality, uncritical Westernisation, lack of foresight, and absence of the moral courage to admit error have resulted in deep and recurrent pain to the country. They have also come to incite cynicism about the elite from the populace. This kind of cynicism was manifested in the violence that was unleashed in the August riots in the country. Where the elite had been known to use violence and vandalism to settle scores, it would have been difficult to persuade the populace that there were better ways of resolving issues.
In the Second Republic, the Oyo State Government demolished a housing project that was being constructed by the Federal government in order to prove that it had a constitutionally-guaranteed right of action against the Federal Government. In the current Republic, in Kano State, the incumbent government has carried out a series of ill-considered demolition of government and private properties. Consciously or subconsciously, these extreme actions have come to serve as models for the lowly in society. The widespread destruction of property and even the killings that took place in some states of the country may therefore be seen as the manifestation of the acquisition of “destructive elite” values.
Retrogressive elite meddlesomeness also occurs in different forms. In a 28 January, 2024 reaction to an article on marital renaming, a Professor narrated the following experience: “There is a female senior academic I know who rightly retained her father’s name after marriage. She resisted the pressure of her colleagues who, out of sheer blackmail, argued that she adopted that practice because she didn’t respect her husband. But the situation changed when she registered her children for school. As there was no correlation between her own name and her children’s surname, she had to pay more and lose the benefit of rebate for staff members at the University School. The economic pressure of having to pay more than her family ought to pay made her to grudgingly go the compounding way. But I personally resent those inelegant compound surnames.”
Elite superficiality has further been manifested in reactions to what some refer to as “mass weddings”, but which I have come to discover should more appropriately be called “group weddings” or “communal weddings”. The Minister of Women Affairs made it a trending issue when, without first trying to find out the true situation, she threatened legal action against the plan to sponsor a communal wedding of one hundred women in Niger State early this year. The hasty or complicit press saw the Minister’s indiscretion as red meat, and it gave them the impetus to unleash opprobrium against the Northern culture.
Incidentally, I was in Kano between late May and early June 2024 for the wedding of my Yoruba nephew. He had come for the wedding from the US where he is based. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and the Hausa bride holds a Master’s degree in Law. They met in the US and freely decided to marry. The bride’s father is a retired federal civil servant and the bride’s mother holds a PhD in English Language and is a Lecturer. Ten couples were wedded after Jumu’ah prayers on the date of the event. Meanwhile, comprehensive medical certificates of suitability to be couples were a prerequisite for inclusion in the group weddings. It is also noteworthy that by virtue of the background of the couple and their families, no government sponsorship or subsidy or assistance for the wedding was required.
After being satisfied with the medical certificate, the officiating Imam invited our group. He asked whether the dowry had been paid. When he got a positive answer, he announced the fulfillment of the requirements for the wedding and the formal process continued. Amazingly, within five minutes, the wedding had been concluded, and we left the mosque, and headed home for feasting which was also moderate. Looking back, after the event, at the media vituperations against the Niger State group weddings planned for earlier in the year, I began to wonder how a combination of ignorance and arrogance and unwillingness to learn had distorted a noble practice of wedding in communal spirit. Many media practitioners and others who had access to the public platform had unethically weaponised their media privilege. That’s why some people believe that, as bad as the social media are, they serve to somehow restrain the bullying by the traditional media elite.
The Nigerian elite are of two kinds: the destructive and the constructive. Until January 1966, the country had largely constructive elite whose conduct reflected a significant appreciation of healthy competition. By January 1966, destructive elite gained ascendancy starting with the coup of that year leading to the civil war of 1967 to 1970, to the continuing military governance of 1970 to 1979, to the civilian administration of 1979 to 1983, back to the essentially military regimes of 1983 to 1999, and then back to the civilian governance of 1999 which has endured till date. The destructive elite have held sway for so long that it seems herculean today to find the constructive elite in good numbers in any aspect of the society.
The challenge now is therefore to work assiduously to increase the constructive elite in population and influence towards achieving optimum elite consensus underpinned by noble values rather than the competitive pillaging of the nation’s resources.