The Defeatism Of Nigeria’s “Tokunbo Elitism.”
In a 2012 interview with vice magazine titled “2012 Is Bullshit; 2020 Is When We’ll Really Be in Trouble” scientist Peter Turchin predicted that beginning in 2020, a wave of violence would rock America for a generation. Even more interesting than the astuteness of his prediction, was the issue he deduced would be at the root of the violence, “elite overproduction.”
The theory of Elite overproduction is quite simple, it posits that while the number of candidates vying for society’s most prestigious positions has increased, the number of available elite positions has remained relatively fixed. It is easy to see how an imbalance in the demand and supply of elite positions in society can create an unhealthy competition, one that often leads to dissatisfaction and resentment among people who nurture ambitions of rising to the upper echelons of society. America today has a student debt crisis, many aspiring elites took out loans to go to college, with the hopes of making themselves more competitive for the market, expecting to secure high paying, prestigious jobs in business, government and academia after graduation. Needless to say, the dream they were sold did not materialize, now they’re overeducated, saddled with debt and stewing in resentment.
This is the story of the Nigerian would-be elite as well. It is simply a fact that we are better educated than our parents, who never fail to remind us of how they trekked several kilometers and crossed the village stream everyday to get to the one, thatched roofed, missionary school in the community. We, on the other hand, attended schools with corrugated roofing, ceiling fans and whiteboards. We have university degrees from the nation’s leading public and private tertiary institutions, some of us were even educated abroad, in air conditioned classrooms with single-seat desks and LCD projectors. So, how come at 23 Tunde’s dad was already working his way up the corporate ladder at a major financial institution, while at 23 Tunde is unemployed, still collecting pocket money, and living under strict curfew in his parent’s house?
The reason, of course, is that daddy didn’t have as much competition for that bank manager job he applied for at 30. With a HND in that era, one was qualified to hold mid-level positions in the civil service and work their way up the ladder. Today our situation is different, while the number of universities, and the graduates they churn out, have expanded, the number of professional job opportunities have trailed far behind. There are just more applicants for fewer spots, so people with degrees in microbiology, business administration, accounting, law and engineering have to settle for menial office jobs for which they’re overqualified (and underpaid) or learn a “trade,” preferably in farming or tailoring, as our former Health Minister succinctly put it.
I took interest in this theory of elite overproduction because of the protests rippling through American society, even as I write this. Although the inciting issue was police brutality and systemic racism, the problems of inequality and elite dissatisfaction are also an important component. Young people, especially the educated elite, are seeing their prospects shrink before their very eyes, and of course it doesn’t help that they also have to put up with “boomer” condescension, having their work ethic questioned and accused of lacking in the “delayed gratification” department, by the most privileged generation in American history. We’ve seen the impact frustrated, educated, young people can have on the political process. Revolutions throughout history, from Bolshevism in Russia to the anti-colonial struggle in Subsaharan Africa, were often led by young, educated idealists who were tired of watching their opportunities disappear.
Take Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for example, who was described as a “29 year old former bartender” when she won her congressional seat in 2018, of course so many people took it for granted that a graduate of Boston University, with a BA in International Relations and Economics was working as a bartender in New York City. This irony flew over their heads completely, but the people who heard her loud and clear we’re not just the working class residents of her district, but also fellow college educated people from all over the country, who had become increasingly disillusioned with capitalism. AOC in terms of socioeconomic background and educational status is not dissimilar to a lot of revolutionaries who would go on to change the world (for better or worse) in the 20th century.
The work cut out for Nigeria’s young, educated elite is even more difficult, because unlike Americans, we do not have a strong democracy to rely on in our (non existent) fight to enact change. Instead, elections are won by the patronage of godfathers, ethnic polarization, stomach infrastructure and employing violence, this is the cost of Nigeria’s deep seated corruption. Even the young people who have access to power couldn’t be bothered with any kind of advocacy, lest they lose the favor of “awa leader.” Our political system is set up so that only the most sycophantic of Nigeria’s elite can survive in it. If young people want to take action against a system that has robbed us of decades of opportunity, it would be an uphill battle, but a battle worth fighting still, because (unless you are planning on escaping to Canada) Nigeria is the only country we have.
This is what many middle-class Nigerians fail to understand, it’s why they spend so much time engaging in “I better pass my neighbor” classism on Twitter. Instead of collectively fighting against a system that has made us the poverty capital of the world, we surrender to a low quality, “Tokunbo Elitism” where we claim status, based on access (complete or partial) to basic resources; Island vs Mainland, iPhone vs Android, Honda plant vs Tiger generator, Altè vs Shepeteri, Nigerians in diaspora vs Nigerians in Nigeria, and all sorts of embarrassing, classist nonsense. We seem to be saying that if we cannot build an elite consensus based on transferable value, we will build one solely on exclusivity, regardless of how mediocre. After all, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is “elite.”
