Edumare to da Rabi olobi lo da Rabi alaso [God that created Rabi, the poor seller of kola nuts, is the same deity that created Rabi, the rich cloth merchant] A Yoruba adage on the “natural” or divine basis of earthly inequality
There is perhaps no better point on which to start this concluding part of this series on the intimate, determining links between mediocrity, corruption and inequality in our country than the statistical fact that the median age for Nigeria is now generally regarded to be 19. From this we can deduce the fact that by an overwhelming majority, the current population profile of the country is dominated by young people. In my own projection from these facts, I estimate that close to 70% of Nigerians are below the age of 30. From this observation I wish to extrapolate two important observations to start the discussion in this concluding piece. The first observation concerns what the older generations are telling the youthful generations while the second observation concerns what the older folks are not telling their younger compatriots on the following historically regressive fact: how merit and excellence existed in the past, only to be ultimately overcome by a relentless and seemingly unending descent into the pervasive mediocrity of the present period. As I hope to show, these two observations each of which seems so different, so contradictory to the other, are in reality two sides of the same coin.
First, then, let us examine the first observation, expressed in an emphatic assertion that might seem only too obvious to most Nigerians over the age of fifty, but is probably somewhat mythical to the generality of Nigerians under the age of forty: This country once had secondary schools and universities that were excellent institutions of learning; it had high standards of public sanitation in the large towns and cities; and it had Public Works Departments (PWDs) that built and maintained roads and highways of quality and durability. Up to this very moment of writing this article, the old Ibadan-Ijebu Ode road still stands as a monument to the kind of sturdy roadworthiness in road construction and maintenance that we once knew and enjoyed in this country. I say this with the authority of one who himself sometimes participates, at every opportune moment, in ritual expressions of nostalgia and sentimentality about the Kings, Queens and Government Colleges and Schools of the past; the UCI and UI of the past; the levels and standards of competence in learning that was commonplace in the past by the time you had gone through secondary school.
In the past – so goes the standard narrative – there were first, second and third tier institutions of learning, the first tier setting the tone, the standards of merit and distinction for the second and third tiers. Now there is a single tier or, even worse, there are no tiers at all as all distinction and distinctiveness have vanished and if you want a sound education for your children, you must send them outside the country, “outside” here including neighboring African countries. A vast expansion of education at all levels to reach as many of our children as possible has historically taken place in the last few decades and all things considered, this was a good thing, as much for the country as for the children involved and their families. However – and this is the big caveat for the voices of nostalgia and sentimentality among the older generation of Nigerians for the lost golden age of the past – it was not inevitable that all merit and distinction should have been wiped out; what could or should have taken place is that merit and distinction should have been kept in sight and protected as a benchmark for emulation by the hundreds of thousands of new schools that had to relax their standards to take in as many of our children as possible.
Though it reeks a lot of mawkish sentimentality and elitist paternalism, this narrative is not without some merits. For it is a historical fact that in many regions and nations of the world, the two seemingly parallel lines of, on the one hand, sustaining high standards of instruction and learning and, on the other hand, democratizing education to reach the children of the poor and the economically and socially marginalized, have been successfully pursued. We can cite a few examples of such regions and nations: Britain and the Scandinavian countries in Western Europe; Cuba and Brazil in the Americas. But this does not happen automatically; and it is not achieved easily, without social, cultural and political struggles to simultaneously pursue democratization and maintain high standards of merit and excellence. This is what is routinely left unmentioned and unexamined by those among my generation of Nigerians who pine for the lost glories of the past in our country when, even as a developing country in the global South, we had excellent institutions of learning, high standards of public sanitation and competent management of our public utilities and facilities.
This point leads me to the observation I made earlier in the present discussion to the effect that in what is both said and left unsaid about the rise of a pervasive, galloping mediocrity in our country, we have not two contradictory observations but two sides of the same coin. Metaphorically speaking, this is the coin of an individual and collective elitism that has been remarkably and unconscionably blind to the past, present and changing sources and nature of its elitism in our country. For the last time in this column, I wish to make an allusion to Achebe’s new book, There Was A Country, in order to illustrate this contention by making symbolic use of Achebe’s anecdotes and references in the book to his car, a Jaguar.
Now, Odia Ofeimun’s commentary on Achebe’s new book has, like the book itself, been much-discussed. It is a very angry, very bitter commentary. [By the way, I should add that strictly on the political aspects of Achebe’s book, it is also a very perspicacious commentary] One little detail in Ofeimun’s commentary that has been ignored is the deliberately wicked and withering references that the poet and essayist makes to Achebe’s Jaguar. Here was a man, Ofeimun says, who not only had a Jaguar while the masses of ordinary people in Biafra had nothing but their “footwagen”, but he also apparently had regular supply of fuel for his very upscale car. Ofeimun’s point in this is that Achebe in war-torn Biafra was a privileged member of the ruling class that did not remotely suffer as much as the masses of ordinary people did in the young secessionist republic. This point is incontrovertible, but this is not what I wish to emphasize here. In Biafra, Achebe belonged to the inner caucus of the political and ideological leadership responsible for the war effort, responsible in effect for winning the war. Throughout history members of such an inner caucus in the context of war have always enjoyed privileges that the general population sorely lack. This is both an evident fact of history and a complex issue of political morality. But it is not my main point in this discussion. Rather, the larger comment I wish to make is that for me, Achebe’s Jaguar symbolizes the general and widespread presumptions of an elite – in Nigeria and Biafra – that completely took its privileges for granted, so much so that it was totally complacent about those privileges. What does this mean?
The general profile, the commonplace worldview was that if you went to one of the best schools and did well, you had a right to the kind of life symbolized in the possession of a car like the Jaguar: an automatically available good job; a house maintained at public or company expense; paid annual leaves that could be parlayed for handsome bonuses on top of your good salary; and excellent future prospects for your children. Up to the time that I went to Ibadan in the late 60s, this worldview and the good life that both perpetuated and justified it were still considered the inalienable components of an entitlement, indeed a birthright that the nation, the world owed us. But this has disappeared completely from the social calibrations of elite identity in our country and with it has gone the meritocratic values on which it was based.
Meritocracy has always coexisted extremely uneasily with genuine democratization, the extension of educational, economic, cultural and social rights and amenities enjoyed by the few to the rest of the population. And throughout modern history, members of the elite have always been very wary, very suspicious of the masses rising to overthrow systems and practices of excellence. Where and when social capital like education and the provision of good health services, clean, potable water and good facilities for recreation and leisure have been extended to the poor and the marginalized, there has always been an outcry of disastrous fall in standards all around. Those who want to see how deep this sentiment goes in the minds and psyches of the elites of the West and other parts of the world might want to take a look at the classic book on the subject, this being The Revolt of the Masses published in 1930 by the Spanish liberal philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset.
In conclusion, I offer a few summative reflections. First, the “democratization” of educational opportunities and cultural and social amenities to the masses of Nigerians that oil wealth made possible is not the main or real culprit in the collapse of merit and excellence in the public affairs of our country. Rather than this, what we should begin to explore is the historic fact that meritocracy, whether of the liberal and benign kind or the conservative and reactionary variety, never stood the slightest chance of survival in our country once merit and excellence ceased to carry any weight in who was rich, powerful, and influential in Nigeria and who was not. My favorite illustration for this claim is the incontrovertible fact that not a single one of all the governments in our country, federal, state or local, needs to actually produce or generate the revenue on which it depends. When you don’t have to produce what you spend, value ceases to have any real significance in what you do or don’t do.
Secondly, while the sharing of oil revenues is supposed to take care of everything, it is in actuality the principal mechanism for the creation and perpetuation of the vast chasm that separates our elites from the talakawa, the masses. Thirdly, the “democratization” that has been going on since oil wealth replaced surplus extraction from export crops as the motive force of our national political economy is a completely sham and fraudulent democratization. Everyone, every Nigerian ultimately suffers from the reign of mediocrity, but the poor and the marginalized far more than the rich and the powerful. In other words, social inequality of the colossal kind that exists in our country at the present time is a rich breeding ground for mediocrity. Please compatriots, never speak about how poor, how inferior and how mediocre things are in virtually all areas of our public affairs without linking this valid complaint, this national pastime in lamentation for the lost glorious past with the struggle for equality and justice in our country.
Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu
