Some people have been asking me whether I will be running – again – for the post of Nigeria’s president in 2023. In fact, the moment the results of our 2019 elections were called, young Nigerians on Twitter started asking when I and other youngish candidates will start coming together. Some sounded very arrogant or quarrelsome, like one owed them something, telling me not to start disturbing them by 2022. It’s all very interesting. First, where will one find money to burn every four years on politics, even as service to Nigeria? And what will be one’s ultimate aim? I ran in 2019 to learn; about Nigeria, about politics, about life. I also ran because I needed to mainstream some of my ideas about how this country could start moving forward. I knew that whether I was in or out of politics, those ideas will continue to matter and my voice will be enhanced. I ran because of the debates, some of which were deliberately muzzled and truncated by the powers-that-be and their enablers. I ran because politics is the most legitimate and potent way of engaging the system and airing one’s grievances – by vying for office.
In 2023, I believe the dynamics will be quite different. Already, some musketeers are stirring, and they all look middle-aged (El-Rufai, Fayemi, Tambuwal, Peter Obi, Moghalu). I am hoping that Nigeria’s restless youths will step up and seize the baton at whatever level the constitution enables them to. The #EndSARS protests have somewhat softened the ground, as can be seen in the comments and reactions of many powerful people in our society, who became afraid of the protests and aftermath, and remain afraid. This may be the time to bend the iron while it’s hot. My advice – based on my little experience – is for as many young people to try. He who dares wins. Failure is also part of success, but it gives the trier, a much more elevated platform to engage with Nigeria. In the course of the recent protests, I had cause to take on a certain gentleman who suggested that what his group wanted was a resignation of the government and the emplacement of what he called ‘Provisional Peoples Council’. I told him that suggestion, and the name too sounded militaristic. In fact, you will find such in places like Libya today. I realised that because I ran, I seem to have more connection with and ownership of Nigeria, and a need to protect this democracy, than most people. If we truncate it, everyone will be set back for several decades. That anyone will even think of truncation is beyond imagination. We suffered 30 years under the military, remember?
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Meanwhile, as I prepared to write this article, I made a detour to read an article shared on a mutual WhatsApp platform by Abubakar Suleiman, MD of Sterling Bank. The article, titled “Can History Predict the Future?” centered around the works and thoughts of Professor Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut. He believes that there will be more strife in many countries going forward, but for a curious reason, which his mathematical model throws up: an over-production of elites. He draws examples from places like Saudi Arabia, where more princes are being born than there are positions for them to occupy or roles for them to play. This has led to the recent turbulences among the royalty there. In the US, he says that Harvard degrees and wealth (especially among whites) are creating the kind of Saudi prince situation; a sense of entitlement to roles in society (and of course, more money), than there is available. This leads to a situation where ‘princes’ will try and topple princes and not wait for their turns. These are called counter-elites. Hear Turchin;
“Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners. If commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels. Commoners’ lives grow worse, and the few who try to pull themselves onto the elite lifeboat are pushed back into the water by those already aboard. The final trigger of impending collapse… tends to be state insolvency. At some point rising insecurity becomes expensive. The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies – and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people. Eventually, the state exhausts all short-term solutions, and what was heretofore a coherent civilization disintegrates”.
I think the above scenario bears much similarity with, and examples for Nigeria. We have a nation that is almost bankrupt. We have seen governments handing out freebies too, trying to placate the poor. The difference here is that we have so many people living in food poverty, therefore igniting a conflagration is quite easy. Ours is one of the most unequal societies on earth, and we have created our own counter-elites, while way too many people are living in mind-bending generational poverty. This was evident with the #EndSARS protest. I, therefore, believe we need to think about some facts before the second EndSARS protest comes up. We hear the next one will be ‘bloody’, that it will be the first one raised to the power of 10. Middle-class people say this often. Even very comfortable people too. I don’t know what the very poor and voiceless are thinking but a lot needs to be unpacked else we shall all be in trouble. We cannot afford to keep burning down our cities from time to time, can we?
Back to the phenomenon of counter-elitism. I looked at the list of those being sued by Lawyer Kenechukwu Okoye. Apart from a slew of musicians (mostly self-made), who needed to be part of the protests as people were not in the mood for album launches at that point, the remaining were very posh people. Almost all the ladies on the list were trained in expensive universities in America and the United Kingdom. Most had good jobs with tech companies and Fintechs. A number of them were top executives and CEOs. When people like Ire Aderinokun (daughter of a co-founder of GTBank and ex-Google Executive), joins a protest or powers it via social media, it cannot be because of poverty. Certainly, it could be because of police brutality or inequality in general. There may thus be a need to discombobulate causes, so that clear causes don’t get hijacked by amorphous ones. For if it was about poverty, it will be important to ask many of the very privileged sons and daughters of who-is-who in Nigeria who powered the protest, what they had given back to the poorest in our society as a show of contrition. Yes, we need to see real sacrifice especially to our poorest folk, not only neat scholarships for computer programmers. Another lady (also sued) was stopped from traveling to the Maldives for her birthday by Nigerian Immigration Services, soon after the protests. I learnt she was traveling on a business class ticket which someone showed cost about N4.5million. We even had Debola Williams, whose company was responsible for the packaging of Buhari in 2015 (all those suits and Yoruba/Igbo traditional attires, you get). I learnt they made loads of money. One of the chief protagonists, one Faqriyyah, even worked in VP Osinbajo’s office till 2018. At that level, perhaps what we have are counter-elites, angry for many reasons and willing and able for the first time, to express themselves. EndSARS was the platform. But what happens after EndSARS, is a different ballgame. Paradoxically, quite a number of the supporters of the protests – including some who were out on the streets – lost businesses, cars, houses and other properties to the other unsolicited folks that took things over nationwide. I am sure that was not the plan.
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