Elite is a negative, bad reference in Nigeria, at first mention, due to facts in national history. It reminds victims of the Nigerian state and its attendant economic struggles under different forms of leadership, of the reasons they are the way they are. They do so as much as they are still tied up by the very reference; and freedom in crying out loud is still as limited as they cannot get to the depth of the meaning of a concept.
Elite is a select group in society that is superior in quality and ability than the rest. That quality and ability are socioeconomic indicators that measure one’s socioeconomic status that defines wider influences, earns respect and even glorifies a person into public figuration. But then elite is not all negative. It is not just the attainment of social status. If you know what to do and what to do for others below your status, with it, it is as beautiful as anything. .
Anyone can be elite, depending on the intervening variables of life – education, job, success, goodwill and the kind of human heart– which will all define what kind of elite one will be. But that definition also rests on the wider socioeconomic, political and political behaviour and leadership action in a given system of a nation, and the relations that nation has with the wider international system.
As much as the above factors count, there is also privilege, also defined by a given system and accrues on the chosen, the special and the favoured. But the popular way to elitism is hardwork, open opportunity and open places for businesses. Those are provided by the good fabrics f society and good leadership of country where one is raised and trained.
Many have become elite through their evolution through business, and with government incentives to businesses in good political economic systems, without any reference to, and link of, their origins, forefathers or godfathers, to their successes. A number of determined persons have broken through to genuine, commendable financial empires built by the sweat of their suffering and hardwork and are serving humanity in many returns.
In Nigeria, the elite has been dragged into the valley of negativism as that hallowed hall of illwish and cruelty where the wicked rich and the heartless wealthy belong and together conspire against those outside the club so the latter remain at bay in order to continue to service their egos, statui, property and to pay unearned courtesies and respects to their families.
However attained, elitism goes with responsibility – responsibility to self, to family and to human. God says any wealth given to you is a trust from Him and you are both accountable and liable to how you dispense it in life; how you behave with it; how you use it; or how you dispense it. The successful wealthy in that defines responsibility is the wealthiest of all the rich.
In Nigeria, the negative connotation of elitism over the years was earned by members’ irresponsibility to that divine wish and gross disrespect to God’s wish, which goes with the twin behaviour of insensibilities to the plight of those outside the hall of haves. It is neither the wealthy’s idea nor the have not’s wish to be in the different categories of life.
First is the closed politico-economic system over the years in Nigeria. There was, there has been, and there is, still, only the public sector of the economy as the only dominant hub of wealth creation, and access to it has been exclusive to only wielders of high privilege, because the sector has been a reserve of the elite it created over the years, and was ensured to remain so by successive managers of the economy, so that opportunities are kept to members of the exclusive club or their appointed custodians.
In Nigeria, access to opportunities has been both expensive and difficult to the rest – the unprivileged. The cost is both social and spiritual. There are social and spiritual conditions to meet in order for the outsider to get access to the windows of opportunities available. And those social and spiritual costs can be as expensive and dangerous as anything.
The social conditions put one through a rigorous process of servitude to a principal, to their families and dedication to their properties. There are many other dimensions of that process that can never be told, including meagre, irregular and, sometimes, denied pay due to overriding needs of employee, just to dispirit them further.
The spiritual conditions make you go through a process which first stage is to first renounce the founding principles of believe in whatever God you serve. The condition of ungodliness is to make no reference to any superior being except the master in charge of the affairs of the employee and should be seen as the lord of their life. This is grave condition of polytheism for anyone, with consequences that can only worsen bad condition of lives the needy want to improve.
Those are the very conditions that disheartened majority of youth in Nigeria into the state of unemployment, waywardness, idleness and ‘uselessness’. In much of the debate about this, the historical conditions of dialectical materialism that made all of that possible is either ignored or underwritten, in order to mislead even the youth themselves from the truth of the road that brought them to point.
That was why PMB’s last comment in France about the youth as lazy last year was treated like that and the mass media in Nigeria, now the social media have joined too, have become the means of the mental productions that negate or misrepresent the truth of history and those involved and responsible. Sad. In all of this, no one knows exactly who – individual or group – are responsible for this elite bad influence on both the mass media and the society.
Now, many other young persons who broke out of the cycle of dominance and servitude have ventured into meaningful private business to decide their future. Inspite of the years of hard conditions against private initiatives because of the mentality on public resources as gifts from father Christmas, some determined few have made it into great success of their own business empires.
Some of them were raised and inspired by stolen public money injected into private business, but it does not matter if the goal is to create more jobs and empower many other idles and to spread shared human kindness, help and assists. A number of young entrepreneurs are doing good jobs all over doing great things in their villages and other communities.
They hunt for every opportunity to bring home to raise their young and to empower their ideas in creating jobs for themselves. They are the hope for the future. The present FGN has tried over the past five years to expand capacities and widen horizons of young minds to start initiatives in private sector opportunities. There has been landmark record of success, all across.
But then a shadow of sadness looms again, thanks to the elite successors. The young employed and empowered – the new generation of pseudo-elite class of ambitious young persons are showing traits that are more dangerous than the problems of the earlier set of elite painted earlier. This new breed of digital elite is crueller, heartlessened and recklessened in orientations and behaviour.
That is what happens when change of status without the accompanying right change of orientation and the necessary selfdiscipline can leader to graver consequences not just for the person involved but to the whole. Many lacked one of each, and that is the reason our men and women have been so much exposed to shame they cannot feel anything about. When the heart dies, ….
We have seen the beginning of the consequences of that in the relationship between such breeds and politics as few negotiate their ways into the public industry of free delve into the free purse that politics guarantees for the few. But I can see that soon, public office will be something many will run from. If some of us are appointed to live, their reasons of life will make it possible. And it will soon be, by God.
With their growing number and influence and the growing cases of child abuse, neglect and bad family upbringing and out of school, the danger of elite manipulations, cruel manipulation and disheartening of the youth can only fold many times ahead. And with the impugn politicians eager to get to 2023 so parties can restart; only God can save the future. Afterall, He made many impossibles possible only recently.
God gives us more elite out of the many good young persons all over. And may the goodness of the many good persons of goodwill among our elite also outdo and override the evil heart of the wicked elite. Be elite, have all the money in the world but think different.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
