By Opatola Victor
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The perennial question of why some countries has achieved development through elite consensus, and why Nigeria has failed to achieve elite consensus but only registered elite resistance has recorded numerous scholarly works. This essay interrogates a major reason why elite consensus in Nigeria has been elusive, further proposing path dependence theory as an analytical framework to study the system of failure of elite consensus in Nigeria. It also proffers pragmatic solutions to the current lack of elite consensus and economic development in Nigeria.
According to the Elite Quality Index report 2022, elites are narrow, coordinated groups with models that successfully accumulate influence and wealth; therefore supplying essential coordination capacity to a society. They are a minority class of people who have direct influence over the decision making process by influencing the decision makers.
According to Harrold Lasswell, elites are individuals with “ greatest access to and control of values”
The path dependence analytical framework is part of a school of thought of historical institutionalism, which considers institutions as structural variables from stem arrangement of ideas, powers and interest. It starts from a premise that the elite of a society are part of the country’s structure that channel their behaviorial standard and activities along established paths.
A historical analysis of Nigeria’s political and social history reveals a major reason why elites in Nigeria have found it difficult to reach a consensus towards the development of Nigeria.
The history of elitism in Nigeria is divided into pre-colonial, colonial and post colonial period.
The pre-colonial elites were predominantly caste system of Kings , Chiefs and few prominent traders of a given society, this precolonial elites are co-adjutors in the economic development of the state. This structure gradually changed during colonial era. The colonial era produced a new class of educate elite, civil servants, political class elite and businessmen. This new class of elites found a collaborative role with the colonial authorities. This set of newly created Nigeria elites presided over a fraudulent and corrupt wealth accumulation system which exploited the people. This led to a power sharing arrangement between the colonial authorities and the elites.
The line of elite we currently have was nutured during colonial era into a rentier system. Upon the demise of the colonial lords, the these new crops of elite took over the system of explotitation.
The pay off was to be parasitic on state resources, effectively hindering the possibility of the State accumulation of capital and using such capital for the development of the state. This was seen in the maximal income inequality in Nigeria’s post colonial population, which penultimately led to May 1964 general strike involving about 750,000 workers.
The major argument of this article is built around the premise that the current crop of Nigeria elite shares a long line of ascendency to a system of colonial rentism. The current Nigeria elites are beneficiaries of a perverse system of economic leaching enjoyed by the colonial masters in colonial Nigeria.
In the 2022 World Elite Quality Report and Index Ranking, where different parameters were used to analyse different country’s elites, Nigeria elites took a back seat and where characterized with words such as lagging elites or low quality elites who increase their own slice of the pie at the expense of nonelites, meaning that they are rent seeking, where “a rent is an unearned reward sought through a quest for privilege.
The vast profit making enterprise of the colonial British empire was perpetuated on ensuring an ineffective colonial Nigeria, this system was deliberately imbibed by the post colonial Nigeria elites thereby re-enforcing it. According to Robert Pirsig, “If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that Goivernemnt are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves”. The colonial pattern of institution that made the colonal Nigeria a rent state is stil alive and active through the current elites’ reliance on such institutions.
These institutions are political institutions and economical instituions. According to Prof. James A. Robinson in his seminal work, Elites and Instituional Persistence, submitted that “particular sets of institutions, once they become established in a society, have a strong tendency to persist.” Thus, in Nigeria where elite identities and formation changed around the period of independence, the behavior of the new elites was heavily contingent on the institutions they inherited and the way that colonial elites had behaved before Independence.
According to economists Robinson and Acemoglu, institutional path dependence theory, social institutions when they are weak due to history and previous elite choices; it tends to create a continuous reinforcing negative trajectory in society. It is important to reflect and ponder how this applies to Nigeria. When a society takes a negative turn with accelerated momentum , it will require a major collective action of discerning elites to pull it back on a good course.
In the words of James Robinson, If an established political power system gives a given group more power, they will adopt economic institutions that favours them. Their wealth will increase as a result, and this will be one way for their de facto authority to persist or increase. Furthermore, persons who hold power today will be able to determine economic instiutions today and will be able to determine political and insitutions in the future. In the future, they will have the capacity to choose political institutions, which will help them maintain their de jure authority. Consequently, the allocation of political power and subsequently economic systems are remarkably durable across time.
The only way to dislodge these inherent insitutions perpetuated by the elite is through an intrinsic dynamics or shocks delved to the system that will penultimately lead to redistributions of power and thus ensure changes in economic institutions or a natural change in incentives( e.g technology, new market e.t.c) of those in power to want to continue to perpetuate such self serving institution or system.
This essay is not the classical colonial blame argument, it rather lay the burden in the Country and her people for our inability to delve a the necessary blow to this Institutions since independence. The burden is on us for our failure to craft and delve the necessary shock at a pervasive institution, in form of consistent and calculated reforms.
Also, on China, Singapore and others, there is a difference.
Numerous Countries of the world, such as China, Singapore and others, although went through the same colonialism, but things stood out to transform this Country out of the path dependent approach. These are 1. Formidable Pre-colonial Institutions that endured colonial onslaught. 2. The active presence of an intelligent, strong-willed and slick leader or leadership. China has a formidable institution that endured colonial onslaught. This tremendously helped China, including it’s strong-willed, intelligent and slick leaders.
Also, while, Singapore cannot be said to have an enduring Institution that survived colonial onslaught, it had the advantage of an intelligent, strong-willed and slick leader or leadership, which penultimately brought the elites to a development consensus.
Nigeria has not had that leadership turning point, nor such important Institutions that survived colonial onslaught. Due to the path dependency theory, Nigeria elites cannot create a consensus towards national development, the rent system they inherited and have imbibed cannot allow it, except a series of consistent shocks are delved on the system, and firstly through electing a strong-willed, intelligent and slick leader and leadership.
In conclusion, Nigeria’s elite cannot engender an elite consensus for the development of Nigeria because they rely on an entrenched system or institution programmed to feed on rent. The institutions of a Nigeria which penultimately determines our economic development are dependent on the histories of our political and economic insititutions, which since they were programmed by colonial masters has persisted and survive this long. The few ways to break free is to find calculated ingenious means, through the collective will of the people to delve gradual and consistent shocks to these institutions. These Instituions are so entrenched that even a revolution cannot cure them, but consistent calculated and deliberate reforms which should be spare headed by an intelligent, strong willed and slick leader of the Country.
Opatola Victor is a Fellow, Abuja School of Social Political Thoughts. ,adeopatola@gmail.com
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