The Miseducation Of The Nigerian Middle Class

By Dami ADEBAYO

Nigeria’s #EndSARS movement has been hailed as a new generation’s attempt
to challenge the status quo. Its ability to transform online disaffection by its youthful popula￾tion towards offline protests and di￾rect action has resulted in it being treated as the most formidable op￾position to the Buhariadministra￾tion.

While this is not the first mo￾vement to have transformed online angst into visible activism on the streets of urban centers (there was #OccupyNigeria in 2012 against the petroleum subsidy), the depth and breadth of people and organizations (such as the Feminist Coalition, Ga￾tefield Media, and Amnesty Interna￾tional, among others) that partici￾pated in and backed the protests is unrivalled. #EndSARS has mobilized
the middle class—a group notably
indifferent to Nigeria’s political eli￾tes’ machinations or, at worst, acti￾ve collaborators with them.

Discussions on where #EndSARS
could and should go have excited po￾litical commentators, members of
the movement, and the general pu￾blic especially after the end of most
protests across the country.

An interesting suggestion that has
gained ground is for the movement
to carry out mass education pro￾grams to the working class and the urban poor, ostensibly to inform the￾se groups of the repressive nature of the political elite. The reasoning be￾hind this approach is insinuations that these groups are the Achilles heel of efforts to challenge the elite.

The belief that members of the working class, urban, and rural poor elect members of the political elite solely because they have been able to mobilize them either on eth￾nic terms or by financially inducing them has allowed this idea to gain currency. Since the nation’s return to democracy in 1999, the middle class has collectively stepped away from the electoral space.

This is evi￾dent in its inability to create a par￾ty platform that can attract the wor￾king classes. The working and urban
poor, on the other hand, are more li￾kely to vote, be party members, par￾ticipate in the democratic process, and to protest injustices that impact them disproportionately.

The purported renaissance of Nigeria’s middle class post-1999 was expected to entrench democra￾tic norms and ideals. The prolifera￾tion of local civic society organizati￾ons to tackle endemic issues, such as corruption (Budgit, NEITI), the elec￾toral system (YIAGA) and bad gover￾nance (EIE), seemed to emphasize
the emergent possibilities of citizen
action toward creating a more repre￾sentative governance system.
In reality, Nigeria’s middle class
are unwilling to act, despite bea￾ring a significant brunt of the po￾litical class’s governance programs that have ensured their decimati￾on and impoverishment—such as those that have reduced public sec￾tor spending, results of which are
clearly apparent in the nation’s poor
healthcare system and substandard
educational facilities; others that

have sought to perpetuate corrupti

on, such as the security vote system
that sees state governors spending
public funds that are not subject to
legislative oversight or indepen￾dent audit. The regressive agenda
of gender inequality goes beyond
mere utterances (the current Nige￾rian President once stated that his
wife belongs in the kitchen and the
bedroom in a meeting with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel). Nigerian
women suffer some of the highest
maternal mortality rates, with legal
structures still restricting their basic
rights and only four percent of elec￾ted officials are women.

Yet, the middle class has imbi￾bed the belief that less government is better and has set out to interact and participate with governance in a “limited capacity.”

Those that par￾ticipate appear content to serve as technocrats to provide intellectual backing and lend professional gravi￾tas to the repressive policies pursu￾ed by the state. The middle class has championed the status quo by pre￾aching the gospel of economic de￾velopment in spite of the govern￾ment by highlighting the various
problems that the country faces.

They erroneously promote the be￾lief that the country’s economic
stakeholders have earned their po￾sitions as a result of their business
savvy or prowess. Their determinati￾on to view the country’s dire econo￾my through rose-colored spectacles
and dismiss the structural realities
of the Nigerian state—where a clear
majority of economic activities fo
cuses on seeking to profit from government dysfunction are upheld.
Quite often they go as far as high￾lighting the various handicaps, but position them as business opportu￾nities that can be solved by foreign direct investment, limiting the role of the government to create an “en￾abling environment.”

The refusal of the middle class to
tackle the regressive agendas of the
ruling elite has led to the latter being
let off the hook: The middle class is
instead viewed as the tool that func￾tions in the subjugation of the wor￾king class. In fact, they are the visib￾le representation of a country that
is designed to work for a few at the
expense of many. The historian Da￾vid Motadel rightly notes the acti￾vities of American and European middle classes, which have active￾ly championed conservative natio￾nalism and authoritarian leadership
over centuries—in essence, positing
that middle classes in Africa are also
disinclined to push for democratic
reform.

Yet, in Nigeria, middle class ac￾tivist history is a little more com￾plicated. While the nationalist mo￾vements resulted in power being handed over to a political elite, the actual struggle comprised of various groups, especially those formed and manned by middle class members who utilized western social and po￾litical ideals in the fight for indepen￾dence. Coleman’s study of Nigerian nationalism notes that middle class individuals, such as Herbert Macau
lay, an engineer and journalist, and
Ernest Ikoli, also a journalist, foun￾ded and led political organizations
and movements while training and
mobilizing countrymen around the
values of nationalism. Funmilayo
Ransome-Kuti’s Abeokuta’s Ladies
Club (later the Abeokuta’s Women
Union) took on the Native Authority
System administering British indi￾rect rule. During the struggle for de￾mocracy this professional class built linkages with organized labor and provided intellectual support for the movement. Individually and collec￾tively, through groups such as the Academic Staff Union of Universi￾ties (ASUU) and the Nigeria Bar As￾sociation, the middle class worked to reform the electoral process, reformbinstitutions of governance, and build networks to protect these reforms.

Some might argue that we owe our
fraught but enduring democracy to this iteration of the middle class.

It is clearly in the interests of the middle class to rid the country of a political elite that has shown that it is not only anti-intellectual, but also willing to cannibalize the cos￾mopolitan culture and  entrepreneu￾rial economy that the middle class holds dear.

– Adebayo holds an undergradua￾te degree in International Relations
from the University of Leeds and a
master’s in Political Communicati