“Do you know who I am?”, By Uddin Ifeanyi

Unsurprisingly, most members of the Nigerian elite suffer a deep crisis of identity. Having expressed themselves all their affluent lives through material attributes, they flounder in the absence of those attributes. In unfamiliar territory, they tend to ask of anyone listening to them, “Do you know whom I am?” You would think that they have an answer to this question themselves. Until they begin to reel off the names and titles of the high and mighty that they believe themselves connected to.

I still have not gotten round to reading Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. My copy of the economics classic has spent half-a-lifetime on my “To-read” list, by the way. My latest explanation for this dithering is that recently the evolution of economic theory and thought, and the ongoing neuralgic assault on ramparts of the discipline that we thought settled are too intense, you might say, to allow a nostalgic stroll down the dismal science’s chequered past. However, in the run up to last weekend, watching (I did so more than twice, I do confess) footage of Wasiu Ayinde Adewale Omogbolahan Anifowoshe (aka K1 De Ultimate) physically (he is not built like Power Mike, by the way) attempt to obstruct a plane preparing to taxi, I could not but be reminded of Veblen’s main thesis.

Join the Premium Times WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.

Open in WhatsApp

Writing in 1899, the American economist argued that in modern industrial society, the wealthy elite, what he called “the leisure class”, maintain and display their social status not through productive work. Instead, their spending on goods and services has two purposes only: the display of wealth through what he described as “conspicuous consumption”, and engaging in non-productive, prestige-enhancing activities (“conspicuous leisure”).

In this sense, one could argue that there could not possibly be an elite anywhere in the world more performative in the consumption of the markers of wealth, nor livelier in its advertisement of this fact than Nigeria’s wealthy class. Although it could just as well be argued that one does our wealthy class a huge disfavour by including “industrial society” amongst its many descriptors.

Initially posited as an interrogation of force and power, this poser is the single most important announcement by our elite of a deep emptiness. Without these links with which they hope to cow and browbeat others, they do not think themselves human enough to be worth much. Or is it that they do not think humanity worth much?

Ought the fact that the Nigerian elite adds layers of nuance to Veblen’s characterisation to count as a measure of its sophistication? Few of our indigenous elite make their wealth from real sector activity, at least until recently. Innovation and original thoughts have found haven in the services sector – especially in entertainment and Nollywood. Even then, in the instances where Nigerians have sought to profit from value-adding activity, when you include the full measure of regulatory forbearance, tariff and tax waivers that is the taxpayers’ gift to their businesses, and without which none of these operations is a going concern, they are nearly always adjuncts to government, whose long-term value parallels the human appendix.

It is small wonder, therefore, that not enough of our elite have managed to successfully bequeath the businesses they set up to the next generation. Invariably, the loss of their links to political power, either because of a coup d’état (as was our wont until very recently) or through their favoured political party’s loss at the polls, signposts the slow death of their enterprises. Then again, neither old money nor the new fancies taking their businesses public as a solution to the succession dilemma. Despite the slim regulatory pickings to be had in corporate Nigeria, the requirements for transparency and openness that an abecedarian focus on corporate governance calls for is a weight too heavy for our elite to bear.

Either way, the question “Do you know who I am?”, asked by a Nigerian “big man”, bereft of the spending and leisure markers that identify him or her as different from the rest of us, is as much a plea for assistance (the kind that a shrink provides), as it is a negotiating gambit by one as temporarily clueless as s/he is, at that moment, out of his/her depths.

Unsurprisingly, most members of the Nigerian elite suffer a deep crisis of identity. Having expressed themselves all their affluent lives through material attributes, they flounder in the absence of those attributes. In unfamiliar territory, they tend to ask of anyone listening to them, “Do you know whom I am?” You would think that they have an answer to this question themselves. Until they begin to reel off the names and titles of the high and mighty that they believe themselves connected to. Initially posited as an interrogation of force and power, this poser is the single most important announcement by our elite of a deep emptiness. Without these links with which they hope to cow and browbeat others, they do not think themselves human enough to be worth much. Or is it that they do not think humanity worth much?

Either way, the question “Do you know who I am?”, asked by a Nigerian “big man”, bereft of the spending and leisure markers that identify him or her as different from the rest of us, is as much a plea for assistance (the kind that a shrink provides), as it is a negotiating gambit by one as temporarily clueless as s/he is, at that moment, out of his/her depths.