Even as feudalism is understood as a social system based on personal ownership of resources or as the exercise of personal fidelity between a suzerain and a vassal, its subterranean, insidious effect disguised as a form of political development must be clearly apprehended by all who are enamoured by our historical trajectory.

There is no reason to assume that political development is any more likely than political decay. Historically, the Nigerian political order emerged as a result of the achievement of some equilibrium among contending forces in the pre and post-independence era.

But in the course of time, observable unsalutary changes have been occurring internally and externally. The formulators of the established original equilibrium have disappeared even as lilliputian actors have succeeded them. Economic and social conditions too have shifted for the worse. Society has become invaded by lesser mortals as rulers. Consequently, the pre-existing equilibrium no longer holds, and political decay has inevitably set in.

Before our very eyes, we have witnessed the growth of increasingly large estates controlled by officials of state. This has had the consequence of increasing overall disparities in wealth and concentrating it in the hands of a small group of nouveau riche families; and of steadily depriving the state of public revenue by their impunitous evasion of state taxes.

These families are appropriately described as a rent-seeking elite as they make use of their political connection to capture the state and as they deploy state power to their unilateral advantage. Thankfully, there is an inflexible law in the nature of deprived societies.

It is to the effect that the rich will grow richer until they are stopped – either by the state, by peasant rebellion, or by the state acting out of fear of peasant uprising. The disparities in wealth which, in the main, are the reasons for public agitation or rebellion do not necessarily reflect natural disparities in abilities or competence.

A wealthy landowner is not necessarily more productive than his small neighbours. The former probably has more ill-gotten resources to fall back on each time. The existing distribution of wealth does not always reflect the superior virtue of the wealthy or the crass inefficiency of the downtrodden.

During the colonial era, the Nigerian people yearned for self-rule. They wanted to be independent of foreign control of the affairs and events of their country. Ironically, life has been getting worse by the year since after independence.

By the early 1970s, the nation which attained independence in 1960, was already in the throes of regression. In less than two years, tension, hatred and strife were rapidly building up. However, by some divine intervention the nation papered over the difficulties.

Until certain strategic institutions of state started being mischievous in the performance of their constitutional roles, some events, like an impending general elections, boosted the people’s morale.

Their confidence was restored in the faith that they could redress their country’s plight through the ballot. Some ominous happenings regarding a palpable lack of commitment to national goals on the part of many of the leaders have since vitiated the hopes and aspirations of the people.

The people had expected their leaders to bring into public life marked ability and competence. But they have been disappointed even as the directive principles of state policy have been slanted to defeat the proper purpose of the people’s surrender of their individual or respective sovereignties.

Almost imperceptibly, there has been a creeping reverential recourse to feudalism even as democracy is noisily touted as the nation’s grundnorm. Since 2015, the signs have become boldly etched on the national canvass for all to see.

Key institutions of state are now owned or are threatened to be pocketed by powerful individuals or interests. Outside of what the establishment rule books of the institutions prescribe, these individuals dictate the direction or thrusts of many statutory bodies.

Narrow in intellect and mean in spirit, the only credentials these state captors parade are a primitive pleasure in flaunting their anti-people strain and their reckless or fierce bravado. Men who were notoriously impunitous and whose characters are really detestable are now degrading the legislature and other arms of government by their presence.

They are, in the tradition of supercilious overlords, contemptuous of the same people whose patrimony they have mindlessly appropriated to themselves.

No estate of the Nigerian state is spared from the neo-feudalists’ forage. The Judiciary, once touted as the last hope of the common man, is in the throes of receiving its death knell as everyone, including its pivotal stakeholders, is sleepily enthralled in sickening concupiscence or in culpable conspiratorial silence.

Everything is tilting in the manner of the exercise of proprietary powers by the owners of the estate. Whenever an advocate of reform managed to get a place in the Chambers, his inglorious exit was meticulously plotted.

The Nigerian national enterprise has become the pawn of a few vain, vicious, feather-brained individuals with neither spirit nor substance but deriving its poor strength from the inexplicable acquiescence of an intensely-educated elite.

The redeeming feature for all the foregoing is that the people are being unwittingly mobilised from across the nation even as their oppressors are pretending that all is well. From the North to the Middle Belt, from the West to the East and the minorities, the cascading waves of rebellion can be felt. As if our dilemma is an eternal one, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1983, in the course of a situation similar to today’s nihilism, noted:
“Our traders, tradesmen, artisans, and self-employed people generally are crying loud for succor but they have neither response nor attention. The peasant farmers are languishing painfully in their doleful wretched shelters; but they do not receive even the slightest notice from the powers-that-be…Today, the vast majority of our people are hungry, wretchedly-clad and indecently housed. They are diseased and ignorant. They wallow in abject poverty….”

Till today, the Awo perspicacity is still valid. Awo warned in Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution that “Revolution, if it stems from the just indignation of the people, is a very useful and salutary political instrument. When it is successful, it consumes and cleanses the political Augean stable as nothing else known to man can. But an Augean stable is an odious thing. Wherever it exists, it pollutes the atmosphere and threatens to suffocate human decency.

It must not be allowed to recur in any country. For apart from its oppressive stench, the operation which is required to cleanse it … is of such a major character that its repeated performance is sure to undermine the stamina of the country concerned, if it does not actually terminate its life.”

If the Nigerian political class remain unwilling to compromise, then they should be ready for the consequential implication of Awo’s admonition:

“The rich and highly-placed are running a dreadful risk in their callous neglect of the poor and the downtrodden”.

On the Nigerian elite who today are steering the ship of state towards feudalism, Awo foresightedly said: “As I see it, and as those whose objective perceptions and subjective minds are not dulled by corruption can see, the position which some unpatriotic, callous and ego maniacal Nigerians, who claim to be rich men or business tycoons take is that the poor should fend for their children… This kind of attitude on the part of the so-called rich Nigerians can only prolong the existent evil, inhuman and, in any case, unconstitutional social order whose effect in the not-too-distant future can do irreparable harm to the so-called rich Nigerians.”

To forestall the impending catastrophe, Awo offered an alternative: “We must ensure there is a complete break with the past so much so that none of its ugliness, however attractively-attired it may be, shall have the remotest chance of rearing its head again.”

Regarding the unpardonable remoteness of Nigeria’s intellectual elite class, we cite an early poet who struck a note of frustration respecting a Canadian parallel situation: “How utterly destitute of all light and charm are the intellectual conditions of our people and the institutions of our public life! How barren! How barbarous! – Archibald Lampman (1861- 1899)

Feudalism is visibly supplanting our democracy.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs wrote via: [email protected]