In the pantheon of scholarly works examining Nigeria’s post-colonial condition, few have maintained such searing relevance as Professor Emmanuel Ayankanmi Ayandele’s “The Educated Elite in the Nigerian Society.” The book was published in 1974 as Nigeria’s oil boom was transforming the nation’s political economy. His analysis transcended mere academic critique to offer a prophetic diagnosis of the pathologies afflicting Nigeria’s leadership class.
Fifty years later, his framework continues to illuminate the shadows of power that shape Nigeria’s developmental trajectory. Arguably, his most profound contribution lies in his conceptualisation of Nigeria’s educated class as “deluded hybrids” – individuals caught between worlds, alienated from indigenous knowledge systems yet never fully accepted within Western paradigms.
This cultural dislocation, he argued, created not just a crisis of identity but a crisis of governance. When leaders operate from a place of psychological insecurity, their decisions reflect not national interest but a desperate search for validation, whether through conspicuous consumption, performative Westernisation, or the accumulation of academic credentials divorced from practical wisdom.
This framework helps explain what might otherwise seem paradoxical: how a nation blessed with some of Africa’s most brilliant minds consistently produces governance outcomes that belie that intellectual capacity. The Nigerian paradox – exceptional individual achievement alongside systemic institutional failure – becomes comprehensible through Ayandele’s lens of elite cultural schizophrenia.
The same minister who delivers sophisticated presentations at Davos might simultaneously preside over dysfunctional ministries, seeing no contradiction between international posturing and domestic neglect.
Ayandele’s concept of “windsowers” – elites who reap, (or want to reap) benefits without sowing developmental seeds – provided a vocabulary for understanding the extractive relationship between governors and governed that persists across regime types. Whether under military rule or civilian administration, the fundamental orientation of Nigeria’s elite toward state resources has remained remarkably consistent.
The transition from colonial extraction to indigenous extraction that Ayandele documented helps explain why democratisation alone has failed to deliver developmental dividends. When electoral competition merely determines which faction gains access to the extractive apparatus rather than transforming the apparatus itself, democratic forms yield authoritarian outcomes.
Perhaps most presciently, Ayandele identified the educated elite’s failure to synthesise Western and indigenous knowledge systems as the root of Nigeria’s developmental stagnation. His call for “New Nigerians” capable of drawing from both wells without drowning in either anticipated by decades the contemporary discourse on decolonising knowledge.
Today, many post-colonial theorists remained trapped in binary thinking – either wholesale rejection or uncritical embrace of Western paradigms. Ayandele, however, advocated a sophisticated integration that respected indigenous epistemologies while engaging critically with global knowledge.
This integrative approach offers a pathway beyond the sterile debates that often characterise Nigerian intellectual discourse. Rather than endless arguments about whether Nigeria’s problems stem from colonialism or indigenous failures, Prof. Ayandele’s framework suggests examining how these forces interact within elite psychology and institutional structures.
Colonial encounter created not just external dependencies but internal contradictions that continue to shape elite behaviour long after formal independence. Ayandele documented how educated elites weaponised ethnic identities to consolidate power bases. He exposed the cynical manipulation underlying what many observers mistakenly interpret as primordial attachments. Thus, his analysis still illuminates the persistence of ethnic mobilisation in Nigerian politics.
The elite’s strategic deployment of ethnicity – what Ayandele termed “tribal nationalism” – serves to fragment potential class-based challenges to their dominance. This insight helps explain why ethnic tensions intensify around resource allocation and electoral competition, then recede in domains like sports or cultural production where elite interests are less directly threatened.
For contemporary scholars of Nigerian politics, Ayandele’s work provides an essential corrective to both technocratic and culturalist explanations of governance failures. Technocrats believe better policies alone can transform Nigeria; on the other hand, culturalists who attribute Nigeria’s challenges to some essential cultural deficiency.
To technocrats, Ayandele reminds us that implementation depends on elite psychology and incentives; and to culturalists, he demonstrates how specific historical processes produced elite behaviours that appear cultural but are in fact strategic adaptations to colonial and post-colonial conditions.
Perhaps most valuably for Nigeria’s future, Ayandele’s work contains not just diagnosis but prescription. His vision of educational reform that would produce leaders grounded in both indigenous and global knowledge systems offers a practical agenda for transforming elite formation.
He identifies the university as both the problem and potential solution to elite dysfunction – being the institutions that reproduce Nigeria’s leadership class. His proposals for curriculum reform emphasising indigenous languages, traditional governance systems, and practical problem-solving remain unrealised but increasingly urgent as Nigeria confronts 21st-century challenges with colonial-era institutional frameworks.
Fifty years after publication, Ayandele’s analysis not only provides not just historical insight but contemporary guidance, as well. As Nigeria navigates the complexities of democratic consolidation, economic diversification, and identity politics, his framework helps citizens understand the deeper patterns beneath surface turbulence.
The persistence of elite extraction despite regime changes, the performance of Western modernity alongside institutional dysfunction, and the strategic deployment of ethnicity to fragment opposition – all become comprehensible through Ayandele’s analytical lens.
For a new generation of Nigerians seeking to transcend these patterns, Ayandele offers both warning and inspiration. His unflinching examination of elite pathologies serves as warning against reproducing the same contradictions.
Prof. Ayandele’s vision of “New Nigerians” capable of authentic leadership grounded in both indigenous and global knowledge provides inspiration for a different path. In this dual contribution – illuminating what is while imagining what could be – lies the enduring value of Ayandele’s seminal work on Nigeria’s educated elite.
Dr. Richard Ikiebe is a scholar specialising in Contemporary Media Leadership and History. With extensive experience as a media practitioner across both public and private sectors, he teaches as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos. Beyond academia, he holds other leadership positions, including President of iNSDEC, Chairman of the BusinessDay Board of Directors, and Co-convener of the YSoT
