In 2015, I moved out of my parents’ sprawling Ogudu mansion into a 2-bedroom apartment in Bariga with my then-girlfriend. To everyone who knew of my decision to thumb my nose at my folks, it was either a brave decision taken by two lovers who were secure enough in their relationship to take on the world with only each other, or it was a silly, disastrous temper tantrum carried out by a spoiled rich kid with an oversized sense of self importance and out-of-whack ego.
What most people who were aware of the drama at the time did not know, however, was that there were reasons other than simple romance behind that decision to walk away from everything that I once considered mine including an extremely comfortable life, protection from most of Nigeria’s nastiness, free food, board and fuel, and even a potential 9-figure inheritance. I was making a point, not just to my parents and their wacko Jehovah Witness cult, but also to the entire Nigerian class establishment – it was time to stop the pretence.
The Cinderella story is actually an old political resistance parable
My mom was never onboard with it, and right from the jump she was very Patience Ozokwor-lite about it. As far as she was concerned, I went off and committed class betrayal by getting married to someone born into significantly lesser circumstances. She had already started matchmaking me without my knowledge or approval, with the daughter of a prominent fellow Jehovah Witness who owned an oil-servicing firm. Then I randomly upped one day, moved out and sent them a note saying, “This is who I’m getting married to, and I’m not inviting you because I know you won’t come. This is just a notification.”
She hated everything about that relationship. She intensely disliked the lady and her family, she hated the wedding photos, she hated the idea that someone could raise a middle finger to her and walk away so fearlessly and contemptuously, the way I did. Who did I think I was, and more importantly, who did she think she was, butting into a family and social stratum she knew nothing about and apparently taking David Jnr hostage to her unrefined Lagos-Mainland feminine wiles?
The irony of history merely repeating itself was lost on her. She was, as it happens also a principal character in a similar Cinderella story, having been born into somewhat inauspicious circumstances as the 6th of 7 children in a single room in Itire, Surulere. Father…gateman. Mother…housewife. Children…often suffered involuntary hunger. Then along came an idealistic young man in 1978, who defied his family and swept her away in a blaze of life-changing middle class affection. Decades removed from Itire and ensconced in the proverbial soft life, she could not see how I was merely being my father’s son.
If we are being honest, the most important thing separating a gateman in Mushin from an investment banker in Ikoyi is the financial and educational capacity both of their parents had
To my eyes, her opposition was silly and puerile – born out of insecurity and self-loathing. I wasn’t having it. I was actually in love, and I was certainly not going to let it go because anyone believed that the lady I was dating did not have enough of a surname to match mine. Thus from being merely a love story, my 2015 wedding became the signifier of a wider Nigerian class struggle – a dynamic that manifested itself even within the marriage itself on several occasions.
Nigeria has classes? Please come off it
Of course, it is old news now that the marriage at the centre of the entire kerfuffle did not eventually stand the test of time. It lasted just short of three years, stumbling along from November 28, 2015 until September 30, 2018 when we officially separated. More than a few people who heard both halves of the story then concluded that the eventual failure of the marriage is proof that my political statement about Nigeria’s class divisions was ill-thought and unsuccessful.
It is easy to see why some might think this, but suffice to say that I beg to disagree in the strongest possible terms. That the vehicle built around the engine failed under stress does not mean that the engine itself was faulty. Sometimes even the best-conceived and most honourably intentioned enterprises suffer catastrophic failure and sink to the ocean floor for no reason more significant than a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere halfway around the world. I have never thought for one second, that I made a mistake or that I would change things if I could go back in time, and here is why.
It is an established historical fact that barely a hundred years ago, the ancestors of those of us who consider ourselves “surnames” now were barely more than peasants – hunters, farmers and fishermen. My family was maybe an exception by virtue of Badagry’s unique history and early contact with British colonialists, but the flipside is that this also implicated us in the, shall we say, less savoury parts of Badagry’s infamous history – hardly an aristocratic history to be proud of. I do not in fact believe that Nigerian society is anything close to old enough to have any kind of significantly demarcated social classes.
If we are being honest, the most important thing separating a gateman in Mushin from an investment banker in Ikoyi is the financial and educational capacity both of their parents had – factors that are less than 60 years old. The ‘elite’ in Nigeria are really just a financially and educationally privileged group – and a very, very recent one at that. There really is no ‘elite’ in the British sense of the term, where some families have heirlooms and meticulously compiled family trees dating back to the 14th century. Our Nigerian history is young and immature, so I see our attempts to fictionalise these nascent social strata as boorishly pretentious in the extreme.
Of course, I wouldn’t be honest if I claimed that marrying someone from a different economic background is the panacea for false class consciousness, or that it was all bells and roses, because it clearly wasn’t. That dynamic also played a key role in what eventually broke us apart, whether I like to admit that or not. Be that as it may, however, I still believe I had the right idea about the dishonesty behind Nigeria’s arbitrary “class distinctions”, and I have no regrets. To paraphrase a popular saying, the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can hold a mirror up to a society, are the ones who actually end up doing so.
Yes, I am an idealist. And what about it?
