The 5%: We Jump When They Ask Us To
Some time ago in the US, there was a great outrage against the ‘1%’ by the ‘99%’ over what they believed was a heavily skewed distribution of wealth and resources. It led to the now famous ‘Occupy’ protests on Wall Street. Basically, Americans were upset by the fact that the bulk of wealth and resources were under the control of the few whilst the masses languished. I do not know whether this had any significant effect or not. I’m not quite sure if the ranks of the 1% have swelled since then or whether that of the 99% depleted.
Here in Nigeria, we had our own version of the “Occupy” protests at the beginning of 2011 when the government in charge adjusted the pump price of PMS once more, but in a fashion that smacked of insensitivity. After all the festive period spending and with the bills of the new year already trickling (or flooding) in, imagine the rude shock it must have been for the average Nigerian to be hit with a 3-fold increase in the price of fuel.
Callous. Wicked. Evil.
Those were some of the words that came readily to mind as people in all corners of the land contemplated the betrayal of a government many people believe they went out of their way to enthrone. However, not too long after that, we found ourselves up against a new kind of evil. One never before encountered in the history of our nation, at least not in this fashion. We heard about the nameless, faceless group of people tagged infamously as the ‘Cabal’. I looked up synonyms of the word on dictionary.com and some very interesting parallels came up; Mob, Cult, Gang and my personal favourite - Cahoots. For the record, Coven is also a loosely associated term.
These people are our very own, Naija-made 1% who control basically everything in this country. They may restrict most of their operations to the oil and gas industry but when you consider that our economy is a one-trick pony, it should come as no surprise that they have the pied piper on their payroll. Of course, to this day we do not know who exactly these people are; the government officials who were very quick to pile all blame for every single ill that plagues the oven where our national cake is baked seemed unwilling, in some instances unable to identify them. We can all hazard guesses we believe to be fairly accurate, some people appear to be front liners, others hidden behind the curtain of perplexing mystery, but the main drama is yet unfolding.
We the common men on the streets are left to digest the apparent injustice of it all! Not that Nigerians are strangers to such abnormalities. Still, we have to ask, “Why should so few people wield so much influence?” Indeed, it is a system that engenders the rise of megalomaniacs, people who think they shouldn’t even breathe the same air as the rest of us. This is not a local problem; it is obvious from the fact that we borrowed the moniker for our ‘Mother of all protests’ from our comrades in the US.
Let us also not forget the Arab Spring that essentially began on a rather uneventful day with one totally frustrated man torching himself under the afternoon sun at a Tunisian market. We do not know if they have terms such as ‘Cabal’ or 1% in Tunisia or Egypt but they were apparently just as frustrated by the status quo as the rest of us. In Libya, they in fact fought against the ‘1’, the tyrannical leadership of a man who lost no sleep over the decision to bomb his own people. Even further, this is not isolated to this era of civilization — think of the French Revolution. We have always had issues with arrangements where the few lord it over the majority; particularly when we are not among the few (you didn’t by any chance see any of the 1% carrying placards on Wall Street, did you? Or did you spot any member of the Cabal at the Occupy Nigeria protests at Ojota Park or any of the other centers nationwide? Wait, we don’t know who they are! So they may have been there without our knowledge!).
However, I digress. Let me get back to my main gist.
Research in psychology and sociology has shown that in a group of people (a herd), you don’t need a large chunk to get things going. As a matter of fact, it only takes about 5% of the population to influence group behavior. So few right? Investigations have also shown that this is usually the case because of a perceived possession of information. In other words, the 5% are able to exert such influence because the rest believe that they are somehow privy to some knowledge that influences their actions and by sheer force of instinctive programming, follow suit. It is quite uncanny that this applies just as much to humans as it does to animals.
Picture this: you are standing at Oshodi or Ojuelegba bus stop by 7.00 p.m. and suddenly people start running…do you stick around to find out why? No, you don’t, you run! You ask no questions, have no strategic deliberations, hold no brainstorming meetings, you just run. If a slogan is required, it would be ‘Run first, ask questions later!’ In this scenario, the whole crowd doesn’t just ‘up’ and run, the truth is that it only takes 3 or 4 people to start running and in a few seconds you’d have a full-blown stampede. The rest of the pack run because they believe that those few have some knowledge, usually of impending danger (real or imagined, I must add) so, they run. It is not unheard of that after such flight responses, amidst gasps for breath and a quick recon of the situation, people discover that they fled the cookie monster!
Another scenario: a few years ago, I was driving from Ojodu to Victoria Island with some friends via the 3rd Mainland bridge. We were on our way to see a movie or something as part of an elaborate birthday celebration. After a few miles into the journey, we encountered some heavy traffic which soon became a standstill. In a matter of minutes, the driver of the first car turned around against traffic if I might add and started to make his way back to God-knows-where. Like clockwork, other drivers began to turn around in fact, there were so many people trying to turn at the same time that the gridlock worsened! I wanted to join the lot, but my friend asked me to wait it out. So, against what I believed to be sound logic at the time, I stayed on the shoulder of the road where nobody could block me and truly, the moment some space opened up ahead of me, I looked forward and couldn’t find anything causing the traffic. I’m serious! There was nothing in front of us. No robbery, no accident, nothing! I drove on, cautiously at first…then I zoomed off when I got to the point that had appeared to be the ‘trouble spot’ and confirmed that the robbers weren’t lurking in the shadows waiting for us. The rest of the drive all the way to the Island took about 15 minutes! What happened? My guess is that the first 2 or 3 drivers to turn back were really crazy people and quite impatient too! The rest simply assumed that they must have seen something they hadn’t or couldn’t and joined them in the madness.
Sounds funny right? Until you remember the Lagos bomb blasts in 2002 where one cannot help but feel that many lives could have been preserved but for our herd instinct. I know you think that you are different, more rational than that- however, you are just as culpable.
The 5% are those people who we have placed on a pedestal for various reasons, the first of which is the assumption of information. There are however other factors to be considered as well, some of them quite subtle. We believe that they represent what we would like to be and as such, pattern our lives accordingly. The way this plays out is certainly not this obvious all the time but that is pretty much the system. If they jump, we jump. If they run, we run. If they sag their pants, we sag our pants. If they bare their boobs, we follow suit. The weird thing is we don’t even have to know them closely or associate with them in any way at all! Like the drivers behind, we simply believe that by virtue of their location, position, status (or any other criteria) they know something that we don’t. We thus believe that we must adopt their ways, style, habits to climb to their pedestal. This may vary from looking sexy to business success; from religious piety to being ‘hip’. It is all one cosmic game of ‘follow the leader’.
In the end, we’re simply copies of the originals and if the principle holds true for them as well, then we’re copies of copies! A pathetic life if you ask me.
For the record I love football. I play (or is it ‘played’, now?) a bit, as much as the average Nigerian male. Like many people, I have a special fondness for those players who have the responsibility of creating opportunities in the game. These blessed creatures have the sacred gifts of control, vision, excellent passing range, dribbling and a tendency towards the spectacular. Think Zinedine Zidane, the French legend, Andres Iniesta, the Spanish Maestro, or our very own Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha. These gods have been arbitrarily tagged the №10, and the average football fan instantly knows what is meant by such a reference. They often don jerseys with the special number but at times, they don’t (Think Xavi Hernandez and his “6” for Barcelona or Andrea Pirlo with “21” for Juventus).
For the longest time, every player who got to wear the №10 Jersey for Argentina was compared to Diego Maradona. They wondered whether any of them could bring the country the same glory as the diminutive maestro known as ‘El Pibe di Oro’. They all failed woefully. Until a little man called Lionel Messi came along. With so many startling parallels, from their small stature to amazing dribbling capabilities and a lethal eye for goal, many thought the moment had arrived. Except it hasn’t. Critics keep screaming that Messi can’t be as great as Maradona citing such reasons (baseless, if you ask me) as “unless he wins the world cup with Argentina they can’t be on the same pedestal!”. I beg to differ. They belong to different eras, are essentially different players, and are/were motivated by different dreams and ambitions. For all their similarities, they are essentially two different people. Messi is currently the best player on the planet (Sorry Ronaldo fans here) and may achieve things that will totally eclipse the glory of his forbear. He is himself. The great Messi, not the new Maradona. I remember it was Luther Vandross who said: “I’m not the next Nat (King) Cole or the Next Teddy Pendergrass, I am Luther Vandross”.
Simple! We spend all our energy trying to be ‘The Next’ Okocha, Soyinka, Azikiwe, Awolowo, Tiger Woods, Achebe, Mandela, Dele Olojede, forgetting that it may not necessarily be what the world needs. Imagine if all these folks never lived their lives and spent their time being copies? Imagine if Steve Jobs wanted to be the next Henry Ford or Bill Gates wanted to be a copy of Andrew Carnegie? The world and history as we know it would be greatly shortchanged. In fact, it is still being shortchanged because so many of us are still busy trying to be someone else. In the words of Oscar Wilde- “Be yourself! Everyone else is taken”.
The 5% got to where they are today by following an agenda. This made them people for their times. Imagine traveling across Nigeria with a map drawn in 1914. It will still be titled “Map of Nigeria”, but it is no longer useful for the stated purpose. As a matter of fact, the only place that map is going to get you is lost! Rather than dance to someone else’s tune, why not make yours. If nothing, give the rest of the world more options to choose from when they’re deciding on someone to imitate!
