“Ekaite’s Law” and Nigeria’s “Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires”
‘ Ekaite’s Law in its shortest form states that given equilibrium, poor people presented with binary decisions will consistently and uniformly choose the worse option
My mom was born in a place called Itire in the Lagos suburb of Surulere. I must have heard the story of her childhood a few thousand times while growing up and I don’t really want to rehash it, so for brevity, here is a cliff notes version. She was the 6th of 7 children (all girls). My maternal granddad was a compulsive gambler who worked as a security guard at a military installation.
My maternal grandma was a housewife who did little but suffer alongside her husband and 7 kids inside a “face-me-i-face-you” room in Lawanson. However, by the time I came around in 1990, all of this was a distant memory from the 60s and early 70s.
The version of Ekaite Hundeyin nee Ekanem-bassey that I met was a jet-set, globetrotting shopaholic who owned a successful cooking gas retail business and had only the finest tastes. Something I remember very clearly from my childhood was accompanying her to an upscale shop in Surulere called Vanity, famous for being frequented by Miriam Babangida and her peers, to pick up two pairs of shoes going for 35 grand each. This was 1997 mind you, so that was a lot of money for a pair of shoes back then.
Despite mom’s complete turnaround in lifestyle and circumstances, she never lost a particular broody energy whenever the subject of her background ever came up. As Jehovah’s Witnesses, we had to go out every Saturday or Sunday to preach in some really grimy parts of Lagos that probably reminded her of where she grew up. It was clear that she had very little patience for the people we met, regardless of their circumstances. Her constant refrain once safely in the car and on the way home was, “Poor people are their own biggest enemies. They always make the worst decisions.”
For a variety of reasons, not least the total breakdown of our relationship due to religious differences, I came to view that statement as a vile, callous expression of privilege and I promised myself I would never see the world through her eyes. In the time- honoured ritual of getting older and starting to understand your parents better however, I have started reconsidering my position on this refrain of hers. Was she merely a monstrous elitist or did her opinion on the subject hold water? Perhaps there could be two truths coexisting at the same time?
As the born- and- raised overthinker I am, I have taken to referring to her aggregated philosophies on the subject of poverty as ‘ Ekaite’s Law.’
Tenets of Ekaite’s Law
Ekaite’s Law in its shortest form states that given equilibrium, poor people presented with binary decisions will consistently and uniformly choose the worse option. For example, poor couples who have the option to practise family planning and thus improve their economic output and standard of living, will instead choose to have multiple children that either serve as a drag on their future economic prospects, or that they cannot take care of even in the present.
Under Ekaite’s Law, a poor man presented with the option of spending his earnings on training and education to improve his economic output will instead spend it on gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and women. Similarly, a poor single lady with the option of investing her earnings into her education and waiting for a suitor with good prospects will instead fall in love with a bum and get pregnant for him.
On a macro scale in Nigeria, you could argue that Ekaite’s Law is in evidence during every election campaign cycle where the generality of poor Nigerians are presented with the option to vote based on solid issues, performance and competence. Almost invariably however, they choose to vote for the worse options that provide short- term gratification like bags of rice and table salt over any longterm hope.
Specifically, you could argue that Ekaite’s Law is in evidence every time Nigerians face a situation that forces them to choose between changing the status quo, or meekly enduring it, as though they have something to lose. This “Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire” ( TEM) phenomenon is one where poor people with little or nothing to lose think of themselves as billionaires and members of the establishment who just haven’t got there yet, and thus act in ways that oppose their own interests because they see themselves as what they fundamentally are not.
Disrupting the TEM - Ekaite’s Law Nexus
My mom’s solution to Ekaite’s Law was to ensure that she placed as much distance and separation between herself and such people as possible. Sometimes it felt as if part of the reason she maintained such impressive tastes was to consciously limit the amount of access such people had to her. I admit that despite my egalitarian tendencies, I have also grown up to do this subconsciously. Whether by nature or nurture, I have become accustomed to paying that little extra on top to keep me insulated from The Great Unwashed.
Obviously, this is not a suitable long- term solution, particularly when the problem is as large and long-standing as Nigeria. It is also not a solution to write articles like this, which can come across as condescending and talking down one’s nose at the people in question. So what can be done? In my assessment, the first step is for those in question to develop proper classconsciousness. Nigerian society functions in a peculiar manner that enables poor people to look down on each other instead of uniting around their shared experiences.
The Youtube meme “Homeless man calls another homeless man a broke bum” describes Nigerian society perfectly. The objectively poor person living in Dolphin Estate looks down on the slightly poorer person living next door in Obalende. The Obalende fellow looks down on the Surulere resident. Surulere guy looks down on Abule- Egba guy. Abule- Egba guy looks down on Sango-ota guy. All of the above unite to look down on Ibadan guy. Thus instead of uniting around shared experiences of Nigeria and developing a class consciousness that leads to political movement, they instead relapse into Ekaite’s Law.
The Nigerian who wishes to break out of this Plato’s Cave must first learn that poverty is an economic situation, not a moral failure or a debilitating disease. From this realisation, it then follows that poverty can be remedied with the right group and individual actions. When a population of properly class conscious and yet individually responsible people emerges, then Nigeria would have broken out of the stranglehold of Ekaite’s Law.