Ekaite’s Law
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, so I don’t really want to rehash it.
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.
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 lotof 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 always used to strike me 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 later 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. Recently however, especially since returning to live in Nigeria, 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 both statements could be true 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 long-term hope.
Or perhaps during a protest against anti-Nigerian violence taking place in South Africa, poor Nigeria have the option to send both South Africa and their government a real message through large scale peaceful demonstrations. Instead almost invariably as we saw yesterday, the option chosen is the one where the whole thing degenerates into a free-for-all looting and roadside robbery spree, with the victims of the damage being almost exclusively Nigerian. Acting out Ekaite’s Law, poor Nigerians hit the streets to protest government neglect, only to worsen the existing unemployment and poverty problem.
How can we Disrupt Ekaite’s Law?
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 also do this subconsciously nowadays. 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 we do? Well probably the most important thing is for those of us who are visible to the people in question to live as examples of intentional and rational decision making, and for us to constantly drum home the message that actions result in consequences.
It would also help if we stop flippantly throwing around words like “revolution” in our publicly accessible socio-political discourse. One unintended consequence of our cultural obsession with grand change supposedly resulting from huge, rapid revolutions is that people fall victim to Ekaite’s Law by constantly choosing the grandiose, visually spectacular option. Using Ekaite herself as an example of how to escape poverty, there was no grand singular event. She simply used the proceeds of her street business to send herself to evening school, in the process rebuffing the advances of a cash-flush auto spare parts dealer as she waited for my namesake and most recent ancestor to make his understated entry to her life.
Real, positive and sustainable change is more likely to come out of a series of long, boring meetings than from displays like yesterday. After being victimized by citizens and authorities in South Africa, Nigerians committed a series of self-harming unforced errors yesterday in the mistaken assumption that they were proving a point to the South Africans. This goes to the heart of the fundamental undesirability of chaotic, violent “revolutions.”
Ekaite’s Law, ladies and gentlemen.
