What Nigerians Are Missing In The Conversation on Privilege 

“Pikin go dey school, parent go dey bill am. My brother LAPO pass LAPO ooo.” These words, which I saw on X a while ago, stirred up one of the most visceral, rib-cracking, gut-busting, laughs I’ve had in a long while. Depending on whether you have seen the tweet or one of its myriad iterations, in what is one of the most fiercely contested debates the platform X has played host to in months—at least in this part of the world—the aforementioned tweet might either elicit similarly intense belly laughter or a confused sigh. For those in the second category, I’ll provide a condensed recap.

Beginning on Sunday, the 20th of July, a tirelessly plumbed debate—the topic of privilege—was revived with bracing intensity. It’s hard to pin down the exact tweet that set the dominoes in motion. Its origins probably trace back to a video of Oyinda Tinubu—yes, the daughter of the president—breaking down her outfit, an expensive set of vintage articles, to The People Gallery, a fashion blog primarily operating off social media. But a tweet from X account /@pdstrn2 contributed, in no small way to tipping the scale. It has so far attracted about 12M views on the platform. “Those nepo kids still outworking most of you, continue basking in foolishness and rubbish discourse here,” it reads. 

The reaction was swift, pointed, and earnest. The tweet bore hints of contempt. Consider the claim that ”nepo babies” work harder and the not-so-subtle drizzle of invectives—“foolishness,” and “rubbish discourse.” This prompted the conversation, which originally had overtones of playfulness, to assume a more serious shape. And why not? The tweeter had called the hard work of lower-ranking members of society into question, reinforcing the long-standing belief that wealth exclusively follows from hard work, and, of course, the reverse. 

Visit that tweet, peruse the quotes and comments, and witness the maelstrom of reproving rebuttals it has stirred up. “You think Temi Otedola dey do ajo? Lol,” one of the most viewed rebuttals reads. It has so far garnered some one million views and stands in contrast to the vast majority of rebuttals, which are one-dimensional in their single-minded desire to reprimand. It also brilliantly envelopes profundity in humor. 

Celebrities have also joined the fray. Adekunle Gold posted a picture of himself, dated 2005, in which he’s splayed on a bench by the roadside, beside a rusted metal signpost that reads: “IKORODU NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT/ TIPPER GARAGE.” With his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his scrawny torso and his mouth wide agape, he looks to be deep in the jaws of squalor. Wizkid’s submission to the debate is more oblique: “You must create opportunity,” it reads. 

The reason this conversation has raged on and resonated with vertiginous intensity is that it mirrors the intense class politics and the widening wealth gap of Nigerian society today. To properly parse the conversation, it’s important to bring ourselves up to speed with two neologisms that have sprung up in the wake of this debate: “Nepo baby” and “LAPO baby.” Wikipedia defines Nepo baby as “A term referring to someone whose career is similar or related to the career in which a parent succeeded.” In the context of this conversation, however, it’s used to describe bourgeois kids, children of parents with means. 

LAPO baby, meanwhile, has an etymology that’s as hilarious as it is multilayered. It references Lift Above Poverty Organization (LAPO) microfinance bank, a leading microfinance bank in Nigeria, founded in the 80s. Its operations are focused on low-income households and SMEs. For all the benefits the bank offers to lower-income households, it has achieved infamy for often going to extreme lengths to retrieve funds from defaulting debtors. As such, the term LAPO baby has come to mean the diametric opposite of Nepo baby: someone born and raised in suffocating poverty.

Nigerian society hasn’t quite warmed to the kind of sensitivity to class tensions and wealth inequality that pervaded Europe in the 20th century, fomenting an efflorescence of political and economic ideologies—communism, Leninism & socialism, offshoots of Marxism; fascism; Keynesian economics, amongst others. This period also witnessed a succession of global conflicts—from WW1 to the Cold War—many of which were incited by these competing political theories. 

Many older Nigerians remain either unaware or apathetic to conversations around class struggle, believing wealth to be exclusively a product of an interesting triumvirate: hard work, destiny, or “grace,” and divine intervention. It’s why, as opposed to an explosion in political consciousness of the magnitude and intensity of 20th-century Europe, we continue to witness an interminable expansion of Pentecostal churches hawking salvation alongside the promise of financial breakthrough. It’s no surprise that the prayer point “When there’s a casting down, for me, there shall be a lifting up” has become a nearly inescapable refrain in many churches. It betrays the lens through which they see the world—and this holds for non-Christian Nigerians as well.

Upward social mobility, as they see it, is less a function of privilege, access, or even broader economic circumstances than it is of divine providence. This is why, despite the unremitting increase in the price of rice, of garri, of yams, of beans, of spaghetti, of plantains—especially plantains—many Nigerians cling to the notion that they can survive the rising tide of economic upheavals by individual effort. I’m at this point reminded of that man who, in response to a tweet bemoaning the price of spaghetti, tweeted something to the effect of “Must you eat spaghetti? Are you Italian?”

Despite the obscene rent prices, prices so high as to effectively exclude a significant portion of the population from what should otherwise be a fundamental right, the “eat the rich” philosophy—which is said to have gained infamy in the French Revolution—has yet to fan across Nigeria. 

Make no mistake, going after the wealthy with pitchforks is entirely mistaken. It paints the entire demographic with a single brushstroke, making the error of binary thinking. But the scarcity of conversations around class politics in these parts shows that the role that privilege plays in shaping one’s life trajectory is lost on most. 

The younger generation of Nigerians—many of whom are technologically savvy and well acquainted with the debates around class and privilege that often animate political conversations in many parts of the world—is presumed to be more sensitive to the mechanics of class politics. And if this Nepo versus Lapo baby conversation says anything, it’s that this assessment is accurate. But even so, as the X conversation shows, a staggering number of young Nigerians still hold on to the mistaken notion that the wealthy class is somehow special: more tenacious, brilliant, more adept at playing the game of life, than the rest of us. 

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” F Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1925. “They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.” Isn’t it somewhat astonishing that a hundred years since these words appeared in Fitzgerald’s short story, The Rich Boy, they remain instructive, perhaps more so today?

The truth about wealth, success in general, is that it’s dependent on a complex array of factors—intelligence, luck, education, geographical location—but parental wealth, or coming from affluence, is by far the most important factor. Multiple studies corroborate this, such as this study published in the Chicago Journals. But you don’t need to look too far for evidence that supports this. Peruse the list of the richest Nigerians, and what you’ll find is that the vast majority of them come from affluent families. Aliko Dangote’s grandfather, Sanusi Dantata, was one of the wealthiest in Kano. Femi Otedola is the son of Former Lagos State Governor Sir. Michael Otedola. Abdulsalam Rabiu, who, with an estimated net worth of $7.6 billion, is the second richest man in Nigeria, is the son of Khalifah Isyaku Rabiu, who was already a leading industrialist in northern Nigeria in the 1970s–80s.

This is not to suggest that upward social mobility is near impossible, or that the wealthy don’t work hard. The reality, however, is that coming from an affluent background is a major predictor of success in life. And this is not just due to a direct transfer of wealth. Affluence naturally comes with access to positions, circles, and information that would otherwise be out of reach. It also gives one the mental fortitude to take on risky bets. If your family’s survival is not hinged on your success and you know that a failed venture would not necessarily leave you in ruins, it stands to reason that you’d be more inclined to take on risky bets, which often leads to disproportionate success. This, Malcom Gladwell, in his seminal book Outliers, explains, is what impelled Jeff Bezos to leave his promising career at a hedge fund to found a little online bookstore that would become Amazon. 

While Gladwell’s thorough interrogation, in Outliers, of the many ways an affluent background all but guarantees success in life is deeply insightful, the book’s winning quality is its balanced contextualisation of the concept of privilege. Privilege, Gladwell contends, extends beyond affluence, even seemingly trivial factors can disproportionately affect one’s prospects in life. Take the Relative Age Effect, the advantage people born higher in a calendar year have over those born later. This phenomenon is a strong predictor of success in sports, especially ice hockey. Kids born earlier in the year are older, sometimes by as much as 12 months, and are thus more likely to be bigger and better at cognitive tasks, This confers an undue advantage and often snowballs into even greater success. 

This theory also holds in education systems; kids born earlier in the academic year are typically older and, per multiple studies, perform better in standardized tests. One study cited in the book shows that students born in the first quarter of the year are 11.6% more likely to be identified as gifted than those born in the last quarter. Strewn across the book are instances of relatively trivial factors that conferred high achievers with an undue advantage. Take Steve Jobs, who grew up in Silicon Valley in the 60s, a period when the personal computer had just been invented and Silicon Valley was on its way to becoming the technological Mecca it is today. He lived minutes away from major tech companies and research institutions like Hewlett-Packard (HP), Fairchild Semiconductor, and Stanford University. He also routinely ran into many of the key figures in the valley. 

While his hard work and singular dedication towards technological innovation certainly contributed to his success, he was also greatly abetted by being born in the right place at the right time. We can extrapolate this thinking to Wizkid, who grew up in a Surulere that was the epicenter of music in Nigeria. He lived minutes away from OJB Jezreel’s studio. At the time, the producer was one of the most in-demand in the country. Wizkid would frequent his studio, and the producer in turn took an interest in him. On account of his frequent visits to OJB’s studio, he would meet heavyweights like DJ Jimmy Jatt, 2 Baba, Sound Sultan, Ruggedman, amongst others. He was able to directly watch these stalwarts go through the entire creative process and make their acquaintance. What better way to learn the ropes of the game? 

All of these point to the fact that privilege comes in different forms and exists along a spectrum. And while an affluent background can gratuitously position one for success in life, other incidental factors can equally play an outsized role in tipping the scale in one’s favor. So instead of fomenting vitriol or fantasies of schadenfreude towards the rich, maybe this conversation should be a sobering reminder of the many ways privileges, in all their myriad incarnations, confer us advantages. This, I believe, would elicit humility, flatten delusions of exceptionalism, and promote compassion towards others.