Who Rules Papa’s Land? C. Wright Mills and the Nigerian Power Elite

Benjamin Aigbe Okonofua

doi:10.1177/2158244013502494

Abstract

In his immensely provocative work The Power Elite, Mills argued that the United States of America is controlled and manipulated by elite that constituted the leadership of three major institutions: business, government, and the military. These institutions and their leaders, over the years, have consolidated their hold on power while evading public opprobrium and chasm. Although Mills and those who support his thesis have been successful at applying the “power elite” model to the United States and, perhaps, developed countries in the Western hemisphere, it is debatable that his rigid classifications and their underlying assumptions apply to other countries, particularly in Africa with different socio-cultural, political, economic, and historical milieu. This article offers an opportunity to apply the “power elite” model to a non-Western, underdeveloped modern nation-state: Nigeria. Nigeria, the most populous Black nation on earth, is clearly under the control of a “power elite.” The question is which elite? Within relatively brief compass, I attempt to identify the Nigerian power elite as a way to validate or reject the “power elite” model of C. Wright Mills.

Highlights

In The Power Elite, Mills (1956) analyzes America’s power structure to demonstrate that the democratic doctrine of the separation and balance of power is an ideal with no specific counterpart in reality
Mills argues that the power of the higher cycles of corporate chief executives, the political directorate, and soldier statesmen derives from authority, which is a specific expression of what Max Weber calls “bureaucracy” or “rationality.” Bureaucracy has enlarged the decision-making process, it has centralized it, placing in the hands of a few men with very similar backgrounds and interests, power over the entire society
Mills argued that in modern America, power is concentrated in the tiny elite that constitute the leadership of three institutions: business, government, and the military

Summary

Introduction

In The Power Elite, Mills (1956) analyzes America’s power structure to demonstrate that the democratic doctrine of the separation and balance of power is an ideal with no specific counterpart in reality. Following the 1914 amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria, the British systematically began to centralize control under the Hausa-Fulani aristocracy.

Results

Conclusion