HERE’S WHY THE WORST NIGERIANS RULE NIGERIA
By Akin Ojumu What’s it about Nigeria that makes it possible for the worst from among the people to continually rise to power? How do the least qualified Nigerians become the country’s rulers? Why do Nigerians allow this to happen? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, attempted to answer similar questions with regards to the rise of Hitler in Germany. In his Letters from Prison, Bonhoeffer argued that the answer was not malice. He reflected on how sophisticated and highly intelligent people like the Germans could elect a megalomaniacal leader like Hitler and support him in his dehumanizing ambitions of racial purity within Germany, and world domination without. Bonhoeffer concluded that his fellow Germans didn’t become misanthropic and evil overnight. Rather he blamed it on stupidity – a vice which, according to him, was more dangerous than malice. Like Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Theory of Stupidity” can be used to explain the rise to power of