Anomie and the Political Disalienation of the Youth Population in Nigeria

From the brutish and nasty state of the dark ages, societies have evolved and experienced growth and development according to the strength of their institutions. To achieve social order and peace, societies set cultural goals and rewards and create institutions through which people must progress to attain those goals. The medical profession is an example of a cultural goal since it has economic benefits and social prestige, but for one to join this vocation, one has to pass through rigorous trainings and be certified as competent by a medical college or related institutions.

However, when people fail to achieve the cultural goals despite the institutionalized means, illegitimate means invariably develop from a forceful configuration of the people’s survival instincts which leads to social crisis and a breakdown in the regulatory structure of society. This is anomie, a state of chaos or the recalibration of society into its brutish, nasty state.

In 1897, Emile Durkheim, a French classical sociologist, first used the concept of anomie in his book (Suicide) to describe the prevalence of suicide in Europe due to the breakdown of the collective values which led to a feeling of despair and hopelessness in the people. However, in 1954, Robert K. Merton, an American Sociologist, developed the concept into a model that analyses the five personality types that respond to anomic conditions in the society which include; the Conformist, the Innovators, the Ritualists, the Retreatist and the Revolutionary.

According to Robert Merton’s Strain theory, the conformists play by the social rules and invariably seek the politically correct means of achieving the cultural goals. The innovators identify the blind spots in the social system and develop unconventional means of achieving the cultural goals. The Ritualists abandon all hopes of achieving the cultural goals due to a repeated experience of failure but still adopt the institutionalized means. The Retreatists become completely disinterested in both the cultural goals and the institutionalized means; they often come off as sociopaths withdrawn to drugs, alcohol, and suicidal thoughts. And the Revolutionary seek to disrupt the existing system and replace it with a perceived better system.

In Nigeria, several conditions of anomie have evolved into social crisis which make major headlines on the news and the social media on a daily basis. Incidences of increasing inflation, poverty and youth unemployment contribute daily to a surge in crime and want of peace in the country. Thus, from banditry to kidnapping, cyber fraud to drug trafficking and social media bullying to ritual killings, Nigeria has been included in the league of unsafe countries to live in the world, with the country ranking 146th out of 163 countries in the 2021 Global Peace Index, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Consequently, there are a growing number of social innovators in the country who leverage technology and the new media to develop alternative means of economic survival. These emerging innovators are largely ensconced in the youth population and are mostly tech savvy with deep knowledge of the dark web. Cybercriminals such as the yahoo boys, the benefit boys, the black-hat hackers etc. belong in this disruptive cohort. Recently, a significant part of the cohort has developed political consciousness through an alliance with the revolutionary to influence a major upheaval in the country.

This played out during the End SARS campaign against the police brutality and oppression of the youth in October 2020. During the campaign, agitated Nigerian youths were able to massively mobilize and crowd-fund intellectual resources and foot soldiers through the social media platforms, especially Twitter, and the decentralized financial market’s block-chain system. Thus, the innovators exhibited the cunning of the fox and the revolutionary engaged the bravery of the Lion to execute one of the most successful campaigns in the history of social movement in the world.

On the 11^th of October 2020, the Nigerian government dissolved the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. However, this was followed shortly by a national ban on crypto-currencies which according to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, were being used to sponsor illegal activities in the country. More so, on 5 June 2021, Twitter was banned in Nigeria over a deleted tweet of the president of the country from the platform but on 12 January 2022 the ban was lifted after Twitter reached an agreement with the Nigerian Government. However, many believe that the twitter ban was a reprisal of the government on the #endsars movement.

There are also indications that the #endsars memories will continue to shape the political consciousness of the Nigerian youth. One veritable example is the #PVC campaign that currently floods the internet and the social media platforms to influence a great number of the youth to get their permanent voters cards towards the 2023 general elections in the country. Never before in the history of Nigerian politics have Nigerian youths shown this much political awareness and social will to power, analysts remarked.

There are many ways to conceptualize the myriads of problems with Nigeria. But for the strain theory analysts, two conditions are evidently insidious to social progress in the country — one is the absence of accountability and the other is a crooked reward and punishment system which overtime have supplanted the moral fabric of the nation. These conditions are mainly due to the failure of the Government institution which determines and enforces the collective value system. The other social institutions such as religion, education and family can only struggle to perform their function of promoting the collective values where the Government institution has failed to enforce those values. Thus, social rehabilitation must be approached top-down — that is, from the Government institution down to the family institution.

Contrary to many people’s belief that social and attitudinal change must be approached bottom-up or from the micro to the macro levels, the strain theorists consider such an approach utopian due to the effect of the law of social gravity. Hence, it must be stated that the Nigerian Government needs to prune itself of corruption and promote sanity across its agencies to build a society where accountability and fairness in reward and punishment determine the political and socioeconomic relations. Only afterward can the bottom-up approach yield significant results.