Saro Nationalism and the Roots of Elite Political Culture in Nigeria

With its size, human and material resources, Nigeria should be the foremost economic and military power in Africa. This is the natural destiny of the country. Unfortunately, Nigeria has failed to actualise its potential. The country remains from all indices a poor country, with over three-quarters of its population living below the poverty line. The Nigerian ruling elite operate a political culture whose identifying indices are corruption and the exploitation of governmental power to advance the pecuniary interests of its members. The article argues that elite political culture is the bane of Nigeria‟s underdevelopment nexus. Against this background, it interrogates the nationalist ideology of the Nigerian educated elite and concludes that elite political culture is inherent in the variant of nationalism that took root in Nigeria in the nineteenth centur