A persistent tragedy in the history of developing societies and marginalized groups is the misplaced faith in representation as a guarantee of liberation. When communities seek socioeconomic advancement, they naturally look to their own—the “brothers” who have successfully navigated elite spaces, acquired Westernized or institutional credentials, and secured seats at the tables of power.
The assumption is intuitive: shared identity implies a shared agenda. However, this expectation frequently collides with a harsh psychological and structural reality. All too often, those who ascend within exploitative systems internalize the values of those systems, adopting the mindset of the master. The result is a tragic cycle of gullibility and betrayal, where the subaltern leader becomes the primary gatekeeper of their own people’s subjugation.
To understand why communities repeatedly fall into this trap, one must examine the psychological conditioning that occurs during upward mobility within asymmetric power structures. Thinkers like Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, articulated how the native intellectual or bourgeois class frequently becomes a mere transmission line between the centripetal forces of elite power and the peripheral masses. When a leadership mindset is shaped entirely by a system built on extraction, control, and paternalism, the upwardly mobile individual often undergoes a cognitive shift. They begin to view development not as a collective structural elevation, but as an individual escape from the collective.
Once insulated by status, these leaders suffer from a form of internalized dependency. They measure their worth by how perfectly they mimic the elite—their language, their administrative rigidity, and their detachment from the grassroots. Because they cannot conceive of power outside the framework of the “master-servant” dynamic, they do not seek to dismantle oppressive architectures; they merely seek to occupy the quarters of the overseer. Consequently, their approach to community development degenerates into patronage. True empowerment is replaced by the distribution of crumbs—symbolic appointments, minor infrastructure gestures, and transactional favors—designed to maintain dependence and secure loyalty, rather than foster genuine self-reliance.
The gullibility of the collective stems from a profound emotional and cultural vulnerability. In desperate socioeconomic climates, the desire for a savior blinds communities to structural incentives. People celebrate the individual success of a compatriot as a communal victory, failing to realize that the system requires that individual to validate its rules to stay there. The “brother” in power is often ideologically or financially shackled to external forces—be it international capital, rigid institutional bureaucracies, or neo-colonial political structures. They cannot deliver systemic development because doing so would jeopardize the very privilege that sets them apart from the masses. They become, in essence, highly polished managers of an ongoing captivity.
Breaking this destructive cycle requires an intellectual emancipation on the part of the community. Progress cannot be achieved through personality-driven loyalty or the naive romance of shared lineage. Communities must transition from an emotional politics of representation to an objective politics of accountability. Leadership must be evaluated not by the heights an individual reaches, but by the structural leverage they bring down to the base. Until development metrics are divorced from the prestige of individual gatekeepers and anchored strictly in collective institutional growth, communities will continue to suffer the heartbreak of watching their own brothers enforce the logic of the master.
– Isaac K. Obajemu writes from Abuja.
