THE TYRANNY OF MERIT. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

Unarguably, the best ever activity for humanity is philosophising. You would not have imagined a province of all. A place where reasoning is done for its own sake, where every problem has a solution, every solution becomes a problem and everything else is in a state of perpetual flux. It's indeed a space to be. This is a bit of what the practice of philosophy can be.

I was privileged to sit in a postgraduate defense in a university in Nigeria recently. It took place in their Philosophy Department. In the course of the defense, the candidate sprang to a sub-topic titled "The Tyranny of Merit". Obviously, this work is a moment in the discourse of meritocracy. Of course, meritocracy instantiates a government or the holding of power by people selected according to merit. It takes off its flight on the pads of attempts to establish or attain a society governed by people selected according to merit.

Every philosophy student by now should have known that this is an intellectual exercise on social and political philosophy. We also won't lose mental sight of the fact that the discipline falls within the labyrinthine of axiological wizzi-wazza. It's a philosophical coinage and please don't bother yourselves with daunting checks on or in your dictionaries. 

Wizzi-wazza is a form of intellectual fireworks that takes place on the pitch of philosophising. It is an adjectival phrase form descriptive of that fierce front and moment when ideas run into antinomies. Carrying on at this juncture becomes very difficult as the words we are employing to define our concepts are now in more precarious needs of definition. Do not worry so much, we shall wriggle out and in case we find it very difficult to do so, we shall assume that we are free even if we are at the epicenter of danger. Never mind!

It all boils down to the fact that axiology concerns itself with the study of values. This makes the work in defense a tip in the ocean of ethics.

During the aggressive pondering on the rendition of the candidate, an examiner willed to turn the entire journey of minds to a full stop as he quibbled that the subtitle is faulty. His argument was that merit is an impeccable moral concept which should enjoy incorruptibility from any dent from the splash of tyranny. For this scholarly leader, it behoves of aberration to permit a blend of such a cocktail where merit and tyranny will be graciously gulped as a fine admixture. He advanced premises aplenty to substantiate his conclusion stating that it's not and will never be permissible that there can be any fault in meritocracy to suggest an idea as Machiavellian as tyranny. In his mind, he was already envisioning an impression as condemnable as the fascist brand of Benito Mussolini. This teacher of ideas could in a twist convert, intersubjectively, the entire academic audience into intellectual witnesses. He was about coasting home with a chorus of agreement by all and sundry. Count on me to be counted out, I will forever be an exception as I kept nodding in disagreement. I could catch myself repeating the paradoxical assertion that "there is no absolute truth" and it couldn't be allowed in my presence. Not even after my being schooled in the variegated thoughts departments of philosophy. I recalled my disagreement with medievalism in philosophy and my utter rejection of the servitude of philosophy in that epoch. I couldn't forget how I sentenced that age in philosophical chronology as the Dark Age of philosophy. I had and have said that the era of the school men when philosophy was the handmaid of religion is "a day of none philosophy" and so an aphilosophical vista in the encyclopedic philosophical history. And I dare say that philosophy as a loving living being ceased breathing within such period but could, once again, take in oxygen and emit carbon dioxide, whatever that means, at the birth of modernism. 

So I was only reminded of that age by the actions in the intellectual room at stake. I was apprehensive of any situation in discussing ideas where everyone agrees to an answer. This is a taboo in philosophy and as a born and trained thinker, I would rather excuse myself for some fresh air than stay back to share in the shackled union of ideas. There is no monopoly in philosophy.

What is my argument?

There is a possibility of meritorian tyranny. Yes! There can be a tyranny of merit. 

An ardent example of this is the practice in a country in Africa called Nigeria which eventually gave birth to a commission known as Federal Character Commission. What is the import of this?

In a multicultural society as is presently experienced since autochthonousity took flight in our social locales occasioned by technology and globalisation, it is possible for a tribe to be less imbued with skills and accumen requisite for merit in almost all aspects of the social needs. In this reality, there is imminence of tyranny necessitated by want of merit (meritocracy). 

Social engineering strand in Nigeria implored and employed accommodative step down on merit for inclusivity. This is a pragmatic experience in our existential realm.

Whereas, many other thinkers may argue that such practice has become the albatross of Nigeria today, and may even elicit an applause from many, including myself, on such point, it does not erase the possibility and reality of the tyranny of merit. What I have simply attempted to do here is merely to make a puncture on that seemingly sacrosanct axiom with my diminutive philosophical niddle and to deny it sacralisation as nothing as such finds its way into the horizon of philosophical discourse.

In essence, the ontology of meritocracy, in the light of its practices, condones tinctures of tyrannical possibilities. It is in reference to this that we remind of its verisimilitude to utilitarianism. Whereas it might be pleasing to run with the greatest good for the greatest number, it does not diminish the imperfections that are likely to turn up. It is possible to field injustice against the few, willynilly. 

In the main therefore, there can be tyranny of merit as we also have the tyranny of the majority which has put a moral question on the practice of democracy. This, however, can be a pathway to moral dilemma. I am not leading the way, regardless.