By OBIOTIKA WILFRED TOOCHUKWU

Every society is run by a class system in which people are rated according to wealth, education, occupation, political influence, family background, gender, religion, ethnicity and social connections. In fact, daily human decisions and partnership are controlled by class structures such as sex, status and intelligence. However, history has repeatedly embarrassed those who attempt to predict human greatness from social status. The twentieth century provides frightening examples of what happens when political power attempts to manufacture a hierarchy of human worth. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi ideology elevated the supposed superiority of an Aryan race and treated Jews and other groups as inferior. Approximately six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, with Auschwitz-Birkenau becoming one of the most notorious centres of extermination.

It is worthy of note that some of the people who transformed the world emerged from circumstances that respectable society considered insignificant. Abraham Lincoln was born in a poor Kentucky frontier family and had little formal schooling. Martin Luther King Jr. became one of the most influential voices of the American civil-rights movement, not because of inherited political power but through education, moral courage and extraordinary leadership. Barack Obama, whose father came from Kenya and whose mother was from Kansas, rose from a relatively unconventional childhood to become President of the United States.

Albert Einstein was not produced by an aristocratic academy. Thomas Edison did not emerge from a privileged scientific establishment. Benjamin Carson was raised by a single mother in difficult circumstances and nevertheless became a renowned neurosurgeon. Their stories demonstrate something that social classifications consistently overlook. The same principle can be observed in religion. Christianity’s history is filled with ordinary people whose influence eventually exceeded that of the powerful institutions around them. The apostles themselves included fishermen and other people without the credentials that contemporary society might associate with intellectual or political authority. The Wesley brothers; John and Charles were products of a clerical family rather than wealthy aristocracy, yet their Methodist revival profoundly influenced Britain and beyond. Billy Graham, the son of dairy farmers, became one of the most internationally recognised evangelists of the twentieth century. Demos Shakarian, born into a family of Armenian immigrant dairy farmers in California, became a major figure in twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.

This notwithstanding, in some other countries like Nigeria; Immigration, Customs, Defence, Ministry of Finance, Power and Works even key ambassadorial positions are reserved for the recognized group of citizens. Nevertheless, the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki portrayed that yesterday’s problems cannot be today’s problems. Despite the plans of scientists, devastating effects of Covid-19 and modern-day nuclear warheads/weapons; smiles and boisterous laughter are heard in every nook and cranny of major cities’ suburbs.

In Anambra State today for instance; a walk through many towns and villages brings one to a unique encounters of roads, buildings, schools, business centres, hospitals, filling stations and commercial projects initiated not by famous political families but by relatively unknown entrepreneurs through the government Public-Private Partnership Initiative. Some of the young businessmen behind these projects are children of parents who once lived in mud houses, thatched structures or modest village compounds. They began as traders, transporters, artisans, contractors or small-scale businessmen.

The institution of ‘Osu Caste System’ in Igbo land subjected certain people and their descendants to stigma and social exclusion. Those classified in this manner could be treated as permanently unsuitable for full participation in community life. Such traditions demonstrate how dangerous it is for a society to convert social labels into permanent judgments about human worth.

The biblical tradition offers an even stronger rebuke to social arrogance. Again and again, Scripture presents God working through people whom conventional society might overlook such as shepherds, harlots, fishermen, widows, servants, foreigners and people of modest social standing. Ancient Greek sages also understood the instability of human arrangements. Heraclitus’ famous insight that change is constant reminds us that today’s hierarchy is not necessarily tomorrow’s hierarchy. The powerful become forgotten; the unknown become celebrated; the rejected become indispensable.

Jewish wisdom similarly insists on the moral limitations of humanity. Human beings are not naturally infallible judges of goodness, worth or destiny. This is why every society must be suspicious of systems that permanently divide people into sacred cows, untouchables, important, separated sons and daughters above and against history’s final verdict. The person society neglects today may possess tomorrow’s invention, business, literature, technology, ministry or political vision. The child raised in a neglected village may become the scientist who solves a national problem. The trader dismissed as uneducated may create employment for hundreds. The young person denied opportunity may become the architect of a new Nigeria.

Nations do not advance merely because their elites are intelligent rather it is when they discover, educate, empower and trust the intelligence hidden among the ordinary majority. The greatest tragedy, therefore, is not that society has poor people but society can become so obsessed with status that it fails to recognize its treasures while they are still standing at the margins.

•Obiotika Wilfred Toochukwu writes from Lagos, Nigeria.