Herbert Wigwe, The Body “Cargo” And The Spectacle Of Vanity

Last Friday, the bodies of former Access Bank CEO, Herbert Wigwe, his wife, and son were flown back to Nigeria weeks after the trio died in a helicopter accident in the United States. Pictures were circulated online showing how the bodies were packaged and laid out like any other cargo, a sight that loudly resonates the ultimate emptiness of human worth and pride.

What has prompted this manner of public reaction to Wigwe’s fate is his social status as one of the wealthiest persons the country has ever had. Only very few persons who pass through the face of the earth will end up earning the amount of wealth he earned. Hence, he was among the most economically powerful. And with such economic power inevitably comes political power as money brings influence. Therefore, it is very natural that people will feel deeply sobered by how all that glory disappeared in a snap of the finger. Hence, many could only scream VANITY!

If people come to this earth and merely acquire what they need for survival and decent life, people would hardly cry vanity when death occurs. The spectacle of vanity becomes so glaring when the deceased has amassed so much surplus wealth and which, unfortunately, they cannot take along while departing. There is thus a sense of loss being felt on behalf of the dead who, having laboured to acquire so much, has departed empty-handed.

I have deliberately used the word “surplus wealth” to underline the fact that much of the wealth being referred to is simply unneeded. Its acquisition is not propelled by human NEED but rather by human GREED – note the difference. This greed manifests when the motivation to acquire can no longer be attributed to the quest to attend to real human wants but to that self-glorifying satisfaction that comes with having billions of naira in one’s bank account, several houses at different locations, and several plots of undeveloped land – even though no harm will be done to the owner’s quality of life, now or in future, if they shed themselves of these acquisitions. Stated differently, such very wealthy persons can maintain their expensive lifestyle till death without touching much of the wealth they have amassed – simply because they have amassed surplus.

Unfortunately, amassing surplus wealth is a desire of many humans – whether expressed or unexpressed. In fact, many of us admire such level of material acquisition and would wish to attain that in our lifetime – even though we would be quick to scream vanity whenever such tragedy as seen with Herbert Wike occurs. Yes, such incidents only momentarily awakens us to the reality of the sheer needlessness of limitless material acquisitions, but soon after, we return to our default mode of admiration for surplus wealth and desire to successfully amass such.

But who can be blamed for having such mindset and nursing such desire? People grow to internalise the values accepted and cherished by their society. This is what sociology calls socialisation. Individuals, in their insights, beliefs, dispositions, and aspirations, are largely a reflection of their society. Our capitalist society nurtures individuals to seek for surplus wealth and to see.nothing wrong with it. This culture discourages contentment. In my weekly column MY MIDWEEK MEDITATION of October 25, 2023, writing on the topic “This Pet Animal Called Money,” I made the following observations:

“The capitalist culture has increasingly turned money into something to be kept, admired, nurtured, cuddled and fondled like we do to our beloved pet animals, whereas money should be like a livestock or poultry animal to be turned to food and eaten. The value of money lies only – and absolutely only – in the material need it solves for humans. Beyond this, any value placed on money is worship of mammon.

“Our capitalist culture and its ethic know nothing about contentment. Endless pursuit of money is legitimised. Individuals are censured and shamed for over-indulging in food, drink and play but no one is shamed for over-indulgence in pursuit of money – nay those who over-indulge in money pursuit are rewarded with appearance on the cover of FORBES magazine or, at least, a space on its list of world’s richest. What is rewarded here is not hard work or genius but money. Tim Berners-Lee, in 1989, invented the World Wide Web (www) and gave it to the world free and we hardly hear about him irrespective of the fact that his hard work and uncommon genius revolutionised what we call the Internet today. If he had patented and commercialised that invention, he would have been celebrated like other tech billionaires such as Google, Apple and Microsoft owners. His face would have surely adorned the cover of FORBES.

“Endless quest for anything amounts to greed, but capitalism exempts pursuit of money from this universal moral rule. The familiar line that humans are insatiable is often invoked to deflate the complicity of capitalism in planting this amoral ethic. Craving and contentment are both inscribed in the character of man and any can be nurtured to prevail. For example, monks and nuns in Christian and Buddhist monasteries across the world aren’t craving to have millions, build mansions or ride the costliest cars simply because they have been formed in an environment that nurtures contentment. On the contrary, capitalism nurtures the craving part of us until it becomes uncontrollable.

“It does this by encouraging and celebrating endless pursuit of money such that money assumes an end in itself instead of a means to an end. This is what money becomes when its acquisition goes beyond solving one’s need for food and other necessities to become a mere status symbol for which one is celebrated. It thus becomes not an animal to be turned to food and eaten but a pet to be cuddled and fondled.

“But it’s difficult for most of us to observe this anomaly being that we have been socialised in an economic and cultural system that is founded on a faulty psychology that affirms insatiability as an unassailable character of man and a flawed ethic that excuses and glorifies greed – the capitalist ethic!”

The fact that capitalism is founded on human greed is very evident in the operation of what’s known as market forces – law of demand and supply. The implication of market forces is that the prices of products are determined, not necessarily by the value of goods or cost of production, but by the extent of freedom the investors have to increase their profit. When the demand is high or the supply is low, this freedom increases and when it’s the opposite, the freedom reduces, hence the price may come down. In other words, the investors are not concerned about the morality of selling goods above what may be their real value, they are only concerned about whether the trajectory of demand and supply is conducive for increasing profit. Hence, many a time, they seek to manipulate the situation by creating artificial scarcity so that demand will outstrip supply and prices will soar.

In his concept of “fetishism of commodity,” Karl Marx described the situation where prices of commodities have nothing to do with the value of the commodities themselves but are merely a reflection of the profit motive of the investors. This is why goods of lower value may be much more expensive than those of higher value. The capitalist ethic completely discountenances the moral implication of this lopsided economics. Capitalist ethic is an amoral ethic.

It’s this amoral ethic that becomes manifest when we seek to acquire endlessly. In capitalist ethic, wealth is there to be acquired irrespective of how much a person has acquired already – there is no end to acquisition as pursuit of wealth is tied neither to need nor contentment.

We feel the way we feel when a wealthy man like Wigwe dies simply because such incident makes glaring the futility of surplus acquisition. Our scream of VANITY is prompted not by the wealth the person has used to solve their need while alive but by the surplus that will not follow them to the grave. This calls for a new way of thinking and living.

I am not exactly sure whether I have ever desired to have so much wealth. However, I’m sure there was a time in my life I admired very wealthy persons like Dangote and Bill Gates. A change of worldview occurred in my early 20s shortly after my graduation. Having engaged in avid reading of philosophical literature for about five years, I developed such a critical disposition that saw me question a lot of things – and one of them is material acquisition. Nonetheless, it was not until 2012 that my insight grew much deeper after I read the classic, THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF INSTITUTIONS, by Thorstein Veblen. Published exactly 125 years ago, this work has remained a seminal reference in sociological study of economics. It’s available free online, and I have always recommended it for anyone interested in a critical dissection of our capitalist economic set-up, its humanistic pretensions and moral contradictions.

In all, the meaning of life cannot be found in endless acquisition of wealth. The more we travel on that path of unbridled acquisition the more worthless life becomes for us. We see life as vanity because of our too much focus on material possession as the RAISON D’ÊTRE of life. Late Wigwe had other things he did in life. He might have been a good husband, a good father, a loving neighbour and a generous giver who put smiles on people’s faces But when we gauge his earthly life just by the amount of his acquisitions, all we see is waste and vanity. Showing love to people, giving a helping hand, whether in cash or in kind, is more in keeping with the fleeting nature of life and the frailty and insufficiency of our being.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.