MERITOCRACY By Sanni Kayode

Have you experienced how painful it is not to be rewarded according to the works of your hands? Yes! I know right? It's crazy. Everyone has a mental picture of how the world should work and if it does not tally with reality it causes imbalance or pain. For most, it is having to be dealt with based on merit hence, the ideal system will be that of meritocracy.

Many, ideally, long for a system where rewards are based on achievements and intellectual criteria—a rule by merit; a society where people are assigned power based on merit; where wealth, income, and social status are got through fair competition.

By virtue of this, it is expected that people should be rewarded based on how well they qualify or not. When we put the concept of meritocracy into perspective within the society, the crux becomes the query, are people really rewarded according to merit? Doesn’t the gross prevalence of process tweaking in favour of friends and relatives belie the essence of meritocracy?While the applicability of the concept of meritocracy is the thesis of this discourse, I’d here with chip in a question to ponder on. Would the world be a better place if what everyone got was based on merit? Personally, I think it will.

However, in reality, the applicability of meritocracy is near impossible and these are the reasons I think are responsible: first, there seems to be some sort of divine, invisible force orchestrating the affairs of men such that the little efforts of some result in huge rewards, while the huge efforts of others result in little rewards. This seemingly makes life appear unfair;second, the world is quite a corrupt place, filled withpeople, who like to disrupt processes put in place to ensure that people are rewarded based on merit, just because they feel they are in a position to; third, there is the concept of luck — some people are just lucky and things just happen for which we don't usually find answers to. How would you explain a situation in which a lady who lived a reckless life gets married to a good man, while a lady who lived uprightly ends up with a not so good man?

It is also important to note that meritocracy is good. It makes our world sort of just. People are rewardedbased what they deserve or not. On the flip side, to be worthy of something means you must have engaged in things that built your capacity to qualify. What happens if everyone does not have equal access to things that help them build capacity? Isn’t the essence of meritocracy defeated? So, at the end of the day it boils down to the fact that those probably, favoured by time and chance get the benefit of meritocracy.

Carla Harris, a top shot in Wall Street in the United States of America, in her speech at a Ted talk eventestablished two basic standards, which anyone, who wants to thrive on meritocracy should have. They are:Performance—she noted that for one to be acknowledged as deserving of something, most especially a post, one must have or must have had a track record of excellent performance delivery which makes them trustworthy; and Relationship—Carla Harris explained that one must know people at the top,who their words matter and can vouch for your competency. But that would not happen until you have a solid relationship with them. They must know you enough to want to speak of you where decisions are made.

Regardless of what is responsible for the near impossibility in the application of meritocracy, and no matter what we think the world should look like, there are certain universal laws that help us make sense of the world. It is universal that whatever we sow, we will surely reap, which is absolutely certain. It does not matter if there's a divine invisible force somewhere, or if someone is manipulating a process, or if some people are just lucky. What matters is that you are sowing good seeds of good deeds, hard work and persistence in the ground because, one day everything will surely produce a great harvest. The universe is always recording and taking note of every deed done which in turn, at a particular time, will cause the harvest to spring.

In conclusion, we can't just live our lives expecting that someone somewhere will come and hand over what we think we deserve to us. We have to go out there and be our best, build the right relationships and always believe that one day there will be a great reward.

ABOUT THE WRITER 

Sanni Kayode Ifedayo 

The Polytechnic Ibadan 

Music Technology 

OS/19B/3463