It is perhaps the bane of democracies that as soon as one election is done, the focus immediately shifts to preparations for the next election. Contenders begin to position and strategise, and the horse trading bubbles just under the surface. Ahead of Nigeria’s 2023 elections, much of the focus, because of recent events, is on the country’s ethnic and religious fault-lines. But it will be interesting to compare Nigeria’s impending political generational clash with the experience of the United States.
The generation born in the twenty years following World War II, the “baby-boomers”, have been a defining force in the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, they were on the forefront of social change, including the later stages of the Civil Rights Movement, protests against the Vietnam War, and the second wave of the feminist movement. These themes would be the defining issues of a generation.
Today, the oldest baby boomers are in their 70s, but still exert an outsize influence on America – from being the most significant voting bloc (some years ago, older voters tipped the balance in favour of Donald Trump) to comprising the majority of elected government officials dealing with an increasingly vocal and politically aware millennial generation, as well as piloting the world’s most important country through an age of significant upheaval. If the still unfolding American experience holds any lesson, it is that a generational transfer of power and authority is inherently fraught with instability, and requires a significant amount of societal maturity to navigate.
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To the First Generation of post-independence politicians in Nigeria, the sudden, and violent emergence of a military political class in 1966 was a shock. What prompted the young soldiers to seize power were rifts between the politicians, and a series of increasingly violent elections. The intervention of the military was also followed by a long and bloody civil war, as tensions within the military political class threatened to rip the country apart.
When the military took power, the hopes of the second generation of politicians were truncated. The military ruled for the next 13 years directly, and then indirectly after Olusegun Obasanjo handed over to Shehu Shagari, a cabinet member in Nigeria’s First Republic, following his victory over Obafemi Awolowo in the 1979 elections. Both Shagari and Awolowo belonged to the First Generation, hence 1979 was still a contest within the set of leaders that broadly led the country to its independence. Shagari was deposed in a coup in 1983, which brought Muhammadu Buhari to power. Buhari, having participated in one of the 1966 coups, was also a member of that First Generation of politically awake military officers.
Buhari was deposed by Ibrahim Babangida in 1985. Babangida ruled until 1993 when he was forced to “step aside” following the aborted 1993 presidential elections. Sani Abacha, who had also taken part in the 1966 coups, took power for himself. When Abacha died in 1998, Abdulsalami Abubakar oversaw a swift return to civilian rule, handing over to erstwhile dictator, Obasanjo. Obasanjo handed over to Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007, and following Yar’Adua’s death in 2009, Goodluck Jonathan took office. Jonathan was ultimately defeated by Buhari in 2015.
Buhari is likely to be the last of his generation of soldiers to hold power. The politicians from whom his generation wrested power, are mostly gone.
Power did not transit from the first generation of politicians to a second generation, but to a generation of soldiers, who have held power under various guises ever since. Even during the eight years of Yar’Adua and Jonathan, they called the shots behind the scenes, although less under the outsider, Jonathan. The first generation of politicians had expectations of how they would be replaced. However, the coups in 1966 upended such plans, and in the entirety of post-independence Nigeria, we have not really had a new generation of politicians in power. Nigeria has been ruled for most of its independence, by first generation soldiers, with their longevity explained by their youth at the time they first took power.
As age has caught up with them, the 1966 generation is leaving the stage. The generation hoping to take their place grew up under dictatorships, and have been largely groomed by the military political class. This generation contains names like Atiku Abubakar, Bola Tinubu, and Nasir El Rufai. These men, all older than 60, have never known the exercise of political power other than via some sort of military-civilian paradigm in a subservient role to the 1966 generation. They expect to exercise power having paid their dues and bided their time, and having been raised by the military, will come to power with certain expectations of how that power is meant to be used.
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This generation faces a challenge from a younger generation, my generation, in our 30s and 40s. Names such as Audu Maikori, Sim Shagaya, Ishmael Ahmed, Dapo Lam Adesina, Udengs Eradiri, Muhammad Dattijo, Akin Oyebode, Deji Adeyanju, Sam Hart, Meekam Mgbenwelu, Muyiwa Gbadegesin, Rinsola Abiola, Ese Owie and yes, Nnamdi Kanu. These people are eager to take up political power, and for the most part, are unwilling to be subservient or bide their time like their elders did. Some of them are already in the process of acquiring that power.
My generation has different attitudes and aspirations from those in their 60s, and crucially, blame the state of the country, especially the glaring disparity of the spread of national wealth and influence, on our elders. It is the elders who must shoulder the blame for the constant economic upheaval, and the deterioration of nearly every sector of national life from infrastructure and housing, to healthcare and education. We are therefore likely to be less reverent. My generation of politically conscious Nigerians have fed on nearly two decades of a mostly democratic paradigm.
As Nigeria’s regional differences are brought to the fore by an increasingly polarised climate, Nigerians are for the first time since the First Republic, deciding big political questions and filtering the important issues of the day through a mostly regional and ethnic prism as voting patterns from the last three elections indicate. The generation of young Nigerians under 40 are slowly coming to terms with the nuanced nature of the country’s politics in a way that no generation since the class of 1960-1966 had to.
The generation that believes it to be their turn to take over will however not simply step aside for us to take over after having waited in line for 51 years. They also realize that their window of opportunity to take and hold power is significantly less than that of their predecessors, perhaps a maximum of twenty years. So, it’s very likely that the next two election cycles will witness an epic inter-generational battle for political, and by extension, economic power in Nigeria.
CHETA NWANZE
