Nigeria does not need youths to have a better country. Neither does it need youths to change the country. Youths have always been in power, today’s leaders grew old in power. To move Nigeria forward, everyone needs a change of mindset. For instance, corruption which is prevalent in the country is not based on demography.
The old is guilty of corruption as well as the young. Almost everyone takes from the common treasury. Many old people today cannot in all honesty justify the source of their wealth. Same applies to the young. But how many of our young people question their parents’ source of wealth knowing that the parent’s legitimate earnings couldn’t have given them such lavish wealth?
Current Nigerian leaders started leading as youths. Check their respective ages and subtract the last 20 years of democracy from it and let’s see what we have. Take Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister of Transportation for instance. He is 55 now. He’s 6 years as Minister. That means he became Minister at 49. He was Governor for 8 years. That means he became Governor at 41.
Prior to that, he was Speaker for 8 years, that means he was Speaker at 33. Raji Fashola, Minister of Works and Housing is 57. He was in Bola Tinubu’s cabinet. Tinubu became Governor 21 years ago. Remove 21 from 57, that’s 36. How youth can youth be? Rivers state governor Nyesom Wike is 53. He has been in power for the last 15/20 years. That’s 33-35. How youth can youth be? Dimeji Bankole was 37 as Speaker in the National Assembly. Ahmed Lawan, the current Senate President is 61. He has been in the national assembly since 1999.
That was 21 years ago at the age of 40. See what we have. What did we gain? Definitely age is not the solution. We need a change of mindset and attitude. Both young and old. Else, it’s the same story. Youths have always been in power. They became old in power yet Nigeria is still where it is.
The experience from our former colonial master Britain is a necessary analogy. It’s true that there are some significant precedents for British political leaders being no more than middle-aged. The aptly named Pitt the Younger became prime minister in 1783 when he was only 24, and he held the office almost continuously until his death in 1806, when he’d scarcely reached the same age that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are now. And for much of that time, Pitt’s foremost opponent was Charles James Fox, who was only 10 years older than he was.
From 1780 to 1790, British politics was very much a young man’s game, and the same was true for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, when Harold Wilson became prime minister in his late 40s and Edward Heath in his early 50s. That was indeed a turning point, for since Wilson and Heath, most British prime ministers have been on the young side. John Major and Tony Blair were in their mid-40s when they entered 10 Downing Street, while Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown were not all that much older.
But taking a longer view, the notion that only relatively young people can or should make it to the top in politics is a fairly recent development. For most of the 19th Century, and for the first two thirds of the 20th, public life was much more an old man’s game where age counted and seniority mattered.
When Lord Palmerston died in office in 1865 at the age of 80, he had been prime minister almost continuously during the previous 10 years. Gladstone was only in his late 50s when he formed his first administration in 1868, but he was in his early 80s when he embarked on his fourth and last premiership in 1892. When Winston Churchill first became prime minister in 1940, he was already an old age pensioner, and he was once again occupying 10 Downing Street when he celebrated his 80th birthday in November 1954.
But it’s a curious and unexplained paradox that in earlier times, when life expectancy was much lower than it is today, politicians were generally much older, whereas nowadays, when life expectancy is much greater, it’s widely believed, at least in some quarters, that politicians ought to be younger.
Yet in a country with an ageing population, and where 60 is supposed to be the new 40, it seems very odd that seniority and experience should be thought to be disqualifications for political leadership, as Menzies Campbell discovered to his cost in 2007, when he was effectively hounded from the leadership of the Liberal Democrats because he was deemed to be too old at 66.
But if we want a government to be more representative of the nation, then there should not only be more youths especially women and members of ethnic minorities elected or appointed to it, but also more older people as well. Let us hope that like the rest of us, all political office occupiers get better at life as they get older- and as well, get better at politics and leadership, too.
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