AGE AS A FACTOR IN NATIONAL LEADERSHIP, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO NIGERIA’S 2023 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – PRINCE JOHN OLA MAFO
Nigeria’s Presidential Election, slated for February 25th, 2023 is around the corner!
The election could not have come at a more trying time, considering the present state of the nation, with particular reference to the damning security situation and the deplorable condition of the economy!
Given the above, it is natural for the forthcoming election to become a front burner affair and a topical issue in our national discourse on daily basis. As the discussion rages, on internet, radio, television, newspapers and other media of communications, a particular issue had ab initio become a recurring decimal, which is none other than AGE!
From the trend of discussions, it is clear that a cross section of Nigerians believes that a younger generation President would be better this time around. The proponents of the idea argue that the elderly politicians are part of the problems of Nigeria and should therefore give way to the younger generation to mount the podium. Understandably, the candidates most affected by this argument are PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and APC’s Bola Tinubu, both of whom are above 70 years.
At this juncture, it’s apt to put the question, do we swallow this argument, hook,line and sinker; dismiss the septugenarians from the race and settle for a younger element as President, come 2023? Put in another way, is it logical and safe for us as a nation to consider age as a barrier national service?
Answering the above questions will involve a voyage of exploration on constutional provisions, contemporary history, the examples of other nations, the concerned individuals and cultural dispositions across the world.
Talking about the constitution, the 1999 edition(as amended), in section 131 which was amended via the ‘Not Too Young to Run’ Bill in 2018, reduced the age of qualification to run for the office of the President to 35 years, down from 40. The key points to note about the constitutional provision about the age of the President and other offices is that, it’s a device to prevent people who are not mature and who by extension inexperienced, from assuming these sensitive positions of serious responsibilities, hence the bigger the office, the higher the age qualification. It should equally be noted that whereas there is a limit at the lower level, there is none at the upper end, which means that while you cannot contest for certain offices until you attain the prescribed age, after that you are no longer barred, from contesting for any office, no matter how old! In other words, from the age of qualification, it becomes a matter of interest, state of health and fitness. The authors of our constitution and similar ones across the globe knew that people can be too young to run, but hardly ever too old to run because, according to a proverb, “the gray hair of experience is the splendour of the old”. The conclusion of the matter at the level of the constitution is that public service requires maturity and experience. And the office of the President is what the Yorubas call ‘atari ajanaku'(the head of the elephant), which is not a load for the child!
In the realm of contemporary history and examples of other nations, a peep into the Nigerian situation would reveal that our referred heroes were mostly active politically to old age. In 1983, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe contested for President. The former was 74 and the latter 78 years old at the time. Nigerians elected the much younger Shehu Shagari, then 54 years old. Till today, we continue to regret that neither Azikiwe nor Awolowo emerged our President, especially Awolowo popularly remembered as the best President Nigeria never had!
Talking about Governors, this writer stands to be corrected, the best set of Governors Nigeria ever had belong to the 1979 set, especially those produced by UPN, GNPP and NPP. They were mostly mature politicians and one of the very best was Michael Adekunde Ajasin, who became Governor of the old Ondo State at 71.
Outside Nigeria, the most typical and current example is that of Joe Biden, who became President at 78. Donald Trump was also a septugenarian when he assumed the American Presidency. It is also instructive to note that one of the highly rated American Presidents, Ronald Reagan was 70 years old when he entered the White House in 1981. He was still active and cerebral by the time he left office in 1989 at 77.
In summary, the world history is replete with examples of septugenarians and even octogenarians, who served their countries meritoriously, with varied degrees of success. They include: Karlos Papoulias, who served as President of Greece from 2005 to 2015. He was 85 years when he left office; Giorgio Napolitano, who became President of Italy at 81; Joaquin Balaguer of Dominican Republic, who left office at 89 and Shimon Peres, who quit the stage as leader of Israel in 2014 at age 90.
Deliberately, this writer refrained from citing nearby experiences in Africa because of controversies surrounding their service years. However, if we can controvert the tenures of Hastings Banda of Malawi(President till 1994 at 98), Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe(President till 2017 at 93), Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia(still in charge till 2019 at 92) and Paul Biya(at 89 and still serving), can anyone question the service and integrity of Nelson Mandela, an African, who voluntarily relinquished office of the President of South Africa in 1999 at 81?
The destination of the cross-continental review above is to draw the attention of Nigerians to the fact that electing senior citizens, otherwise known as statesmen, as Presidents in countries of the world, is not a taboo. If anything, it could be an added advantage. It goes without saying that most of the prerequisites of leadership like maturity, experience and wisdom are more of products of advance age. The other major prerequisites like character, discipline and integrity, are available to both the young and the old, as a matter of choice and personal disposition. It is for these reasons that nations of the world choose and elect their leaders without any organized or orchestrated prejudice against the senior citizens.
In that regard, after George Bush(Snr), it was possible for America to elect three young Presidents in a row, namely Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, before proceeding to elect two septugenarians, Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the last two elections! That is democracy for you, not about age or any other primordial factors, but about popularity, track-record and acceptability of the candidate, as well as the durability and organizational qualities of the sponsoring party!
It is apposite to note that in America, Great Britain, France and other advance democracies across the globe, it is safer for them to elect younger elements as national leaders because the structures of public administration and political institutions are so well established and laid out that it can be argued that it’s easier to run such countries than big and complex African or Third World nations like Nigeria, with all the ethnic diversities, as well as contending religious dispositions!
Moreover, unlike in the developed nations, the culture and the institutional framework for constitutional democracy are yet to take firm roots in Nigeria, thus our democracy can be described as work in progress. In this regard, the man we need for the job ahead, from 2023, should be a tested and trusted statesman, who can boast of wisdom, maturity, experience, character, integrity and capacity, with a packaged blueprint on how to turn things around for our misguided nation. He must as a matter of necessity, if not compulsion, come from a background of a well structured party, with presence all over the federating units, having a pool of men and women of diverse qualifications and abilities, from which the President can pick his team for the numerous positions that are interwoven in the complex administration of the country. It is not an emergency job or crash programme for a sole administrator or lone ranger, jumping overboard to ride on the platform of small and untested political parties, which, to all intents and purposes, lack the capacity to produce and support a President to tackle the monumental task associated with Nigeria’s leadership! No matter, whatever good intentions, it just doesn’t work that way!
For us as a nation, the lesson from the above is that we should give all the candidates, including Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu, a level playing ground and let the most qualified win in the interest of our teeming populace.
The last bust stop in this voyage of discovery is at the cultural plain. According to a Chinese proverb, “an elderly person at home (is like) a living golden treasure”. Interestingly, in China, in spite increasing Western influence, the citizens still follow the Confucian tradition of respecting elders as the highest virtue!
There is a popular proverb among the Yorubas of Western Nigeria to the effect that “what the elder will see while sitting in the valley cannot be seen by a child even when standing on the mountain top!” There is another corresponding proverb, which translated means that “the child can have as many clothes as the elder, but cannot have as many rags as the elder”. These proverbs and uncountable others, emphasize the advantage the elders have over the younger generation where wisdom, experience and leadership are required. It is for this reason that in many traditional African communities only the elders are allowed to take up the position of leadership. A typical example in Nigeria is Ibadan, with a rigid well structured order of succession, which had served the ancient city right over the ages!
It’s apt to rest the cultural aspect of this discourse on a folkloric account, which emphasized the place of experience, wisdom and old age in solving the problems of society. This would take us to the animal kingdom, where the young rebelled against the old, like some people in the country are suggesting we do now against the senior politicians. Due to their resentment against the elders, they all agreed to slaughter and eat up their mothers. According to the folklore, all the animals except tortoise complied by killing and eating their mothers. This development led to a kingdom without elders and wisdom became scarce. Meanwhile, tortoise had gone to hide his mother somewhere faraway and anytime the kingdom faced a thorny situation without any solution, tortoise would go to his mother for advice on way forward, which always worked for the kingdom. Invariably, this made tortoise to become popular and well respected in the animal kingdom at the time. To cut a long story short, the other animals later got to know the secret of the wisdom of tortoise and they all regretted their foolish action of killing their mothers!
The big lesson from the story above is that Nigerians should not sacrifice our elders in search of a non- existent young messiah so that we will not regret the action when it would have become too late to be reversed!
“The words of the elder are words of wisdom, the wise man hears and becomes wiser”!
– By John Ola Mafo(MOJ).
—Prince Mafo, a lawyer and former Commissioner For Information in Ondo State writes from Akure.
