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| Age and the underlying issues. |
When President Muhammadu Buhari
gave assent to the Not Too Young to Run Bill and signed it into law on May 31st,
2018, the action was greeted with a lot of excitement and cheers for the
President for yielding to the clamour of the young people who had carried out a
robust campaign and pressured the National Assembly to pass the bill. The bill
sought to amend sections of the constitution to reduce the age limit for
seeking election into political office from 40 to 35 for Presidential, 35 to 30
for both Governorship and Senate, and from 30 to 25 for both House of
Representatives and State House of Assembly membership. All in a bid to
increase youth participation in politics and governance.
In the midst of all the excitement,
some of us postulated that it was not yet Uhuru
for youth participation in politics and the actualisation of good visionary
leadership. At the time I asserted that age is not necessarily the major issue
affecting leadership in Nigeria and indeed Africa, so merely reducing the age
limit for seeking leadership doesn’t solve and wouldn’t solve the problem of
leadership in Nigeria. Few weeks ago, I watched the president of Ghana, Nana
Akufo-Addo make an impressive address at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Conference,
and he further proved that age isn’t an excuse for poor performance or lack of
it, incompetence is the reason for our leadership failures. The Ghanaian
president left everyone in awe, that the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
said “I’m not particularly a fan of septuagenarians, but President Nana
Akufo-Addo has shown that age isn’t quite the problem.” To further give
credence to that, the youngest in the current crop of governors, has been said
to be incompetent by many. This is not to suggest that young people are unfit
or lacking in experience to govern. Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross
River state, became governor at 37 and we all know the legacies he left in the
state. So beyond age, we need to look at the quality (character and competence)
of individuals seeking elective positions.
We’ll recall that when the
President signed the Not Too Young to Run bill into law, he asked the young
people to shelve their presidential ambition till 2023 and not run against him
in 2019. I personally saw this as the president acknowledging that there’s a
possibility that he would lose to a young person if fielded in 2019 if the youths
rallied round one of their own as they tenaciously did to get the bill passed.
A society where private citizens are held to higher standards than their
leaders is a dysfunctional one and is bound to fail. How do you explain to a rational
person that tertiary graduates ought not only to have their school
certificates, but must have acquired the National Youth Service Corps
certificate to get jobs in civil service, but the Nation’s chief civil servant,
the president and all other political office holders only need to have basic
SSCE certificates, irrespective of whether they passed the exams or not? This
is not only ridiculous; it is an insult to our common intelligence as a people
and has been the foundation on which we’ve sacrificed excellence to elevate and
celebrate mediocrity. For things to change, we have to cease to be that nation
where the best of us, are governed by the least qualified of us.
Nonetheless, it's election
season and party primaries, nomination processes and all the politicking
synonymous with the season are upon us. Most political parties have announced the
sale of forms for those seeking nomination, and from the amount of these forms,
you can tell that there’s a deliberate attempt by these political parties to
deny young people the opportunity of getting into the race. While the main
opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party(PDP), which appears to be the
most sought after bride leading up to the 2019 election is selling its
expression of interest and nomination forms for 12 million for presidential, 6
million for governorship, 3.5 million for senate, 1.5 million for House of
Reps. and 600 thousand for House of Assembly, the ruling party, the All
Progressives Congress (APC) is selling theirs for 45 million for presidential,
22.5 million for governorship, 7 million for senate, 3.85 million for House of
Reps. and 850 thousand for House of Assembly respectively. These rather
preposterous prices mean that many youths with good leadership character and
competence can’t participate in the 2019 elections, as they may not be able to
afford the nomination fees. That means the purpose of the Not Too Young to Run
bill which was to give young people the opportunity to run for office has been
defeated as the window which was opened to them by way of reduction of age of
participation, has been shut by an increase in the cost of running for same
office.
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| Political parties and the cost of their nomination forms. |
I was particularly disgruntled
last week when someone from the APC came on national television to defend the
party’s decision to sell its forms for those exorbitant prices, saying it was a
way of screening the calibre of aspirants as only the serious ones will come
forward and purchase the forms or get people to believe in them enough to
purchase the forms on their behalf. What this suggests is that, the litmus test
for recruiting leaders for Nigeria in 2019 is by the depth of their pockets,
which implies that a person lacking in character and competence, who can
dubiously come up with funds to purchase forms and run for election is more
qualified and likely to get elected than a young aspirant who has both the
character and competence to provide effective leadership but lacks the
financial power to compete in our highly monetised political space which
contravenes our electoral laws.
In a society where vote buying,
stomach infrastructure, and several forms of inducements seem to be the order
of the day, the man with the deepest purse, the highest bidder is bound to take
it all. And regrettably, this man is hardly ever a youth. For the young people,
as we realise that it’s actually not yet Uhuru,
and that the signing of the Not Too Young to Run bill into law was merely a Greek
gift from this administration, which was aimed at scoring political
points and gaining more support from young people whilst blocking them from the
process by suppressing their chances of participation with exorbitant fees, we
must remain resolute in pushing for more reforms in our polity that will lead
to the actualisation of the Nigeria we desire and indeed deserve. The success of
the Not Too Young to Run advocacy is proof of what we can achieve when we come
together with one common goal. In that action, we’ve shown that the people in power are not as powerful as
the power in the people and that there is strength in numbers. I therefore suggest that young people who are
ready to run in 2019, should seek the nomination of other parties like KOWA who
have made their nomination forms as affordable as it can get, to encourage
participation by all. We agree that these parties are not as viable as the APC
or PDP, but who knows, you just might be the “3rd Force” Nigerians
are yearning for. We must stick together and take our country back from the
shackles of mediocrity that is further plunging it into global obscurity by
electing visionary leaders that will place Nigeria on a path of sustainable
development.
