If younger Nigerians need shift in leadership, organise yourselves, Obasanjo replies Agbakoba

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the older generation will continue to pilot the affairs of Nigeria so long as the younger ones do not show reasons why the elderly ones should step down.

He has therefore called on the younger generation to organise themselves around positive core values, become ideological in the sense of nationalism and patriotism in their quest for a generational shift in political leadership of the country.

Obasanjo stated this in a letter he wrote and addressed to a Lagos based lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Chief Olisa Agbakoba and dated July 28, 2017.

Agbakoba had in an earlier letter to Obasanjo entitled, “Nigeria needs a generational shift in political leadership” said, “I am concerned about the quality of leadership in Nigeria. Corruption is endemic. Poverty is high. Life expectancy is low. Nigeria ranks poorly on all international human development indicators.”

Quoting Chinua Achebe’s book, “The Trouble with Nigeria”, Agbakoba in his letter said that Nigeria’s situation is due to failure of leadership, adding that Nigeria has been “held back by crop of leadership that have outlived usefulness and effectiveness as a result of old age.”

He went further to say that Obasanjo ruled Nigeria at 39, and that Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello were 40, 43 and 40 respectively when they began active roles as pioneers of Nigeria’s political history.

Agbakoba also reminded Obasanjo that Odimegwu Ojukwu and Yakubu Gowan were in their 30s when they took centre stage in Nigerian politics.

He therefore called on Obasanjo to intervene in the political situation of Nigeria to see that, like in France, where 39-year old Emmanuel Macron emerged as President, and in Canada where Justin Pierre James Trudeau, 45 is the Prime Minister, a younger Nigerian could also be president.

But in his reply entitled “Re: Nigeria needs a generational shift in political leadership” and addressed to Agbakoba, Obasanjo said that the “point to ponder is how have the successor generation positioned themselves to lead?”

Part of the letter reads “I write to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated July 20, 2017 and to reassure you that I share some of the sentiments expressed in the letter. I am actually not oblivious of the points you raised concerning how General Gowon, myself and some others you mentioned became prominent figures in the running of the affairs of the country as a rather young age.

“Be that as it may, what you must not lose sight of is the fact that some of us were thrown up and brought into limelight by circumstances which were not of our own making.

“By and large, what those early leaders and some of us, who assumed the mantle of leadership in pubic-offices at relatively early age, lost in advanced age, was more than made up for in dynamism, nationalism, commitment and lofty ideas. Whatever exceptions, there might have been were few. We demonstrated patriotism, selflessness and also acquitted ourselves credibly with our uncommon contributions to the socio-political development of Nigeria.

“My dear Olisa, it is sad that the successor generation of Nigerians have in most cases resorted to work avoidance in the quest for leadership. Most members of the younger generation of Nigerians are mostly contended with waiting for dead men’s shoes and are unwilling to beat alternative past leadership. In such a situation, it is to be expected and actually it is human that those with some head start in life will not concede such advantages freely and based on their innate goodness.

Read also: SERAP wants ICC to probe N11trn Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan spent on electricity

“The world. As I know it, is powered by shrewd hard-headed calculating individuals and the cornucopia of their mercy is decidedly thin and it is unlike God’s rain that falls on the just and the wicked alike. The point to ponder is how have the successor generation positioned themselves to lead?

“I look back at some members of the younger generation and I am miffed at the missed opportunities. I am equally saddened that although we the so-called older generation did facilitate some semblance of infrastructural development, today the gains made have been mostly pushed down the drain by some of those privileged young people saddled with similar responsibilities in the recent past.”

According to Obasanjo, some of the younger generation have been “complete disappointment and failures in their various appointed or elected positions”

He however said that while younger ones failed, it should not be a disincentive to support other young people, “I don’t think that older people should be excluded in our leadership recruitment process”.

On what the younger generation needs to do, he said, “I ask you dear Olisa, you are at a point where you should step forward and develop a mobilization framework that seeks to rearrange Nigeria on a different basis of legitimacy. Late Chief Awolowo and the great Zik were younger than you when they threw their hats in the ring. It is time to take the hard road. Olisa it is time to jump down from the fence and the siddon look corner. It’s your fatherland. The time is now.

“Let the younger people organise themselves around positive core values. Let them become ideological in the sense of nationalism and patriotism in this struggle. This is democracy. Politics is a game of numbers at the end of the day. The youth are in the majority. What is the excuse? So long as the older generation do not have the incentive to step down, for so long will they continue to reinvent and reappoint and resurface”, the former president stated.

It would be recalled that the agitation for younger Nigerians to be more actively involved in the nation’s politics gave rise to the Not Too Young To Run Bill.

Specifically, the campaign wanted the age criteria for president reduced from 40 to 30, that of governor and senate reduced from 35 to 30 as well, and that of national and state assemblies from 30 to 25.

However, the Senate in its constitutional amendment role recently approved a reduction of the age criteria for president to 35, governor and senate to 30, and the national and state assemblies’ to 25.

 

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