The way we’re going, there’s no doubting the fact that Nigeria might soon get an award. And it will come from no less a body than the publishers of the prestigious Guinness Book of records.
The award, of course, would be for the newsworthiest country in the world!
You see, it’s like news was created for Nigerians or is it vice versa?
The news of the former vice president, Mr Abubakar Atiku’s being bought by the People’s Democratic Party, his former party has gained dominance. I’m reliably informed that our irrepressible media have equated movements from political parties with transfer windows in that famous sports, soccer!
Atiku left the PDP with others. They had various reasons for leaving the then ruling party. But keen observers believe they had read the political thermometer and knew, not believed, that come the 2015 elections, APC would give PDP a knock out.
The decision of Nigerians to join, desert, and rejoin political parties is a constitutional right. So I wonder why people are fretting because someone has exercised his political right.
By the way, Atiku still has to go through the party primaries before he becomes a candidate. I am told that the PDP primaries would just be like the day an elephant dies. Various people are also interested.
But what concerns me is the fact that the two major parties will be parading elderly people. When I say elderly people, I mean people in their seventies.
Are we practising a geroncratic government? A gerontocracy is a form of government in which a society is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population.
It is regretably obvious that most of our younger elements may not possess as heavy a warchest as the elderly ones. Those ones are even few.
In this country today, many forty year olds still depend on their parents. When will such people start fending for themselves, not to talk of families and their country?
The problem I see there is that of our failure to develop institutions. We would rather develop individuals or personalities. .
If we build institutions, there will be adequate mentoring. At a point in time, there might not be less then twenty people at a time, in each party, who can be saddled with the leadership of the country.
But then, the philosopher, Plato once said, ‘It is for the elder man to rule and for the younger to submit’. We seem to be following the ancient philosopher’s saying.
In the ancient Greek city of Sparta, it was ruled by a collective known as the Gerousia. The least age of a member of the Gerousia was sixty. We could also find old people ruling in Communist states, Theocratic states and absolute Monarchies.
But the world is changing now. In Saudi Arabia, the king will soon abdicate the throne for the crown prince who is in his thirties.
It’s not as if I’ve developed gerontophobia which is a fear of the elderly. I’m closer to seventy than twenty anyway.
But it has occurred to me that we’re not using the wisdom or lack of it, for that matter, of our youth. It would have been even better if we had been having a good deal with our current situation.
Nottooyoungtorule!
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