Photo credit: Premium Times
The way we’re going, there’s no doubt that Nigeria might soon get an award. And it will come from no less a body than the prestigious Guinness Book of Records publishers.
The award, of course, would be for the newsworthiest country in the world!
Was news created for Nigerians, or was it vice versa?
The news of the former vice president, Mr Abubakar Atiku, 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 the famous sport, soccer!
Atiku left the PDP with others. They had assorted 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 knockout.
Nigerians’ decision 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 must do the party primaries before he becomes a candidate. I am told that the PDP primaries would be like the day an elephant dies. When an elephant dies, many machetes are assembled to finish the job.
But what concerns me is that the two major parties will be parading elderly people—I mean people in their seventies.
Are we practising a gerontocratic government? A gerontocracy is a form of government in which a society is ruled by leaders 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 our failure to develop institutions. We would rather develop individuals or personalities.
If we build institutions, there will be adequate mentoring. At some point, there might be at least twenty people in each party who can be saddled with the leadership of the country.
But then, the philosopher Plato once said, ‘It is for the older man to rule and for the younger to submit.’ We seem to be following the ancient philosopher’s advice.
The ancient Greek city of Sparta was ruled by a collective known as the Gerousia. The youngest member of the Gerousia was sixty. Old people also ruled 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 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, of our youth. It would have been even better if we had been dealing well with our current situation.
Nottooyoungtorule!
120417
