The Buhari 800-metre home trek, from Sallah prayers in Daura, would appear a seeming riposte to Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal.
Tambuwal, hosting some visiting youths in Sokoto, had claimed the president was too old; and too frail, to run in 2019. But what has age got to do with it?
At the advent of the Buhari Presidency, when hardship bit and there was no quick fix to the economic recession, Nigerians, not the most patient species of humans, had sought easy emotions to a hard question. If the president lacked no “open sesame” to make the biting pains go away, then the culprit must be his age!
Then, “open sesame”: the age-youth lobby was in full ferment! All the old ones should go and yield space to the “youth”. They are not only old, their ideas are ancient. Only the “youth” have the magic wand! Really?
President Goodluck Jonathan, under whose government about everything collapsed, wasn’t exactly an old man. And former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose era laid the foundation for the Jonathan-era debacle, no thanks to free-wheeling corruption, was no young man either.
The brief interlude between the two, the decent but ill-fated President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, claimed by ill health in office, was neither young nor old. Yet, the cumulative effect of the era was near-total collapse.
In his first coming, Gen. Obasanjo was a callow youth, extremely callous in giving the short shrift to his elders, Awo, Zik and even Gen. Yakubu Gowon, though much younger than the two Titans. But what definitive difference did that era make, despite Obasanjo’s youth trumpet?
The moral? Age, in itself, is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. It is what you do with the age. Indeed, every polity needs the full utilisation of its youths and grandees. Indeed, though recent developments have thrown up relative youths as leaders, witness France, Canada and Croatia, the relatively old, still hold the statistical power mode, witness the United States, Great Britain, Malasia, where a 90-year-old just regained power, and many others.
Even back in antiquity, the Greek city state of Sparta made it a clear state policy to fully utilise every segment of its population. Out of infancy, you entered the equivalent of a Boys’ Academy to be trained for military service. After that, with all your needs met, you entered military and sundry services, at the apex of the sap of your youth. When you got old, you entered the elders’ council, when you contributed to forging state policy for the younger generation.
In Athens, though far less rigidly structured, it was more or less the same pattern, with no youth admitted to the Areopagus, the highest decision making chamber of the state.
In old Rome, the Senate was no bastion of impressionable youth, though one of two, among the old-young, could make it, based on specific spectacular personal achievements. Even in 20th century Britain, the great Winston Churchill didn’t attain the prime ministership, until he neared his winter years, on the virtual eve of World War 2.
So, all through history, leadership has always been more of elders than of youths. That couldn’t have been an accident. Inasmuch as the youth have their vigour, the elders have their wisdom, other things being equal.
Which is why it is a fallacy pushing youth leadership because the beneficiary is a youth. It’s an empty, emotive argument that doesn’t make any sense.
Let everyone come to the table and canvass with their ideas. The brilliance and practicality of ideas should cut it, not some phantom fancy about being too young or too old.
