On the wake of electioneering campaigns for the last general elections, some Idoma sycophants drummed support for Senator David Mark. Among their laughable reasons was ‘maturity and experience’. I for one countered and deconstructed their sycophantic posture on pages of newspapers and social media. They forgot that even lawyers come to the legislative chambers to learn the nuances of legislation. Leadership must have succession as heritage for continuity of any system. Those who want to sit tight and die in position of power are not in sync with the reality of the modern time. If the younger people are pervasively excluded from political participation and yet expected to be the leaders of tomorrow then we shall have social anomie. Those who manipulate them today shall live to see the negative results.
If the National Assembly has been turned to a rendezvous for ex-governors or a gerontocracy, someone should tell me why many of these tired legislators sleep through legislative sessions. Our fifth termers have not been very active lately since their party lost to APC.
In developed countries, national leadership at the executive and legislative arms of government are increasingly becoming an exclusive reserve of the youths. While in Africa, the reverse is the case as recycled group of ex- military men and their civilian collaborators in the civil service and private business dominate the political space. Yet, the media is always inundated with the lip service of “the youths are the leaders of tomorrow.” Has their tomorrow not been destroyed by the crops of leadership we have today? It is a systemic failure that borders on the recurrence decimal as the seeds of destruction were sown right from the time of self rule. Instead of concentrating on building a solid national foundation based on integration and development, the three major ethnic groups were busy fighting primordial ethnic and religious war of hate and suspicion. Today, we are living witness to a slide towards disintegration as these three principal stake holders in the Nigerian project struggle to maintain the fragile oneness.
All major and minor stake holders have in the recent past sat at national conferences to deconstruct and reconstruct the framework of the Nigerian project, but come out more confused than before. As we trudged on with the burden of nation building, must we continue to pretend that the youths of Nigeria are the leaders of tomorrow?
- By Comrade Ogbu Ameh
Akatekwe Kingdom of Ogbadibo LGA
Benue State