One of the important issues highlighted by innuendo in
Obasanjo’s recent letter to Buhari on the basis of which the Ota
General advised him to forego any second term ambition is the issue
of his age. Buhari is officially 75 years old.
Babangida sought to reinforce Obasanjo’s call for Buhari not to
go for a second term by underlining Buhari’s age as a disqualifier.
As the Minna General put it:
“In 2019 and beyond, we should come to a national consensus that
we need new breed leadership with requisite capacity to manage our
diversities and jump-start a process of launching the country on
the super highway of technology-driven leadership in line with the
dynamics of modern governance.
“It is short of saying enough of this analogue system. Let’s
give way for digital leadership orientation with all the trappings
of consultative, constructive, communicative, interactive and
utility-driven approach where everyone has a role to play in the
process of enthroning accountability and transparency in
governance.”
In the above passage, Babangida implied that there is a
relationship between age and ability to govern well. Here the young
(the digital age) are assumed to possess critical skills that the
old (the analogue generation) lack.
Even before Babangida’s call for the leadership mantle to be
handed over to the ‘digital generation’, there has been an episodic
obsession with the politics of generation shift in the country – an
obsession that seemed to have reached its crescendo last year when
Emmanuel Macron was elected the youngest President of France at
39.
With the renewed interest in the young taking over from the
analogue generation, I feel a need to update some of my
interrogations of the simplistic assumptions in the ‘generation
shift’ argument:
One, I see the new ‘digital generation’ mantra as part of our
search for an alchemy – a magic buzzword that can unlock the
mystery of why we are where we are politically and economically
despite our potentials. But the truth is that we have experimented
with several mantras in the past – ‘import-substitution’,
‘structural adjustment programme’, ‘rolling back the state’,
‘bringing back the state’, ‘strong institutions and not strong
men’, ‘it takes strong men to create strong institutions’ etc.
Unfortunately none of the mantras lived up to the hype and the
country remains on the precipice as its comfort zone – as it has
always been. The past mantras failed basically because their
underlying assumptions were not robustly interrogated. Therefore
while I essentially agree with the general thrust of the letters by
both Obasanjo and Babangida, I will place the reasons for the
‘failures’ of Buhari’s government, not on his age, but on other
factors.
Two, the assumption that the ‘old generation’ has always
dominated the governance of this country is not factually correct.
In fact if we compare the age at which Nigerian leaders come to
office with those of their counterparts elsewhere, it becomes clear
that the country’s governance has always been dominated by young
people. This is the age at which these Nigerian leaders assumed
office: Tafawa Balewa, the First and only Nigerian Prime (48);
Nnamdi Azikiwe (ceremonial president at 56); Aguiyi Ironsi (42);
Yakubu Gowon (32); Murtala Muhammed (37) Obasanjo (as Military Head
of State, 39); Shehu Shagari (54), Buhari (Military Head of State,
42): Babangida (44); Shonekan ( 57); Abacha (50) Abdulsalam
Abubakar (56); Obasanjo (as civilian President, 61); Umaru Musa
Yaradua (60); Goodluck Jonathan (53) and Buhari (as civilian
President, 72).
Now compare the ages of these Nigerian leaders with the ages of
the youngest leaders from other advanced countries we normally like
to look up. In the USA, the ages of the country’s five youngest
Presidents when they took office were: Theodore Roosevelt (42
years, 10 months and 18 days); John F Kennedy (43 years, 7 months
and 22 days old); Bill Clinton (46); Ulysses Grant (46 years and 10
months) and Barack Obama (47 years, 5 months and 16 days old).
In the UK, David Cameron became the youngest British Prime
Minister in almost 200 years (since Lord Liverpool in 1812) at the
age of 43. In Germany Angela Merkel, became the youngest German
chancellor at 51 in 2005. In France, The youngest person to become
Prime Minister was Laurent Fabius, (at the age of 37 years, 332
days). Emmanuel Macron, who became President at 39 years, 144 days)
became the youngest French President and one of the youngest
European leaders. Remarkably Gowon, Murtala Muhamed and Obasanjo
were all younger than him when they took office. In the US no one
under the age of 42 has ever ruled that country.
When it comes to the age of parliamentarians, Nigerian
parliamentarians are on average much younger than their
counterparts elsewhere. In 2012 for instance the average age of
European parliamentarians was 53 years while the current average
age of the Members of the House of Representatives in the USA is 57
years, and 62 years for Senators. In Nigeria, the average age of
our parliamentarians is not only much lower, Joseph Wayas (Second
Republic) and Dimeji Bankole (Fourth Republic) became Senate
President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively
in their 30s.
Based on the above, if youth or ‘digital’ age correlates
positively with effective leadership, then since most of our
leaders have been young people, Nigeria ought to have been doing
better. This means that in the new mantra of generation shift, it
is not clear whether it is those over 60 who should be clamouring
for power to shift to them since only a handful of Nigerian leaders
came to office after 60.
Three, quite often those pushing for a ‘digital generation’ fail
to articulate any meaningful ideas exclusively possessed by the
youth or recognize that the youths have in fact been historically
dominant at all levels of governance in the country. Such people
also often fail to define those they will classify as youths and
those to be classified as ‘old generation’. For example where do
you put Donald Trump, who despite his vile personality, is full of
energy and tweets frequently at inhuman hours at 71? Where do you
put Obasanjo who at over 80 is very active as a global statesman
and was able to get a PhD at over 80 years of age? And where do you
put some young graduates and those in their 40s and 50s who know
nothing about the world around them or even what a keyboard means?
The truth is that there are ‘young old men’ and ‘old young men’
such that it becomes problematic to conceptualize generation shift
as a form of relay race between the old (analogue) and the young
(digital) generations, in which the old, out of exhaustion or
impending exhaustion have to pass on the baton to the younger, and
presumably more dynamic runners. In reality, ‘generation gap’ often
denotes the dominant ideas and ways of doing things of an era, and
subscribers to such new ways could be both the old and young even
though certain age groups tend to be more closely allied with
certain trends. A good example here is the networking websites
Facebook, which initially was a fad for the young but has since
been embraced also by the not so young. If the President of a
country is say 70 years old, while his cabinet, the civil service
and the bureaucracy are dominated by young people, will such a
government be said to be under an old guard or young people?
Besides, all over the world chronological age is no longer what it
used to be – people not only live longer but also healthier
Four, no study that has found any relationship between age and
performance in office by political leaders. For instance Ronald
Reagan who became US President at 69 and Bill Clinton who became
President at 46 are often regarded as among the greatest US
Presidents. In the same vein George W Bush who became President at
55 is often ranked among the worst of the country’s Presidents just
as Americans seem to be having a ‘buyer’s remorse’ with Donald
Trump who became President at 70. In Nigeria, it has not been
proven that our young governors are the best performers (on the
contrary some are among the worst culprits when it comes to not
paying workers’ salaries).
Five, I feel that the major challenge of the Buhari government
is not his age but his approach to politics and governance that
makes him fail the public perception index of at least many people
from the South and parts of the Middle Belt. I believe that Buhari
has not done as well as he should have done when it comes to
nation-building and that the consequent perception of him as a
sectional leader has beclouded whatever achievements he may have
recorded elsewhere – at least among his critics. A puzzle that will
remain debatable however is whether Buhari’s approach to politics
and nation-building is driven by his insular nature or whether it
is his perception of the country and its politics that influenced
his decision to become insular.
One of the important issues highlighted by innuendo in
Obasanjo’s recent letter to Buhari on the basis of which the Ota
General advised him to forego any second term ambition is the issue
of his age. Buhari is officially 75 years old.
Babangida sought to reinforce Obasanjo’s call for Buhari not to
go for a second term by underlining Buhari’s age as a disqualifier.
As the Minna General put it:
“In 2019 and beyond, we should come to a national consensus that
we need new breed leadership with requisite capacity to manage our
diversities and jump-start a process of launching the country on
the super highway of technology-driven leadership in line with the
dynamics of modern governance.
“It is short of saying enough of this analogue system. Let’s
give way for digital leadership orientation with all the trappings
of consultative, constructive, communicative, interactive and
utility-driven approach where everyone has a role to play in the
process of enthroning accountability and transparency in
governance.”
In the above passage, Babangida implied that there is a
relationship between age and ability to govern well. Here the young
(the digital age) are assumed to possess critical skills that the
old (the analogue generation) lack.
Even before Babangida’s call for the leadership mantle to be
handed over to the ‘digital generation’, there has been an episodic
obsession with the politics of generation shift in the country – an
obsession that seemed to have reached its crescendo last year when
Emmanuel Macron was elected the youngest President of France at
39.
With the renewed interest in the young taking over from the
analogue generation, I feel a need to update some of my
interrogations of the simplistic assumptions in the ‘generation
shift’ argument:
One, I see the new ‘digital generation’ mantra as part of our
search for an alchemy – a magic buzzword that can unlock the
mystery of why we are where we are politically and economically
despite our potentials. But the truth is that we have experimented
with several mantras in the past – ‘import-substitution’,
‘structural adjustment programme’, ‘rolling back the state’,
‘bringing back the state’, ‘strong institutions and not strong
men’, ‘it takes strong men to create strong institutions’ etc.
Unfortunately none of the mantras lived up to the hype and the
country remains on the precipice as its comfort zone – as it has
always been. The past mantras failed basically because their
underlying assumptions were not robustly interrogated. Therefore
while I essentially agree with the general thrust of the letters by
both Obasanjo and Babangida, I will place the reasons for the
‘failures’ of Buhari’s government, not on his age, but on other
factors.
Two, the assumption that the ‘old generation’ has always
dominated the governance of this country is not factually correct.
In fact if we compare the age at which Nigerian leaders come to
office with those of their counterparts elsewhere, it becomes clear
that the country’s governance has always been dominated by young
people. This is the age at which these Nigerian leaders assumed
office: Tafawa Balewa, the First and only Nigerian Prime (48);
Nnamdi Azikiwe (ceremonial president at 56); Aguiyi Ironsi (42);
Yakubu Gowon (32); Murtala Muhammed (37) Obasanjo (as Military Head
of State, 39); Shehu Shagari (54), Buhari (Military Head of State,
42): Babangida (44); Shonekan ( 57); Abacha (50) Abdulsalam
Abubakar (56); Obasanjo (as civilian President, 61); Umaru Musa
Yaradua (60); Goodluck Jonathan (53) and Buhari (as civilian
President, 72).
Now compare the ages of these Nigerian leaders with the ages of
the youngest leaders from other advanced countries we normally like
to look up. In the USA, the ages of the country’s five youngest
Presidents when they took office were: Theodore Roosevelt (42
years, 10 months and 18 days); John F Kennedy (43 years, 7 months
and 22 days old); Bill Clinton (46); Ulysses Grant (46 years and 10
months) and Barack Obama (47 years, 5 months and 16 days old).
In the UK, David Cameron became the youngest British Prime
Minister in almost 200 years (since Lord Liverpool in 1812) at the
age of 43. In Germany Angela Merkel, became the youngest German
chancellor at 51 in 2005. In France, The youngest person to become
Prime Minister was Laurent Fabius, (at the age of 37 years, 332
days). Emmanuel Macron, who became President at 39 years, 144 days)
became the youngest French President and one of the youngest
European leaders. Remarkably Gowon, Murtala Muhamed and Obasanjo
were all younger than him when they took office. In the US no one
under the age of 42 has ever ruled that country.
When it comes to the age of parliamentarians, Nigerian
parliamentarians are on average much younger than their
counterparts elsewhere. In 2012 for instance the average age of
European parliamentarians was 53 years while the current average
age of the Members of the House of Representatives in the USA is 57
years, and 62 years for Senators. In Nigeria, the average age of
our parliamentarians is not only much lower, Joseph Wayas (Second
Republic) and Dimeji Bankole (Fourth Republic) became Senate
President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively
in their 30s.
Based on the above, if youth or ‘digital’ age correlates
positively with effective leadership, then since most of our
leaders have been young people, Nigeria ought to have been doing
better. This means that in the new mantra of generation shift, it
is not clear whether it is those over 60 who should be clamouring
for power to shift to them since only a handful of Nigerian leaders
came to office after 60.
Three, quite often those pushing for a ‘digital generation’ fail
to articulate any meaningful ideas exclusively possessed by the
youth or recognize that the youths have in fact been historically
dominant at all levels of governance in the country. Such people
also often fail to define those they will classify as youths and
those to be classified as ‘old generation’. For example where do
you put Donald Trump, who despite his vile personality, is full of
energy and tweets frequently at inhuman hours at 71? Where do you
put Obasanjo who at over 80 is very active as a global statesman
and was able to get a PhD at over 80 years of age? And where do you
put some young graduates and those in their 40s and 50s who know
nothing about the world around them or even what a keyboard means?
The truth is that there are ‘young old men’ and ‘old young men’
such that it becomes problematic to conceptualize generation shift
as a form of relay race between the old (analogue) and the young
(digital) generations, in which the old, out of exhaustion or
impending exhaustion have to pass on the baton to the younger, and
presumably more dynamic runners. In reality, ‘generation gap’ often
denotes the dominant ideas and ways of doing things of an era, and
subscribers to such new ways could be both the old and young even
though certain age groups tend to be more closely allied with
certain trends. A good example here is the networking websites
Facebook, which initially was a fad for the young but has since
been embraced also by the not so young. If the President of a
country is say 70 years old, while his cabinet, the civil service
and the bureaucracy are dominated by young people, will such a
government be said to be under an old guard or young people?
Besides, all over the world chronological age is no longer what it
used to be – people not only live longer but also healthier
Four, no study that has found any relationship between age and
performance in office by political leaders. For instance Ronald
Reagan who became US President at 69 and Bill Clinton who became
President at 46 are often regarded as among the greatest US
Presidents. In the same vein George W Bush who became President at
55 is often ranked among the worst of the country’s Presidents just
as Americans seem to be having a ‘buyer’s remorse’ with Donald
Trump who became President at 70. In Nigeria, it has not been
proven that our young governors are the best performers (on the
contrary some are among the worst culprits when it comes to not
paying workers’ salaries).
Five, I feel that the major challenge of the Buhari government
is not his age but his approach to politics and governance that
makes him fail the public perception index of at least many people
from the South and parts of the Middle Belt. I believe that Buhari
has not done as well as he should have done when it comes to
nation-building and that the consequent perception of him as a
sectional leader has beclouded whatever achievements he may have
recorded elsewhere – at least among his critics. A puzzle that will
remain debatable however is whether Buhari’s approach to politics
and nation-building is driven by his insular nature or whether it
is his perception of the country and its politics that influenced
his decision to become insular.
Read more https://nairalaw.com/are-digital-age-leaders-really-the-answer/