LEADERSHIP: What Has Age Got To Do With It? - James Ibori

The call for power shift from the older to the younger generation is fast gaining currency. This political discourse has occupied the public space in recent times and understandably so. The question is what level of leadership are we talking about and what age suitability should be considered; below age 40 or 50 or 60? Or even below age 30? We are yet to interrogate the idea that the failure of leadership may not necessarily be age related.

Closely related to this idea is the proposition that this failure is actually across all sections of society. That is to say, it may not be restricted to political leadership alone because other sections of the society that are by nature exclusive to the youth are also afflicted. For example, university students’ unions and the financial sector where we have a large proportion of young people in senior management positions. Have these young men and women exhibited the leadership qualities lacking in the older generation? We must, of necessity, answer this question. We also have young men and women as ministers of God. Many of them are at the helm of affairs in majority of the churches in Nigeria. Has the youth trumped the old in behaviour, morality, leadership, integrity and frugality? How have our youths fared in the professions, the military and the civil service? Do they even hold out any hope for the nation?

One problem that appears to have bedevilled Nigeria is the “one solution fits all” and “easy way out” syndrome. We are quick to proffer ill-thought out solutions to all our problems; transfer political power to the youths and all our problems are solved.

When nine years ago Americans voted in a 47-year old Barack Obama as their President, many Nigerians enthused that American politics had embraced youth power. That Obama had attended the best schools in his country, volunteered again and again in providing free services to his communities, and had been involved in politics as early as he could, and the fact that he had been elected into the country’s Senate did not matter in their reasoning. The only thing that registered was that a black person below age 50 was President. Many never bothered to study his trajectory to power. Had they done that, they would have realised that Obama did not become President simply because the United States of America decided that the old must give way to the young or whites to blacks. No, Obama became President because, at that moment, he was adjudged the best among those who offered themselves for election. He had built up some national gravitas. He had been noted as having something to offer his nation, something great enough to even transcend whatever obstacles that had blocked the way of every black politician before him. In as much as his election was a black revolution, it was actually personal to Barack Obama.

There was no national consensus before the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi began to defend people for free. And when he began that public service in 1969, he was a young lawyer. Let it not be forgotten that when the late Chief Anthony Eromesele Enahoro was jailed because of his struggle for Nigeria’s independence, he was just 21 years old. The Wole Soyinkas, the John Pepper Clarks, and the Chinua Achebes that we celebrate today achieved greatness while they were in their youth. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart at the age of 28. Ben Enwonwu became a master sculptor in his youth. There was no national consensus that literary greatness should be taken from the old to the young then. And when the Ben Okris and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies took over the mantle of becoming great writers, they begged for no let or leave from the old. They just did what they had to do. They tasked themselves until they achieved greatness.

The election of a 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron in France may have galvanised a section of Nigerians to think that the time is NOW. Monsieur Macron did not contest for office solely on the basis of being a “youth”; he ran in a national election based on concrete ideas. He ran against popular Eurosceptic and anti-immigration candidates. He believed in something. It was not because someone mobilised the French voters to support a young man. In electing Macron, France voted a left of centre politics.

Macron has been in public service for decades. He studied Philosophy at Paris Nanterre University before obtaining a Masters degree in Public Affairs at Sciences Po. He graduated from the École nationale d’administration (ÉNA) in 2004. He worked at the Inspectorate General of Finances, and later became an investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque. Before entering politics, he was a senior civil servant and investment banker. He joined the Socialist Party in 2006 and was appointed Deputy Secretary General in François Hollande’s first government in May 2012. He was appointed Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in 2014 under the Second Valls government, where he pushed through business-friendly reforms. He resigned in August 2016 to launch a bid for the 2017 presidential election under the banner of En Marche!, a centrist political movement he founded in April 2016, and won the election on 7 May 2017. Macron made history as the youngest President in the history of France, but he actually paid his dues. He learnt the ropes and acquired experience. He was tested to the hilt. He did not scream that he represented the youths whose turn it was to take over power.

A good look at Nigeria’s political history will throw up the fact that, ironically, the problem of Nigeria has been caused, in large part, by exuberant young men who were at the helm of affairs in the first decade of the nation’s independence; civilian and military alike. Major Patrick Chukwuma Nzeogwu was just 28 years old when he pulled off his January 15, 1966 coup. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, under whom Nigeria fought a civil war, was 32 when he became Head of State and could not prevent the war that started when he turned 33. Even the first military Head of State, Gen Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi was 41 when he mounted the saddle. Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was in his 30s when he started the Egbe Omo Oduduwa as a university student in London. This association later metamorphosed into a political party, the Action Group. The late Sir Ahmadu Bello was in the same age bracket when he rallied the North together through the Northern Peoples Congress and the late Mallam Aminu Kano was also about the same age when he decided to speak up for the rights of the “talakawas”. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was just 30 years old when he returned from the US and began his Pan-Africanist struggle in Ghana. Their failures and successes cannot and should not be laid at the doorstep of age. It was not because they were old or young men. The reason for their failures must be found elsewhere.