All over the world, a country’s seat of government serves as a brain box where policies and programs tailored to improve the lives of citizens are plotted.
It is therefore an aberration when any nation in their rightful judgment (sic) decides that their own seat of government should be a Rehabilitation Center or Old People’s Home to nurse people whose mental power and physical ability have degraded considerably.
Sadly, this is what has been playing out in Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria since 2015 when the All Progressive Congress, APC, bulldozed their way into the nation’s seat of power.
Late President Muhammadu Buhari mounted the saddle for eight years from 2015, and at a point even confessed that he no longer had what it takes to drive the nation towards the desired destination as a result of the inevitable natural ‘diminishing returns’ that had set in, in his life. However, the hawks around him prodded him to hang on despite the well intentioned advice from well.meaning Nigerians, particularly our sage, former president Obasanjo who in several missives to the late president urged him to dismount from the ‘rock’ for the interest of the nation.
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At a point during the Buhari era, it became obvious that the president had ceded power to an amorphous group referred to as Cabals who ruthlessly ran the country aground to the point of becoming the World Poverty Capital amidst huge human and material resources.
Whatever Nigerians are going through today in terms of economic hardship in the midst of plenty is a cumulative effect of a rudderless leadership enthroned in the last 12 years under the APC .
It is an anathema that a nation like Nigeria that is in dire need of socio-economic advancement is being bogged down by the inordinate desires of men who should be in their homesteads enjoying folktales with their grand and great grand children having spent their active years.
Nigeria has not formally adopted gerontocracy as a system of government, but that is what the APC as a party is foisting on Nigerians in the likes of Buhari and Tinubu. In many critical cases, they failed to live up to expectations, preferring to operate through surrogates.
For some time, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has been locked in a running battle with the numerous spokespersons of the Tinubu administration over the inscrutable age of the president.
Atiku has maintained that Tinubu is way above 90, saying he can prove it even in court, while the handlers of the president are saying otherwise and calling Atiku names.
Tinubu’s official age is put at 74, but every discerning eye would not be deceived to accept that dummy looking at the gait and physical appearance of the president. Even at 74, should the president be encouraged to hang on even with the visible frailties and unstable movement that is seen about him. He often sounds incoherent even while reading prepared speeches. It is worse whenever he is speaking extempore.
Nigerians have seen all these and many believe that the president should be helped to retire home and leave the political turf for those who still posses the grit to lead and not holed up in State House while the nation burns.
Emilokun is anti Nigeria. It was intended to satisfy selfish ego and not informed by a genuine desire to help a nation in dire need of leadership recalibration. And that is why we have landed where we are with many Nigerians slipping down into poverty line .
Yet the president does not care a hoot. For him, poverty or hardship predated him, so no one should bother him about hardship in the land. After all, he is well cared for in the REHABILITATION CENTER where he has everything at his beck and call.
But Nigerians have a chance to abolish gerontocracy in our political life and shut out anyone or group intending to turn our hallowed seat of power into a Rehabilitation Center or Old People’s Home. 2027 presents that opportunity and Nigerians must dispassionately rise up to the occasion.
Our mumu don do.
