Aso Rock Villa: A Presidency or Old People’s Home?

By Bello M. Zaki
I am old, I am in my early 60s, therefore I don’t have anything against old people
or old age; but when it comes to electing old and sickly people to lead an already
troubled nation like Nigeria, I must balk. Ms Naja’atu Muhammad, a chieftain of
the All Progressive Congress (APC) and a Director in its Campaign Council, was
in the news this week when she told media men that her principal, Asiwaju Bola
Ahmed Tinubu (ABAT) the APC Presidential Flag bearer, was so frail and shaken
that he could not hold a tea cup, he had to be assisted. She said that Tinubu had
demonstrated clear symptoms of dementia when she visited him for a private
meeting in London: “Asiwaju that I sat with for two hours, he slept most of the
time, it was Bisi Akande that I was really talking to. Most importantly he is not
only physically unfit, he is mentally unfit.”
Tinubu’s age, officially put at 70, had been a subject of controversy, like his other
parameters such as his name, place of birth and educational qualification, ever
before he signified interest to contest for the presidency last year. Now Ms
Muhammad has confirmed the rumours opponents were peddling on social media
platforms, that he is physically and mental unstable.
ABAT, who has a track record of administering Lagos very well, a state with a
large population and rich economy bigger and better developed than those of many
countries in Africa and other continents, could not be said to be incapable of ruling
Nigeria well; but it became a case of concern when the media started to show him struggling and unable to hold his party’s flag on the day he was nominated; sleeping at a presidential campaign meetings; inability to answer basic questions on the nation’s economy at the London Chartham House last year, calling on aides to assist him; being physically assisted in his movement on platforms at campaign rallies; mixing the name of his party and that of its opposition at a rally; speaking incoherently and reading poorly from a script at rallies and many others. This made me to abandon a pressing project to look into the issue of age and leadership
amongst presidential contestants in the forth coming election.
Nigerians must avoid making the mistake that would lead to the present
embarrassment situation the people of Cameroon are going through with their 89-
year-old president, Paul Biya. The social media had recently showed a video clip
where President Biya was urinating and wetting his trousers at a public gathering;
he was also unable to get up and deliver a speech at the U.S Africa Leaders’
Summit in December last year, despite being prompted to, twice by aides; he was
even asked to read the speech sitting down, but he kept on fidgeting with the paper
absent mindedly. He farted loudly twice in the process, and a recorded
conversation with his aides indicated that he was completely unaware of where he
was and for what purpose. President Biya is reported to live mostly in Switzerland
on medical care, leaving the country for a cabal to rule.
Nigerians should also recuperate and wake up from the grievous mistake of
electing the 72-year-old Muhammadu Buhari. I did not only vote for Buhari, but
had contributed in so many ways in his 2015 electoral success, like other
Nigerians: Farmers, artisans, food vendors, petty traders and others who
contributed their crops and meagre earnings to fund his campaigns; so also were
the millions that trooped to the polling stations and stayed the whole day to vote,
and waited and watched the conduct of the election to make sure he was not rigged
out; many lost their lives, others were taken ill while pregnant women delivered on
voting queues out of stress. Bu immediately he was sworn-in and started flying to
that London hospital, all the marvelous Nigerian dream the common man expected
him to deliver faded away, leaving the leadership of the country in strange hands
that took us where we are today – the wife was right when she said he was hijacked
by members of a clique that now runs the government, just like the case of
President Biya.
Going by age, the 18 racing into the Aso Rock Villa in the February election could
be categorized into old men (6 of them), those between the age of 65 and 80, such
as: Sani Yabagi Yusuf (65) of Action Democratic Party (ADP); Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (65) of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP); Umeadi Peter Nnanna
(69) of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA); Osakwe Felix Johnson (70) of
National Rescue Movement (NRM), Tinubu Bola Ahmed (70) of All Progressives
Congress (APC), and Abubakar Atiku (76) of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
(Age 76 years). The second group are the young-old men (6 of them), of age
between 60 to 64, such as: Al-Mustapha Hamza (62) of Action Alliance (AA); Obi
Peter Gregory (60) of Labour Party (LP); Abiola Latifu Kolawole (60) of Peoples
Redemption Party (PRP); Ado-Ibrahim Abdumalik (60) of Young Progressives
Party (YPP); Nwanyanwu Daniel Daberechukwu (60) of Zenith Labour Party
(ZLP). There are also the men (2 of them), aged between 50 to 59, such as:
Adebayo Adewole Ebenezer (52) of Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Sowore
Omoyele (51) of African Action Congress (AAC). There are also the young men,
of between 40 and 49, the group that only one person featured, Kachikwu Dumebi
(40) of African Democratic Congress (ADC), and the Youths, that are between the
minimum contesting age of 30 and 39, with only Imumolen Christopher (39) of
Accord Party (AP) contesting.
The issue of old age had surfaced in U.S politics in 2016 when Donald Trump (69),
was contesting the presidency, as the average age of the previous presidents was 56
years. The fear was that he could abandon his duties to others after he won, while
attending to ill health resulting to old age, as it happened to Nigerians in the
present dispensation. Trump therefore promised Americans that he would submit
himself to the White House Chief Physician to ascertain his health competency
after his swearing in, and he would resign immediately if he was found incapable
of executing his duties on the ground of his health status. Shall our old and young-
old men presidential contestants oblige us this privilege?
When Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017 as the 45th U.S President, at
the age of 70, he was the second oldest amongst the eight oldest U.S Presidents;
others are: Joe Biden, the oldest, he was 78 when he took the oath of office as the
46th president of the United States in January 2021; the third oldest was Ronald
Reagan who was 69 when he was sworn-in as the 40th president of the U.S in
January 1980; the fourth oldest was James Buchanan, the 15th U.S President who
was sworn in 1867 at the age of 65; the fifth oldest was George H.W. Bush, 64, the
41st president sworn-in in 1989; the 6th was Dwight Eisenhower, 62, Sworn in as
the 34th president in January 1953; the 7th oldest was Andrew Jackson, the 7th
American president sworn-in in January 1829 at the age of 61; the 8th oldest was
Henry S. Truman who was 60 when he became the 33rd president in 1945.

All the eight oldest presidents of the U.S had successfully served two terms, except
Donald Trump and H.W. Bush who were defeated by their opponents after their
first term, and James Buchanan who could not contest for second term due to ill
health. As regards performance, two of these oldies made the list of ten best U.S
Presidents: Henry S. Truman, the 7th best and Dwight Eisenhower the 6th best;
while Donald Trump and James Buchannan were listed as second and third worst
presidents of the U.S amongst the 45 that served. Also, the two youngest American
presidents were amongst the best ten: Theodore Roosevelt who ascended following
the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 at the age of 42, was listed as the
4
th best American president, and John F. Kennedy elected in 1961 at the age of 43,
was listed as the 9th best. (CBS NEWS September 13, 2022 @
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/presidents-ranked-worst-best/38/).
Therefore, age, health status and experience determine ability and performance of a
leader. But there is a very serious issue in even ascertaining the true age of the
contestants in Nigeria, not to talk of their true health situations. Like the case of
Tinubu who put his age at 69 last year, a careful forensic investigations of
Wikipedia put it at 79 as reported by the Foundation of Investigative Journalists
(https://fij.ng/article/wikipedia-puts-tinubus-age-at-79-on-daughters-page-after-multiple-edits/).
Observers became alert when the Wikipedia page of Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, Bola
Tinubu’s daughter and Iyaloja of Nigeria, said she was 60 and Tinubu her father
was 69 in December 2021. It is not usual for a man to father a child at 9, therefore,
forensic experts investigated the issue, with additional facts discovered, they put
Tinubu’s age at 79 then.
A coalition of more than 40 youth-based initiatives across the country had,
between the year 2016 and 2017, relentlessly fought for the reduction in the age of
election contest in Nigeria to enable young people participate fully in the politics
of their country and have vibrant youth to lead the country; the battle cry was ‘Not
too Young to Run’. A Bill with that name went successfully through the National
Assembly and was adopted by 33 State Houses of Assembly, representing more
than two-thirds of the country’s 36 states, and was passed by the House of
Representatives in July of that year, and was signed into law by President
Muhammadu Buhari in May 2018: The new law altered Sections 65, 106, 131, 177
of the 1999 constitution and reduced the age qualification for president from 40 to
30; House of Representatives membership from 30 to 25 and State House of
Assembly membership from 30 to 25, but did not change the age qualification for
governorship and Senate; both were retained at 35 years.

Despite the reduction of the age for contesting public offices, one can see from the
line-up of the nation’s presidential flag bearers above, the youth are left on the
lurch, so also it is when you come down to the legislative and the gubernatorial
contests. Political analysts had attributed the situation to maneuver by the old
political class, in form of money politics, election malpractices, godfatherism and
various forms of corrupt practices in the political system, like making the contest
so exorbitant, scaring away not only the youths, but the competent hands in the
country, leaving the field free for the very corrupt old guards to play with
impunity.
I see the failure to have the able and the competent at the helm of our political
affairs in the selection process for the party flag bearers at the party primaries. We
all heard of the criminal high cost of party nomination forms in the last party
primaries and how party delegates were bought with foreign currency to vote out
their conscience. For a solution, the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) should make it mandatory for every political party in the country to
establish and maintain an electronic register at local government level, of all card
carrying members with their full data including National Identification Numbers
(NIN), making only financial members that must have registered at least in the last
six months to vote and be voted for in both party leadership and primaries for
general elections. All posts including that of the president should be directly
balloted by all financial card-carrying party members, and not delegates, else the
Aso Rock Villa will be turned into an old people’s home.