Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday to elect a new president for another four-year term.
Like in the days of old, two men very advanced in their years are the centerpieces of this electoral jigsaw.
Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari who is four years short of his eightieth birthday is pitted against Atiku Abubakar who is past 72.
By all indications, the 16 February election in Africa’s most populous country presents a living contrast as old men chase after young voters in their bid to win the highest office in the land.
The country’s estimated 35 million youth will provide the decider.
Nigeria has one of the largest concentrations of youths in the world and therefore their votes can make or break any one of the two candidates both of whom are keen on their votes.
As expected the two contenders have been on the campaign trail promising ‘heaven on earth’ for young Nigerians millions of whom are jobless university grads who are fed up with the empty promises of the past but find themselves still in the gripping paw of old men whose obsession with the presidency dates back to the very foundation of an independent Nigeria.
Buhari who made his second coming to power by means of the democratic ballot in 2015 inherited a National Youth Policy from 1999.
Under this policy the development of young people through education was supposed to be the backbone of successive governments.
While marking Democracy Day last year, he made his now famous declaration that he was signing his “Not Too Young to Run” Bill, an official nod to youth to seek political office.
The law cuts the required age for aspirants to the state Houses of Assembly and House of Representatives from 30 to 25 years.
35 is the magic number for those wanting to lead the country.
However, this nod to those nursing presidential ambitions came with a caveat.
Buhari wants the youth to hold their presidential ambition on ice until after 2019 when he would have been ineligible to run for office again, effectively disqualified by the constitution.
For many Nigerian youth, Buhari’s first term as president has seen a lot of unfulfilled promises to young people, the most important among them employment for the hundreds of thousands of graduates.
The wars on corruption and the Boko Haram insurgency still rage while his track record against poverty has not caused much of an impression to the country’s teeming mass of almost 200 million people.
Meanwhile his challenger Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president under Olusegun Obasanjo who feels he is on a rescue mission, has also been keen to impress and entice young people with his promises of jobs, education, empowerment and social incentives if they hand him their votes.
According to him at least ten million Nigerians, including young people, had lost their jobs in the years under Buhari and his All Progressives Congress administration.
Other pivotal parts of message is to end poverty, tackle the insecurity in the country’s northeast and cause a serious dent in corruption.
Writing in the Vanguard, social commentator Carllister Ejinkeonye has warned Nigerian youths to ‘shine your eyes’, a local euphemism for young people to be vigilant the real intentions of their politicians.
“I grew up with a firm belief that adults don’t lie. This was reinforced by the way children were sternly rebuked and punished for lying, mostly, in attempts to exonerate themselves when they had done something bad. Sadly, today, I now know better as I see most adults, even ‘big’ ones, flagrantly lying, thereby, teaching young people never to admit their errors and faults just to remain ‘relevant’. What a legacy being passed down?”
Ejinkeonye pulled no punches while brutally dissecting the politics of old men in Nigeria, writing: “Today, what we have is an aberration. Old men, often referred to as ‘elder statesmen’ and ‘honourable’ men engage in wars, abusing and rubbishing themselves in the name of politics, because wealth, power and fame have blinded the eyes of many to the fact they are, indeed, old and should take time to prepare for life beyond here, while at the same time helping to create an atmosphere conducive for sustaining their good works at the hands of the next generation. Unfortunately, it looks like they are not desirous of having successors. When and where they even allow that, they would insist on those successors having them as god-fathers, so, they could remote-control them from the comfort of their homes. It would seem that they have meanwhile escaped the consequences of their evils. But our discourse today ought to be food for thought for today’s youths”.
As a huge chunk of Nigeria’s over 33 million young people go to the polls to make a choice between two old men, wary social commentators like Carllister Ejinkeonye cant resist the urge to partake in the debate about the real intentions of the old men who continue to dominate political life in Africa’s biggest economy.