Tinubu’s joke, Atiku’s jab and the lazy Nigerian youths [Pulse Editor's Opinion]

The dream of the Nigerian youths to sponsor and feature their own political candidates in the 2023 elections is suddenly disappearing like a fart in the wind.

About 27 months before the 2023 elections, young Nigerians had ‘planned’ to relegate the aging politicians and take over the affairs of the country.

But as the 2023 elections approach, the visionary youths are no longer seeing themselves in a position that could place them in the driver’s seat.

Sadly, some of the vanguards of the youth-in-politics campaigns are either taking the back seat or queuing behind the political class, while the politicians they planned to reject are taking steps to keep ruling. 

The clamour for youths to occupy political positions started with the #nottooyoungtorun movement.

In October 2020, during the heat of the #EndSARS saga, the youths’ agitation to take over from the political dinosaurs in the corridors of power was rife on Twitter.

They mapped out a plan to establish their political party ahead of the 2023 elections and also came up with a presidential candidate they believed would turn the country around.

In a bid to take their destiny in their hands by 2023, the youths enthusiastically came up with their political party’s identities such as logo, campaign slogan and even suggested candidates to represent their interests in the upcoming elections.

There were also conversations around how the youth party would be funded through crowdfunding because no politician was going to be allowed to weaponise the mass poverty in the country to win an election again. 

In fact, there were virtual posters of Aisha Yesufu and Folarin Falana aka Falz as presidential and vice-presidential candidates respectively. 

Young Nigerians looked unstoppable. Their morale was high and they seemed ready to wrestle power from the political class that keeps failing the country.

Interestingly, Nigeria’s population is statistically in favour of the youths. No politician in his late 60s or 70s would win an election in the country if the youths decide to present and elect the candidates they genuinely want. 

The #EndSARS episode was ostensibly a great impetus for Nigerian youths to determine the future of the country. 

The youths seized the moment not only to air their ideas and feelings on how the country should be administered but also to send a signal to the grandfathers in power that their time was winding up.

Also, with the signing of the Not Too Young To Run bill by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018, Nigerians in their 30s have the backing of the law to lead the country.

With this, the ground appeared to have been prepared for the youths to present their candidates; fly their party’s flag, and take control of the country’s affairs. But like penguins, the youth’s dream can only flap its wings on Twitter, it can not fly, at least not in the next election.

Twelve months to the general elections, the aging politicians the youths do not want to see again are out and putting the youths in their place, despite all their perceived plans and purported readiness in 2020.

On Sunday, February 20, 2022, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu during his visit to Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, the Alaafin of Oyo, jokingly told Nigerian youths that they would lead the country after he had fulfilled his lifelong ambition of ruling the country as a president.

“You won’t allow the elderly ones to pass and you haven’t become president. What if you become president, will you chase us out of town?”

“You will grow old and become president. But I will become the president first.” the 69-year-old politician said albeit jokingly.

It was a joke many youths could only rant about helplessly on social media.

Similarly, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 elections, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar strongly believes that the youths need to compete with his contemporaries if they really want to contest in the 2023 elections.

Responding to a question on elderly politicians giving the youths a chance in the 2023 election, Atiku, with a straight face said, ‘let the youths compete now.’

Indeed, politics is about competition but Atiku’s comment was not urging the youths to compete. It was a spit on their faces. 

Atiku’s jab echoes the sentiment of his political mates who have been calling the shots in Nigerian politics since the 1980s. 

President Muhammadu Buhari once described Nigerian youths as lazy because he believes a significant percentage of the youths just want to enjoy good governance without lifting a finger.

In 2018, the president said, “More than 60 per cent of the population is below 30, a lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria is an oil producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing, and get housing, healthcare, education free.”

In 2010, General Ibrahim Babangida in an interview with the BBC Hausa ahead of the 2011 general elections said that Nigerian youths were incapable of leading the country.

Asked why he didn’t step aside and give the younger generation a chance, the former military leader said, a country like Nigeria cannot be ruled by people without experience.

This is the mindset the old political class keep towards the youths and the youths are not doing well enough to correct this impression.

They do not believe in the youths because young Nigerians hardly demonstrate any sense of belonging in the affairs of the country. 

The civic responsibility and political participation of many Nigerian youths begins and ends on Twitter. 

The political leaders understand this and they know that the clamour for a youth force on social media is a noise-making exercise that fizzles out immediately another controversial issues trend on Twitter.

Obviously, the 2023 election is out of the youths’ hands, and if the youths seriously want to take their destiny in their hands, their preparation for the 2027 election should start now.

Unless the youths are ready to be involved in politics and step up their political participation, young Nigerians will be on Twitter in 2027 to rant again and again, while the aging politicians prepare their children to take over from them.

*Pulse Editor's Opinion is the viewpoint of an Editor at Pulse. It does not represent the opinion of the Organisation Pulse.