Nigeria does not lack for young people whose veins pulse with young blood and heads brim with ideas. Nigerian youths are not lazy in spite of how many times that word is let loose from the loose lips that are gradually sinking the Nigerian ship while stoking an intergenerational conflict of interest.
The Nigerian young person is smart, sturdy, studious and selfless. The Nigerian young person is defiant and decisive. The Nigerian young person is incisive, industrious and ingenious. The Nigerian young person is neither a crook nor a criminal as the now defunct SARS believed and lived for many years until visceral protests across the country sent its egregious empire and emperors of iniquity crumbling like a house of cards.
The Nigerian young person is not worse than his parents or people of their generation. In fact, the levers of power in Nigeria will be better operated by the refreshing hands of the Nigerian young person.
In these days when it seems that septuagenarians have commandeered Nigeria`s corridors of power, breathing antiquity into power while arguing that their experience gives them the edge, Betta Edu is a breath of fresh air – a marvel of youth in politics and an anchor for those who argue that youths should be in government. She is indeed a sterling example of the miracles young people can work when they are in power.
At 35, she has already been a Commissioner for Health in Cross River State as well as the National Chiarman of Nigeria Health Commissioners Forum. She showed heroic leadership in her state during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2022, during the national convention of the All Progressives Congress, she was elected the National Women Leader of the party.
In a party whose leadership a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja recently indicted and ordered to comply with the National Gender Policy of reserving 35% of posts for women, Betta Edu has gone about her remit robustly.
However, by a recent statement attributed to her, she clearly charged headlong into charged waters, betraying in the process the fact that she does not clearly grasp the opportunity she has to soothe the nerves of young people who for so long have been cast out of the corridors of power by the aging coyotes who would cement the corridors of power as their cemeteries if they could.
Reacting to the decision of the All Progressives Congress to peg its nomination form for presidential hopefuls at a hundred million naira albeit with fifty per cent cut for individuals under the age of forty, Dr. Betta Edu defended the cost of the nomination forms arguing that those who want to cater for Nigerians should have at least fifty million naira or at least access to that. She also rhetorically asked how someone who cannot access fifty million naira would be able to manage so much funds if they are given the opportunity.
Now, Betta Edu may have cast her eyes on the bigger picture while querying the financial capacity of those who would put out themselves to lead Nigeria as President, however her words betrayed the kind of mercenary thought process that has successfully paved the way for those who recycle stolen public funds to retain their relevance in the corridors of power.
Also, in her haste to defend the party of which she is the National Women Leader, Betta Edu`s words abandoned one of her primary constituencies: the youth.
At this stage of our national life, it would be a beguiling illusion for anyone to think that the years-long attempt to stick Nigeria`s young people into the slime of stagnation has been culled of coordination and cunning. It has been a circle with arcs leading into each other to the other to keep the circus going.
It has also harshly dawned on many that the 2023 election is going to be a straight fight between the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party. The battle for the presidency especially will be between two political parties who have in the last twenty-three years given Nigerias many square pegs for the round hole of the Presidency. Can they be trusted again this time? Can they be trusted to choose the physician that would nurse a gravely ill country? Can sights so impaired by the juice of Judas be trusted to find the needle in Nigerias haystack? It does not appear so.
Already, their nomination forms run into millions of naira. For many of the contestants, it is not a problem given just how unaccountable they were when they filled public offices. For many of them, their supporters, many of them with an eye on returns for their investments, are already jostling to pick up the forms for them as a sign of loyalty and a mark of popularity. If only we were not in a country where the labyrinth of loyalty is laden with banana peels and popularity so phoney as to be parlous.
Again, many young people are set to be shut out by the mercenary politics of the ruling party and a young person who recently benefited from such mercenary politics defends the decision.
A country serious about ridding its corridors of power of swindlers and scammers is one that must take the pain of emphasizing that money is only secondary to its politics. That country must take the pains to emphasize that the sanctity of its entire electoral process cannot be soiled by the silt of filthy lucre. The emphases must begin from the foundational stages and lead up to the ballot box lest the country be caught up in the dizzy daze of its own hypocrisy.
In a country where many cannot account for their wealth especially among those who stampede the corridors of power, the mistral of money cannot be allowed to blow open the ballot box come 2023. The opener should be the choice of the electorate, freely exercised.
It is because when some of those who have stolen Nigeria blind get into the campaign trenches, their grandiose illusions about their own competence are not shredded by searing questions from those they address, many of who prefer to collect money and look away, that they continue to return again and again like dogs to their vomit.
Nigeria is by no means a mercenary country and mercenaries and their machinations should never be allowed to make the mosaic of power in the country.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
