BEVERLY HILLS, August 18, (THEWILL) – Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has noted that present-day youth in the country lack leadership qualities, arguing that younger Nigerians who had been trusted with political power in recent times failed to live up to expectation and left imprint of disappointments.
He pointed out that youths prefer to wait for what he called ‘dead men’s shoes’, stressing that their display of clear lack of preparedness to take over power has made older generation to hold on tight to power.
Obasanjo stated this in a response to former president of Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Mr Olisa Agbakoba SAN, who had earlier told the former president in a July 20, 2017 letter that Nigeria needs a generational shift in political leadership.
He insisted that older generation who still have good things to offer the nation should not be excluded from leadership on the basis of the sentiment that youths should be handed power. This position however runs contrary to Obasanjo’s last week admonition to the youth to quickly wrest power from the older generation.
The letter reads in part, “Most members of the younger generation of Nigerians are mostly contented with waiting for dead men’s shoes and are unwilling to beat an alternative path to leadership.
“In such a situation, it is to be expected and actually human that those with some head start in life will not concede such advantages freely and based on their innate goodness. The world, as I know it, is powered by shrewd hard-headed calculating individuals, and the cornucopia of their mercy ids decidedly thin; and it is unlike God’s rain that falls on the just and the wicked alike.
“The point to ponder is how have the successor generation positioned themselves to lead? I look back at some members of the younger generation and I am miffed at the missed opportunities. I am equally saddened that although we, the so-called older generation, did facilitate some semblance of infrastructure development, today, the gains made have been mostly pushed down the drain by some of those privileged young people saddled with similar responsibilities in the recent past.
“You should know that some of these same young people, whose interest we canvass, have in the recent past been a complete disappointment and failures in their various appointed or elected positions.
“Some of these young people in public or private sector have frittered the prospect of being at the vanguard of sustainable development of what some of us, the earlier generation of leaders, pioneered on the altar of their crass materialism, self-centredness and opportunism.
“So, while these failed young men and women should not be a disincentive to support other young people, I don’t think that the older people should be excluded in our leadership recruitment process. For me, if I find men and women who have shown profound commitment and exemplary integrity in their various chosen careers or professions as well as zeal for the service of our fatherland, I will, of course, give such both my support and inspiration, notwithstanding their age, circumstances or place of birth.”
The former president went on to challenge Agbakoba to seek political leadership to help provide the desired leadership the nation needs .
“I ask you, dear Olisa, you are at a point where you should step forward and develop a mobilization framework that seeks to rearrange Nigeria on a different basis of legitimacy. Late Chief Awolowo and the great Zik were younger than you when they threw their hats in the ring. It is time to take the hard road. Olisa, it is time to jump down from the fence and the siddon look corner,” he said.
