Never has the power to determine who becomes Nigeria’s next president been at the behest of Nigerian youths more than now. Let me explain why: Nigerian demographic records indicate that over half of Nigerian population, perhaps 60% is comprised of youths (18-35) so the bulk of voters are the youths. In this new age of social/new media, the youths matter because they are the most adept and savvy at using it to mobilize support for or against a candidate and available records indicate that over 40% of Nigerian youths are unemployed and hungry. As the saying goes ‘A hungry man is an angry man’
With so much political power at the beck and call of youths, any presidential candidate who rubs them off on the wrong side is in political hot water, so to speak.
To understand who the youths are angry with, all we need to do is cast our minds back to the unfortunate incident that led to the stampede and subsequent loss of the precious lives of some youths when the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS)under president Goodluck Jonathan’s watch,invited them to a botched job recruitment exercise in stadiums nationwide.
Add that to the January 2012 increase in petroleum pump price, which the youths goaded by opposition political parties, resisted thereby compelling a roll back of the price by some percentage, then you need not search further for the reason the youths are really ‘mad’at president Jonathan .
In what appears like adding ‘salt to injury’, instead of courting the aggrieved youths with a bid to retaining them as Jonathan foot soldiers ,presidential spokesman, Ruben Abati,in a vicious article, ostensively in defense of mr president in 2012,titled “The Jonathan They Don’t Know” castigated the youths who were already seething with anger because mr president whom they believe they helped against all odds to transform from vice president into president in 2010, betrayed them.
In that article where Abati claimed to know Jonathan better than everybody else, even though he was not with Jonathan when the youths fought the system on his behalf,he unflatteringly labelled them as ‘idle and idling ,twittering,collective children of anger ,the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts , the BBM-pinging soap gossips of Nigeria who seem to be in competition among themselves to pull down president Goodluck Jonathan’.
As things stand today,that article was a big mistake by the presidential spokesman and l said that much in a subsequent article entitled ‘Abati, The President They Don’t Know and Prophesy’ which was published in the vanguard newspaper of 9/92012. My thesis in that piece goes thus ‘engaging in emotional outbursts against the very nimble social media matadors who are the main butt of Abati’s ire is begging the issue and the fact that president Jonathan, like Obama, is an avid user of Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry, makes the option of courting the social media supremos more compelling than carpeting them’
As they say, to be forewarned is to be forearmed but apparently,the presidency failed to be forearmed hence the erstwhile friendly social media has now become president Jonathan’s albatross.
Having been literarily shut out,derided and treated as outsiders, the youths had to find another group that they can connect to and Buhari and APC seem to have provided a veritable alternative platform which is why they seem to be ‘in bed’ with APC and Buhari.
This perhaps explains why you hear the youths chanting the ‘change’ mantra, but if you ask them change to what?They simply sneer “change from Jonathan to anything or any body other than Jonathan”.
The youth’s anger has been so ferocious in the social media that one was wondering how it could have panned out on February 14th if the presidential election had held on that day. Thankfully,the election was postponed for another six weeks but after a reality check, it dawned on me that most of the social media gladiators were not likely to be based in Nigeria so they may predominantly be resident abroad hence their anger might not have materialized as votes against Jonathan especially since there is no provision for diaspora voting.l may be wrong.
Disappointingly, the critical role of youths in elections in Nigeria is not being taking seriously by them.They seem to be treating the election of the president and other political office seekers in Nigeria like one of those tv reality shows such as BIG BROTHER,NIGERIAN IDOLS,WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE etc where they vote out,house mates who are vying for $100,000 prize money based on their whims and caprices.
Clearly absent is the critical thinking and vigorous consideration which such civic responsibility of voting for new leaders deserves. As we all very well know, decisions made in anger are never rational, so the youths may end up regretting choices of leaders made in anger if they don’t put their emotions in check.
To further highlight the enormity of youth power in politics ,consider the effect of the protest march (occupy Hong Kong) by the youths in Hong Kong when they were trying to put pressure on Chinese govt to democratize and reduce their influence in that country.It was such an unprecedented affront against the iron curtain country, China considering the tragedy that befell protesters in Tianemen square in Beijing not long ago.Unlike the Tianemen square crack down that witnessed the brutalization of protesters which was ingloriously crowned by the Chinese army tanks rolling over a protester who refused to back-off, Chinese authorities are now compelled to listen to the voice of the youths by negotiating with them.
Another demonstration of the awesome power of youths and the critical role of the new media is evident in the unprecedented election of Barrack Hussein Obama as the 44th and first black president of United States of America in 2008.It is settled,documented publicly and acknowledged universally that it is the strategic enlistment of youths and the savvy deployment of the social media that propelled the relatively unknown and youthful black man from Chicago , Illinois to the office of the president of the United States of America.
The general narrative is that American youths (Caucasian and colored) who are devoid of the burden of their parents who harbor memories of black men as slaves and their dehumanizing experiences in the hands of the infamous, Ku Klux Klan,KKK,voted for Obama whom they adjudged to be the best candidate for the job based on his positive antecedents and vision as opposed to primordial sentiments of slavery harbored by their parents.
Coincidentally, most of the youths in Nigeria currently supporting Buhari were not around (By virtue of age) when he ruled as a military dictator some thirty (30) years ago.No wonder references by PDP to Buhari’s brutish policies when he was head of state are not negatively swaying their opinion of him as it should.
The scenarios captured above perhaps underscores president Jonathan’s parley with some youths in lagos recently and also justifies his appointment as Special Assistant, New Media,mr Obi Asika who posses the DNA required to bring Jonathan’s campaign back into the loop leveraging on his experience as a foremost social media entrepreneur and having been the first to bring Big Brother tv reality show amongst others to Nigeria.
While applauding president Jonathan’s new initiative to woo the youths by turning a new leaf in attitude towards them,the campaign should focus on issues of development, past, present and in the future and quit assaulting the sensibilities of Nigerian voters with tales of how APC paid $5m to Chatham house for the recent presentation by candidate Buhari;how APC has infiltrated oil marketers hence the current fuel scarcity and that Buhari has been flown to the USA for cancer treatment.From the other side of the aisle ,APC should also spare Nigerians the international embarrassment of whether or not king of morocco snubbed president Jonathan. Instead of celebrating such insult from a declining desert kingdom, APC should put Nigeria’s dignity first and be miffed by such effrontery.
These energy sapping,time consuming character assassination and unnecessary evocation of integrity related issues about key political umpires like INEC’s Atahiru Jega as well as the filling and counter filing of libel suits by both the PDP and APC presidential campaign spokesmen against each other amount to mere red herring.
Rather than engage in such chicanery,both parties need to embark on charm offensive not a war of attrition as is currently the case.
The need to espouse vision and mission applies more to the PDP which is facing its stiffest challenge in it’s near fifteen years at the helms of political affairs in Nigeria.It is preposterous that after all these years,PDP lacks a research and development(R&D)department.That in my considered opinion is a major flaw. No serious organization, private or public operates without such a critical component which should serve as it’s engine room.
It is not by sheer happenstance that the Sage ,Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory successfully organized the UPN (which had firm control of western states for decades) with a very strong R&D department under the leadership of the famous Ebenezer Babatope who incidentally is still alive and an active member of PDP.
Had there been an R&D department, PDP would have identified current challenges such as the rebellion by House of Representative that elected their leaders in spite of PDP arrangement and the terming-out governors, five of which later ‘potted’ to APC and youths disenchantment owing to perceived high handedness by some top public officials.
By proactively addressing the aforementioned issues as opposed to the current situation whereby such incidents literarly blew up in the faces of PDP leaders like the Aminu Tambuwal and Emeka Ihejioha “coup” at the House of Representatives and the walk-out by some stalwarts led by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar at the PDP mini convention at Eagle square, Abuja, PDP would not have gine through this agonising re-election pains.
Fortunately, PDP controls more states in the federation than their main opponent, APC which was seemingly suffering some headwind arising from the postponement of February 14th original election date.
Conversely, PDP in addition to having a wider footprint and foothold, was seemingly propelled further by the tail wind of the postponement as it has notched up its campaign in the past few weeks while APC’s campaign machine virtually run out of steam apparently owing to paucity of funds to sustain their vociferous attacks against Jonathan, as opposed to marketing superior new governance ideas to Nigerians.
As it stands, the youths appeared to have had their say on Saturday. In the next few hours, results from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), will tell us to what extent they could make or mar a presidency.