Accord Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Professor Chris Imumolen, yesterday said Nigeria and the rest of Africa must begin to jettison their proclivity towards sit-tight rulership by aged and recycled politicians and embrace a forward-looking governance system that draws inspiration from a generation of youthful leaders.
Imumolen, who stated this against the backdrop of the recent emergence of Bissirou Diomaye Faye as Senegal’s president, said only through a change in governance approach will the continent quickly achieve her set developmental goals and objectives.
The former presidential candidate, who contested the 2023 presidential election at 39, said the continent has largely under-achieved for decades because of a system of policking that has, more or less, stifled the participation of the youth in governance, thus leaving a generation of geriatric politicians and leaders who keep being recycled with nothing new to offer.
The academic and entrepreneur said it was time Africa, particularly Nigeria, began to move away from what he called the “politics of the old” to the politics of the young if she is to break free from stagnation and fulfill her full potential.
“The emergence of Bissirou Diomaye Faye as Senegal’s new president is something that has greatly encouraged me to believe that there is hope for Nigeria and Africa,” Imumolen said.
He continued, “That the Senegalese people chose youth, vibrancy and dynamism over age or tradition in voting in Faye — a very young man at the age of 44 — as their president, only reinforces the position I have always held that youth is the way to go if we are to achieve rapid cultural, socio-economic development both as a country or continent.
“I entered the race for the presidency in Nigeria in 2022 at the age of 39, convinced that I had the wherewithal to deliver to our people good governance and the full dividends of democracy that the older generation of politicians had often promised them but never, for once, delivered on.
“Those who scoffed at the notion that a youthful president neither had the experience nor the capacity to deliver have repeatedly been made to eat humble pie as a generation of youthful presidents and prime ministers now dot the global landscape in France, UK, Italy, Chile and so on.
“I regard our slowness to grasp the wind of generational change in leadership now blowing across the world as a conservatism that will do us more harm than good as the youths are more adequately configured to lead in a world more digitalised than analogued.
“So, Faye’s emergence is a wake-up call. Countries around the world are beginning to realise that the future belongs to the youth and are putting systems in place to encourage them to be more involved.
“But for the signing into law of the Not-Too-Young-To-Run bill by former president, Muhammadu Buhari a few years before he left office, I don’t think I, and a few other young Nigerians would have had the opportunity to contest for public offices in the last General Elections.”
He expressed confidence that the coming of Faye will open more doors for a new generation of young leaders to burst onto the scene in the coming years.
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