By Olu Fasan
Two significant events hit the world from America recently. One is positive, the other negative. The positive is the criminal convictions of former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. Both are unprecedented: Trump is the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, and Biden Jnr is the first son of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.
That suggests no one is above the law in America. However, the negative is the disastrous presidential debate between Biden and Trump. Both the positive and negative events have relevance for Nigeria. That relevance is worth exploring. But my focus here is the nerve-racking debate.
There is no human being who watched last week’s
presidential debate who will not weep for President Biden and shed tears for
America. That Biden is so frail, physically and mentally, and yet in total
denial is disheartening; and that Trump, a convicted felon, is likely to become
president again is saddening. During the debate, I feared Biden might collapse,
and the permanent smirk on Trump’s face betrayed the absence of a moral
compass. Yet, Trump is backed to the hilt by his party, while Biden has refused
to withdraw from the race. Politicians are the most selfish and self-deluded
people on earth, yet they always have self-serving people who urge them on, who
tell them they are God’s greatest gifts to humanity.
We had that experience in
Nigeria in 2015 and 2023, didn’t we? In 2015, every right-thinking person knew
that General Muhammadu Buhari was mentally and physically unfit to be
president. Yet, Bola Tinubu self-interestedly foisted Buhari on this country,
saying he was Nigeria’s General Eisenhower and General de Gaule. But now, as
president, Tinubu says his administration inherited “a totally ruined economy”
from Buhari, whose presidency was also dogged by his prolonged undisclosed
illness. In a country where there is no accountability for failure or
misjudgement, Tinubu is barefacedly dissociating himself from Buhari’s
government, and some shallow-minded people are buying the deception.
But what about 2023? Everyone
knew Tinubu was not physically fit, with his wobbly gait and slurred words. He
said he was “running for president, not WWE wrestling or 500 yards”, as if a
president doesn’t need to be physically fit. But Tinubu’s supporters said that
even if he had to run Nigeria from the sickbed, he was the best man for the
job. They touted ad nauseam his overrated achievements as Lagos State governor.
But one year as president, Tinubu is not only struggling physically, but also
lacks the mental agility to tackle Nigeria’s multifaceted problems. Matthew
Parris, a prominent British writer, once said that there must be in every
government “the presiding intellect with the intelligence to grasp the
problem.” Tinubu has not demonstrated he has the cognitive health to do the
job.
Recently, Vice President Kashim
Shettima condemned those who mocked Tinubu when he fell and had to be helped to
get back to his feet during this year’s “Democracy Day” event. Well, it was
wrong to mock Tinubu. But it misses the point to say that he’s human and
elderly. Of course, he is. But he schemed and muscled his way into the
presidency. Now that he’s president, he must do the job with the physical
fitness and mental fecundity it demands.
Let’s be clear, it is utterly
selfish and unpatriotic for any individual to ignore his physical and mental
frailties and insist on running for president. But that’s what President Biden
is doing by insisting on running for a second term against wise advice to quit
the race. “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as
easy as I used to do,” Biden said after his disastrous debate performance. “But
I know what I do know, I know how to do the job.” Really? Even if he slips and
falls all the time, even if he rambles and stumbles over his words, even if he
often loses his train of thought. It is classic self-interested politics.
In June 2015, a month after he
became president, Buhari said he wished he was younger. “I wish I became
president when I was governor, a few years a young man,” he said. Then, he
added factually: “Now at 72, there is a limit to what I can do.” But did Buhari
not know that before he ran for president? Well, he didn’t talk about the
limitations of his age during the election. Why would he? He wanted power at
all costs even if he knew there was a limit to what he could do. And it wasn’t
just a limit: he performed woefully, disastrously!
But what about Tinubu? For a
start, his age is shrouded in a miasma of dubiety. An interview published in
The Guardian in October 1998 started thus: “Senator Bola Tinubu, 52, returned
from self-exile recently.” Unless the newspaper erred, if Tinubu was 52 in
1998, he would be 78 now. But he says he is 72. Well, let’s stick with the
“official” age. Would Tinubu publicly admit that there’s a limit to what he can
do given his age and, perhaps, his health? Of course not. Indeed, some praise
singers are already saying he MUST do a second term.
Last week, Shehu Sani, a former
senator, said some Northerners were planning to unseat Tinubu in 2027 and
warned that if Tinubu wasn’t allowed a second term “it could destroy the unity
of Nigeria.” Really? Between 1999 and 2023, the North produced president for 11
years; the South-West for eight years; the South-South for five years. The
Igbos in the South-East have produced none. Surely, for Nigeria’s unity, the
Igbos should have produced the president in 2023. But Tinubu said it was his
and Yoruba’s turn. Did he think about Nigeria’s unity? No! Did his
Muslim-Muslim ticket promote unity? No! By the way, if denying President
Jonathan a second term in 2015 did not destroy Nigeria’s unity, why should
unseating Tinubu in 2027 do so?
Anyone who has read Jason Weeden and Robert
Kurzban’s book The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind would not take Shehu
Sani seriously. He’s not a disinterested commentator. He’s Tinubu’s cheerleader
because Tinubu fell out with Nasir el-Rufai, his archenemy. So, El-Rufai’s
enemy has become Sani’s friend. But those who abuse their public profile to
make misguided interventions undermine their own credibility.
But here’s the overarching point. Nigeria must avoid
being governed by old, senile men. It needs a new generation of leaders, not
gerontocracy.
*Dr. Fasan, Visiting Fellow at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE), is a commentator on public issues
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