A picture, they say, speaks a thousand words. After the 1999 elections, the Carter Institute, in conjunction with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs published a report, entitled “OBSERVING THE 1998-99 NIGERIA ELECTIONS” which outlined a narrative starting from the sudden death of the then military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, through the transition programme that saw the emergence of another retired general and ex-head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, as the democratically elected president of Nigeria.
Somewhere in this report, there was a picture of a man leaning on a wall and reading a newspaper, with the headline clearly visible. “Date with Destiny”, it screamed. Underneath the photo was this descriptive line: “This Lagos man seems sceptical, as many Nigerians, about the military government’s promise to hand over power”, and behind him was a campaign poster on the wall he was leaning on that read, “Vote Bola Ahmed Tinubu for Governor”. The rest of the text was not clear, but it is safe to assume that it was the campaign poster for the Lagos State 1999 elections which Tinubu won.
I don’t know why but that scene was quite poetic. Maybe it so with the hindsight we now have. I don’t expect much from the efforts of the PDP and the LP, and former president Obasanjo’s efforts to get the elections cancelled, so barring an act of God, president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be sworn in as the president of Nigeria on the May 29, 2023. He has mentioned not once that it has always been a dream of his to be president of this country and in spite of all the odds, all the hurdles and the long trek, May 29 will be the culmination of this trek, the date with destiny he has worked for all his life. It does not matter whether one is a fan or not but I for one, believe he has earned this date.
President-elect Tinubu and soon to be former president Buhari are two men who have really paid their dues and braved the donkey years on their ways to the presidency. President Buhari won after his fourth try, and Tinubu got it on his first attempt – but that is not quite true even if it is true. Tinubu’s approach has only been less direct and more calculating. He threw his hat in the ring only when he was ready, when he was quite reasonably sure of success whereas Buhari stabbed in the dark until he hit the bull’s eye.
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A few years back, there was a great opprobrium after the president called Nigerian young men and women lazy. He said that they are mostly uneducated but expected to get housing, healthcare, etcetera while sitting pretty in their (parent’s) homes. In effect, he called them “millennials”. I too, did not like hearing that from Buhari, but that does not stop it from being true, or partly true. Human beings are averse to unflattering truths and that’s an unflattering truth itself since I am also a human being.
The truth is that, like our peers in most of the world we have a congenital disease, the one called the millennial syndrome. We grew up at the turn of the millennium as the world was closing in on itself, around the time the world truly became a global village where youth restlessness became an identity transcending political borders, around the time technology was making good its threat to make ease a natural entitlement. Thus we grew up to be, like other millennials around the world, pretty much entitled freeloaders who expect to be handed the world on a platter of gold for a justification we never even cared to think through.
That sentiment found a political expression as we came of age, as we became old enough in our own opinion to take the grand responsibility of leadership. And we believed that too should be given to us without competition, without first deserving it.
Typical of our haphazard temperament, we never truly took out the time to understand what young age means. Well, it is the opinion of this writer that the Bola Ahmed Tinubus and Muhammadu Buharis of this world are much younger than we are and they have proven that timeless remark we always parroted about age being just a number when it suited our fancy. We never got around to doing that.
These two men have proven themselves much more grounded in the qualities we insist are ours and ours alone. Buhari fought hard four times before winning, fighting and fighting and fighting and not giving up even after publicly giving up. How many young people our age show such tenacity, such determination, such discipline? Like Tinubu did, how many young people have the patience and discipline to bide their time, to build the walls and the bridges and even the cities to be included in the stories we live in and live by?
How many of us can walk and work as far as Tinubu and Buhari have now done? How many of us have the heart and vigour to date destiny as these men have succeeded in? Age is just a number, and thank God for young men like Buhari and Tinubu for making that even clearer. Things will not magically become better once they are handed over to the young. That is not how it works – we have seen that in Kogi and many other places in Nigeria and beyond.
Youth is in the heart and in the soul, and only those with the vectoral grit and nerve to date destiny are truly young, not those blinded by the spoilt and entitled decadence we insist on calling youth. I hope one day soon, young men and women in Nigeria and beyond will understand and assimilate this fact.
Congratulations, Bola Ahmed Tinubu for successfully dating destiny!
