By Comrade Ogbu A. Ameh
The gap between the old and the new is time. According to reliable statistics, 65-70% of Nigerians are below the age of 35 years. When a country shuts out such demography out of the economic and political space, it spells doom and danger for the country. The dynamics of politics and power are predicated more on social, economic and political mobility through elite initiation. This process varies in dimension depending on the marked inherent political maturity and socio- economic development of any society.
The constitutional age limit as a requirement is nothing of a big deal as the Conveners of “Not TOO Young to Run made hype of it. As a civil society group, it must redirect its advocacy towards opening up socio-economic space too for empowerment leading to political participation. However, it must try and mobilize and join force with Socialist tendencies in the quest for alternatives in production social relations and political leadership. The emerging generational; shift advocates must not be entangle in emulation paradox that is the characteristics of the bourgeois political class in Nigeria.
The youths must be re-educated in the basic Marxian Socialist Revolutionary Theories based on it purely systematic scientific point of view. What the Nigerian youths today need is not just the political space to participate in electoral process as contestants. They need economic inclusion, which the bourgeois rundown economy over time shut them out. They political inclusion advocated by this campaign will be counterproductive with the level of economic exclusion the Nigerian youths are subjected to through unemployment and increasing high cost of higher education.
The paradigm shift I propose for this advocacy is the ideas youths need for liberation of society. These ideas are rooted in Marxist Socialism. Going down memory lane, we must not forget in a hurry the unpublished report of the IBB Political Bureau Debate in the late Eighties. It expressed the unanimous wishes of the Nigerian people who unequivocally yearned for Socialism as alternative economic order.
The conscious Nigerian youths today must learn to interrogate through systematic scientific knowledge of political theories. The salient questions that must agitate their minds are; who are we and why are we what we are? These questions are to be asked to really conceptualize the situation they find themselves. The class divide today is more glaring and palpable in Nigeria, as the State has been hijacked by people who thoroughly need to be schooled in class conflict theory. This contradiction dates back to the outset of industrial revolution, which brought about contestation of power between the Monarchy and the middle class. The Social Contract Theory was a ruse used to legitimize the control of political power by the bourgeois elements.
It is time the masses rally support for progressive political parties in Nigeria to win power through protest vote. This political strategy can be beneficial to all the civil society groups advocating opening up of the political space for the youths. The production social relations must be altered and replace with that which will accommodate all-inclusive economic opportunities for the collective whole. In the First and Second Republic respectively, we can still recall quite a good numbers of those in their early 30s who are Cabinet Members and Members of Parliament. I may have to excuse the young military officers thrown up by coup that marked military incursion into Nigeria’s politics in the mid 80s and beyond.
In the chequered history of nation building and government in the Nigeria, age of state and political actors has not been the issue at problem but the ideas and system. The prevailing ideas and system soaks in every actor in position of leadership as long as the system and ideas prevails. It has always been a case of new wine in old bottle or old wine in new bottle. Whichever way, the result has been the same. The advocacy by Not Too Young to Run in my objective criticism is a misplaced priority. As I speak. We have have many under 30s in government in many states of the federation today. My dialectical argument has been, what ideological premise are the Young launching themselves into the political arena? They cannot do anything differently from what their older generations have done and are doing now. Unless I underscore, unless there is a revolutionary change in the system.
Why do violence erupt now? Perhaps de Tocquiville was right when he observed one hundred years ago that revolution do not occur until the possibility of changing the situation becomes realistic. When there is despair, there is usually sullen acceptance. When changes occur, a new horizon is opened for those who feel oppressed. They then demand the fullness of the desired changes immediately. This seems to be the pattern of social revolutions. Religion has been used to keep the poor, the youths and workers in Nigeria across the divide apart perpetually. They are supposed to be the bastions of the revolution from below.
As much as I have the task of deconstructing the superficiality in the flippancy of its advocacy’s objectives, I see through its prism a ray of revolutionary catalyst. The onus is on the conveners to shift emphasis from age differences to more fundamental issues affecting socio- economic and political mobility for the Young today. The advocacy should focus more on shared political ideas and vision for the greatness of the country and the wellbeing of her citizenry. It should note that the vast majority of our people live in abject poverty in the midst of plenty. It should recognize that the bane of our society lies in the poverty of leadership and a frustrated or uninspired citizenry.
It should go a notch further to align with people oriented and progressive political parties like National Conscience Party and Labour Party. These are platforms determined to create a new political movement imbued with a new political vision to emancipate the masses from the rots of the past. These parties are poised to lift the Working Class and poor masses up to standards of living befitting citizens of a rich and giant country like Nigeria. Progressive and people centered political parties like these, provide political education and participatory platforms for all. It believes that to understand the turbulent present, it is instructive for the youths to look at Nigeria’s history.
The problems lie squarely in ethno- religious sentiments and grossly eroded moral ethos. These cancerous combinations culminate in negative social attitudes amongst the supposedly citizens who still cling to their various ethnic cleavages as indigenes of their various and different ethnic nationalities.
Ameh is the author of In The Struggle and FCT State NCP Director of Mobilization and Planning
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