Cameron Duodu
Letter from the North
If you have ever lived in English-speaking Africa, north of the Zambezi, it might have struck you that advertisements for jobs always require that the age of applicants shall be “not less than”, whereas in Europe and the United States, the requirement is usually for people whose age is “not above” a certain stated figure.
I think this speaks volumes. In Europe and the US, employers look for people who can perform at their optimum, which is usually when they are young and hungry. But up in my neck of the woods, employment is conferred on individuals more or less as an indication of status, and in order to be worth that status, they must have attained a certain age.
If you ask these employers, they will probably tell you that “experience” is important to them. And in their view, experience comes with age. So a high-flyer with only two years’ experience in a similar job is of no use to them, whereas dead wood that has been climbing the ladder rung by rung for donkey’s years will bring dignity and stability to the position, and must be preferred.
Even our political representation is affected by an obsession with gerontocratic concerns. Until recently, 18-year-olds could go to jail, and die for their country serving in the army, but could not vote. Even where a person can vote at 18, he is often debarred from entering Parliament until he is 25 or above.
Well, this ridiculous situation has just created a great deal of havoc in Nigeria’s newly installed democratic system. In order to be eligible for election to the Nigerian House of Representatives, one should have reached the age of 30. But a very rich and dynamic young man called Buhari Salisu, apparently aged 29, is reported to have thought that this was not acceptable.
So Buhari put his age on the requisite parliamentary candidate’s curriculum vitae form as 36. And he backed it up with an affidavit from his dad.
Now, it will come as a bit of a surprise to you that in Nigerian politics, money goes very very far. Buhari’s “charm” and “charisma” (nothing to do with money) were such that not only was he elected into the House of Representatives hands down, but also as the Speaker of the House.
But his very “charisma” had aroused the “curiosity” of some people. Hadn’t this same Buhari worked closely with the odious Abacha dictatorship? Was his wealth perhaps derived from his “contacts” with that corrupt administration? These people began to dig. And a few days ago, a magazine called The News hit the streets of Nigeria with a cover story claiming that Buhari was 29, not 36 as he claimed; and that he had not attended any university in Toronto, Canada, as he had further claimed. So Buhari was what Nigerians would call a “419 politician”.
Section 419 is the part of the Nigerian criminal code that deals with fraud. In recent years, 419 has come to be applied, almost exclusively, to a certain letter that some Nigerian crooks write to people overseas. This informs them that the writers have cornered a large amount of Nigerian government funds earmarked for projects that had never been carried out. If the recipient of the letter furnished them with a bank account number and bank address, so that they could transfer the money into it, he or she would receive a share of the booty – to the tune of, say, $5-million.
As soon as the required information is furnished by the gullible recipient of the “419 letter”, the writers systematically milk the account of whatever it contains. Sometimes they even invite the idiot to come to Nigeria, where he or she usually faces a dire situation that might even end in death.
When The News hit the streets with its exposure of Buhari, some people started buying it up in huge quantities. Buhari next took the step that usually shuts up newspapers: he asked a lawyer to threaten the paper with a libel action. The counsel for the paper, however, told him he could go and jump.
The House of Representatives wanted to debate the issue. But Buhari was presiding over the deliberations of the House! Did he recuse himself and allow the House to debate the matter in his absence? No! Eventually, after a reputed 200-million naira had made its way into the pockets of “some people”, Buhari’s deputy presided over the House and accepted a motion on the issue for debate. But the motion had been presented without notice and Buhari’s opponents saw it as a subterfuge to enable an “emasculated” motion to be debated, thus killing any chance of one being presented to impeach Buhari. So they repeatedly raised “points of order”. All were ruled out of order by the deputy speaker.
Buhari’s enemies then created a disorder of mammoth proportions in the House, during which fists flew, and the mace was almost seized and broken. When the House was finally adjourned, they issued a press statement attacking the deputy speaker as a “stooge” of Buhari’s.
The situation had become untenable. In the end, Buhari announced he was “stepping aside” because he could not be “a judge in his own cause”.
It is almost certain that by the time you read this, he would have been charged in court with fraud.
Perhaps the whole unsavoury affair will concentrate the minds of the framers of Nigeria’s Constitution into thoroughly examining the illogicalities that govern the age requirement for those who seek to represent their fellow countrymen in their country’s legislature.