Nigeria's Should Not Vote A Leader Above 70 years

Ahead of the 2015 presidential election,
Nigerians have been admonished to emulate
progressive countries like the United States
and United Kingdom which have never elected
a president above 70 years of age since the
inception of democracy in their countries.
Speaking in an interview with journalists in
Lagos, a former Governor of Anambra State
and the Deputy Director General (South) of
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
reconciliation team, comprising the South-
west, South-east and South-south, Mr. Peter
Obi, said the oldest person ever elected as
the US president was Ronald Reagan at the
age of 68.
He said the All Progressives Congress (APC)
does not wish the country well, or else why
would the party be agitating for the election
of a 73-year-old former Head of State,
General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), adding: “In
a world, where a life-changing protest for
democratic change, the demand for free and
fair democracy without Chinese interference
was led by a 17-year-old boy in Hong Kong,
APC is threatening to inflict a 73-year-old
grandfather on Nigeria as president.”
Obi therefore called for the re-election of
President Goodluck Jonathan, stating that
the president has set the right processes in
motion, adding that Jonathan’s performance
has been under-reported and “even distorted
by mischief makers.”
He said Jonathan could not be held
responsible for the decline in the value of
naira, as Nigerians need the understanding of
macro-economic realities to understand what
is happening in the world today.
According to Obi, “The depreciation in the
exchange rate is a worldwide phenomenon
fuelled by the fall in oil prices and other
elements of the increasing global economic
and security challenges. Hardest hit are
countries that export petroleum products.
“Talking about the fall in the value of the
naira, look at what is happening in Russia
and other places. In just a year, the Russian
rubbles lost 40 per cent of its value. The
Venezuelan currency even lost more than
that. The interesting thing about these
countries is that they are not calling for the
crucifixion of their leaders, rather, they are
supporting them with an understanding that
the gale will pass away.”
“Do you realise that the major search engines
and social networks of the world, like Google
(1998), Yahoo (1994), Ebay (1995),
Facebook (2004) and Alibaba were all
founded by young people under 40 years of
age? Most of the captains of industry in
Nigeria today are led by men and women who
were not yet in primary school 31 years ago
when Buhari’s was head of state.”
Disagreeing with the notion that because
Buhari stopped the Maitatsine insurgency in
the 80s, he could do the same with the Boko
Haram sect, he said what obtained then was
quite different from the current scenario,
adding: “The stable global environment of the
80s cannot be compared with the volatile and
terror-enveloped global environment of today.
The socio-religious realities that threw up the
Maitatsine group are different from the
realities that threw up Boko Haram
insurgency.
Obi commended Buhari, who at 41, which was
31 years ago, staged a coup d’état and
removed the democratically elected
government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari and tried
visibly to instil discipline and order in our
society.
He, however, said that the coup was Buhari’s
greatest achievement, but the “economic
policies and actions of that government were
disastrous, as Nigeria nearly turned into a
pariah nation that no one wanted to deal
with globally. At the time, under the Buhari’s
government, confirmed Letters of Credit were
rejected, because no one wanted to deal with
Nigeria.”
Obi said considering the fact that APC
believes that its presidential candidate is the
best in the annals of Nigeria’s history, does
not indicate that he should be asked to come
back, adding: “The Singaporeans are not
asking Lee Kwuan Yu to come back.
Malaysians are not asking Mahathir
Mohamad to come back. The Americans are
also not asking Bill Clinton, who came to
office 10 years after Buhari’s first outing and
who had the best economic performance in
the 21st century, to come back. Are we
saying that Nigeria has not produced anyone
who can do the job today?”
Taking a swipe at the opposition party that
the Jonathan administration is incapable of
fighting corruption, Obi said: “Everyone in
Nigeria claims to be a saint and accuses
others of being corrupt. We all read and also
heard from those who were there what
transpired at the APC primaries in Lagos.
That is not corruption, right? While I agree
that there is the need to strengthen
institutions like the ICPC and EFCC, to fight
the physical and more tangible forms of
administrative corruption, there is also the
far more fundamental need to fight
corruption from its very roots.”
He called on Nigerians to elect President
Jonathan who he said has what it takes to
take the country to the next level in its
development.