NIGERIAN PRESIDENCY IS AN ELIXIR OF YOUTH

By Akin Ojumu

In most civilized nations, where sanity reigns and things work, the job of the president and head of government is a mentally tasking and physically challenging undertaking that causes the office holder to experience an accelerated aging process. Due to its agonizing and bruising demands, it’s a job that saps the life out of the office holder.

Take for instance Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. At the end of their 2-term presidencies, they both looked thirty years older than when they first took office eight years earlier. These two men looked quite youthful, and both had full jet-black hair when they were first sworn into office as presidents. 

After eight years of the grinder of the Oval Office, though, both men’s hair had turned grey. Their smooth youthful skins had aged to a leathery texture, and their faces had become taken over by deep lines of wrinkles and forehead creases.

In contrast, the situation is a whole lot different with the Nigerian presidency. Unlike the American White House, Aso Rock is a fattening house where senescent men go to regain their youthful vigor. Becoming the president of Nigeria is an elixir of youth that old men drink to make them look younger.

Nigerian presidency is a retirement home where septuagenarians and octogenarians go to reverse the biological clock. It’s only in Nigeria that you find presidents, at the end of their tenure, looking younger and healthier than when they first took office.

The reason the Nigerian presidency seems to reinvigorate invalids and transform debilitated old men into vibrant, vigorous, and energetic young men is simply because being a Nigerian president is like going on vacation on someone else’s dime. 

This strange phenomenon of reverse aging effect of the office of the president only happens in Nigeria and other failing nations like it.

People don’t seek the office of the president of Nigeria because they want to offer public service to Nigerians. They fight like crazy to become president because they want to be served by the Nigerian public. The attraction is chiefly for the perks of the office and not the agonizing slog the job requires, like you find in civilized societies.

In Nigeria, the position of a head of government is a cozy affair that’s anything but mentally tasking or physically challenging. The only thing demanding about the job is the effort required to squirrel away the mountain of loot stolen from the national coffers. It’s for this reason that it seems to always attract the frail and ailing retirees of the society. 

The characteristic undemanding cushiness of the job is why some Nigerians see nothing wrong in the forceful and violent imposition of Alhaji Bala Blu, a sick dotard with signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease, as the next president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

When the office of the president of a country of over 200 million people is turned into an old men’s sabbatical gig paid for by the impoverished taxpayers, the hapless citizens shouldn’t expect the resulting government to contribute meaningfully to their well-being. 

It’s the reason Nigerians shouldn’t be shocked to learn that their country, with all its wealth in human capital and abundant natural resources, is the moribund poverty capital of the world.