Opinion
By Chiedu Uche Okoye
YOUTH is a time of creativity. It is the phase in people’s life when they unleash their rare and exceptional talents to produce great works or perform extra-ordinary feats in diverse areas of life. Didn’t Chinua Achebe, the greatest African raconteur, write his magnum opus when he was twenty-eight years old? Didn’t Boris Becker win the Wimbledon lawn tennis championship at sixteen? And Alexander the great conquered the world at a very young age.
Back in Nigeria, our freedom fighters, namely Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Matthew Mbu, Anthony Enahoro, and Nwafor Orizu were young men when they staked their lives to fight for the political emancipation of Nigeria. In fact, the great parliamentarian, Mathew Mbu, became a federal minister in Nigeria when he was in his early twenties. Yakubu Gowon and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu were young men when they played great leadership roles, albeit not noble, that re-shaped the history of Nigeria and set it on a certain trajectory.
The fact is that youth is a period of time in people’s lives during which they brim with creative and physical energies. At that time in their lives, when they could be likened to yam tendrils that needed stakes on which to twine, they should be advised to sublimate their sexual and other energies into the execution of tasks that will bring forth the manifestation of their geniuses. What it means is that young people need guidance.
In today’s Nigeria, there is a clamour for the inclusion of young people in political leaderships at various governmental strata. A great number of Nigerians feel that if young people are brought into political leadership positions, they will help to turn around our ailing economy and technological underdevelopment. But it is believed that the commercialization of our politics has shut many young people out of the political arena and loop of power.
However, since the inception of the fourth republic, some young people had got the opportunity to be entrusted with leadership posts at the top level. As to that, Hon. Salisu Buhari readily comes to mind. At the age of twenty-nine, he won legislative election to become a member of the house of representatives. And in 1999, he emerged as the speaker of the house of representatives, which made him become the number four man in the line of power in the country.
Hon. Buhari’s resume showed that he attended the prestigious Toronto university. But he did commit elementary grammatical faux pas while speaking on the floor of the house. His spoken English, which was marked by grammatical infelicities and Jejune ideation, did not portray him as a man of great learning, who attended a world-class university. His poor elocution and uttering of illiterate comments set tongues wagging.
Consequently, an investigation was conducted into Salisu Buhari’s credentials, and they were discovered to be forgeries. He was not an alumnus of Toronto university, Canada; neither was he thirty-six years old, then. Those startling discoveries about his Toronto university degree and true age led to his political downfall and exit from the speakership post.
The fact is that a master forger, who is not an exemplar of positive morality, cannot clean Nigeria’s Augean stable. Salisu Buhari was not the poster boy of good behaviour. And as such, he lacked the moral ground to lead the charge for the moral reformation of our country’s youths.
Thereafter, after many years had elapsed, the dapper and foppish Mr. Mark Okoye II became the chairman of the South East Development Commission (SEDC). Before he got that preferment as SEDC chairman, he was celebrated and eulogized for emerging as the youngest commissioner in the political annals of Anambra state. He was thirty years old at that time. And the American trained Mark Okoye held important political posts in Anambra state before he turned thirty. Whether or not he acquitted himself well in those offices is debatable.
But SEDC, which is a child of necessity, is a different kettle of fish from the other political offices, which he held. The decades of political and economic marginalization of the southeast, which caused lack of federal presence in the area, necessitated the establishment of SEDC. So Mark Okoye’s job is to drive the economic and infrastructural renewal and development of the entire southeast area.
But does he know that the great assignment given to him require him to take judicious and quick actions so as to accelerate the economic and infrastructural development of the southeast area? But Mr. Okoye is given to theorizing. And it seems that he has got lost in a labyrinth of bureaucratic boondoggle and gobbledegook. Organizing endless conferences and seminars to conceptualize how to fix the southeast infrastructural rot and deficit is not what we need now. He should know that time is of essence.
Worst still, his response as well as his defence about how he managed the humungous billions of naira given to the commission was unsatisfactory. It gives room for suspicion. That he used 153 million naira to fix an office and pay for its annual rent depicted him as a spendthrift. His misuse of public money has portrayed him as a man, who is insensitive to the plight of millions of suffering Nigerians, who live below the breadline.
Mr. Mark Okoye II should know that he is a representative of our country’s youths, to whom the baton of political leadership should be given. He should, also, not give people the cause to believe that young Nigerians are morally bankrupt people, who cannot lead Nigeria out of the economic woods and technological quagmire. But his lacklustre performance as the chairman of SEDC is reinforcing that belief among us. Mr. Okoye should turn a new leaf and make hay while the sun is shining; otherwise, history will judge him, harshly.
Chiedu Uche Okoye
Uruowulu-Obosi
Anambra state
08062220654
Okoye is a poet.
A.I
June 30, 2026
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