Tinubu’s turn: Liberties, leadership and limits of age

For a brief moment on Monday May 29, 2023, Abuja’s sun was the centre of the universe. 

World leaders and well wishers gathered in Nigeria’s administrative capital to grace Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s swearing in ceremony as Nigeria’s President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

Senator Tinubu formally became the President of Nigeria when he took the oath of office at 10.37 am local time at the Eagle Square, Abuja, amid the cheers of fans present and jeers of foes absent.

Tinubu who won 36.61% of total votes cast by 27.1% of the voting population believes he won the election fair-and-square. The opposition candidates believe otherwise, that the vote casting was not free and the vote count was not fair.

Albeit, some wonder why a partly free country can ever have a fully free electoral process.

Research shows that countries whose citizen are partly free or not-free, as opposed to free countries, usually have Presidents that are partly old as Bola Ahmed Tinubu is.

With a score of 20 over 40 in political rights and a score of 23 over 60 in civil liberties, making up an aggregate of 43 over 100, Nigeria situates among partly free countries as of 2023, according to Freedom House ratings.

“Freedom in the World assesses the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals, rather than governments or government performance per se. Political rights and civil liberties can be affected by both state and nonstate actors, including insurgents and other armed groups.

“Freedom House does not believe that legal guarantees of rights are sufficient for on-the-ground fulfillment of those rights. While both laws and actual practices are factored into scoring decisions, greater emphasis is placed on implementation,” the Freedom House report explained.

According to Pew Research’s measurements, older Presidents like Bola Tinubu usually emerge in not-free and partly free countries as Nigeria than in free countries. The study submits that “countries ranked less free tend to have older leaders.”

Currently, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ranks among the 45 oldest presidents among 187 presidents of countries in the United Nations, going by the recent Pew research. 

The study also revealed that 105 of the national leaders in 187 countries in the United Nations are in their 50s and 60s.

The median age of world presidents is 62 years. The youngest of all is 37 years old Gabriel Boric of Chile while the oldest of all is 90 years old Paul Biya of Cameroon, according to Pew Research.

Going by the global age distribution of presidents, President Tinubu, 71, could not be thought to be too old to govern a country.

The only concern is that he takes over from a septuagenarian like him who stifled the people’s freedoms than the past younger presidents did, rendering any notable electoral reform made useless.

The fear is that the trend on Nigeria’s score in terms of civil liberties under Tinubu’s age contemporary, Muhammadu Buhari, proved the Pew Research hypothesis right – “Countries ranked less free tend to have older global leaders.” 

Coincidentally, Mr Tinubu has repeatedly said that he would go the way of his age group and contemporary, General Muhammadu Buhari.

Several civil liberties under the immediate past leader, aged 70+ like Tinubu, remained poor or worsened. The metrics show that the freedom of expression and belief was the civil liberty that the people expressed most, with a score of 9 out of a maximum score of 16.

The civil liberty least abused in Nigeria over the years is the Rule of Law, with a score of 4 out of 16. Tinubu’s professed pacesetter, Buhari did not reverse the flagrant abuse of the Law in Nigeria for 8 years in office.

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