• Youth, elders do not complement each other

• Self comes before nation, me before others

ELDER statesman and Nigeria’s former permanent representative at the United Nations, Alhaji Maitama Sule, says the nation has found itself in an unenviable situation because, “people with no experience in administration are now in power.”

Speaking at the weekend during a public lecture on the topic, “Political Development in Northern Nigeria - 1949 Till Date,” Sule noted that the younger generation in the late 1940s and 1950s, such as himself, actually formed and held important positions in the earliest cultural organisation, Jami’iyar Mutannen Arewa (Organisation of Northern People), which raised the consciousness of northerners.

Yet, when elders embraced it, he and others had to step down because they “realised the importance of having elderly people,” and this was the secret of the success of the organisation at that time.

According to him, that organisation transformed into the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC), which became a political party in 1952. He observed that its manner of leadership was a factor in its success from 1952 till the coup of 1966.

“The best organisation in the world is a combination of the old and the young, the experience and maturity of the old and the dynamism, radicalism and youthful assurance of the young,” he pointed out.

Northern leaders of that time, such as Ahmadu Bello, he said, deliberately made younger ones such as himself, Shehu Shagari and Justice Mamman Nasir (rtd) to work with them in order to make them gain experience in administration because of the realisation that the future generation must be trained.

The secret of the success of the younger generation he belonged to in the North, and which was groomed by such leaders as Ahmadu Bello and the late Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, was that the younger generation respected the elders and made effort to learn from them, each category complementing the other, Sule explained.

At the lecture, which was organised by Liberty Chamber, a students’ capacity-building and self-improvement body of the Law Faculty, Ahmadu Bello University, Kongo Campus, Zaria, Sule said that politics, as played by politicians in the pre-independence period, was significantly different from what obtains today.

According to him, leaders of that time did not put self first but the nation. He cited an occurrence at the 1952 Jos Convention, where a new president was to be elected for NPC after its first president, Dr. Russel Barau Dikko, had resigned and withdrew from politics because he was a civil servant.

At the convention, many had wanted Tafawa Balewa as party president, and there was going to be an election between him and his rival, but Balewa put the unity of the party and that of the North first and declined to participate in the election, Sule noted.

He conceded the Presidency to Ahmadu Rabah, later known as Ahmadu Bello, who became president of NPC and later the Premier of Northern Region. And though political leaders in the North were of different religions and ethnicity, he added, “we were all brothers, irrespective of religion or tribe.”

At the national level, he recalled, leaders of that time, Balewa, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, united by putting the interest of the nation first as independence time approached, even though they were divided by regions and party, as well as ethnicity.

These leaders faced series of crises in the last few years to the 1960 independence, yet they worked together and overcame them for the benefit of the nation, he said. To this end, he called on the younger generation not to despise the elders but to be ready to learn.

Likewise, he urged the national and regional leadership to emulate the good examples of the past selfless and incorruptible leaders, who were part of the nation’s history.

On his part, the principal partner of Liberty Chamber and head of the organising committee of the lecture, Hauwa Mohammed Nasir, said the chamber was set up to help law students become familiar with law practice by organising relevant extra-curricular activities.

Such activities, Nasir said, included moot trials (without witnesses), mock trials, public lectures, debate, as well as competitions with law students of other universities.

Present at the lecture were the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration), Ahmadu Bello University, Prof. N.I. Sada, and Justice Mamman Nasir (rtd.)