Political elite worried over growing popularity of young presidential aspirants

Political elite in Nigeria are getting worried over growing popularity of young presidential aspirants Mr Rights investigation reveals.

In what seems to be a turning point in the Nigerian political system, young Nigerians in their large numbers are beginning to get more involved in the political system, thereby causing panic and apprehension within the political class.

In the past, what usually dominate the political discuss in this time of the year is determined by the political elites, but fortunately or unfortunately, that is no longer the case. A careful view of the political trend has shown that, young Nigerians are now talking more about their own aspiration than about the aspiration of older people.


Jaye Gaskia

Apart from the growing involvement of youths at the state and local level, many young Nigerians have indicated their interest and working actively towards participating at the national level. Some of them have actually declared interest in running for the number one office in the country among which include Jaye Gaskiya,a veteran civil right activist, Mathias Baba Tsado, an engineering and advocate of quality leadership, Omoyele Sowore, an investigative journalist and social justice advocate, Fela Durotoye,a motivational speaker and host of others.


Omoyele Sowore

However, among all the young presidential aspirants, the one that has caught Mr Rights attention is Mathias Baba Tsado (MBT), who is running under the Action Democratic Party (ADP).

Mathias Baba Tsado (MBT) is the Executive Director of Matrust Nigeria Limited, a successful Engineering firm based in Kaduna State and he is also the Convener of Hope Platform Initiative, a young leadership mentoring organization.

Unlike other young aspirants who are doing so much talking on the media without corresponding efforts at the grassroots level, Mathias is doing it differently. He is not only proffering workable solutions to Nigeria’s numerous challenges; he is equally walking the talk by creating sustainable structures at the grassroots level.

Few weeks ago, the Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir Elrufai said 2019 election cannot be won on Twitter or Facebook, which was in reference to the growing popularity of young aspirants gaining wide publicity on social media. However, unknown to Elrufai, there are young aspirants who are not only popular on social media, but are equally doing the ground work needed to make their dreams a reality. One of them is Mathias Tsado. In December 2017, Mathias inaugurated his presidential campaign team in the 36 states of the federation, building a mass grassroots based structure to aggressively spread the gospel of his campaign across the nokes and crannies of Nigeria. Mr Rights is of the views that, by the time people like Elrufai would realize what is happening, the world would have changed.


Fela Durotoye

Owing to the growing popularity of some of these young presidential aspirants, the political class are really getting worried that the youths are gradually freeing themselves from the hold of the career politicians. While some people are already complaining that too many youths are now declaring to run for president as if it is a tea party, they are not aware that the more the number of youths that indicated interest in such a high office, the greater the level of young people that would participate in the political process, because each of these young aspirants will mobilize more youths to get involved and at the end, not many of them would eventually run, but their friends and families that had been mobilized would continue to participate in the process to the betterment of the country's democracy.

Still talking about what interest Mr Rights in Mathias Tsado, the 41 year old recently released one of the most daring, most progressive and most ambitious manifesto that has woe the social media as well as unsettled the political class. The manifesto was titled ‘’The Difference’’.

In this short document that has since gained considerable attention on the social media and whose content is being actively debated on several fora, Mathias proposed the removal of police from the executive arm of government. He said the police should be run by the judiciary, not the executive. Isn’t this amazing? In the same manifesto, Mathias supported the clamor for state police. However, not a state police that would be controlled by the governor, but the judiciary. He argues that, if the police, either federal or state is controlled by the president or governor as the case maybe, that will always leave room for abuse.
In his own words, ‘’ I believe the law enforcement should work together with the judiciary which is the custodian of our laws, such that no body is above the law, even the president of the country. The same should apply for the states too, so that we can have state police that would not be used by the state executives to bully the opposition and dissenting citizens’’


Mathias also proposes the commercialization of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in such a manner that the corporation will be listed on stock exchange market and every Nigerian is able to own a share in the company. He argues that, this will force the company to be transparent, accountable and responsible.

Reacting to Mathias proposal on pension, an online commentator, Gbenga Akinruli who was so intrigued by Mathias manifesto stated that, ‘’on a positive note, your initiative to push for pension act reforms that allow for cash backed collateral so as to secure housing loans from the Federal Mortgage Bank (not commercial banks because of high interest rates), to me is your most important selling point and should be your battle cry".

These and many more interesting qualities have endeared this young presidential aspirant on the youths of Nigeria who are now volunteering for his campaign.

No wonder a youth led civil society organization recently announced that it is willing to sponsor a public debate between Mathias Baba Tsado and President Muhammadu Buhari. The organization threw out an open challenge, urging president Buhari to accept the challenge in the interest of the people. It argued that, by the ideas being proposed by Mathias, which seems to be extra ordinary in outlook, there is need to host him alongside the president who is more in line with the practical situation.
However, President Buhari is yet to accept the challenge and Mr Right hope he does.