A former Governor of Kaduna State and Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Ahmed  Makarfi, has urged  old politicians to quit  the political stage for the younger generation.

Makarfi  said  a situation whereby  the older generation clung  on  to power stifled the country’s growth.

The former governor spoke at a dinner organised to mark his 57th birthday on Sunday in Kaduna.

He said, “I am by no means advocating that the older generation is losing its value. What I am saying is that they are more valuable where and when they gradually and voluntarily hands off leadership to succeeding generations in a deliberate and seamless manner such that the new leadership will be availed the opportunity of being guided by their various experiences.”

Makarfi, a two-term governor of the state, noted that  Nigeria’s older generation ignored the fact that leadership transition should begin with the training and preparing of successors.

He added, “When I look around the world, especially the developed variant, I see that leadership is seamlessly being transferred to a new generation that is in its 40s and a few other cases, in early 50s. But here the story seems to be disturbingly different.

“I believe that by the time I am  60 in 2016, my peers and I should have evolved a succession system that sees us begin to gradually disengage and give way to those that now look up to us. A system in which we get stock to our various seats till tomorrow or beyond, even when we have been around since yesterday, in my opinion, is stifling our growth because the dynamism that now rules the world is such that requires leaders of the time, who are in tune with the times.

“My concern is that unlike in other places, we seem to ignore the fact that leadership transition is a process that should begin from day one with the training and preparing of potential successors because since nature abhors vacuum, we must know that prepared or not, we must be succeeded one way or the other.

“It is therefore my view that it is in the interest of the good of the society and even our own enlightened self-interest to ensure that those, who eventually take over from us are properly and adequately prepared and trained.

 “Two issues agitate my mind at the moment. One is that there is no escaping the fact that as we grow older, we get more dispensable by the day. Therefore, all of us that have been thrust into positions of leadership need to ask ourselves two discomforting questions.

“One, I, for instance have just clocked 57, which means that three years hence, if it pleases Allah to preserve me to that time, I will be 60. What will I wish or even expect upcoming generations to remember me for?

“In other words, what legacies will I be bequeathing? Linked to that is the question of what we are doing to make for a smooth transition of leadership from us to the succeeding generation. Decency and propriety demand that one does not sit in judgment in one’s case.”

 -Punch