Let's Confront The "Generational Change" Question

Africans have no quarrels with age. We revere, venerate and celebrate our elders. So may it be, so shall it be, for aye. All elders are accorded this high honour, until they disprove and disown the status!

One sure station at which elders easily unravel and discredit themselves is politics. It is the open marketplace in which nothing is hidden anymore. And for them elders, we mourn. Very bad sore all over the land! Yes, we must mourn.

At first we permitted the so-called learning process, teething period. But after several decades of the same shenanigans, no more! How come they know how to manipulate, break all laws with impunity, steal the thunder out of the electoral process, loot the daylight out of tight national treasuries, find and locate, and then stash obscene sums in off-shore safe havens, plus luxurious properties in the poshest neighbourhoods abroad? How come they are experts in selling our collective patrimony to themselves, using the most devious means to cleverly appropriate our commonwealth? Yet, they cannot run our affairs in consonance with their oath of office? Damn, we must now ask our elders, and be pointedly tasking about it.

Do they see what "elders" and "seniors" do elsewhere? Especially in those developed economies where they so frequent, and even made alternative home(s)? Why have our elders blocked our progress this long, this bad, this shamelessly? Answers, please...No more hedging or hiding.

Now, let's be clear and fair. There are millions of honourable and wonderful elders in the land. Indeed, we are so blessed with the stock. And that is the problem. How did the wrong ones get to take-over??? And why did they last so long on the wrong path??? Now, we be all smeared. Why and how did the multitude follow the few to sin??? Now, we be all damned.

The Chinua Achebe Foundation's interview series and other media reminiscences with senior citizens, as well as memoirs of retired persons, have been eye-openers! Lamentations galore!!!
No matter. Point now is, what next? Where is salvation, come Election 2007?

I think political parties need to take this matter on board. We must ask the pointed questions. They sh