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It is becoming more
and more frightening to grow old in a country where elderly people are
treated like rags and sometimes as spiritually dangerous creatures.
Indigenous traditions in Africa and elsewhere invite us to honour the
elderly and make provision for their upkeep. Old age is understood as a
blessing from the maker, a reward for some good work, though sometimes
re-explained as an opportunity given to individuals to mend their ways
before it is too late.

In whichever way
old age is conceptualized, the fact remains that it is considered a
great abnormality for a community to lack the elderly. In recent times
life expectancy in Nigeria seems to have fallen and one can find the
most elderly in a local community being just 55 years or even less,
people shrug their shoulders and snap their fingers, saying the
situation is much like a curse. A community that lacks the elderly
lacks a store of wisdom and wealth of experience for.

In spite of the
growing tendency to look towards new ways imposed by modernity, there
are always occasions to turn to the elderly to seek advice on how to
handle challenging situations. In a modern Nigerian society that is not
sure about how to use the past, or that is uncomfortable with memory,
have the elderly not become stereotyped as witches and wizards whose
presence is a danger to the progress of the very children and grand
children they have always craved to have? Have their children and
grandchildren not abandoned them, believing that if they get closer,
these elderly ones would take ex their younger souls in exchange for
theirs?

What about the
government of the day? How friendly are its policies to the senior
citizens of the country? How much attention is paid to how housing,
environmental planning and social activities affect the well being of
the hoary-haired among us? The attitude of the government to the
elderly at best seems to be that of indifference.

Perhaps the
unfortunate idea is that these elderly ones do not contribute much to
society, that they are rather a liability. With the exception of the
efforts made by religious groups, one does not see any significant
community welfare programmes designed to cater for the psychological,
medical, or physiological well-being of elderly people in a 50-year old
country where elected politicians spend billions on entertainment,
buying several fleets of cars and airplanes.

We seem to live in
a society that prefers eternal youth and which sees the elderly as
signifiers of what it does not want to be.

As a beginning
“nation” we are to be excused as learners and we keep promising that we
will learn. Give us time. Give us the chance to burn and then resurrect
from our ashes. Give us the chance to take ourselves to Hell before
getting to Heaven. Give us the chance to bury our elderly ones first
and then come back to follow the rest of the welfare-oriented world.

Nigeria at 50 is
nothing but “Oke wie aji o buru akakpo oke” (The rat that renews its
hair becomes a midget rat). It will never grow up or grow older. It is
satisfied with being akakpo oke! Even when it is 2000 years old as
akakpo oke, it will still prefer playing in the sand like a toddler,
asking to be given more time to grow up. As a country that prefers to
be eternally young, why would it bother to have laws or policies that
help to ensure that the rights of elderly are not violated?

In public places
like banks, post offices, does one ever see separate queues reserved
for the elderly, to prevent such occurrences as sick or tired ones
slumping and dying? Even when out of frustration such elderly ones try
to jump the queue, does one not hear very inconsiderate remarks about
how this “old baba” or “old mama” does not want to respect him or
herself? A callous and insensitive crowd that we have become, we hardly
think about how we would want to be treated if we were that old and
made to wait in a long queue.

Very soon the 2011
elections will take place in a country that is 50 years old but would
have wished it were 50 years young. That akakpo oke country will issue
the very elderly folks it does not cater for with voters cards and ask
them to queue up for hours to vote in an akakpo oke president or
governor or senator, or other distinguished akakpo oke politicians of
the nth republic. The votes of the elderly count too, but against them.
Some will definitely slump and die where akakpo oke politicians have
brought them to use them as stools to stepping into the saddle of a
future that cannot run as fast as its past.

Indeed, growing old in a country eternally young is a very regrettable encounter with citizenship.