By Rotimi Fasan
SENEGALESE President, Abdoulaye Wade, is an old man by any standard. You only need to look at him to know. While according to official records he was born in 1926, street lore has it that he might be much older given poor record keeping in those days. Which means the president might be entirely blameless in the mix-up in his age.

Was it not in 2003, on the eve of his seventieth birthday, that JP Clark-Bekederemo, one of Nigeria’s celebrated writers, discovered he was born in 1933? Up till that time any fresh student of English or Literature, in Nigeria, believed the writer of Song of a Goat among other memorable plays and poems was born in 1935.

This probably proves right those who say that age is  a mere number, for I doubt if that difference in his date of birth had any fundamental effect on the person of Professor Clark. Yet one might say there is nothing strange about Mr. Wade reducing his age if he had done so deliberately. It’s wide spread practice in these parts of the world. For both understandable and quite dishonest reasons people, even those that are ordinarily honest, lie about their age.

So President Wade would only be doing the typical by reducing his age. While his actual age might be disputable, what is not disputable is that President Wade is quite advanced in age even if he is one old man with apparently very strong constitution. This much is clear when you see the president in person.

This brings me to the strange part of his story- his reluctance to leave office after almost 13 years. Given the history of African leaders, this part of the story might not be strange after all. Were the likes of Kamuzu-Banda and Houphouet Boigny young men when they chose to turn their stay in office into life presidencies?

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