I am studying a work by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans titled “#newpower”. It’s a very interesting book.

This book helps to define our modern day character as a people engaged and witnessing the contestation of two big forces which are old power and new power.

It explains old power working like currency and held by a few who guard it jealously and make it inaccessible to the larger population. Old power is leader-driven and its essence is to capture and own.

New power is open, forceful, participatory and distributed across the society for people benefit. It’s owned by all and its objective is to channel it to everyone’s benefit.

New power moves sideways not top down. That is where we are with the Peter Obi phenomenon. It’s the new power. It’s surging like water and electricity currents. It’s moving from the bottom through the sides to the top unlike old power that is top down and commands.

The young people are using today’s tools to channel the rising thirst to participate in our democracy and build collaborative structures. This is further creating tensions between hierarchies and networks and a dialectic between bottom up and top down. Today opportunities for participation are not constrained. Let the old power holders keep talking about structure while people are organizing in geographically boundless ways with unprecedented outreach

A better Nigeria is possible
Credits: Dr. Ody Ajike