Couple of weeks ago when former vice president, Atiku Abubakar turned seventy, the President, Muhammadu Buhari didn’t just wish him the customary ‘happy birthday’ and it’s overflow of merry prayers. He made it a welcome message: welcome to the seventies club, Atiku. It was as thoughtful as it was suspicious. But above all, it was true.

Going by the reports reaching us from Ghana, the President might get another opportunity to show off his new model of congratulatory greetings soon if the New Patriotic Patriotic Party’s Nana Akufo-Addo, third time presidential hopeful in Ghana looks like he might soon clench the title of President of Ghana, following a media-based campaign that can best be described as one modelled after Buhari’s 2015 election campaign. Maybe it was just coincidence and the world really just needs men like them and the message they carry or maybe we are right and Nana Akufo-Addo is the new Buhari in all the ways we’ll show you below, you decide.

The seventies club

With just one year between them, Nana Akufo-Addo, 72, will join President Muhammadu Buhari, 73, in the league of the world’s oldest leaders soon. They have both watched their respective countries grow for a while and have decided that they no longer will sit back and watch while they are being run aground.

Their determination needs no pointing out. Maybe it’s a thing of age. Maybe when you are seventy is when you defy all odds going after whatever you seek. President Muhammadu Buhari before 2015, had tried for the office twice, same as Nana Akufo-Addo who tried first in 2008 and then again in 2012; both times losing to National Democratic Party candidates.

The party

Speaking of parties, we know it will be a stretch to call Ghana’s NDP the Nigerian PDP so we won’t. But it’s worthy to note that Akufo-Addo has gone head to head with an incumbent who party currently runs things in Ghana. Not very different from PDP. Thye both seek to change  things.

The Change agenda

Perhaps nothing unites both leaders as much as their campaign slogan -Change. Again, maybe it’s just what they world needs, as we have seen from Britain to Austria and more recently, The Gambia. Nana-Akufo-Addo has run a beautiful campaign on A change agenda, promising to create more jobs. Guess who promised last year to eliver jobs by the hundreds of thousands – you nailed it! – President Muhammadu Buhari.

The two campaign, more than their promise of Nirvana through change, owe huge thanks to a citizenry that has lost all hopes they might have ever had in the current administration. Buhari- Goodluck Jonathan and Akufo-Addo – John Dramani Mahama.

And while Ghana’s problems do not date as far back as the 16 years Buhari amabitiously promised to turn around, anyone with eyes can see that things might just be just as bad. For one, Ghanaians have been complaining of lack of infrastructure and incessant power cuts for a while now.

If it weren’t for that unending war over jollof rice, Ghana and Nigeria would actually be besties. And really, that might not be far from happening with the two countries hopefully looking on to these incredibly similar men for “change”.

Where does the Asiwaju come in?

Right here. It will be unfair to end this piece without bringing in the king-maker himself who in the most paradoxical way ties both Buhari and Nana Akufo-Addo together. Sure, Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu has never hidden his support for Nana Akufo-Addo’s opponent, John Mahama. And while Tinubu was undoubtedly instrumental in President Buhari’s win last year, the state of affairs and his waning popularity in Nigeria (and a rumoured rift between him and the President) when viewed in light of his support for the sitting President (no pun intended) in Ghana right now goes to show who the winner really is.