Power, particularly political power has a number of characteristics. Some of them relate to power conferring on the holder awesome means to effect changes in society and affect people’s lives negatively or positively. Power could also be a source of stupendous wealth to the corrupt and greedy. Power equally confers a lot of relevance to people who otherwise without it remain backwater nonentities. Power is a powerful aphrodisiac. It has unlimited potency to engineer arrogance in the holder and fear in those opposed to the holder. But unfortunately power is transient. No matter how long one clings to power, it will eventually come to an end. That is the Vanity of Power.
Those who hold Power and weld it as if it will never come to an end have always found themselves at the wrong end of history when that power slips away. They often come to realize when it is patently late that it is all vanity. The arrogance is immediately deflated. The noise is silenced. The ego trip stops, while the retinue of hangers-on deserts the has-been. The power holder becomes an empty shell with his or her ego badly bruised. In the beginning such persons may erect a bold face, and pretend all is well. But as soon as the paraphernalia of power are removed, the person becomes empty. When a has-been no longer gets recognition or preferred seat at gatherings, when the Press ignores statements made by the has-been and when the retinue of praise-singing hangers-on deserts the former holder of power, the shells begin to crack and the has-been realizes the need to have been more careful in the use of power. But then, it is often too late.
These are the thoughts that run through my mind when I heard of the removal of Ahmed Ali Gulak as the Political Adviser to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. That fateful Tuesday Morning around 8.46am someone notified me that A.A. Gulak and Doyin Okupe have led a team of 47 Civil Society groups to the office of the Chief of Staff in the Presidential Villa for a meeting. My source said they were to issue a communiqué condemning Governor Murtala Nyako. I laughed and asked my source whether they were properly mobilized. He said yes. I told him good for them. After all the blessings of Governor Nyako are many and that part of it relate to the money they will get from the meeting. We both laughed over it.
A few hours later I got a call from another source in Washington DC that the President was about to sack A. A. Gulak as his Political Adviser. While I was bracing up for the confirmation, my friends in Abuja equally started contacting me with the news. I still kept a sealed lip pretending not to know anything about it. By 4 pm there was a call from Gulak the Headquarters of Madagali Local Government to inform me that there was a Rally in the town. The noise from those rallying was deafening and the mood appeared to be joyous. I felt truly bad about the vanity of power. So this man who had made power an instrument of oppression and for the display of unbridled arrogance had finally lost power. How will he adjust to being an ordinary citizen? He had to contend with relative ignominy of a has-been.
He will have to contend with the insults he had heaped on others without any capacity to respond. He will surely be another nobody very soon. As a face saving measure, he claimed he was coming to contest for the Governorship of Adamawa State. I got a call from his relations in Gulak who told me that if indeed Ahmed Ali Gulak wants to be the Governor of Adamawa State, we should request all communities in the State to accept him as Governor if only he will be elected by Gulak his base. The imposter he had imposed on the people as Chairman of the Local Government despite an Appeal Court Ruling has himself left the place as soon as he got an idea of the eventual removal of his godfather.
Another lesson from Gulak’s removal is that in this current dispensation the fear of the South-South is the beginning of wisdom. For all his dabbling into the internal affairs of the PDP in Adamawa, Kano and other northern States, in spite of the insults heaped on elders and Governors of the north, he did not merit a sanction. But as soon as he dabbled into the internal affairs of PDP in Akwa-Ibom State, Governor Godswill Akpabio was said to have complained to President Jonathan on some of the negative activities of his political Adviser A.A. Gulak. The PDP in Akwa-Ibom State claimed that Gulak came to Akwa-Ibom State and inaugurated a sectional and an unknown support group in favour of President Goodluck Jonathan without calling on the State’s party leadership. The party also accused the former Presidential aide of breaching existing and relevant protocols during his visit to the State.
Funny enough these have been the modus operandi of A.A. Gulak as political Adviser. How come it tuned out sour this time around? Well, whatever it is, Gulak had finally stepped on more powerful toes than those he is used to. Now reality will dawn on him. His dream of contesting for the Governorship of the State is nothing but a pipe dream. If he cannot install a District head in Gulak with only six (6) electors, he has absolutely no capacity to win any election in Adamawa State even if it is as low as a councillorship election.
And when he eventually descends from his Abuja high horse to our level here in Adamawa State, he will discover that it is entirely a different ball game. He will get to know the true meaning of the Vanity of Power. He will realize that without power he is just an empty shell. He will realize that a has-been has no place in the scheme of things. That is the true meaning of the Vanity of Power.
Ahmad Sajoh wrote from Dougerei Jimeta-Yola
