“When you use the machinery of the state to dig a pit for your enemies, make sure it is shallow. The political wind changes fast, and you may find yourself sleeping in it tomorrow.” – African Proverb.
In most cases, while reflecting on political life, people wonder why God, who has the absolute power to allow things to go well, still often looks away and allows negatives to prevail in society. When a government or a leader is not performing well, everybody becomes bitter and complains, yet such a government survives and carries on. Why? You may ask, because God’s way is not our way, and oftentimes He uses it to pass a message. That’s why He allows the weeds to grow together with the crops until harvest.
The behaviour of political leaders in Nigeria, most times, reaches a point that makes people wonder why God allows them to have their way amidst the suffering such attitudes bring to the ordinary poor in society. But it all goes to show that God’s way is not our way.
He takes His time and expects people to pick lessons from happenings, knowing that it’s not going to be all smooth and sweet in society.
God occasionally throws up issues that should guide our way when we are privileged into a position. Even though most people often forget the hand of God in their privileged positions, He watches them graciously, hoping they will change.
Because many do not change, having forgotten how they got there, He provides instances for people to learn that, in reality, no condition is permanent. As a result, in some instances, God throws up conundrums to show the mystery of positions.
This week, Political Musing is going to review three instances of privileged positions that may have turned around to be lessons to persons who misuse or abuse their elevation, and to show that in modern reflections, “Power is a leased asset, never a permanent possession. And that while a true leader builds institutions that outlive their own ego, the tyrant builds a monument to their own collapse.”
Nigeria’s political landscape has often been treated to an extraordinary spectacle: The stark, vulnerable unravelling of figures who once sat at the absolute pinnacle of state authority. The ongoing legal battles, detention, and sudden vulnerability of former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the former Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami, and the former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Justice Danladi Umar, have sent shockwaves through the political establishment.
From the rapid movements through inter-agency custody to the viral, emotional images of El-Rufai’s wife’s tears crying out for basic administrative fairness, the scene represents a jarring reversal of fortune. Abubakar Malami, for eight years, presided over the conduct of anti-corruption crusades under Muhammadu Buhari as the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. At some points, he even had to deal with the then EFCC Chairman Ibrahim Magu over allegations of corruption. But here he is today, facing huge corruption cases resulting in the forfeiture of 48 illicitly acquired properties worth over N200 billion naira.
Also, the former Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Justice Danladi Umar, was recently remanded at the Kuje Custodial Centre in Abuja in July 2026 over alleged corruption and abuse of office. He was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Recall that this was the man who humiliated the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, over corruption allegations in 2019.
For men who once wielded the machinery of state with absolute, sometimes ruthless certainty, this sudden descent into the cold reality of the “other side” of the law forces a profound examination of the true nature of authority in Nigeria. It exposes what can only be called the profound mystery of power. Even Bola Tinubu, who has literally seized Lagos State since 1999 and now Nigeria since 2023, will have a day of reckoning, one way or another.
The primary mystery of power is its ability to utterly blind those who hold it. When a politician is surrounded by the intoxicating sirens of state security details, institutional immunity, and a court of fiercely loyal subordinates, power feels like a permanent fortress. It creates the dangerous illusion that the ruler is the author of reality, entirely insulated from the consequences of the systems they oversee.
While in office, both El-Rufai, Malami, and Umar operated with a governing philosophy that frequently prioritised state executive will over procedural restraint:
Nasir El-Rufai earned the Hausa-phone moniker “Mai Rusau” (the demolisher) for his uncompromising, iron-willed administrative approach in Abuja and Kaduna, often dismissing the human cost or pleas for empathy with a declaration of “no apology.”
Abubakar Malami, as the chief law officer of the federation, presided over an era where the selective application of due process and the subversion of institutional boundaries routinely favoured the ruling faction. Homes of judges and Justices, including the Chief Justice of the Federation, were invaded and desecrated under his watch.
In those moments of absolute strength, the idea that the scale would one day tip—that the very state machinery they sharpened would be turned against them—seemed impossible. Yet, power is not a fixed asset; it is a temporary lease. If El-Rufai, Malami, and Justice Umar recall how they utilised their power while in office, would they ever be justified in blaming their successors for dancing to the same music they played and danced?
There is a tragic, repeating irony in Nigerian governance: politicians and public officers only seem to truly discover the importance of constitutional safeguards, human rights, and the dangers of selective justice when they are no longer the ones holding the gavel.
Today, defenders of these former leaders cry out against the rapid-fire transfers between security agencies and pre-trial detentions without clear, credible charges. Frontline opposition figures have even stepped in to declare that “justice must have a heart,” urging the state to respect human dignity.
These advocates are fundamentally correct—every citizen, regardless of status or past misdeeds, is constitutionally entitled to transparent due process and the presumption of innocence.
But the biting morality of this moment lies in the fact that El-Rufai, Justice Umar, and Malami are not being subjected to some alien, unimagined tyranny. They are experiencing the exact, flawed institutional mechanics that they spent years normalising and defending while in office.
“Power is a shadow that vanishes when the sun goes down. The real tragedy is not being treated in unimaginable ways; it is being treated in utterly familiar ways, except you are no longer on the dispensing end.”
The tears shed in this political season—whether by families or broken structures—send a clear, unvarnished warning to anyone currently intoxicated by the wine of public office:
The system you build to crush your opposition today will become the very cage you are thrown into tomorrow when factional alignments inevitably shift.
Arrogance and administrative cruelty sow seeds that wait quietly in the soil. When a politician falls out of favour with the ruling oligarchy, they are forced to harvest the exact thorns they planted. APC is still the ruling party, but the abuse of privilege by some persons that resulted in the coming of Bola Tinubu has fixed some members in opposition. Institutional integrity remains the only true security. The only real way for a true patriotic leader to protect their own future is to protect the integrity of the law while they are in power. If you destroy the courts, weaponise the police, and make a mockery of bail conditions, ridicule those in opposition, you ensure that there will be no shield left to protect you when your vulnerability arrives.
The mystery of power is that it always outlives the powerful. If today’s leaders led by Bola Tinubu do not look into the mirror of El-Rufai and Malami’s current tribulations, strip away their hubris, and begin to govern with restraint and genuine service, they are condemned to star in the next tragic chapter of the same repeating history.
In conclusion, let me therefore remind politicians and any office holders that “Power is a leased asset, never a permanent possession. The true leader builds institutions that outlive their own ego; the tyrant builds a monument to their own collapse.” Opportunity to serve people is a rare privilege that should not be abused. God help us.
