By Dr Dayo Israel
Power in public office is a rented room, not a freehold. The lease is short. Four years, at most eight. Then the keys are collected, the curtains drawn, and the crowd that once crowded the corridor simply vanishes.
Those who once walked as if the state itself bent to their stride discover, almost overnight, that the ground beneath them was never theirs.
Look at the record. Diezani Alison-Madueke once controlled the petroleum purse of Africa’s largest oil producer and sat at the head of OPEC. Today she spends her energy in courtrooms, fighting to recover assets long seized while the industry she once dominated has moved on without her name on any door. Abubakar Malami, as Attorney General, was the gate through which justice, contracts, and high-level decisions were said to pass. He is now answering money-laundering charges, properties traced, family members named alongside him.
Tunde Sabiu, the private secretary and nephew who ministers reportedly feared to cross, once made access to the President feel like a privilege he dispensed. Buhari’s own daughter has since spoken openly of how much power the position allowed her to accumulate. The gates she controlled no longer open at her command.
These are not isolated stories. They are the recurring pattern from Obasanjo through Yar’Adua, Jonathan, and Buhari. Men and women who treated presidential proximity as personal capital, who used the seal of office to delay, to exclude, to extract, or simply to remind others of their own dispensability, later discovered that the capital expired with the administration.
The same voices that once competed to praise them now compete to explain why they never truly belonged. The same contractors who queued for signatures now queue elsewhere. The same aides who carried bags and messages now carry them for the next beneficiary.
Every government carries a terminal date written into the constitution and into the calendar. The day the new office holder is sworn in, the old phones stop ringing in the old order. Not gradually. Abruptly.
The calls that once arrived before dawn with urgent requests, the invitations that filled every evening, the quiet offers of partnership that arrived because someone needed a name or a signature, simply cease.
What follows is not only political irrelevance. It is a strange emptiness. Life becomes boring in a way the powerful rarely anticipate. The calendar that was once managed by others is suddenly empty. The people who sang loudest while the resources flowed do not linger to console. They migrate.
Loyalty in those circles was never to the person. It was to the purse, the allocation, the contract pipeline, the ability to open or close a door. When that ability ends, so does the loyalty.
This is why the wise refuse to play God inside the system.
Public office is temporary stewardship, not private dominion. To use the office to freeze the growth of others, to keep files permanently pending, to ensure that only those who bow remain visible, is to build a record that outlives the tenure.
Those records do not disappear when the administration ends.
They become the material for investigations, for public memory, for the quiet satisfaction of those who were blocked. The same people who once needed a favour later remember who made the favour unnecessarily difficult. History is not kind to the gatekeeper who confused access with ownership.
The test is simple and constant. While the phones are still ringing, remember they will one day stop. While the room fills when you enter, remember it will one day empty. While resources flow through your hand, remember the hand will one day be empty.
Those who understand this early do not waste the years blocking others. They use the years to open paths, to settle matters cleanly, to leave institutions stronger than they found them, and to keep enough private dignity that the silence which follows does not feel like exile. Those who treat the office as personal territory discover, too late, that the territory was always leased, and the landlord never needed their permission to repossess it.
The next set of powerful men and women already walks the same corridors. Some will learn from the empty offices and unanswered calls of those who came before them. Most will not. The cycle does not pause for anyone’s sense of permanence. It only waits for the next terminal date.
Dayo Israel is a Nigerian politician, youth advocate, motivational speaker and international development professional. He is also the National Youth Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Quote
Every government carries a terminal date written into the constitution and into the calendar. The day the new office holder is sworn in, the old phones stop ringing in the old order. Not gradually. Abruptly.
