Three days ago, profound changes occurred in the polity – across the land. New governors have sprung forth in the states while their predecessors up till last Wednesday had become former, consigned to the ex-this category.
When such situations occur, our people have a way of bringing such reality to the fore, for some lessons to be learnt. If the Yoruba don’t call you “Olowo atijo”, some others will tag you “yesterday’s men”.
How that epithet fits depends on how you spent your time in the transient world of power. Some are conscious of life after office, hence they behave themselves in a way that they can easily fit into society when the aura of power takes a holiday from their lives.
The Yorubas say “ise a tan, omoluabi lo ma ku”. How you exercise power over fellow human beings will determine how you are able to cope after office.
Some public office holders live at peace with themselves after office, not because they shied away from standing up to be counted when duty necessitated their taking some firm stand or action on issues of governance, but because they were ‘Rotarian’ in their thought process while discharging the temporary power they were entrusted with to exercise.
It weighed more on their minds whether the actions they were contemplating in office were in conformity with all known rules of fairness, justness, overriding public interest and the fear of God.
Some others live a life of recluse after office because most of their actions in office centred round the worship of self, ego and cronyism. They employed the tools of meanness and vindictiveness and were, for the most part, gloating in the mistaken belief that they were Pharaoh to whom nothing untoward could happen, forgetting how Pharaoh ended up in life.
Those governors who exited last Wednesday should by now be reflecting on how they impacted or ruined lives and how they want to be remembered thereafter. Those of them who remembered God in their activities know they are going into a life of bliss to enjoy peaceful retirement from the governorship throne while those whose every action fell far short of mortal and celestial expectations should prepare their minds to constant conscience-picking of ‘had I known’, which usually is the lot of those to whom there’s no second chance of attuning for their sins of omission and commission.
All said, we bid the outgoing governors farewell to either peaceful life or perdition; and welcome and good wishes to the new men on the block. Man’s judgement can be subjective but God’s is objective, thorough and total and beyond appeal!
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