BY IDUH ONAH
THERE is a peculiar affliction that visits powerful men after prolonged exposure to applause. It begins innocently enough. First, they come to believe they are indispensable; then they become convinced they are irreplaceable, and finally; they arrive at the most dangerous conclusion that the state itself is merely an extension of their will.
Across the ages, this disease has worn different garments, spoken different languages, and occupied different palaces, but its symptoms remain remarkably constant. It accumulates power beyond accepted limits, manipulates institutions, laws, and public opinion; suppresses criticism and dissent, and ultimately, it isolates its victims from reality until they inhabit a nation that echoes voices that returned to them as wisdom.
George Orwell’s Napoleon, the pig of Animal Farm, begins as a revolutionary promising equality. Gradually, rules are revised, institutions captured, history rewritten, and dissent crushed. By the story’s conclusion, the liberators have become indistinguishable from the oppressors they replaced. The satire endures because it captures a timeless political temptation: the belief that power can be monopolised in the name of public good.
Nigeria, like many nations before it, once again finds itself watching these familiar performances upon an ancient stage. The actors change but the script rarely does.
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Consider Julius Caesar; a brilliant general and consummate strategist, crossed the Rubicon and concentrated unprecedented authority in his own hands. Rome’s republican institutions bent under the weight of his ambition. Senators, who once praised him, eventually feared him. The laurels of triumph became the shadows of conspiracy. The man who seemed invincible discovered that power accumulated beyond accepted limits often creates the very enemies that destroy it.
Then came Nero, who transformed imperial authority into personal theatre. Surrounded by flatterers, insulated from criticism, and detached from reality, he mistook fear for loyalty and obedience for affection. His empire shrank as his vanity expanded. When the end arrived, it came not with the grandeur he imagined, but with abandonment and disgrace.
In Shakespeare’s Richard III, manipulation became an art form. Rivals disappeared; institutions were corrupted; public sentiment was manufactured; yet every intrigue required another intrigue, and every deception another deception until the architect of conspiracies found himself trapped within the labyrinth he had constructed. His desperate cry for a horse remains literature’s enduring symbol of power collapsing beneath its own excesses.
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French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte, rose upon the wings of genius and national necessity. Victory, upon victory so intoxicated him that the boundaries that constrained ordinary men seemed to him irrelevant. To him, Europe symbolised a chessboard, and nations mere pieces. But ambition knows no natural stopping point. Moscow’s snows and Waterloo’s fields delivered a lesson history never tires of repeating: a man may conquer continents and still fail to conquer himself.
The twentieth century supplied darker illustrations. Italy’s Benito Mussolini manufactured a cult of certainty and strength, persuading many that institutions existed merely to ratify his desires. Germany’s Adolf Hitler elevated propaganda into a machinery of national hypnosis, crushing opposition while demanding absolute loyalty. Both imagined themselves masters of history. Instead, they became warnings within it.
Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu also offers another haunting example. For years, official propaganda portrayed him as beloved, indispensable, and universally admired. Crowds were choreographed. Praise was compulsory. Reality was forbidden. Yet when reality finally entered the room, it arrived with startling speed. The adulation vanished; the illusion shattered and the ruler who controlled every institution discovered that he no longer controlled events.
These figures; from the Roman forum to the literary stage, did not fail because they were weak; they failed because they were intoxicated by their own strength. They believed they had mastered the art of politics, when in truth, they had only mastered the art of self-deception. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, their names becoming bywords for the folly of unchecked ambition.
We have seen this tragedy perfectly played out before on our very soil, Nigeria, in the dictator’s playbook of General Sani Abacha. General Abacha appeared firmly entrenched within the architecture of power, amassed fortunes and set up a formidable fortress of fear only to be undone by the fragility of his own human heart at the apex of his reign.
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Literature, with its merciless understanding of human nature, offers equally profound warnings.
Macbeth murders his way to security only to discover that insecurity grows faster than power. Every threat eliminated creates new threats imagined. Every act of suppression deepens fear. His crown becomes a prison from which there is no peaceful escape.
King Lear presents a subtler tragedy. Though not driven by ambition in the conventional sense, he succumbs to the intoxicating effects of flattery. He banishes truth and rewards praise. In time, he loses the ability to distinguish reality from performance. His downfall reminds rulers that isolation from honest counsel is often as dangerous as naked tyranny.
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George Orwell’s Napoleon, the pig of Animal Farm, begins as a revolutionary promising equality. Gradually, rules are revised, institutions captured, history rewritten, and dissent crushed. By the story’s conclusion, the liberators have become indistinguishable from the oppressors they replaced. The satire endures because it captures a timeless political temptation: the belief that power can be monopolised in the name of public good.
Even Oedipus, though neither tyrant nor usurper, embodies a universal truth. The harder he struggles to escape uncomfortable realities, the more completely he fulfils them. Power often blinds its possessors long before it abandons them.
The lesson connecting these figures is neither ideological nor partisan. It is civilizational. Power that cannot tolerate opposition or contrary view eventually loses the capacity for self-correction. Institutions reduced to instruments cease to function as safeguards. Propaganda may postpone reality, but it cannot abolish it. Political succession manipulated for personal preservation frequently breeds instability rather than continuity.
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Nations flourish when leaders understand that offices are temporary, institutions are permanent, and legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed rather than the ambitions of the governing. The desire to remain politically immortal; whether through perpetual dominance, constitutional acrobatics, manufactured consensus, or the installation of obedient successors, has repeatedly seduced rulers throughout history. But, it has also repeatedly ruined them!
History’s graveyard is crowded with men who mistook possession for ownership, authority for destiny, and power for permanence. They imagined themselves authors of the final chapter, only to discover that history reserves the last word for itself. And history, unlike politicians, rarely forgets.
These figures; from the Roman forum to the literary stage, did not fail because they were weak; they failed because they were intoxicated by their own strength. They believed they had mastered the art of politics, when in truth, they had only mastered the art of self-deception. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, their names becoming bywords for the folly of unchecked ambition.
Our own political dramatis personae would do well to study this history, not to emulate its villains but to heed its warnings, for the cycle is eternal, but the actors are mortal. The throne is not a fortress, it is a stage, and the final scene belongs not to the tyrant, but to the audience. And if history and literature teach us anything, it is that the people, once roused, are the most unforgiving critics.
Onah is the Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL RECORD and writes this column every Wednesday. Send reactions via email to: nationalrecordng@gmail.com, onahiduh@yahoo.co.uk. WhatsApp: +234 8033209749
