“When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of the regime” – Sir Winston Churchill, 1874-1965

“The face of tyranny is always mild at first” – Jean Racine, 1639-1699

Most African and Nigerian leaders are often too busy hustling to make as much money for themselves and family that they have no time to read.

They certainly don’t engage staff who can undertake the most casual review of historical precedents in order to guide their actions.

Let me confess that it appears as if the rest of the world is catching up to us as we drift gradually towards World War III.

Only God knows what this planet will look like after mankind would have done its worst to annihilate the species from the face of the Earth.

Just last week, it was announced on this page that WORLD WAR III has started and only the official declaration and shooting remains.

Two days after, Israel attacked Iran, justifiably or not, and has exonerated Russia from invading Ukraine; and excused China if it chooses to forcefully annex Taiwan.

The Chinese invasion, which is only a matter of time, will present America with a dilemma: Face China based on its treaty obligations or accept the loss of an ally and the humiliation that entails.

Given Trump’s instincts, confrontation and conflict will be his response. There lies the danger.

Escalation will surely follow; and a full scale war might result – with nothing off the table as weapons to be deployed.

Just in case you are wondering what the preamble has to do with Nigeria, let me summarise it this way: Gradually, the entire world is defecting from governments based on strong institutions to nations governed by strong men and one party.

Democracy and governments characterised by rule of law is giving way to rule by one man.

The checks and balances entrenched in classic democracies have been severely eroded.

As Benvenuto Cellini, 1500-1571, reminded us, “The law can’t be enforced against the man who is the law’s master.”

When self-deluded political leaders embark on creating an individual who is so powerful as to be above the law, they inevitably fail to understand that they might become victims of the tyranny that will follow.

AFRICAN HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS

“What experience and history teach is that people and governments never have learnt from history or acted on principled deducted from it” – Gorge Hegel, 1770-1831, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 92.

I must have read over 300 history books, partly or fully, among nearly 6,000 while compiling materials for the book of quotations which took me about 34 years from the start to finish.

I waded through virtually all the stories of empires from 500 years before Christ till the wars, big and small, up to 2006 when I started the manuscript. 

I also followed the history of rulers across the world; the personalities who made every age in human history.

The most astonishing fact is the frequent recurrent of dictators – those who wield absolute power over their fellow men.

When Lord Acton, 1834-1902, proclaimed: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” – a line which most people quote – they forget the second line. “Great men are almost always bad men”.

Later, Saul Bellow, 1915-2005, a 1976 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, warned the whole world: “Invariably, the most dangerous people seek power.”

That statement is to some extent true irrespective of time, place, the form of government and the people involved. 

I have chosen to focus on Africa and some of the historical precedents that we have established with one party, one man and millions of citizen-slaves that inevitably emerge.

Despite the overwhelming evidence available to all of us that one-party, one-man dictatorships have left the continent mostly under-developed, Africans everywhere still embrace one-party and one-man dictatorships – whether military or civilian.  

Ghana, Guinea, Cameroun and Zimbabwe started out in the 1960s as democracies – when the wind of change blew all over Africa bringing independence to former colonies of European nations.

By 1970 there were very few democracies left.

The heroes of the struggle for independence — had turned their nations, first into civilian dictatorships; and finally into military tyrannies.

Kwame Nkrumah, 1909-1972, and Sekou Toure, 1922-1984, late Presidents of Ghana and Guinea, respectfully, serve to remind us of how multi-party democracies when independence was granted, were transformed into one-party and one-man dictatorships until they were both toppled by another one-man dictatorship – the military. They were not the only ones.

Africa is littered with the one-man dictatorships. 

Nothing demonstrates that people and governments never learn from history than the fact that, in most cases, the politicians who helped the megalomaniacs to achieve absolute power frequently become victims of the monster they have created.

It is one of the verdicts of history that “This is a sickness rooted and inherent in the nature of [dictatorships], that he that holds it does not trust his friends.” (Aeschylus, 525-456 BC).

I always pity all those who, on account of cowardice, selfishness, political expediency or just plain stupidity, join the bandwagon to help create a dictator; which is another name for one-party state.

In less than four years, many of those who helped Nkrumah and Toure were sacked from their top-level jobs; some were jailed; other died under mysterious circumstances; the lucky ones died in self-exile in foreign lands. 

One of my mates at the university in the USA, George Saitoti, became first Finance Minister, then Vice President to Kenya’s dictator, Arap Moi, 1924-2020, after helping the tyrant to gain absolute power.

Then rumours started about George being the heir apparent to Moi, who was not yet ready to go.

George suddenly, mysteriously disappeared.

Irrespective of how close anybody can assume to be to a tyrant, they are only one step away from political downfall – which can sometimes be fatal.

SYCOPHANTS, HISTORICAL AND INTERNATIONAL

“…If I had served God as diligently as I have served the King ( Henry VIII, 1491-1547), he would not have given me over to my enemies in my grey hairs. This is my just reward” – Cardinal Wolsey, 1475-1530.

Cardinal’s Wolsey started his career in serving the King as a middle-level officer. He quickly established himself as the ultimate sycophant who proclaimed that the King could do no wrong – despite the several marriages of the monarch and a forceful divorce.

He quickly became Henry’s man to call upon to propose, execute and justify all the atrocities of the dictator – who, in the meantime, was getting entangled in numerous conflicting and unprincipled situations each of which still required absolute loyalty from his subjects.

In the end, Wolsey was caught in a web of intrigues from which he could not escape the King’s wrath.

He was credited with those words just as he was led to away to suffer the same harsh fate he had plotted for others in order to please Henry VIII.

THE END IS ALWAYS PREDICTABLE

“History never repeats itself; man does” – Barbara Tuchmann, Harvard University History Professor.

Those promoting one-party, and by extension, one-man dictatorship, might become the first victims of the demon they would have created.

The first beneficiary of the evil contraption might even find himself a victim of the system he nurtured.

There is a national precedent.

General Obasanjo was subordinate to General Gowon until the Murtala Mohammed coup.

Shortly after, Mohammed was assassinated and Obasanjo became the military dictator. Gowon, in absentia, was convicted of alleged complicity in Dimka’s failed coup.

The decree Obasanjo signed to nail Gowon, without success, was later slightly amended to almost get OBJ executed by Abacha.

Just as only God saved Gowon; it was the Almighty who saved Obasanjo from his own decree.

Dictators invariably are short-sighted and obsessed with suppressing the people, they seldom consider what would happen if they lose grip on power.

Remember Mugabe?

He spent his last years receiving the lashes others suffered under him.

I know that those nurturing a dictatorship in Nigeria would not listen to words of caution. Obasanjo has twice been responsible for disasters which befell him personally and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; he drafted his own death warrant as military Head of State.

As civilian President, he and people like Bode George encouraged unconstitutional transfer of mandates from other political parties to PDP.

Short-sighted as usual, it never occurred to them that their party would ever become a victim of the precedents established.

APC is also falling into the same manhole now.