By Dr. Charles Obiajulu Ugwu
The Ancient Seduction
Among humanity’s most persistent compulsions is the hunger for power, that intoxicating force famed for its unrivaled ability to bend wills and sculpt destinies. Power promises the illusion of control in a world defined by fragility. It whispers of permanence, prestige, and immunity from irrelevance.
Across every civilization from the marble halls of empire to the algorithmic kingdoms of today, power has remained the ultimate currency. In Lagos or London, Abuja or Washington, its language is universal. The cleric yearns for spiritual authority; the politician, institutional reach; the entrepreneur, market dominance; the influencer, digital devotion.
Yet beneath this global chase lies a paradox humanity rarely pauses to confront: when we finally possess power, do we truly wield it or does it wield us?
The Possessed Wielder
History reads like a recurring cautionary tale. Those who seek to master power often end up mastered by it. Rome’s disciplined republic decayed into the imperial narcissism of its Caesars. The revolutionaries of France, once apostles of liberty, became architects of the guillotine. In Africa, liberation movements hardened into dynasties of oppression ranging from Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to Gaddafi’s Libya.
The pattern is disturbingly human. Power enters quietly, draped in moral intent, then reconfigures the psyche of its wielder. It does not simply corrupt; it converts. The liberator becomes the oppressor, the reformer the tyrant, the preacher the profiteer. What begins as service ends as domination.
In Nigeria, this metamorphosis is almost ritual. The soldier who seizes power to “save the nation” soon drowns in its privileges. The revolutionary who once shouted against injustice begins to defend his own impunity. Even the cleric, cloaked in virtue, often builds private kingdoms in the name of faith.
Power, it seems, has no permanent masters only temporary vessels.
Power’s Invisible Machinery
Power’s architecture is not limited to offices, uniforms, or bank accounts. It’s true dominion lies in the human mind. It colonizes perception before it captures institutions. Psychologists call it moral licensing, the subtle mechanism by which individuals, once elevated, unconsciously excuse their own transgressions.
“I have sacrificed,” says the politician, “so I deserve reward.”
“I am serving the people,” says the cleric, “so I may bend the rules.”
Chinua Achebe diagnosed this pathology with prophetic clarity in A Man of the People, where Chief Nanga’s charisma dissolves into corruption once his idealism meets power’s seduction. Achebe’s genius was not moralizing but mirroring: he exposed how even the noble are deformed by the systems they fail to reform.
The real danger, then, is not overt tyranny but subtle domestication by the quiet erosion of empathy, the moral numbness that power breeds.
The Nigerian Mirror: Power Without Transformation
Few nations illustrate this paradox as vividly as Nigeria country where brilliance often bows before power’s theater.
At independence, the air was thick with idealism. Yet the dreams of self-rule were soon hijacked by the hunger for personal dominion. The nationalist’s podium became the politician’s throne. From the coups of the 1960s to the oil-fueled opulence of the 1980s, Nigeria’s story has been one of moral displacement in a republic perpetually seeking redemption from its own elites.
Consider General Murtala Mohammed: fiery, disciplined, briefly transformative. His assassination cut short a reformist momentum that might have redefined civic virtue. Then came Sani Abacha the ultimate parable of possession by power. His regime reduced a nation’s vast energy to whispers and fear, turning the state itself into a private vault.
But the paradox runs deeper. Power’s corruption has not spared the educated or the devout. Professors who once decried dictatorship become autocrats within universities. Union leaders replicate the hierarchies they once protested. Even civil society, meant to be conscience, sometimes succumbs to the seductions of funding and fame.
Nigeria thus mirrors the world: power without transformation is merely the transfer of tyranny.
The Global Mirror: Power as Civilization’s Idol
Across continents, humanity has built entire systems around the worship of power. The American project, born in liberty, often veers into imperial muscle. Europe’s colonial “civilizing mission” was little more than moral camouflage for economic conquest.
Today, the battleground has shifted. The new emperors are digital and their weapons, data and algorithms. The world now obeys invisible monarchs: tech giants whose influence exceeds governments, whose codes shape consciousness. Power no longer needs armies; it travels through servers.
And yet, despite this evolution, the moral core remains unchanged. The modern world celebrates empowerment but fears accountability. We have democratized access to power but not the discipline to wield it.
Africa’s Double Bind: Freedom Without Restraint, Power Without Character
Africa’s tragedy is not the absence of freedom but the absence of restraint. Having escaped colonial domination, we often replicate its logic internally. The old overseer’s seat remains; only the skin of the overseer changes.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o once warned of the “colonization of the mind.” Postcolonial power, he argued, is not liberation but inheritance of the master’s worldview. From the palaces of Yaoundé to the parliaments of Abuja, the language of independence often masks dependency on oil rents, on foreign aid, on borrowed prestige.
Robert Mugabe’s descent from liberation hero to despot remains one of the continent’s most painful parables. So too does Gaddafi’s transformation from revolutionary to monarch. Even in Nigeria, the pattern repeats: governors, once hailed as “servant leaders,” morph into emperors of impunity within months.
Yet exceptions gleam through the fog. Nelson Mandela’s decision to step aside after a single term was more than political wisdom; it was moral engineering, an act of restraint that restored equilibrium to a continent intoxicated by longevity. His exit was his ultimate statement: that true power lies in knowing when to release it.
The Psychology of Deformation
To observe power closely is to witness the slow corrosion of self. It begins subtly: a tone of command, an entitlement to exception, a contempt for dissent. Gradually, empathy shrinks and hubris expands.
Modern psychology confirms what literature intuited long ago. In The Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner’s research shows that as individuals gain authority, their neural circuits for empathy weaken. Power, in essence, numbs the moral senses. The powerful interrupt more, listen less, and assume moral exemption.
In Nigeria, this erosion manifests in everyday governance: leaders who dismiss public suffering as mere “perception problems,” or who weaponize poverty as political leverage. The pathology is not ignorance but intoxication in the sense of being above consequence.
The ultimate cost of power, then, is not institutional decay but spiritual deformity. The soul becomes addicted to control.
Toward a Regenerative Understanding of Power
Yet power itself is not evil. It is a neutral energy, waiting for moral direction. The problem is not possession but consciousness. The question is not whether we should have power, but how we should hold it.
In traditional African cosmologies, leadership was sacred stewardship. The chief was not owner but custodian — the human embodiment of balance. His power derived from service, not dominance. Decisions were taken beneath the iroko tree, in dialogue with the community, guided by ancestral wisdom.
To reclaim this ethic in modern governance is not nostalgia; it is necessity. Power must again be seen as borrowed, not owned; accountable, not absolute. Institutions must outlive charisma; constitutions must cage ambition.
As the Yoruba proverb reminds: “Agba kii wa loja, ki ori omo tuntun wo” when elders are present, the newborn’s head should not go askew. Leadership, at its truest, is moral guardianship.
Lessons from the Margins
Paradoxically, those with the least formal power often reveal the purest forms of it.
In Nigeria’s informal markets, traders mostly women, have built microcosms of trust and solidarity. Their rotating savings schemes and mutual aid systems operate on moral contracts more binding than legal ones. Power here is not domination but reciprocity and a living testament to social intelligence.
Across Africa, women-led movements embody similar regeneration. Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement in Kenya redefined power as ecological healing. Nigeria’s market women, from Abeokuta to Aba, once confronted colonial taxation with collective defiance — asserting that power can also protect, not only control.
Such models remind us that authentic power multiplies others; it does not hoard. It regenerates rather than consumes.
From Power to Presence
The future demands a redefinition. The world no longer needs more powerful individuals rather it needs more present ones. Presence is influence rooted in integrity, not control. It is power disciplined by conscience.
To wield presence is to lead without coercion, to command without threat, to persuade without vanity. It is to carry authority lightly, as one carry truth with respect for its weight.
When leaders begin to see power as temporary trust rather than private inheritance, societies stabilize. When citizens treat accountability not as rebellion but as civic hygiene, democracies mature. When spiritual leaders prioritize truth over spectacle, faith recovers its moral gravity.
The next civilizational breakthrough will not be technological but ethical: humanity learning to hold power without losing its soul.
The Final Reckoning
The ultimate question of our time remains deceptively simple: who wields whom?
Every empire, every institution, every human who believed themselves unassailable has eventually discovered that power, left unexamined, consumes its holder. History is littered with the wreckage of those who mistook possession for mastery.
Perhaps the true measure of civilization is not how much power we accumulate, but what kind of beings we become after having it.
To wield power without being wielded by it — that is the last frontier of human maturity.
About the Author
Dr. Charles Obiajulu Ugwu is a management consultant, regenerative systems thinker, and adaptability thought leader. A contrarian with a flair for creative disruption, he interrogates the moral and cognitive architectures of leadership, exploring how societies can evolve beyond dominance into stewardship. His work bridges philosophy, psychology, and systemic transformation to design adaptive, humane futures
