Editorial: The arrogance of power

There is hardly any human being that doesn’t cherish one form of power or the other. People seek it; they lobby, beg and cringe for power. Others, lie, cheat and steal to acquire it, while some simply ride on cosmetic or outright false promises to the pinnacle of power. Worse still, many are those who go the whole hog to kill to acquire or amass power.

Power, is a charm. It is a talisman or amulet. You can either cure or harm with power. Power also comes in the positive sense of it. Many leaders are known to have sought and acquired power to build their states and improve on the general welfare of those they rule.

Even though, power, like wine had left the stomach of the Late Muammar Khadafy for his head, he still managed to employ this aphrodisiac, to turn the socio-economic fortunes of the people of Libya around. It took the coercive, nay, undiluted power of the West, to smoke him out of a hell hole in Benghazi, to enthrone their minions, and place them on a thorny path of atrocious conflict and confusion.

America, Russia and co, are spending sleepless nights, craving and seeking for such power with which to subjugate the rest of the world. They and their cohorts enforce peace by way of manufacturing and sprinkling the coercive weapons of power in weaker but potentially strong and wealthy states.

They then resort to pontificating on democracy, good governance and all that jazz, only after they would have ensured that their convenient apples of discord are effectively in the hands of their minions, wreaking the programmed havoc.

Power, in this case, becomes the ability to act on a person; to be in possession of control or command over others, to have dominion and sway on the rest.

Power then, when not defined in strict kinetic and potential terms like in physics, translates into an unguided missile in the hands of a drunk or teetotaller as the case may be.

Just like they wield enormous power, the dead could, at times, also be powerless. A corpse, by its very nature, is both powerful and arrogant. It never, ever, appreciates the lavish accolades with which it is very often led to Celestial bliss or simply surrendered to the worms.

The “Very Important Corpse” would not as much as appreciate the gold plaited coffin in which it is placed; it wouldn’t confess to, or recognise the trampling feet of violent mourners or those who purport to miss it; neither would it show gratitude to, or recognition for the angelic voices of choristers or give open value to the saintly preachments of Pastors of Souls and Imams.

And now, with all due respect to the bereaved, only power could have informed the burial of the First Lady’s dear mum in Mvomeka’a, rather than in the traditional husband’s homestead in the West Region. In as much as we don’t know if she willed that her final resting place should be Mvomeka’a, trite knowledge, all the same, demanded of the widower to have been dignified by the deceased’s remains being interred in his Western Region village, Presidential fiat and other sweeping powers notwithstanding.

The Governor of the Adamawa Region, Abakar Ahamat, recently queried a foremost business operator and billionaire in his area of jurisdiction and copied the Territorial Administration Minister. Alhadji Abou’s offence was to have arrived the ‘Barka da Sallah’ prayer grounds after the administrator. One wonders what a strictly religious event had to do with the Governor’s presence or “authority” in a Mosque. Whose power was diluted here, the Imam’s or the Governor’s?

Strange still, the Administrative Court of the Southwest is currently looking into a matter of abuse of office, allegedly perpetrated by the Regional Governor, Bernard Okalia Bilai. Some time last year, the administrator ordered the arrest and detention of the CAMWATER Chief of Centre for Buea, because the taps in the Governor’s house stopped running for a while.

Yet, when tens of thousands of other denizens, including boarding school kids, went and still go for months without seeing a running tap, he stays mute. When this ‘scum of the earth’ resort to cholera prone sources to scoop water, no one is locked up. Arrogance of power, one would imagine.

Arrogance, especially when it comes to power makes for, or implies unwarranted claims to dignity, authority or knowledge; it makes for aggressively conceited, haughty or overbearing overlords, like those who are quick to put senior legal practitioners behind bars like tearful peevish brats are wont to demand of daddy, when a bigger brat deprives them of their Christmas Day candy.

The same Governor practically went to the frontiers of decency when he destroyed a CRTV flagship programme, “Press Club” for daring to comment on his land acquisition deals that were considered untidy.

The most recent is the putting behind bars for weeks, of a sand truck driver by the Southwest Governor. Lest we are mistaken for condoning traffic offences and other forms of unacceptable social behaviour, we acknowledge the fact that many motorists are reckless, thoughtless and arrogant.

We have had cause to decry such dare-devil approach to transforming our highways to race courses on the pages of this same newspaper. The traffic bad manners right under the big man’s nose in Buea is, to say the least, disgusting. He prefers for his charity to begin from the Tiko-Douala highway, while Buea streets are turning into a theatre of lawlessness.

We see it as odd, for an “off duty” Governor on prom, to personally intercept an “erring truck” driver, who allegedly prevents his car from overtaking his sand truck on the Tiko-Douala highway, to employ his obnoxious “15 days renewable detention” prerogative and keep a father of children behind bars, without the slightest compunction; without recourse to the dictates of prudence, common sense or due process.

Some of these laws that still infest the nation’s statute books and which are conveniently placed at the beck and call of local administrators, are, to say the least, atavistic; they are repugnant to the law of man or natural justice. We hasten to state that it is mostly gullible bullies that are quick to take refuge in such laws for unwarranted protection.

Similarly, only unsafe personalities would resort to take too much to themselves as of right, undue presumption of dignity, authority or knowledge and aggressive conceit.

That said, we denounce the arrogant resort to the use of naked power and call on overzealous power monger and brokers to allow the courts to decide in matters when rights, including theirs, are seen to have been infringed upon. That, Sirs, is what obtains in “advanced democracies”.