A presidential adviser (Ahmed Gulak) and his dangerous polemics, By Garba Shehu

Mr. Ahmed Gulak, the Political Adviser to
President Goodluck Jonathan, can be a
very dangerous man as is evident from
some of his pronouncements.
In a recently published interview he is
yet to retract, he reminded Nigerians that
our democracy is a hand-out by the kind
grace of the President who he said we are
lucky to have. This President, he
thundered, “has the power of life and
death” but that because he is a good man,
he uses only 40 percent of those powers.
In effect, Gulak wants Nigerians to be
thankful and loyal to the President for his
kindness in not using his full powers (to
crush all of us) otherwise, as he said, he
would have deployed those enormous
powers to do evil.
If Dr. Jonathan is surrounded by
dangerous people like this one, they no
doubt would make him feel like a leader
with absolute sovereignty; one who is
entitled to make rules for the conduct of
human life and therefore one who is
entitled to unreserved obedience. Such
leader would deserve our prayers
because he is in urgent need of
deliverance. He must be rescued from the
power group around him. A leader who
is persuaded, as Mr. Gulak is trying to do,
that he has unlimited authority to
command the country is as much a
danger to himself as he is to the nation.
This is the stuff with which absolute
dictators are made of. Such leaders
demand unreserved loyalty failing which
they label any resistance or opposition
individuals as rebels and traitors.
Mr. Gulak may not have paid attention to
the Holy Bible or the Holy Qur’an
(Baqrah: 258) where a detailed narrative
of the encounter between God’s Prophet
Abraham and the powerful ruler of his
kingdom, Nimrod, was given. “Who is
your Lord?” Abraham was asked. “My
Lord is He who gives life and causes
death,” Abraham told Nimrod.
Nimrod: “I give life and I cause death.”
To prove his point, Nimrod caused two
condemned prisoners to be brought to his
court. He ordered that one be let go and
the other, executed and this was done. He
turned to Abraham and said to him that
“I have just given life and caused death.
What else can your God do that I can’t?”
Abraham was not given to quick temper.
God’s gift to him was logic. He didn’t get
angry or lose his temper at his affront. He
then said to Nimrod “Allah brings the sun
from the east; just bring it from the
west.” At this point, Nimrod was
confounded. He lost the debate.
Gulak’s dangerous polemic is almost as
dangerous as this one.. It is an insult to
the many Nigerians who fought and
defeated our varying types of
dictatorship, pre-colonial, colonial and
post-colonial. Many has paid the supreme
price doing this. We can’t forget those
years of dictatorship that bled the
nation.Any advocacy for dictatorship,
benevolent or otherwise, at this time is a
slap on the face of all Nigerians who
fought for, and nurtured democracy as a
form of government and this, not
withstanding its inherent imperfections.
And for the record of it, Nigeria does
have a constitution and the fact of it
being there is itself a limit on the powers
of whoever is the president. Why do we
have a constitution if the ruling group
does not believe that there is a limit on
the powers of the President to do as he
wishes?
The constitution defines the powers and
tenure of the president. It doesn’t say
that his powers are absolute. Where the
constitution prescribes death penalty for
instance, it confers on the president or
governor the prerogative of mercy but
sets a limit to this because this power is
to be exercised in consultation with the
Advisory Committee on prerogative of
mercy.
Similarly, the president is the head of the
army as commander-in-chief. But to
deploy soldiers to war, the constitution
requires that he seeks the approval of the
Senate. The president is required by the
constitution to operate under the law.
Where he fails to abide by this, it sets
guidelines on how such leaders can be
removed from office through
impeachment. As a politician with a
following and a large family to feed, Mr.
Gulak no doubt needs money to put food
on the table. It becomes dangerous
however when he must become a scam
master and massage the ego of the
President to do this.
It is incumbent for the President to
denounce Gulak’s dangerous statements
and distance himself from them for his
own as well as his government’s
credibility. Otherwise all this talk about
recasting the ruling party and the
government in a new mould by ending
the country’s rowdy political culture will
come to nothing.