Ahmed Gulak is the latest to be thrown away from the presidential jet
without the aid of a parachute. Fired, he was on Tuesday, as a special
adviser on political matters to President Goodluck Jonathan.
Gulak is not new on the political turf. He had been the Speaker of his state House of Assembly, Adamawa and a vice-presidential aide on constitutional matter before he was appointed by President Jonathan as his political adviser.
In the course of his duty, the presidential chief political strategist wormed himself into the heart of his boss, who probably had commended him on a few occasions for a job well done. Buoyed by his closeness to the president, he became more virulent in carrying out his duty.
With a barrage of criticisms and invectives coming the way of his boss, Gulak took it upon himself the role of an attack machine against opponents of the president, yelling at every identified or perceived enemy of his boss, particularly over the latter’s eligibility to run in 2015.
Governor Murtala Nyako is one of those brushed with a tar by Gulak. When the governor alleged that the president signed a one-term pact, the presidential aide came down hard on Nyako and pronounced him “politically dead.” The governor fired back, cursing Gulak would never be politically alive. To Nyako, the political adviser was more of a liability than an asset to his boss and the country.
When former President Olusegun Obasanjo penned a caustic letter to President Jonathan over the manner the latter had been handling the affairs of the country and those of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Gulak was in his element in chiding his boss’s political benefactor. “I will like to say with all sense of responsibility that Nigerians should not make God out of Obasanjo. Obasanjo is not God, and it is only God that gives a person power, it is only God that can say ‘Mr. A, you will be president,’ and it will come to pass. No human being can play God.”
“Some people resorted to letter writing; they are out of power and still want to dictate; they want to assume the power of God. Nobody can play God. They were in power for many years; they stayed for two terms and even tried to remain in power. Why should President Jonathan be different?” Gulak had asked rhetorically.
But he contradicted himself in January this year when he tongue-lashed those opposed to Jonathan. He cast the president in the mould of an Almighty leader when he said Jonathan “has the power of life and death” and that Nigerians were lucky to have him in the saddle. He added that only 40 per cent of such awesome power was being used by the president because he was not power-drunk.
Another of Gulak’s many destinations in his flight of fancy was the National Assembly. He had lampooned the lawmaking institution and those in charge of responsibility for poor budget performance and implementation, even when it is apparent that it is not the duty of the lawmakers to release vote for budget. The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, while responding to Gulak, described the presidential aide as an “interloping troublemaker.”
His probable last straw or misstep was his voyage to Akwa Ibom State recently to inaugurate a support group for President Jonathan’s re-election.
Assembled at the event and put in charge of the group were the political opponents of Governor Godswill Akpabio. Apart from being the chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Akpabio is the most vocal backer of the president from his home base in the South-South geo-political zone. A political turmoil has been the consequence of that ill-considered decision.
The general image Gulak cut for himself is that of a loquacious presidential aide who failed to realise there is time for everything- a time to talk and a time to keep the mouth shut. Gulak took the fall because he did not realise that the tongue, though a small member of the body, is so lethal a weapon that sometimes sets the whole body on fire. That tiny organ also has the capacity to prematurely draw the curtain on anyone’s career, if not properly muzzled. History is replete with tales of great men who fell from the Olympian height to ground zero on account of improper use of the tongue. King Richard, in Shakespeare’s Richard II, ironically refers to himself when he chides his uncle, Old Gaunt, on the latter’s sickbed. He says: “This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head, should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.”
If it said that a person has spent, for instance, 20 years on a particular job, can such a person claim to have got 20 years of cognate experience on that job? The answer will be ‘no’, if all the person does is to repeat the same task over the years without either multitasking or changing his or her strategy.
Perhaps, Gulak did to understand how his predecessors in similar roles in the past ended both within the country and in other climes. David Plouffe doubled as President Barrack Obama’s political strategist and campaign manager. He played the role so well that he was credited with the success of Obama’s political strategy. Chicago Tribune credited Plouffe as the mastermind behind the winning strategy for Obama. Plouffe was not given to attracting unnecessary publicity for himself or his boss. Obama characterised him as “the unsung hero who built the . . . best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.”
Rather than build bridges for Jonathan, Gulak succeeded in making more foes for his boss. If he could not make more friends for his boss, it was illogical to have added to his list of enemies. Political strategists are usually not seen, but their impact is felt by the employers. They deploy their tact and intelligence in halving their boss’s enemies and leave people wondering what magic has come to play.
Now that Gulak has been axed, maybe he will avail himself of books on political strategy. One of the lessons from such book will be this: “The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.”
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