Examined Life: A lesson in Power, Politics, Loyalty & Personal Development (1)

By DrNuruddeen Muhammad On Jan 29, 2025

By Dr Nuruddeen Muhammad

Ten years ago, on this day, the 28th of January, 2015, I took final leave of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan after resigning a dual role in his cabinet as both the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Supervising Minister of Information of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The president has finally released me after an exchange of letters between Dutse, which was signed by my father, and political benefactor, the then governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Sule Lamido, and the president himself, effectively ending a three and a half tour of duty which began on the 14th of July, 2011.

In this personal reflection, I intend to write about the powerful undercurrents, motives, and entanglements that drive my journey so far, including specifically the need for and price of loyalty, and later harp on the necessity for continuous personal and professional development among the political class, most especially the younger cohort. There is significant anecdotal evidence out there that suggests that many young people (like me) who climbed the social ladder quite quickly, eventually find it a bit difficult navigating life . My hope is that this becomes a useful guide to other young people in the position of power and authority today and in the future.

Though President Jonathan and Governor Lamido have a fairly extensive knowledge of me, and reasonably confident that I hadn’t caught the extremely infectious power bug, I suspect they also felt a certain obligation to make sure that I succeed outside office; politics or no politics. Both had imagined and clearly planned a certain immediate future where, according to them at different occasions and severally (including on that day), I shall be of immense use to my generation (whatever that means). The combined weight of these expectations and the anticipated uncertainties that lie ahead made me took one hard look at myself through my phone screen while driving out of the Aso Rock Villa that day (and in the process took this attached selfie).

While President Jonathan had the inclination to return me (among many other young people as he had said) as his substantive minister of foreign affairs in his second tenure, for Lamido, that future had just begun, and it was in what he indisputably knows best; electoral politics. At 37, I was coming home to contest the position of a deputy governor, alongside Mallam Aminu Ibrahim Ringim, who was then substantive flag bearer of the PDP for the 2015 general elections in Jigawa State.

Meanwhile, I had tons of personal plans, too. The top most were personal and professional. I had wanted to immediately consolidate my newly acquired skills and experience on the global scene through an immediate Mid Career Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of the Harvard University, in the United States of America. This I had to postpone. I will come back to this later.

However, I guess Sule Lamido wanted to first ground my big degrees in medicine and those newly acquired skills, expertise, and experience in state craft, national security, diplomacy, international relations, and global politics and governance to our local social and political realities, idiosyncrasies, and even contradictions. He thought, and perhaps rightly so, that without further tethering at the grassroots, I could be lost to the vast global landscape. It wouldn’t have been entirely of my own making, either, I think. The combined transformative pressure of more than two decades of continuous undergraduate and postgraduate specialist medical training, exposure to power and governance at the highest national and global levels with all its glitz and glamour at a relatively young age could potentially create an alternate reality for many, much less, the young.

Well, our ticket in Jigawa was eventually defeated. Like in many other states in the North, this defeat was through the combined agency of the sheer romantic appeal of the poorly conceived political philosophy and ideas that were presented as General Muhammadu Buhari’s change manifesto (which centered entirely on blaming the status quo) without much coherent ideology, governance model, and guidelines to deliver on it, and an intractable civil war within the PDP. Buhari and his hoard of itinerant ‘intellectuals’ blamed everyone in the then ruling party (particularly the president) for the entire social, economic, and political problems that ailed Nigeria. Unfortunately, many within the PDP concurred, and the biggest party in Africa imploded! This is a topic for another day

But Lamido was right about recalling me back to Jigawa to contest in the 2015 general elections. It is this type of strategic thinking and altruistic disposition of Lamido which we benefitted from that we try to match by our loyalty to him which not a few see as intense. Though I was briefly a rural doctor in the state exactly a decade earlier, five months of extensive campaigns in all its nooks and crannies gave me deeper insights and a more nuanced perspectives of its economic realities, sociocultural dynamics, political economy and orientation, youthful demography their worldview, needs, and vulnerabilities, and environmental threats.

While these realities had greatly improved after Sule Lamido’s eight years of conscious, proactive, and clinical leadership, I had strongly felt that a further strategic disruption was necessary to unlock a future of sustainable development and growth. However, I was, unfortunately, by that time, already reluctant on electoral politics. Instead, I resorted to fulfilling what I considered as an obligation. I initiated dedicated development dialogues and symbolic action platforms to inspire communities through the Unik Impact Foundation (www.unikimpact.foundation) and SAWABA FM Radio (sawabafm.com). Quite a drop in a vast ocean, well, perhaps, but probably just enough to numb the conscience. I will come back to these later.

Three reasons explained what many had interpreted as either my reluctance, fear, or apathy with the electoral politics in Jigawa State.

First, I was not entirely comfortable with some of the key elements of the prevailing political mobilization strategies. I felt strongly then, that appeal to base sentiments, deceit and treachery, and outright transactions are largely deployed in place of deeper conversations around social contracts on how to deliver greater good to the greatest number of our people. This utilitarian ideal or even a reasonable corruption of it (I supposed) is often pejoratively dismissed as either naïve, bokocentric, or even blatantly idealistic. But as is already obvious, this present model can only help take us backward.

Secondly, political movements are largely mistaken for personal projects of the aspirant to attain fame and enrich themselves, not as a collective social enterprise for a shared cause around core values. While this may be true for many politicians, it is entirely up to the people to actively identify and mobilize around actors that may be different. This is hardly the case. Poverty, hunger, and ignorance are often advanced to justify these poor civic behavior and transactional outlook.

While it is unfortunately true that there still exist some feudal undertones to the social structure and organization in the Muslim North, and as a result, the majority Talakawas at the bottom have been denied quality education, and their prosperity stunted through long-standing economic injustices; and these ignorance and poverty are eventually exploited by the predatory elite class to perpetuate and widen existing class and social gaps, this sole victimhood narrative alone is however of limited validity. The Talaka must be challenged to participate in his own emancipation. Because under the outlined circumstances above, I had thought, the Talaka appears complicit in his own dehumanization and oppression!! I digress

The third and most fundamental reason for my reluctance was my overwhelming sense of personal loyalty and indebtedness to Dr. Sule Lamido, the strong desire to not disappoint him in any way, and a certain spiritual interpretation I gave to both.

This deep sense of personal loyalty/indebtedness to Sule Lamido, spiritual orientation, and general reluctance were to be thoroughly tested in the coming years against a strong desire to serve, a growing passion for both personal and professional development, and an overwhelming political pressure to contest elections.

Ten years on, the combined agency of these formidable push and pull influences has delivered both results and experiences, including adventures that were uniquely transformative; many in the ideological realm, some on the local electoral political and social turf, and a few in personal development far away in exotic lands.

There were landmark disappointments, and yes, serious consequences, too !!!

To be continued….

Dr Muhammad

MBBS, MWACP, FMCPsych

Was Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs 2011-2015

Minister of Information 2014 -2015

PDP Deputy Gubernatorial Candidate 2015 General Elections

PDP Jigawa North East Senatorial Candidate 2023 General Elections

Student (Global Health and Development)University College London 2024 to date