-By Abdul Mahmud
There is a special kind of silence that follows power everywhere it goes. It is not the gentle quiet of the monastery or the eerie quiet of mourning. It is the awkward, accusatory silence of a phone that once overheated from devotion and now lies cool, innocent, and suddenly uninterested. Such is the fate of the phone of Yusuf Buhari, son of the one-time military ruler and former President, who recently lamented that ever since they vacated the Presidential Villa, his phone has fallen into an eloquent silence. “After Goodluck Jonathan made that call to my dad to congratulate him on his victory as Nigeria’s next president, I used to receive up to 2,000 calls a day from different people. The calls would start coming in as early as 4 a.m. – from old classmates, acquaintances, extended family members, former maids, and servants who had once worked for the Buhari family at some point. There were also callers with bogus, untraceable explanations, but my assistant would simply come up with polite excuses to end those conversations quickly! But the moment my dad left power and handed the baton to His Excellency Bola Tinubu, the calls dropped dramatically to about 100 a day. After my dad was buried, they reduced even further to around 20 daily – usually just from siblings and business associates. The phones no longer ring. Nobody truly cares”.
Yusuf Buhari’s lament is therefore not merely a personal reflection, it is indeed a public service announcement about the aura of power in Nigeria.
Once upon a presidency, the phone rang like a Pentecostal bell on Sunday morning. Calls came in torrents. Old classmates rediscovered brotherhood. Distant cousins suddenly remembered shared ancestors. Former house helps developed emotional attachments that demanded urgent reconnection. Even strangers arrived armed with stories so creative they deserved the Nigerian Prize for Literature. Everyone wanted to talk. Everyone needed a moment. Everyone was important. The phone became the national shrine. Then came the unthinkable tragedy. Power packed its bags. The baton of power was handed over. Democracy did its modest little dance like Jimmy Bo Horne’s dance across the floor. And something even more devastating occurred. The phone began to rest. From two thousand calls to one hundred. From one hundred to twenty. From the roar of affection to the whisper of obligation. From the expressive euphoria of power to the familiarity of family group chats. This is not just decline. This is the austerity of pretend affection in the absence of power.
Let us pause and admire the honesty of Yusuf Buhari. The phones no longer ring. Nobody truly cares. It is a brave thing to say out loud what the entire country already knows but pretends not to know. In Nigeria, love is renewable only when it is connected to power. Affection is strongest where one is close to the power. Once power goes, the allure of friendship wanes.
This discovery is not unique to Nigeria. In the United States of America, it was made with cheese. Lyndon B. Johnson, once the most powerful man on earth, reportedly complained that after leaving the White House, senators who once hovered like loyal furniture suddenly developed hearing problems. The phone that rang relentlessly during legislative battles and war briefings became suspiciously quiet. Johnson, a man who could bend Congress with a stare and a threat, learned the old lesson in a new accent. Arms twist only when there is something left to extract. Power had been the caller, not friendship. Jimmy Carter also encountered the same silence, though he dressed it in Southern politeness. After leaving the White House, he once noted how Washington’s warmth cooled, how invitations thinned, and how the phone lost its urgency. Carter, a man who traded power for principle and later built houses with his own hands, learned that integrity is admirable but not bankable. Washington respects power more than character. When the office disappeared, so did the interest. The calls, it turned out, had been for the presidency, not the person. The meaning that Yusuf Buhari’s lament provides is that relevance only obeys the law of power. If you have power, or close to power, the laws of things will bend over to your wishes. Relevance in public life has very little to do with ideas, values, or service. It has everything to do with power. You call he who has power that can move the mountain for you. Who can whisper your name into the right ears at the right time. When that ability expires, so does the crowd.
Power in Nigeria is a balm. It heals old grudges. It restores forgotten relationships. It multiplies cousins like loaves of bread. It turns silence into urgency. When you have it, people call at four in the morning to check on your spiritual wellbeing. When you lose it, they discover the importance of respecting your privacy. The pattern is so consistent. The same society that will not answer calls from the powerless will accuse them of being inaccessible. The same people who once dialed endlessly will later say they did not want to disturb you in your grief. Courtesy suddenly appears when usefulness disappears.
But let us be fair. This is not cruelty. It is efficiency. Why waste airtime on someone who cannot move a file, sign a paper, influence a contract, or secure a favour. Friendship must also eat. Concern must have logistics. Sympathy needs a budget. The phone, after all, is not just a device. It is a moral instrument. It measures value in real time. It rings for the important and sleeps for the irrelevant. It is democratic only in theory. In practice, it obeys hierarchy. What makes this moment cheesy is the shock that accompanies the discovery. As if the silence is a betrayal rather than a curriculum. As if the phones were ringing out of love rather than calculation. As if two thousand daily calls were ever sustainable without the fuel of power. This is the Nigerian lesson that no civics class teaches. Power is the loudest ringtone. Without it, even your obituary struggles for attention. And yet, there is something profoundly instructive in this quiet. For the first time, the silence is honest. The remaining calls are few, but they are real. Siblings call because blood still remembers. Business associates call because interests endure. Everyone else has returned to their natural habitat, which is waiting for the next powerful number to save.
In this silence, truth clears its throat. It tells us that many of our public relationships are seasonal. They follow office terms, not human bonds. They are loyal to chairs, not people. They are attached to corridors, not conscience. The lie which underlines Yusuf’s lament is that care is proven by ringing phones. But care has always been something else. Care is presence when there is nothing to gain. Care is the call that does not need to be returned. Care is the visit that cannot be monetised. By that standard, the phones were probably not ringing with care even at their loudest. So, maybe this is not a fall from grace. Maybe it is a graduation. The fact which stays stark is that silence strips away the noise and leaves behind a smaller, sturdier circle. It replaces the choruses of opportunists with a handful of humans. It enthrones reality.
If those who inhabit the high chambers of power would cure themselves of this peculiar affliction, they must first reconcile with the enduring truth: it is when power recedes that solitude reveals its sharpest edge. They must learn to dwell within the natural order of things, where silence, long suppressed, at last finds its voice. They must accept that the kingdom of power admits no rival sovereign; there are never two kings upon its throne. Until that wisdom is embraced, every departure from office will be accompanied by the same bewildered lament, uttered only in differing accents.
The phones no longer ring.
They will never ring for the reason that Yusuf knows: “Soja go” with old friends; and Soja arrives with new friends who in turn arrive with new ring tones.