GOVERNORSHIP RACE: Ambition or A Call
Ambition can be good when moderately pursued but when taken too far, even when the odds are up against you, it becomes very dangerous. This is over-ambition. In politics, over-ambition is what has led to so much bloodshed of innocent Nigerians because overambitious politicians want to win it all cost – the do it or die syndrome. This is what we see in many parts of the nation.
Jeremy Clarkson, an English broadcaster, journalist and writer, who also turned farmer, got it very well when he warned of the danger of ambition. He said: “Ambition is a dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don’t, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.”
However, while healthy ambition is not altogether dangerous, Clarkson was referring to a do or die approach to achieving one’s ambition. Success that is long lasting is built on purpose. Outside purpose, success becomes the instrument for oppression. This is what we see in the political environment, where those voted into power have turned the levers of power as instruments of oppression of the poor who lined up under the scorching heat of the sun to elect them.
The Akwa Ibom governorship race is on, the campaigns have really gone far, with several aspirants covertly jangling for relevance. Some of who really have no track records of leadership in their private enterprise but leverage their plum public offices to fly about their ambition to clinch the guber seat in 2023. Others have gone so far to declare themselves governors-in-waiting and making it as if the seat is their exclusive preserve and that heavens will fall if they don’t get.
Governor Udom Emmanuel once urged the fathers of faith to pray against dangerous ambition, because, according to him, if any politician ascend political power through diabolical means, he will still continue to engage such diabolical power to sustain him in the seat. Imagine the dangers such ambition portends for the state and her people!
Over-ambition is dangerous! When David was old, Adonijah his son announced himself as his successor. He went about with some priests and strongmen of the kingdom, campaigning and gaining popularity. Yet he was not called to succeed the king. Solomon was called. When David eventually made public the call upon Solomon to succeed him, Adonijah and his hosts were deeply embarrassed. Adonijah recapitulated but at the expense of his life, even after acknowledging that it was Solomon who was call.
These two verses should teach sense to overambitious politicians: Adonijah campaigned in 1Kings 1:5
“Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him.” In 1Kings 2: 15, he said: “ Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign: howbeit the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s: for it was his from the LORD.”
Adonijah lost his life because of unbridled ambition, he knew he was not called but his brother Solomon was. Then why did he waste resources, junketing the whole place, calling himself the king? If politicians have come to accept the sobering truth that power belongs to the almighty God and that he gives it to whosoever he will, then they should not align with Satan to destroy the hard-earned peace and waste the precious lives of young people they administer mbiam to.
A man who is called to serve does not get involved in unnecessary frays just to outsmart his perceived opponents, such leaders abound and time will unveil them.
Akwa Ibomites should discern between the ambitious and the called. Overambitious leaders, if they burrow their ways to the throne by diabolical means, will rule by same. Akwa Ibomites should watch and pray!
