The crown Mandela refused, By Osmund Agbo
When the final chapter of this era is written, it may be said that Nelson Mandela, having borne the weight of history, chose to lay it down with grace, while others, having seized the mantle of freedom, turned it into a sceptre of control. Mandela’s life reminds us that power, stripped of compassion, is merely another form of bondage. He was the slave who demanded justice and refused the crown.
Aso Rock may continue to dismiss rumors of a coup, but the stench of panic hangs thick in the air. First came the sudden cancellation of the Independence Day parade. Then, a flurry of forced retirements and reshuffles swept through the military’s top ranks. And now, reports emerge of security operatives storming the Abuja home of Buhari’s petroleum minister and hauling his brother into custody.
It’s all hauntingly reminiscent of Obasanjo’s third term fiasco, in which every denial only confirmed what we already knew. Once again, power mistakes our silence for consent. Nigerians are timid, no doubt, content to watch a handful of rogues decide their fate, but they are not fools. Beneath the quiet endurance lies a people who see, who understand, and who will one day remember. But perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is witnessing a man once hailed as a champion of democracy slowly becoming the very despot he once fought to overthrow.
When Albert Camus observed that “the slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown,” he distilled in one searing sentence the moral arc of power; how noble rebellion, once triumphant, so easily degenerates into tyranny. It is the oldest tragedy of human governance: that the oppressed, upon tasting power, too often become oppressors themselves. Yet, history offers a few rare exceptions: figures who broke the cycle, who won freedom and resisted the intoxicating urge to rule as gods among men. Chief among them was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
Mandela’s greatness was not in his defiance alone, nor in the twenty-seven years he spent confined to a small cell on Robben Island. His true greatness lay in what he chose to do when the chains were finally broken, when vengeance was within reach and power beckoned. He emerged from the shadows of prison not as a man consumed by bitterness but as one tempered by it. The world expected retribution; he offered reconciliation. Where others would have wielded power like a cudgel, he used it as an instrument of healing.
Born into a country that denied his humanity, Mandela could have justified any measure of revenge. He had seen friends murdered, comrades exiled, and entire communities erased by the machinery of apartheid. Yet, when he stood before his people as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, he refused to be consumed by the same hatred that had forged his chains. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom,” he once said, “I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” Few in history have matched the moral courage in that simple realisation.
It is this moral restraint, the rare ability to win power and yet resist its seduction, that separates Mandela from the vast gallery of revolutionaries who have stumbled where he soared. From the Jacobins of revolutionary France to the Bolsheviks of Russia, from postcolonial Africa to modern populists, the story repeats itself with tragic predictability. The firebrands who ignite revolutions in the name of freedom so often end up enthroned, repressing dissent in the name of stability. The oppressed become the new masters, erecting new prisons with the same stones that once walled them in.
Camus would have recognised the pattern instantly: the slave who demanded justice now wears the crown. Tinubu’s transformation from activist to autocrat mirrors the tragic arc of so many leaders who mistake the struggle for liberation as a license to dominate. The revolutionary spirit that once burned in him has calcified into political opportunism. The man who once fought to free his people from tyranny now wields its instruments to consolidate his rule.
Nigeria’s own history is replete with such cautionary tales. Perhaps none is more emblematic today than that of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man who once stood as a symbol of resistance against tyranny but now presides over its quiet resurrection. There was a time, not too long ago, when Tinubu was hailed as a pro-democracy hero.
During the dark years of military dictatorship, he fought alongside other patriots under the banner of NADECO, risking exile and persecution for the dream of a free Nigeria. He was one of the loudest voices demanding the restoration of the June 12 mandate, the stolen victory of MKO Abiola that had united Nigerians across tribe and creed in a shared longing for justice. Tinubu, then, was the rebel, the exile, the man of conscience.
But history, it seems, has a cruel sense of irony. The same Tinubu who once stood against the generals now governs with their methods. The man who once decried the silencing of opposition now presides over a state that persecutes dissenters, manipulates the courts, and tightens its grip on power through coercion and patronage. Under his watch, democracy, the very ideal for which he once risked everything, is being hollowed out from within. Nigeria, instead of deepening its democratic ethos, is sliding toward a one-party state where loyalty is prized above competence and where dissent is met, not with dialogue but with intimidation.
Camus would have recognised the pattern instantly: the slave who demanded justice now wears the crown. Tinubu’s transformation from activist to autocrat mirrors the tragic arc of so many leaders who mistake the struggle for liberation as a license to dominate. The revolutionary spirit that once burned in him has calcified into political opportunism. The man who once fought to free his people from tyranny now wields its instruments to consolidate his rule.
The contrast with Mandela could not be starker. After twenty-seven years of deprivation, Mandela could have easily justified revenge. He could have turned South Africa into a theatre of reckoning, a place where those who upheld apartheid paid in kind. Instead, he offered forgiveness, not out of weakness, but as an act of supreme strength. He saw that the new South Africa could not be built on the ashes of vengeance but on the fragile hope of unity. He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, choosing confession over punishment, empathy over retribution.
When he left office after a single term, Mandela accomplished something that few leaders in history, let alone African leaders, have ever managed: relinquishing power willingly. In that gesture, he elevated the moral bar for leadership far above the reach of ordinary politics. He proved that the purpose of power is not to reign, but to redeem. He showed that freedom’s truest test begins not when you are oppressed, but when you are free to oppress others but choose not to.
Tinubu’s Nigeria stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when that lesson is ignored. The man who once fought the oppressors now dines with their ghosts. The champion of June 12 has become the warden of June 12’s broken promise. Mandela, on the other hand, will forever remain the man who held power lightly, who understood that moral authority is stronger than political might.
The lesson remains as urgent today as it was on the day of his passing, 5 December, 2013. Around the world, democracy is retreating under the weight of populism and authoritarian drift. In Africa, the continent Mandela sought to uplift, coups are resurging, dissent is criminalised, and liberation parties have hardened into dynasties of corruption. Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, is no exception. The same institutions that once promised renewal are now instruments of decay. Elections are rigged, not only with guns but with money and wile. The public trust has become the rarest currency in the land.
And yet, even now, the image of Mandela endures, a reminder that integrity in leadership is not an impossibility, only a choice too few are willing to make. His life rebukes the cynicism that says power must always corrupt, that ideals must always crumble beneath ambition. Mandela proved that one could wield authority without losing humanity, that one could win the battle for justice without becoming unjust.
Tinubu’s Nigeria stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when that lesson is ignored. The man who once fought the oppressors now dines with their ghosts. The champion of June 12 has become the warden of June 12’s broken promise. Mandela, on the other hand, will forever remain the man who held power lightly, who understood that moral authority is stronger than political might.
As we remember Nelson Mandela, let us do so not in sterile reverence but in moral reflection. His life calls each generation to interrogate its own revolutions, to ask whether the pursuit of justice has become the hunger for domination, whether the crown we seek to wear is worth the freedom we once demanded. For Mandela, freedom was not the end of the struggle, it was the beginning of responsibility. He showed that the true measure of a leader is not in how fiercely he fights his oppressors, but in how gently he governs his people.
When the final chapter of this era is written, it may be said that Nelson Mandela, having borne the weight of history, chose to lay it down with grace, while others, having seized the mantle of freedom, turned it into a sceptre of control. Mandela’s life reminds us that power, stripped of compassion, is merely another form of bondage. He was the slave who demanded justice and refused the crown.
Osmund Agbo is a medical doctor and author. His works include Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and a fiction work titled The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released. He can be reached through: [email protected]