FACTFILE with Lanre Alfred Every country produces politicians but only a few produce custodians. Nigeria, unfortunately, has seen too many of the former and too few of the latter. I have spent enough years around the machinery of power to know its peculiar chemistry. Power changes the tenor of a man’s voice and alters his gait. It also expands his appetites and shrinks his patience. Sometimes, it creates an invisible moat around him, separating him from ordinary suffering. Thus, it can turn decent men into emperors and public servants into minor deities. Yet every once in a while, you encounter someone who seems curiously resistant to its intoxication. That, perhaps, is why I have found myself repeatedly drawn to the story of Femi Gbajabiamila. I know, I know. In our society, praise is always greeted with suspicion. The moment one says something generous about a public official, somebody somewhere begins to calculate what contract has been awarded, what favour is being sought, or what office has been promised. We have become so accustomed to betrayal by our leaders that admiration itself has become suspect. But not every reflection is a transaction. Sometimes, one simply encounters a public figure whose journey compels contemplation. Gbajabiamila is one of those figures. I have watched him for years. I have observed him in moments of triumph and while he handled criticism. I have listened to those who adore him and to those who distrust him. And I have come to one conclusion: his greatest political talent is not strategy, not eloquence, not even longevity. It is empathy. Not the sentimental, performative empathy that politicians suddenly discover during election season. Not the kind that arrives with television cameras and disappears with the last ballot paper. I mean power empathy, the ability to understand that authority is not ownership and that the true owners of political office are the people. The Chief of Staff (CoS) to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu understands that governance is not merely about ruling but about carrying the anxieties of millions as though they were your own. In a country where power often behaves like a private inheritance, this quality is almost revolutionary. I have seen powerful men who entered office with noble intentions and emerged with palaces of ego. They stopped hearing ordinary people and became prisoners of protocol, protected by layers of aides, insulated by convoys and convinced that their importance was proof of their infallibility. Gbajabiamila has never struck me as that kind of man. The first thing people notice about him is restraint. The second thing they notice is discipline. The third is something harder to explain. It is the sense that he understands the burden of office and carries it with unusual seriousness. He does not perform power, rather he inhabits his office and the responsibilities it imposes upon him. And this distinction matters. It explains why he can move through the corridors of influence without appearing intoxicated by them. It also explains why he can occupy powerful offices without becoming their captive. Look at his political journey: Twenty years in the House of Representatives. Twenty years. In Nigeria, that kind of longevity is usually accompanied by scandal, fatigue or arrogance. Yet he managed to remain politically relevant while steadily deepening his institutional influence. That alone deserves study, because our politics is littered with brilliant sprinters and very few marathon runners. Gbajabiamila was once a minority leader, and subsequently, a majority leader. Then Speaker of the House. Now he sits at the nerve centre of executive power as Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. What this means is that he is close enough to power to shape its daily rhythm, and distant enough to avoid its vanity. Those who follow society and politics in equal measure understand that influence in Nigeria is rarely a solo performance. It is a terpsichore of trust, calculation, alliances forged in private rooms and tested in public storms. Gbajabiamila has mastered that waltz without reducing or sullying himself. He knows when to speak. More importantly, he knows when silence does the heavier lifting. It was this quality that compelled me, eventually, to undertake a serious portrait of the man in the form of a book: The Power Empath. Not because he is flawless, but because he represents a type increasingly rare in our national theatre: the institutionalist. The man who believes that structures matter more than slogans. The first chapter of the book, A Boy Raised Between Law and Ledger, traces the early currents that shaped him. Lagos in the 1960s and 70s was not merely a city; it was
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