…..By the time the last congratulatory call faded, a hard truth had settled in.
Yusuf Buhari, son of Nigeria’s late former President Muhammadu Buhari, has offered a rare and sobering reflection on what life becomes when power slips quietly out of reach. In his words, influence is loud—but its absence is deafening.
He recalled the moment that changed everything: when former President Goodluck Jonathan placed a historic call to congratulate his father on winning the 2015 presidential election. That single phone call, Yusuf said, opened the floodgates.
“Back then, I received up to 2,000 calls a day,” he revealed. “From as early as 4 a.m., the phone would not stop ringing.”
The callers came from everywhere—old classmates resurfacing after years of silence, distant relatives rediscovering family ties, former house helps and domestic staff who had once passed through the Buhari household, acquaintances with hazy memories, and even strangers with flimsy, untraceable reasons for calling. Some were sincere. Many were not.
Yusuf said his assistant often had to step in, politely crafting excuses to end conversations that led nowhere.
Then came the turning point.
The day President Buhari handed over power to Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the noise reduced sharply. The once-overloaded phone lines thinned to about 100 calls a day—still many, but a fraction of what power had attracted.
And then came loss.
After his father’s burial, the calls dropped again—this time to barely 20 a day. Mostly siblings. A few business associates. The rest had vanished.
“The phones no longer ring,” Yusuf said quietly. “Nobody truly cares.”
His account is a stark commentary on the fleeting nature of influence in Nigeria’s political life—how proximity to power draws crowds, while its exit clears the room. It is also a reminder that beyond the motorcades and protocols, public office leaves behind a private reckoning.
In Yusuf Buhari’s words, the silence is not just about missed calls. It is about understanding, too late, who was there for power—and who was there for people.
Source:@GoldmyneTV
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