By Lanre Adewole
Historically, there was a man regarded as world’s first trillionaire in dollar. That was long before his modern version; Elon Musk.
After he did nearly all money could do on earth including literally filling his conjugal barn with record-setting belles and even experimentally getting drunk to test the inebriating power of alcohol, he documented his understanding of life for men of immense power, authority, wealth and fame, to learn from.
Speaking of life, he wrote “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. “What profit has a man from all his labour in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever.
“All things are full of labour; man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
“There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.
“What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered. I said in my heart,
“Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure”; but surely, this also was vanity. I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives.
“I made my works great, I built myself houses, and planted myself vineyards. I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made myself water pools from which to water the growing trees of the grove. I acquired male and female servants, and had servants born in my house. Yes, I had greater possessions of herds and flocks than all who were in Jerusalem before me. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the special treasures of kings and of the provinces. I acquired male and female singers, the delights of the sons of men, and musical instruments of all kinds.
“So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour; and this was my reward from all my labour.
“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labour in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all. So I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, it also happens to me, and why was I then more wise?”
Then I said in my heart, “This also is vanity.
“For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come.
And how does a wise man die? As the fool! “Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity and grasping for the wind. Then I hated all my labour in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labour in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity. For there is a man whose labour is with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; yet he must leave his heritage to a man who has not laboured for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what has man for all his labour, and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun? For all his days are sorrowful, and his work burdensome; even in the night his heart takes no rest. This also is vanity.
“Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labour. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God.
“For God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.”
Quoted above almost verbatim, with just a few verses left out, was Solomon, mourning life in Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 2. Except God even opens the mind-gate of man to this exhortation, it will still sound hollow, same way it has appeared as empty emission to countless souls since it was penned. So I add my own ecumenism to it; “except God shows man mercy, His word will remain foolishness to him”.
Penultimate Sunday; when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared APC’s candidate Barrister Danladi Halilu Envu-Alanza the winner of the preceding day’s by-election for Nasarawa North Senatorial District seat, I was pensive for days, after congratulating the winner. Barrister Danladi, the famed judicial encyclopedia, who held NJC’s top-job for a record-breaking 15 years (between 2002 and 2017), is well known to me. Our friendship (as my big uncle) survived office. Whenever I’m in Abuja, he has a standing instruction to me to always show up at his residence for breakfast and the invitation for dinner is also open-ended, regardless of whether I’m staying in something-star or no-star hotel. In recent time, after breakfast, I teach him some table tennis lessons (smiles) though he has his boys around who avenge him (laughs).
I know of his political heartbreaks before his recent Red Chamber inclusion. Here was a man who could have easily been Nasarawa’s governor in 1999 considering his all-encompassing political and administrative influence on and in the state by the time the military was relinquishing control, despite still being in service as a judicial administrator. As the first-ever chief registrar of the state judiciary before transmitting his career to the federal level, he would conveniently wear the garland of an architect of modern Nasarawa.
Somehow, he stayed put in the judiciary till his retirement in 2017 despite his towering figure in the state. In fact, many considered him governor-in-waiting anytime he chose to show up. But it would seem ground had shifted a bit and by the time he showed up, it was one heartbreak after another and serial treachery from associates; from trying to be governor, to scaling down a bit, to be at least, senator.
