Power rarely travels alone. It moves like a shadow with a pulse, slipping through constitutions, outliving regimes, and lodging itself in the bloodstream of nations. Ballots may crown leaders, but spirits enthrone legacies. Long after flags are lowered and speeches are archived, what leaders carried inwardly continues to breathe, bruise, or bless the body politic. Influence, once absorbed, becomes inheritance. And inheritance, whether named or denied, always collects interest.
This is the uncomfortable layer beneath modern governance, the subsoil politics prefers not to dig. We analyze budgets and ballots, yet ignore the invisible cargo leaders bring into office. But history insists otherwise. No society collapses on policy alone. It unravels when the moral spine is quietly replaced with rot. The Apostle Paul, writing across centuries, framed it bluntly: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.” In other words, the real battles are not televised.
The transference of spirits is not mystical theatrics. It is the mechanics of influence at work in its rawest form. Call it cultural inheritance, psychological contagion, or moral osmosis; the effect remains the same. Fear leaks. Courage spreads. Corruption, once tolerated, learns to reproduce. Like water finding the lowest level, the dominant spirit of leadership always settles into the nation’s soul.
Leadership is the fastest courier. What a leader excuses today becomes law tomorrow. What they embody in private becomes policy by proxy. When Scripture says Moses laid hands on Joshua and wisdom transferred, it was describing succession beyond ceremony. When Saul’s fear metastasized into rage, the palace inhaled it until the throne itself became toxic. Power does not just rule; it replicates.
Modern democracies often behave as though institutions are firewalls against moral decay. They are not. Institutions are only as clean as the hands that operate them. Corruption is rarely invented fresh; it is inherited, refined, and baptized with new slogans. Violence is not born overnight; it is nursed, normalized, and passed down like a cursed heirloom. Hope, too, can be transmitted, but only when deliberately protected.
Nigeria’s story, like that of many postcolonial states, reads like a relay race where the baton keeps changing but the poison remains. Faces rotate. Parties rebrand. Yet citizens sense the same old ghost pacing the corridors of power. This is not a uniquely Nigerian affliction. From Capitol Hill to the Kremlin, from parliaments to presidencies, nations recycle unresolved spirits and call it continuity.
The Holy Scripture warns against reckless transfer. “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands,” Paul cautioned Timothy. Endorsement is impartation dressed in civics. Proximity is transmission without consent. When societies reward cunning over character, they should not feign surprise when cynicism becomes the national dialect. When faith is reduced to spectacle, emptiness multiplies instead of conviction.
Critics dismiss spiritual language as a distraction from material reform. History exposes that lie. The deepest transformations have always fused moral awakening with structural change. Wilberforce did not merely attack the slave trade’s legality; he confronted the deadened conscience that sustained it. Martin Luther King Jr. did not just demand civil rights; he put a mirror before America’s soul. Even Jesus framed leadership as overflow: “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Rotten wells cannot produce clean water.
The danger of ignoring spiritual transference is slow and surgical. Societies begin treating symptoms while recycling causes. They prune branches while watering poisoned roots. Over time, cynicism hardens. Hope becomes a rumor. Faith withdraws from public life, leaving a vacuum quickly occupied by fear merchants and outrage brokers.
Yet the same law that spreads decay can also transmit renewal. History is punctuated by moments when a different spirit breaks the cycle. After exile, Israel rebuilt not only walls but reverence. After apartheid, South Africa attempted to exhume truth before prescribing reconciliation. The early church conquered no territory, yet conquered hearts through the contagious force of sacrificial love. Light, when released, is just as transferable as darkness.
The real question of our age is not whether spiritual influence exists. It is which spirit we are exporting into the future. Every society is being discipled by something: fear or faith, greed or restraint, vengeance or justice. Neutrality is a polite fiction.
As elections loom and leaders emerge, citizens must sharpen their questions. Not only what does this candidate promise, but what do they carry. Not only what laws will they pass, but what spirit will they plant. Because when the ballots are counted and the noise dies down, what is transferred will still be breathing.
Influence always becomes inheritance. The only uncertainty is whether that inheritance will heal the land or haunt the generations yet unborn.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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