I have been asked severally what my opinion was on last week’s presidential media chat. First, I must commend the presidency for hosting the chat, though belatedly after 19 months of holding back. When the people hear directly from their leaders and not from third parties they didn’t elect, it affords them opportunity of psycho-analyzing the man at the helm of affairs, match his gestures with policies and project what the leadership’s future strides will be.
It was also gladsome to see the president radiating warmth, confidence and mastery of his craft. He appeared to have learned the ropes of a limitless presidential powers. He must have warmed himself up to the behemoth powers at his disposal, next to God’s. You could see this as he exuded confidence in himself and his office. Unlike the pre-and early Bola Tinubu presidency optics we had, the president appeared physically stable and in better health. I was glad to see stability as he raised his hands in gesticulation. We thank God for presidential health mercies.
As they say, the divide between confidence and arrogance, much as it is as long as the Zambezi River, could be paper-thin as well. Though clothed in a cloak of confidence, the Bola Tinubu I saw in that interview wore power arrogance on his lapel. Beneath that, you could see a God complex. I didn’t hear anywhere throughout the interview where the president accepted that he was human, capable of frailties and wrongs. I saw King Herod and the clowns of power shouting “This is the voice of God, not man!” The tax bills were chiselled straight from the stone plate of Moses, he seemed to have said. They are irreversible. And to the North which thought it had him by the balls, like the man who knows tomorrow, the president proclaimed that he would live till 2027, go through the presidential election and win. He would not probe military top brass whose fat stomachs and fat epaulettes are euphemisms for the toads of wars – apologies to Eddie Iroh – which they have become from filching Nigeria’s wealth in an endless war. He didn’t err when, pounced upon by the Herodian spirit, he pronounced that “subsidy was gone,” he said. While Nigerians die in droves from hunger, the president literally clinked wine glasses for being the greatest reformist in human history.
When I heard the president compare his reform to a woman going through the pangs of labour – “and the child may die” – but at the end of the birth, everybody is happy, the mentality that drives the president came out vividly to me like the first flick of a movie in a dark cinema. I saw a heart scarred and scorched like the sand dunes of the desert. I didn’t see blood flowing through the veins at all. Immediately I understood. The political furnace has forged in the smithy a stone statue devoid of feelings.
Nigeria of the 1950s and early 1960s had very many interesting personalities. Western Region had its fair share of such. One of them was a man named Súàrá Sòbó (Sobo pronounced as ‘Sorbor’). He was a prominent transporter who held the transportation industry of the time by its jugular. An Ibadan man of the Òópó ‘Yéosà clan who lived in an area now known as Ring Road, Súàrá Sòbó was wealthy and had a fleet of lorries in his pool. As a trade logo, Súàrá Sòbó’s lorries always had monkeys chained to their entrance, which excited and attracted passengers to them. However, his lorries soon acquired a very unflattering typecast. Any passenger who boarded them was literally embarking on a journey that had no certain time or terminal point of disembarkment as the lorry could be arrested for having no particulars, and the inappropriate conducts of the drivers and conductors, which led to road accidents, were legendary. The otherwise pleasurable ride with a monkey on board to marvel at its close resemblance of man could turn awry. It thus became a peculiar refrain in the Western Region to say a man had entered Súàrá Sòbó’s lorry, an equivalent of today’s One Chance lingo among youth. Odolaye Aremu, then Ibadan-based, Ilorin-born dadakúàdà musician, once sang of the untimely passage of Súàrá Sòbó, years after. At a celebration in his house, said Odolaye, Súàrá Sòbó had hosted the crème de la crème of Ibadan, where roast mutton and turkey flesh were feasted upon. People were shocked when, six days later, Súàrá Sòbó’s sudden death was announced to the world.
As I stood up from watching the interview, I shook my head languidly. I was sorry for us. All I saw were 200 million Nigerians sequestered inside the Súàrá Sòbó bus. We must pray that the Herodian spirit which pounced on Olusegun Obasanjo doesn’t repeat its tragic pounce on Mr. President. If it does, Tinubu would have a third term and more, becoming an Hastings Kamuzu Banda at the drop of a hat. And nothing would happen.
