By Duke of Shomolu
I had thought everything had died down. The news of the ‘wahala’ my favourite Governor was going thru with the powers that be had left the front pages and I had thought the worse was over.
The lady was granted the fastest bail ever and had scurried back into obscurity and there was seeming peace in the land
Then Baba forgot or refused to shake his hands in a line up of his people at an event
Sanwo had taken a deep bow like his peers and stretched out his hands and the President in a very un-presidential manner ignored it and moved to the next person
The clip has gone viral and a lot of furore has been made on the presidential snub
This is not looking good for SANWO-OLU at all levels the least being the optics
This shows him as a light weight and not in the good books of the President and may have been frozen out
My question at this point is what happened at the Airport when Baba arrived.
As it is customary, the Governor is to receive the President upon arrival
Did that happen and did he shake him? Was he also snubbed at the Airport?
Was he also part of his entourage through out Babas touring of Lagos?
With that snub, the answers to the above no longer matter to me and we must fashion out a clear strategy for our man before he is turned into mince meat and chewed out
From my point of view, options opened to SANWO-OLU are dual.
He either goes for broke and calls the Presidents bluff and honker down and prepare for the consequences which can be anything from impeachment to prosecution after tenor or even exile
The second option is to intensify the begging cos its looking like the begging thus far is not working.
Before I advise him on which of the positions he should take, let me make a brief analysis
Remember we do not really know what is causing all of these beyond piecing things together from the snippets we are getting both from official and unofficial sources and as such our position can not be factually binding.
That said, lets look at the character of the man SANWO-OLU.
By nature, he is not a Wike or a Fayose or a Dino who are born stubborn and would fight to the end and danm the consequences
Remember how Fayose fought Buhari to the last day of his stay in office and appeared at the EFCC with a tshirt – we are here.
SANWO-OLU is a different kind of person. He is sophisticated, non confrontational, consensus building and a docile party man
Who or what distracted him to this point needs to be studied
On the other hand, the President is at full strength.
Lagos has been rescued, everybody is decamping even as far as Akwa Ibom, the National Assembly is safe, the Judiciary is malleable and those who control legitimate force are in line
This is the person that we have gone to look for their trouble
So can SANWO-OLU at the height of any kind of madness attempt a full throttle fight?
He will be like those midgets that we see on American wrestling struggling with Andre the giant – he will be torn apart that we will be picking various parts of his body in different parts of Lagos
Now the begging.
Should he intensify the begging working with people that Baba can listen to with the hope that just maybe he will get a soft landing?
With these he also has to be careful. He must think of his image, political future and all before he will now go and beg his way into irelevance.
So If I were SANWO-OLU what would i do
Simple. A little bit of both.
The elephant in all its might is afraid of the rat.
Call Babas bluff for a bit. Walk out of the venue after the humiliation, show no fear for impeachment and send signal that na person dey enter prison no be ghost
They will be wondering who or what is behind him.
There is a way someone will be beating you that it will get to a point where you sef wil say – Ahhhh kilode gan
For the incident to have happened publicly, then we can imagine what would have been happening outside of public glare
Yes SANWO-OLU is a ‘boy’, yes they ‘put’ him there, he is still the Executive Governor of Lagos and he must at all times carry himself in that regards no matter what.
Would any President do that to Saraki as Gov of Kwara, or Wike as Governor of Rivers or any of the Northern Govs or even El Rufai no matter what
He should strategically ‘yari’ and send a signal that he can fight back after all Zelensky is still fighting years after.
While fighting he would continue to try to open the doors for reconciliation and pushing strategic people thru that door.
I can see him doing that with the Thisday article of this morning and the attack on Peter Obi the other day.
These cannot get him any where, he needs to uproot first class Obas, captians of industry, foreign heads of states and those Lebanese brothers who live in France for this job.
All of these is as a result of the wayo democracy we are running which has personified power and weakened institutions
The President of the Federal Republic is The President and the Governor of Lagos is the Governor which one is all that grovelling and prostrating all over the place.
Its cos the boundaries have been blurred and we now have mercurial leadership that runs the stable within its whims and caprices.
Its really sad that we have gotten here where a cult of personality have subsumed institutional power in our democracy
Whatever it is that SANWO-OLU has done or not done, he certainly does not deserve that kind of treatment.
That was not really necessary.
Thank you and you may come and beat me
Duke of Shomolu
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
