Governor Ademola Adeleke could be an embarrassing public spectacle. Whenever I see him afflicted by his dancing seizure in the public, I take my eyes off him, indescribably embarrassed for him, by him and on behalf of those who unleashed such public disaster on Osun State. On a personal note, I long concluded that the queer, unprovoked dancing in public, very unusual by every standard, is a mental health challenge, most probably a childhood neurological defect, something close to a rare variant of autism. Whenever I hear that line from Ilorin, Kwara State bard, Odolaye Aremu, which says “Ọmọ ahun ‘i duro gbọ’lu, b’o gbọ’lu, yio họ ni” (the miserly is riled by a drum’s sound and takes to his heels immediately — for fear of pasting the drummer’s head with money) the converse hits me whenever the sound of a drum provokes Gov Adeleke’s sickening dancing.
As a Yoruba, I’m ashamed at Adeleke’s dancing spectacle. I usually wonder how a hallowed office once occupied by a serious-minded, intellectual man, like the Cicero of Esa-Oke, Chief Bola Ige, could have literally gone bonkers as this, to the extent of the office becoming a piece of public amusement in the hands of Adeleke. However, the people of Osun State, I’m told, love him so, why should I cry more than the bereaved?
I first met Madam Remi Tinubu about one and half decades ago. We sat beside each other in Ikenne, Ogun State. She had come to represent her husband in a function, while I represented my erstwhile principal. A mild issue sparked her fuse and immediately, her face was wrapped up in an embarrassing contortion. Anger, manifest as a vile temperament, appears as the chink in the armour of Madam. For me, it was a window into a burning mind wrapped firmly away from public penetration. At that moment, I wondered what her spouse must be battling at home.
A viral video of Mrs Tinubu, now Nigeria’s First Lady, has caught public attention. Uncomfortable with Gov Adeleke’s dancing seizure and seized by her intruding temperament at an event in Ile-Ife on Sunday, Madam Tinubu walked up to Gov Adeleke twice. Ostensibly demanding that he cut off the unamusing nonsense, she insolently flipped her fingers in Gov Adeleke’s face like a rude Agama lizard.
Comments have since queued behind them, for or against the First Lady’s rude action.
Notwithstanding my estimation of both characters, I think Mrs Tinubu went beyond her remit by that action. It was an assault on public decency and an insult on the good people of Osun State for whom Gov Adeleke is a democratic sovereign. It was a Nebuchadnezzar complex, a “do you know me?” mentality writ large. Could Madam Tinubu do this to any northern governor? I imagine how many of such distasteful public exhibition of impatience for the other Mrs Tinubu must have shielded from view with her ‘Pastor’ veil.
