In one of my early school English
textbooks, an interesting story I read still
lingers in the memory. It was the story of
Angazi, and I crave your indulgence as I
adapt the story for the purpose of today’s
discourse. It goes thus: A certain traveller
found himself in a beautiful foreign city
with
amazing infrastructure and jaw-slacking
edifices. When he got to a truly avant
garde
skyscraper he turned to a man standing
nearby and asked: “Who owns this mighty
building?” “Angazi,” the man replied.
“Wow!
Angazi!”, the stranger exclaimed. In
another
section of the city, he saw a truly eye-
goggling car zooming past so regally and
he
could not help wondering aloud: “Who on
earth is the owner of this wonder on
wheels?” To his shock, a woman standing
close responded, “Angazi!” The traveller
gaped at the woman and exclaimed,
“Angazi
again! That man must be filthy rich!”
Before
the day ended, the tourist had seen
hundreds of architectural and other
money-
made wonders – opulent shopping malls,
theme parks, astounding cloverleaf-fill ed
super highways, hotels etc – and each
time
he asked to know the owner, the
response
was the same: “Angazi!” As he returned to
his hotel in a taxi, he got to a section
where
hoodlums were rioting and destroying
property. Scared, he asked the taxi driver
who could have caused the riot; and the
frantic answer again was “Angazi!” He
was
still wondering how pervasive was the
riches and power, and even notoriety of
this
Angazi person when he saw a crowd of
mourners conveying a dead soul in an
expensive coffin to a cemetery. He then
received the shock of his life when on
asking to know the name of the person in
the coffin the answer was again, “Angazi!”
“What a life!” our tourist could not help
exclaiming. “This Angazi owned virtually
this
whole city but alas, all he has now is that
piece of grave and the expensive coffin! So
what’s the usefulness of his money now?”
Our tourist only realized his folly and
abject
ignorance later that night when he
returned
to his hotel. As an alien in a city where a
different language is spoken and which he
didn’t understand, this tourist did not
know
that “Angazi” was not a name but a
sentence meaning, “I don’t know!” All the
people he had spoken to had really told
him
nothing, but his ignorance betrayed him
into making hasty conclusions! This is akin
to the case of Citizen Bola Ahmed Tinubu
and the impression of legions of
impressionable Nigerians about him. In
our
nation’s political history, I stand to be
corrected if I asserted that no other
Nigerian has attracted as much popularity
–
some would say ‘notoriety’ – in the mind
of
Nigerians as Tinubu. Such is the power of
his personal influence in contemporary
dispensation that anything that happens
in
today’s polity, real or imagined, good or
bad,
outlandish or ordinary, must have the
magical Tinubu touch. Even the foreign
press have been bitten by the fast
metastasizing Tinubu bug. If he’s not
being
called the Zvengali of Nigerian politics by
prominent British newspapers now, he is
being referred to as the Machiavelli of
African politics by an American media
giant
then. Such is the immensity of the
institutionaliz ation of Tinubu’s might that
anything befalling the nation, good or bad,
is attributed to him. Indeed, in dissecting
the architecture of this man’s near
mythical
influence one would find that easily.
Tinubu
has become the unwitting cannon fodder
of
most political events, good or bad. No one
can deny Tinubu his status as a major
architect of the present dispensation.
Challenge me, but I can safely say that his
adroit, brave and near-suicidal stand
against
the PDP behemoth of those days made the
APC revolution possible. Without the
formidable structure he so generously
availed the APC merger, the broom
revolution that crumbled the seemingly
invincible PDP would not have chanced.
With
such gigantic media might, coupled with
near fanatical following in the key
Southwest states and Edo, the union that
birthed the APC largely owed its success to
him. He thus deserved a high seat on the
high table of the emergent order.
However,
like our fabled “Angazi”, Tinubu is tilting
dangerously towards being credited with
virtually anything that happens in the
polity
even when such attributes are blatantly
erroneous. Tinubu must be wary of the
incipient image of an unscrupulous
power-
grabber and ravenous money demon. Too
often, he is being portrayed as a ravenous
powerhungry cormorant which, on
balance,
is really not so. That is why this man of the
moment must watch it. Rather than the
thesis of his influence leading to an
antithesis and ensuing bitter jealousy
turning his many admirers against him, he
should assume a more statesmanlike role
as
this dispensation grapples the arduous
challenges of change. With an influence
this
colossal, I challenge Tinubu to assume his
huge powers with more patriotic and
statesmanlike zeal. It is clear that he can be
a
huge force in the making of a truly great
Nigeria by transforming that power to
more
positive use. He can exploit the near-
mythical image to inspire his party, the
President and all Nigerians to overcome
the
nation’s nagging oddities.
Read full article here: http://
www.theopinion.n g/ tinubu-and-the-a
ngazi-metaphor/

Those who ramify every twist in the polity with Tinubu will be shocked when realize that the Gentleman is just a philantropist of established social movements. once there is a groundswell in any direction Tinubu knows where to dump his money.