If Fouad Oki were a bird, he would probably be a nightingale. If he were a nightingale, would he, like the sonorous bird, piteously die of shame because another bird sings better? Driven by his declining stature and loss of relevance, he has descended into a desperate strait.
Thus his desperation to vent and reenact the impossible, like the proverbial soldiers starving to death in the battle trench; as the drought persisted, the latter abandoned prayers, marched up the hills and began to shoot at passing clouds to hurt the heavens for abandoning them.
Like the metaphorical nightingale and desperate soldiers, is Fouad at his tethers end? Pundits dismiss his persistent bickering and recent offensive against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as one of his unfortunate tantrums.
It is apparent by his recent tantrum that Fouad considers himself a repressed martyr. Hence he sees conspiracies where none exists.
You couldn’t have forgotten so soon,when the former Director General of all the governorship campaigns in the state since 2003 had surprisingly stood up to challenge the continued over lordship, dominance of the party by Asiwaju Bola Armed Tinubu, a former governor of the state and the obvious authority in the affairs of the party. Fouad fired from all cylinders, “We are stopping the tyranny of the minority”. He bragged and bayed! Nobody cowed.
He spat in the air and received it in measured cadence, yet no dice. Many sneered and sniggered wondering what theatric the rambunctious politician would conjure to win the war but the dark-hued politician was at his wits end. Today, with the emergence of Babajide Sanwoolu as the APC guber candidate, Oki has withdrawn into his anonymous cocoon with his tail in between his legs. He wasted priceless time and fortune in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality. Having almost exhausted his goodwill in chasing shadows, he has suddenly ended up like the proverbial prodigal child who seized his fortune in a fit of greed and frittered it away in one fell swoop.
However, being a hero is about the shortest lived vocation on earth. Perhaps, because every hero becomes a bore at last. But not Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The former governor of Lagos State is a man like no other. He seems to walk on wings and tread in the air. To his enemies, he is a dreaded factor, the untamable element of Nigerian politics. And that is because he arrived with an uncommon lust for change. In that yearning was his strength; a towering passion to serve country and the good of all.
Unlike many of his peers and predecessors in Nigeria’s political arena, Tinubu propagated a passion and realism that defied that wanton lust for power and intemperate avarice that characterises the worst of Nigeria’s political class. But wait a minute, like all man-made deities, Fouad has stopped resembling a demi god or something like one. Or have you heard from him lately?
