Some men would pawn their intelligence for a bottle of champagne; many more would cheerily shun the grey matter in their brain to engage in a dance of folly – particularly if they are errand boys. If he were livestock, Jide Sanwoolu, would probably be a peacock. The man many have touted as the incoming governor of Lagos State in 2019, like the flightless bird, is so stuck up on ego and the support of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, that he may have begun to over-estimate his own worth.
Yes, there is no dignity in the life of a man living on a leash of another man’s cash. He will forever remain a sad excuse for man, a glorified errand boy whose lustre often extinguishes in the glitter of his benefactor’s wealth. In fact, he is a pawn in the grand designs of Tinubu and his cronies to wrestle power from Ambode. Jide, to the consternation of Lagosians, chose to challenge the influence of Governor Ambode by rebelling against him to sate his abject lust for power and political independence.
Unlike fictional Brutus, Governor Akinwumi Ambode need not wait for the cock to crow before he experiences the lacerating slash of treachery; some of his political associates and friends whom he has helped brazenly flaunt and flash their deadly daggers stained with his blood, before his very eyes and the full glare of the world. They have cast morality and decency to the winds to enact lethal deeds of treachery and deceit against the man variously regarded as their benefactor and mastermind of their fortune.
You couldn’t have forgotten so soon how Sanwoolu, a bot, reencountered bliss in trying hours, like the sojourner who discovers a babbling brook in the middle of the Sahara. It was gathered that Jide who also worked for former deputy governor of Lagos, Femi Pedro, allegedly left him to sustain his loyalty to former Lagos governor, Bola Tinubu. Jide worked closely with Tinubu’s wife, Senator Oluremi. But soon after his stint in the corridors of power, he faded off the political scene. Rumour had it that he got caught in certain intrigues that left him flat broke and without a political base.
Jide was totally forgotten and abandoned in his time of need. Nothing was heard of him again until when Governor Ambode came to his aid and restored him to political limelight by appointing him as the MD/CEO of Lagos State Property Development Corporation (LSDPC).
In climes where sanity prevails, Sanwoolu, would have ceased being the Managing Director, Lagos State Property Development Corporation (LSPDC), a position that makes him accountable to the man whom he has surreptitiously engineered to supplant. Sanwoolu has shown himself to be an ingrate and biter of the fingers that fed him. Sanwoolu was already languishing in obscurity before Governor Ambode fished him out, revived him and made him the LSDPC head honcho.
Many might reason he was used as a pawn in the politics of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu-Ambode silent acrimony, Sanwoolu should have been circumspect in the way he delivered on the errand sent him. He showed his opportunistic side unapologetically and in a very offensive way. Now that Asiwaju has sheathed his dagger against Ambode, bowed to voices of reason and pledged to support Ambode reelection, it is not clear what face-saving moves Sanwoolu intend to make.
However, Ambode too would learn from his recent shaming and humbling by alternate forces within the party and subsequently tone down his lust for power and alleged overbearing attitude to his associates on the Lagos project. Let’s hope he evolves faster than imagine in politics and character; if he could manage to do so, he just might understand in due time that, in the long run, failure is the only thing that flowers predictably; like success, it has no fixed abode, it is a tide in the affairs of man that is alternately shared as the tyrant strokes of fate and circumstances dictate.
