B.O.S: Listening & Courageous Governor In The Midst Of Devil-May-Care Protesters ..!

By Gboyega Akosile

Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwoolu of Lagos State is of small frame but he fits the appelation of “small body, big engine”. And he shares some commonality with one of Nigeria’s civil war heroes, Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle whose exploits at the war front where he commanded the Third Marine Commando belonged to the legends of war.

Adekunle never shied away from battle and those who encountered him attested to the fact that he led from the front and evoked awe in the territories he fought with his troops.

That similarity he shared with Adekunle ends there. Sanwoolu has no record of brutality of which the “Black Scorpion” was renown. What Sanwoolu has in large quantum as Adekunle, is courage, raw courage; which the B.O.S of Lagos has demonstrably shown on two occasions beyond what Yorubas say “ajanaku koja mo ri nkan firi; t’aba r’erin,+ ka gba pe a r’erin”.

No one can mistake an elephant for something else or an inconsequential. As the incident commander on corvid-19, Sanwoolu displayed uncommon courage and leadership qualities in the prosecution of the relentless war against the pandemic, leading from the front, here and about that many feared for his health. Those of his colleagues who didnt throw themselves head-long, as much as he did, into the corvid-19 battle, tested positive to the pandemic; but Sanwoolu came out of it all, unscathed. On the more that one occasion he was tested, he tested negative, despite the fact that he sucked himself into the battle, without caring a hoot about the likely consequences. If you describe him as lion-hearted, you wont be wrong.

Any cynic in doubt must admit that the nimble and sure-footed governor indeed has a fearless heart of a lion, given his going into the lion’s den, as it were, to emphatise and dialogue with #EndSARS protesters who blocked the gateway into Lagos from the Lekki axis yesterday.
I wont be surprised if his intelligence and security teams tried to dissuade him from taking the gamble in the line of their assigned duty but, in deciding to go and engage the protesters in a dialogue, Sanwoolu’s security team must have imbibed some core Biblical value in their principal that ” if one’s ways are pleasing to God, He will make him live with his enemies in peace”.

Sanwoolu, in the midst of protesters, as recorded by the Nation newspaper and the not so flattering Punch newspaper, above here, dialogued with the mass of protesters who bore all manner of banners and chanted so many “war songs” not uncommon in such circumstances. But, being a well-bred and soundly tutored Yoruba man, he truly understood the saying in the land that soothing words bring out kolanut in the pocket while harsh words draw the dagger or cudgel from the underbelly.

When Sanwoolu spoke at Lekki yesterday and also raised his own banner of unpretentious love and peace, he succeeded in calming frayed nerves, signalling hope that the protests in Lagos will end sooner than later.