Hurray! Adenuga clocks 63

Gregarious Media punditry in Nigeria rose by several decibels recently as the raucous cyber commentariat gorged itself on a steaming sultry incipient accommodating from its already overflowing buffet of the sensational and the salacious.
The feast was a photo exhibiting celebrated multi billionaire oil and telecom mogul, Otunba Mike Adenuga, in a deeply reverent bow as he shook hands with President Muhammadu Buhari during a reception at the palace of The Awujale of Ijebuland. The photo caught fire as it were, going viral with a furious velocity that made that one image perhaps the most trended item in Nigeria’s digital space for several days. Why this one photo should elicit such frenzied chatter is not far-fetched.There is a cultural context and there are the residual perceptual values attendant upon the towering image of the eminent personality who was captured doing the bowing.
The cultural frame bares examining in some detail. Especially, in this case, as it relates to how even men of far lesser stature than this admittedly maverick mega tycoon might have approached a to be treasured meet and greet presidential photo op in full glare of a sensation hunting paparazzi. In our notoriously materialistic culture, cherished values such as humility, temperance, reverence and good natured self-deprecation are increasingly disdained in favor of a concretely rankling pseudo machismo. Against the back drop of such prevailing artificiality, where a perennial dueling of deformed egos dictate that everyone must outshine everyone else in an accumulation, ‘swagger’ is incorrectly defined as you wearing your aggravated sense of self-paramountcy on the stiffly starched sleeves of your over flowing babanriga. Should you belong to the minimalist faction of the incipient fashionista, swag is a cockamamy affectation of Hollywood cool as you strut into view in your own discomfitingly svelte fitted interpretation of haute couture, chest thrust out with praetorian tautness – age, rank or eminence of the to be greeted party be damned. Viewed within the jaundiced mediation of such a festering value system, it’s little wonder that Dr. Mike Adenuga – who by every bespeaker salient has been ecumenically acclaimed as an A list member of the world’s wealthiest elite – got a culturally atrophying nation consummately dazed by his reflexed act of obeisance to Nigeria’s number one denizen and indeed, Africa’s pre-eminent bellwether, if you have by some chance commenced to comprehend the continental import of Muhammadu Buhari’s historic mission. Indeed, given the prevalent frailty of our human frame, it can be argued that many who have achieved but a fraction of Dr. Adenuga’s monumental business prosperity and financial accomplishments have been kenned to be susceptible to the intoxication and self-absorption which prosperity can bring. It is this propensity – prevalent to all races, sexes and faith persuasions, to become irredeemably swollen headed following even a modicum of prosperity – that throws the multi billionaire’s oft cited humble disposition into especially graphic palliation.