K1 and the 'Awon Alfa Ganusi' controversies

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“He hasn’t seen nothing, and I mean it,” this harmless line that wrapped up my opinion on K1 yesterday was an intended speculation, not my wish; not even a prophesy. I’m not given to clinking glasses at my fellow’s low moment, and K1 is not an exemption. Till this Thursday morning, I’m not comfortable with the hails of insults and sometimes curses to which he’s been treated on social media by those who are directly or otherwise hurt by his leaked video.

K1’s response to the roar, in another video from perhaps a recent live performance, gives a life to Otunba Wale Ademowo’s yesterday’s submission on K1’s approach to hours of emergency. Ademowo, author of ‘The King of Fuji Music: Dr Wasiu Ayinde Anifowose Marshal’, published in 1996 by Effective Publisher, Ibadan, affirmed and dated his friendship with K1 to over 40 years and also brought out his peculiar character trait. This exclusive infers that he knows him like the back of his palm.

Ademowo writes: “People call it arrogance but I know that is him. He says it as it is and reacts straight to issues on the spot.To change at almost 70 may be a bit difficult. If those people understand his personality, they would not have asked him to apologise publicly. That to him is humiliation. Ko ni gba.To want to bring him down on his day is unfair.”

While I am not here to pass a judgement on K1, however bad his case looks in face of the controversial video and that showing him standing before a group of clerics at the fidau for his late mother, I, however, insist that his measured silence would have sentenced the matter to natural death and observed the rule of Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist and author of ‘The Devils Dictionary’. Bierce says “speak when you’re angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

K1 should be told that his political and business associates present at the prayer session, some of whom are, in truth, the source of his exploding confidence, may have used the incident and its aftermath to re-evaluate their fraternity with him, only waiting patiently for the appropriate time to convey the message to him in the only language they all speak at their gatherings.

In politics, for instance, what is permanent is interest, not relationship. You’re an ally today because interests are in harmony. Tomorrow, you’re thrown out of the window once you have become a liability or, worse still, a virus to the interest. If the multibillion-naira investments credited to the name of the late Chief MKO Abiola are no longer visible on the economic landscape today because Abiola lost the favour of his former friends in power, anything can happen to anybody, except the sitting president. Between 1999 and 2007, Senate Presidents came. Senate Presidents went. Four Senate Presidents were removed and reduced to floor members. That’s the transience of power, influence, joy and sadness. That’s every condition is shortlived. That’s the only thing that is permanent in this life is change.

K1’s true friends, who can look him in the eyes and tell him hard truth (not those who dress him only with what is convenient to them to sustain their benefits from him and retain their privilege of hanging around him) should rise up and help him to know that at almost 68 (March 3, 2025), he should see himself beyond himself. He should see his words and actions as a gauge which public would use to measure their attitude-affection or aversion-towards his many children and grand-children.

On this particular consideration, I want to humbly differ with Ademowo; I want to believe K1, a Member of the Order of the Niger, is still not irredeemable. He’s not yet that dry fish. At the end of this raging dust, hopefully, we shall see a new K1, who would see a provocation, a slap and turn his other cheek, say ‘thank you’ and walk gently past the aggressor. Laugh not. It’s not impossible.

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