Asiwaju The Play: The story I want to tell

“Duke, instead of running around looking for money to do Awo, let’s do Asiwaju and make killer money,” this was a very top official of the Lagos state government telling me as I struggled to secure funding for the phenomenal play, ‘AWO’.

He is not alone as everywhere I turn, I get that request. When are you doing something on Tinubu? Asiwaju will make you a billionaire if only you can stop being stubborn.

I always used to answer them by saying; “the story I want to tell is not the one you want to hear”.

In executing ‘Emir Sanusi’, we pushed back into his lineage as far back as Usman Dan Fodio. We saw everybody and pulled it down to his grandfather, the first Emir Sanusi, and closed it with him.

In ‘Sardauana’, Professor Yerima did a yeo man’s job. We pulled into the Hall 60 of his direct descendants and spoke to over 40 people in piecing the story.

Former president Olusegun Obasanjo sat for five hours with us discussing his pedigree and opening up his ancestral lineage. We went to Owu and saw the plot where he was born and spoke to his relations and villagers.

He has a full museum in his house that will tell you his story end to end.

Awo was a beautiful story. Makinde the talented director put together a very powerful and rich script and we sent it to Chief Tokunbo Awolowo – Dosunmu to vet. She spent two hours with us on Zoom authenticating the story.

We are about to drop Zik this Easter and already his wife is cooperating and deep rich research is ongoing.

Ladi Kwali is taking Prof Bakare Ojo, the first professor of dance in Nigeria, into her village where for the last 30 days, he has sat with her descendants feeling the vibes that come from her blood.

Where do I start in putting Tinubu on stage? The story I want to tell is from a totally different angle.

This is the story of a god and it cannot be told from the mere ordinary prisms of mortals.

Why would I dare want to tell a Tinubu story the way I told a common Obasanjo story?

Who is the ‘Sardauna’ beside our own diety who discovered Lagos during a lazy walk about after siesta?

To make justice to this story, I must go to Oduduwa. He must tell me this story. Cos he is the only other deity that dropped from the sky and with one finger created Ile-Ife and from there, produced a proud and wonderful people.

Yes, this is the only angle that would do justice to our god. Like his colleagues, he didn’t even have a virgin birth which is too ordinary for a god of this quality.

But like his friend who hung on the cross and still had the presence of mind to forgive us all our sins, he has no siblings and no real relations.

Gods drop from the sky with nothing of that biological ties so they don’t get distracted. Saving the world or as in this case, saving Nigeria is an onerous task that minute things like parents, lineage and even sex could distract.

The story I want to tell is the story of a charismatic leader who, one hot Friday afternoon, appeared from the sky and dropped in Isale Eko in a haze of fire with angels blowing trumpets announcing the birth of a new era.

That is the story I want to tell. How with one wave of his left hand, Lagos turned into a celestial city and how with the other hand, all of our water turned into kunu and all igbo fell into the lagoon.

Such greatness must be heralded on a stage with 200 million actors. No theatre will be big enough to accommodate my biggest-ever production. Tinubu will play himself and his followers will all have major lead roles

Such tiny denizens like Awo, Zik and the Sardauna will even be lucky to have lines as they would be written out of the scripts.

It is Tinubus’s story and Remi will be in the spotlight and in every scene while the rest of us will scream in ecstatic joy each time we hear the war cry, “Bulla Ballu”.

This play will pull in all glory and will enchant all of us since we would even be in the play and until the curtain drops, we will be out there watching with mouths wide open and spittle falling as the messiah after a beautiful eight-year reign ascends above ever so slowly in the light of the Almighty and in a blaze of glory.

With heads bowed and in pure humility, all 200 million of us will now send a huge petition to the Almighty begging that Seyi continues where his father stopped.

This is the story I will tell and tell it I must.

Thanks.