KWAM 1: The Arikuyeri 1 of Abuja

Now that the hard news–breaking news aspect of the airline saga of August has lapsed, we can now leisurely treat its soft news entertaining aspect, the one involving the music entertainer, Wasiu Ayinde. I will not dabble into that other airline act that gave us boobs show!

Rewind to August 5, 2025, at Abuja airport as the king of music, Wasiu Ayinde, swaggers in majesty to board his flight to Lagos, a gold-coloured flask in one hand, like a royal ‘irukere’.

He had cleared the boarding protocols and stepped onto the tarmac with the self-important carriage of royalty. After all, is he not the ‘Olori Omooba’ (head of the princes/princesses) of Ijebu-land?  He apparently believes that a royal ‘Irukere’ cannot be interrogated. So, he must have regarded it as impudent for the airline staff to ask the almighty KI the Ultimate disclosure of his flask’s content. The Big Man’s arrogance.  The media had created a public impression of Wasiu’s touted friendly relationship with President Bola Tinubu, and he must have felt that the knowledge of that relationship entitled him to preferential and reverential treatment.

When it dawned on him that the airline wouldn’t budge on its demand to know the content of his flask, and that he may not board the plane, Wasiu resorted to self-help by standing in front of the plane, apparently intending to use his body as a barrier to prevent take-off. It was an insane gambit. He did not reckon with the fury of a scorned lady pilot who revved her plane and engaged the gear.  Sensing clear and present danger, survival instinct prevailed over suicidal mission when the musician dodged the plane’s wing, which could have decapitated him. So, I give King Wasiu Ayinde a new title: The Arikuyeri 1 of Abuja.  (The Death Dodger 1 of Abuja).  Life is sweet, after all, particularly for a musician who has so much going for him, moneywise, and wasn’t ready to meet his creator in a gory exit.

Times are a-changing (apology to Bob Dylan). And times are really, dramatically, changing for the better for musicians, many of whom now belong to the multimillionaire class, upgrading their social connections. Wasiu Ayinde belongs to that nouveau riche class of musicians and has climbed the social and political ladder to the stratosphere. He is even reported to be condescending to Obas!

Before now, musicians were not that well-regarded in society.

They were known as ‘Alagbe’ (beggars), those who perform at social parties and serenade people for money by praise singing. We still have a category of itinerant musicians – individuals, and sometimes in twos or trios – who go to social parties to praise-sing individuals for money. In the early 1960s, musicians were generally not appreciated with currency notes, but with coins, which were often slapped on the musician’s forehead. I often wondered then how those old musicians did not suffer from migraine

The Wasiu Ayindes of this world, as a luckier generation of musicians, have acquired a sense of entitlement, an arrogance, that they should be deferred to because they have been able to wangle upscale relationships with those generally regarded as their betters. Such socially and politically connected musicians also develop an attitude of impunity, based on ‘man knows man’.  Luckily for Wasiu Ayinde, his purported connection not only got him a clemency from sanctions for a security breach at the Abuja airport, but he was also awarded an ambassadorship in the airline industry.  Nigeria, we hail thee!

I read that Ayinde grew up in the Onola area of central Lagos Island. That was an area of the Young Turks in those days.  So, KWAM 1 possibly must have learnt street smartness and imbibed street confidence during his growing-up days. I lived in that general area, by Campos Square, at the intersection of Bamgbose and Igbosere Streets, in the late 1960s, and knew the terrain from Tinubu Square, to Odunfa, Princess, Inabere, Okepopo, Tokunbo, Oshodi and Freeman streets.  Central Lagos Island was like one huge family in that period, with ‘area fathers’.

Perhaps, maybe Wasiu knew President Bola Tinubu as an Islander neighbourhood ‘egbon’  in those days or cultivated him when music and money gave him stardom, and he desired a power connection as an icing on his popularity cake.  Whichever way, that connection, presumably, saved him from the hot embrace of the law, as the power man was believed to have facilitated a soft landing for him, apparently out of a self-induced, sentimental obligation to friendship. A case of a power benefactor becoming hostage to his power beneficiary?

Well, Wasiu had an escape from death and from the law. Hopefully, he has learnt a lesson in decorum and humility, that is, if he understands the meaning of decorum and what being humble is.

The one redeeming point about this musician is that he did not forget his roots – Ijebu-Ode, in Ogun State, where he has built a glittering music landmark structure in the GRA section of the town, thereby contributing to turning the area, with its many hotels, into a famed hospitality and entertainment hub.

Dr Bisi Olawunmi, a senior lecturer at the Department of Mass Communication, Adeleke University, Ede. Osun State, writes via  olawunmibisi@yahoo.com