Aminu Waziri Tambuwal

Did you see that laudable example demonstrated by House of Representatives Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal aka AWT at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos last week?  It was all captured in a lead photograph on the front page of Sunday Vanguard. Tambuwal, apparently demonstrating that leaders do not have two heads, are not different from the people they lead and should not be subjected to undue preferential treatment, humbly stretched out his hands and patiently stood as such as he was being screened by security men at the airport before boarding his flight out of Lagos last week Friday.

Don’t ask me who took the photograph or how the Sunday Vanguard got it (perhaps one of his media aides took it), but the message depicted by the photograph is poignant: leadership by example, and at its best too. Are we not in this country when one of Tambuwal’s predecessors in office, apparently riding on the crest of his exalted office, wanted to drive his convoy all the way to the tarmac at the same airport? The lad insisted the gate leading to the tarmac be opened for him and in the process holding up, for a long while, other motorists trying to take the normal route and be dropped off to catch their flight.  We all know who; it’s pointless mentioning the name of the young ex-lawmaker.