Behind  The Curtain | By Tunde Busari

In Yoruba parlance, especially when elders want to guide a promising youth against early fall, they tell him or her that palm oil always goes after white fabrics on destructive mission. This metaphor is a warning to the youth not to lose his head while the flame of his or her fame is burning.

A childhood friend of the late Dr Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, at a public gathering in memory of Barrister in 2013, revealed that his friend had and maintained a split image divided between Sikiru and Barrister.

He told the very, very attentive audience that Sikiru was not Barrister and vice versa. The man, Alhaji Mojeed Kareem, unfortunately also late now, explained that the moment Barrister, coming from functions, stepped the entrance of his Fuji Chamber, he dropped Barrister and put on Sikiru, the no non-sense, fast-talking Mushin-born who was as human as any other person.

But when he was back to town and on stage, he transformed again to Barrister who must watch what he did, how he did it and particularly his endurance level. Why? He was tutored that he was that white fabrics while the people he met in the public could be that palm oil.

That’s what must have informed the gentleman treatment he accorded that woman who sneaked into his living room in Isolo and told him that she was his biological mother, not Alhaja Sifawu Odee whom he was advertising to the world in his albums. That was 1986.

If the evidently provoked Barrister had given in to the burning fire in him and reacted as such, he would have found himself at the wrong side of the law and possibly had his goodwill injured and his music career burnt to ashes.

The wisdom here is that celebrities should always be in charge of themselves, regardless of situations they find themselves. They shouldn’t be carried away by smiles or hard look of the public to fall cheaply and stupidly too into veiled traps by which they are surrounded.

Alhaja Waka Queen Salawa Abeni is a happy woman today because she treated her latest story well. Her prompt release, in which she alerted the world about a danger hovering on her roof, killed the matter, for it is timely. The sincerity, contained in the content of the release, won her sympathy which she couldn’t have got had she reacted differently and denied that aspect of her past. She has, thus, won the war which would have somehow affected her improving health again.

Assuredly, however, hers is not going to mark the end of such scandal as our celebrities appear to be unmindful of their status, thereby engaging in series of unholy acts behind the curtain and sometimes in the public.

They should be reminded that lens of phones is watching everyone, everwhere and everything. So they should watch their back so that they don’t receive Salawa message.