Tony Ogaga
‘He who fights and runs lives to fight another day.’ So goes the popular saying.
Following the screening of Tuface Idibia’s Power of One at the Silverbird Galleria recently, the question on every one’s lips now is that ‘is Tuface Idibia after running away now back to fight?’
Last weekend, the entertainment industry converged at Silverbird Galleria, V. I. Lagos, for the premiere of The Power of One, a movie that captures the events of Tuface’s ‘botched’ protest of over a year ago.
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Peter Ebuka, Jibola Dabo, Tuface idibia, Elvina Ibru, Jide Kosoko, Alex Ekubo, Bimbo Manuel, IK Osakioduwa and Annie Idibia were among a host of celebs that attended the event.
Scripted by his manager Efe Omorogbe, The Power of One confronts head-on issues plaguing our nation today ranging from corruption, unemployment, terrorism, our ostentatious life style against a backdrop of crippling poverty and exposes the despondency of the Nigerian youth in a society where their votes no longer matter.
It highlights the power of social media and the radical side of Tuface and the choices he had to make in those critical days.
The Power of One is wrapped around comedy which helps deliver a hard message in a subtle way while driving home the fact that for NIgeria to stand as a nation, we all need to stand together, united.
It also captures the pains, fears and challenges of his wife, Annie Idibia as she battles to balance her husband’s desire for a protest with the interests of her family and the safety of her husband and
his career.
Above all, it shows the potentials of the entertainment industry and how it could be leveraged to break the chains of economic backwardness and set Nigeria on a trajectory to greatness.
As news of his planned march gathered momentum in 2017, attempts were made to politicise it and scared it could lose its credibility with severe consequences for him, the singer had withdrawn from the protest in a broadcast that instantly went viral and he was subsequently labelled a coward.
Today, with The Power of One, Tuface is telling us the back story of what transpired during those ‘dark days’ though with some embellishments and Power of One also comes with a roadmap for the
way forward.
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The last scene is indeed emotional. As motorists tried to negotiate a narrow road obstructed by a pole, at some point it dawned on them that unless they disembarked and lifted the pole collectively, they would all be stuck.
That pole could be likened to Nigeria lying prostrate and what Tuface is saying is that, if only we all join hands together, we can save Nigeria from descending into the abyss of a failed state.
In all of these, what come to mind is the timeliness of the movie as the 2019 elections beckon. The message is simple, rather than complain or resort to violence because of bad governance, with our voter cards, we can achieve the kind of change that we want. Indeed, it is another day and Tuface Idibia is back to fight but this time, it’s on his own terms.