By Lasisi Olagunju
I wanted to find out who the greatest massager in history was, but the Internet told me history keeps no such Hall of Fame. I asked Google and got no answer; I asked Google Scholar and got silence. Even super-intelligent AI hasn’t been able to help. So, should I just give that crown to Comrade Adams Oshiomhole?
In a private jet, Oshiomhole was filmed completely soaked while massaging the soft leg of a foreign goddess. At the Presidential Villa on Friday, he was heard massaging the ego of the president and his wife.
He said after meeting the president: “I came to see Mr. President. I haven’t seen him this year. Also very importantly, you saw the way and manner President Donald Trump acknowledged not just the President of Nigeria but our First Lady, describing her as a very respectable woman and a responsible woman, and a pastor of the largest church in Nigeria and he invited her to stand up for recognition. You know that President Trump is very blunt. So, when he used those words to describe our First Lady as a Nigerian you feel proud. And I think it is important for us to say, Mr. President, congratulations because if it were the other way round, imagine what the opposition would have been saying now. You all saw the applause. For me as a Nigerian, that’s worth celebrating.”
The man who uttered those words was Nigeria’s number one labour leader. I heard him and went back to his private jet video. There he is: his wealthy fingers pulse with practised precision, back and forth, along the stretch from the lady’s toe to her ankle, the slender bridge that carries the foot, delicate, expressive, and graceful.
History may not keep records of hand skills, but it remembers timing. And Oshiomhole’s timing is usually impeccable. Just when Nigerians were still debating whether a foot massage can be therapeutic for an aging Comrade, or whether artificial intelligence has finally learnt how to embarrass senators, he calmly changed the subject. From the feet of an angel, he moved to the sentinel of the Villa displaying the same deft skill as a masterful masseur.
While Oshiomhole’s media aide blamed the viral private jet clip on AI and cyber bullies, the lady in the video blamed nothing at all. She wrote: “Video wasn’t AI but okay, believe your senator.” She wrote that, dropped a smiling emoji, and left the rest to Instagram to do the talking.
Oshiomhole, meanwhile, rose above the noise. He chose a higher calling. He raced to Bola Tinubu’s Villa to applaud Donald Trump for noticing Nigeria and celebrating the First Lady. In the world of austere comradeship, national pride depends on foreign validation.
While I struggled thinking of how to merge the jet massage clip with what Oshiomhole said at the Villa, the Internet pushed the word ‘lotus’ at me. I thought I knew Lotus – my generation grew up on Lotus body cream. But what does Lotus have to do with Oshiomhole and that famous foot? Google quickly stepped in: lotus is the perfect passive participle of the Latin lavare—to wash, to bathe. From there came the lotores, ancient Roman bath attendants who washed legs, arms, and armpits, and every other available body part in public baths. Our comrade is a washerman.
Ancient Rome had public baths called thermae. They were active and widespread during the 1st century BCE and reached their peak use in the 1st to 4th centuries CE. If Adams Oshiomhole had come during those centuries, he would be an attendant in one of the baths. The Roman baths, the Internet told me, were not just about hygiene. They were social hubs, fitness centres, and relaxation spaces rolled into one. Senators, soldiers, slaves, and emperors all shared the same steam, while skilled hands worked with oil, pressure, and quiet confidence. Elbows did serious business. Which is why I am making a comparison here: the Oshiomhole private jet scene looked less like a scandal and more like a mobile Roman bath. So when people call Roman bath attendants “ancient wellness influencers,” they are not celebrating unusual people with unusual skills. Like punctilious Oshiomhole, they mastered pressure, posture, and presentation long before Instagram. Like bald-headed, serious-minded comrades, they worked with absolute dedication and carefreeness. They washed anything and everything for anyone to see.
There is always something extra between bald-headed men and the elegance of ladies. Where baldness meets discernment, admiration knows no borders. And for comrades who fight for the masses, admiration easily turns to intoxication when girls are sleek, slim, fair-skinned, and foreign.
It takes rare versatility to be linked to a mid-air foot video and a holy breakfast in the same news cycle. It takes even greater skill to insist that both should make Nigerians proud. In managing time that massages memory, politics that massage truth, power that massages ego, and damsels that demand attention, Oshiomhole is fluent in every department—and masterful in all their techniques.
History may never have a Hall of Fame for masseurs. But if it ever erects one for politicians celebrated for their devotion to the angelic legs of Eves and for spritzing the arse of power with deodorant, Adams Oshiomhole would need no AI to secure his place.
