Abati has lost it. And this should be lamented. I read recently someone querying why Kayode Ketefe only refered to Soyinka and Fawehinmi as the names that circulate in the social criticism circuit in NIgeria. Where are the critics? Have they not all been swallowed by the Nigerian predicament? Wole Soyinka lamented on the burial of Ojetunji Aboyade: "Nigeria kills us slowly; one by one, but surely." Give 'kill' as large a metaphorical elasticity as you want. That's what this nation does to its heroes and critics.
What is however interesting to me, from the perspective of a philosophical study of human nature, is: What was going through Abati's mind when he was writing that piece and marshalling those epithets? He definitely is aware that his boss is deficient, worthless, clueless and more. He knows for certain that Nigeria is presently comatose and under siege (and definitely not only from Boko Haram, but also from other traditional national adversaries like corruption and poverty now suddenly and redoubtably resusucitated).
Maybe he was led to accept the assignment in the first place from the background of a messianic complex we all missed in his social criticism. Maybe he is just taking his own captive frustration out on the rest of us because he knows we are right and he had been tricked. Maybe that's his way of testing his critical skills again at least to assure himself that even if his integrity has been compromised, his acerbic writing has not, and what the hell-let's kick Nigerians' asses. We are in power!
Adeshina Afolayan
This write-up captures completely my thoughts on this issue. Reuben Abati should not have succumbed to the peer pressure that emanates from the recent 'hire' of Doyin Okupe, because I think they are not of the same pedigree. Having said that, Abati's piece last Sunday gave off the impression that he is angrier with GEJ's performance and his (Abati's) location in GEJ's administration, than with the criticisms of Nigerians. Re-reading the statement "the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria" one wonders if he really means all that. The people referred to here do not care about Jonathan as an individual, they are worried whether that they may have been short-changed in the leadership negotiation in Nigeria. During the ailing season of Late President Yar-Adua, myriads of Nigerians, home and abroad clamoured for Jonathan to be given executive rights, first as acting president and later as president, following Yar'Adua's demise. A year later, he was voted into office for a fresh four year term. What does it say of his presidency that just two years after Nigerians clamoured for him to be invested with executive powers, they are chanting anti-Jonathan dirges? What does it say that Nigerians are now questioning his values as a man and a leader? Abati seems to imply that the GEJ does not answer to Nigerians because they raise these concerns via the social media networks. However, no matter what epithets Abati uses in labelling different groups of Nigerians who have raised various concerns, serious or mundane, GEJ is actually answerable to us, because he is our president. Yes! He is the president in a democratic Nigeria, where it is not only permissible to question our president, in fact, it is our responsibility to question our president on those issues that affect us. But, Abati already knows this, having served as an advocate for similar 'questioning' of previous democratic and not so democratic administrations in Nigeria. It is gratifying that Abati knows GEJ in a way that other Nigerians do not. Perhaps it is time he collates various concerns that Nigerians have raised in the past one and half years, clean off the rough edges of the language and re-represent them in a way that GEJ can understand. That GEJ has a deeper love of Nigeria that any other past leader is incontrovertible, given the fact that he is the serving leader, whose actions are under evaluation. But what does it say to Abati and to GEJ that in the past one year, Nigerians have begun to question his patriotism, his leadership abilities and his 'worth' as a man. They don't have a choice… people want leadership, and in the absence of genuine leadership they will listen to anyone who offers views on their deepest concerns…
FKO
On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 3:07:27 PM UTC+1, funmiara wrote:
--http://premiumtimesng.com/
opinion/98151-abatis- unnecessary-necessity-by- victor-ehikhamenor.html Abati's unnecessary necessity, By Victor Ehikhamenor
Premium TimesPublished: August 29,2012Victor Ehikhamenor
As much as I cringed reading some of Dr. Reuben Abati's words this past Sunday in The Guardian newspaper, a sense of eiyaaa overwhelmed me. It was so obvious that the task before the erudite ex-columnist was to catch a porcupine with bare hands.
Abati's piece reminded me of my mother when I was in primary school. I was flogged silly by the labour master for not bringing "handwork" to school one time and hell almost broke loose.
Handwork required tedious work, and it was a necessity and part of the school program. At this particular occasion I came to school empty handed and the labour master could not bear my audacity of hoping he would not ask me for it.
When I had no tangible reason for not bringing handwork, he went berserk and finished an entire cane on my bare legs and sent me home. My mother, seeing the cane marks all over my legs as if I was a runaway slave, decided to go to my school and start a civil war.
She was literally flying out of the door when my father stopped her. And what I will never forget was he reminded her that -Yes it is true that the punishment was excessive, but Victor did not do what was required of him, hence the punishment.
My mother could not defend that position, she dropped the case reluctantly and treated my wounds. And I went to school with my handwork the next day.
Somebody, an editor or a personal assistant, should have stopped Abati's "The Jonathan They Don't Know" before it made it to the public space. Not that the president's spokesman should be censored, but this particular offering was necessarily unnecessary.
I don't know if Abati realizes there may be an incontrovertible "handwork" missing from "them" that is making his labeled "they" cabal i.e. "the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria" scream and lash out like my labour master. Abati couldn't have forgotten so soon that he was once a "they" before he became "them" and he should have a better communication stratagem to handle "they's" restiveness.
I don't know Abati personally; I have only met him through his writings, in the past as a hard-hitting fire spitting critic/columnist and in his current reincarnation as the president's image Laundromat/megaphone.
The more I read him these days the more it is clear to me that it is not easy walking with a left-leg shoe on a right foot. Many people knew exactly where Abati stood in the past and now that his pendulum has swung to a different direction, they are not heedless either.
Nigeria may be a country that needs Lasik surgery for its myopic malady, but Abati's potshots at government are too recent to recess into the abyss of the national sub-conscious.
When Dr. Abati joined Dr. Jonathan, if I knew him well I would've congratulated him with a handshake. I am not averse to serving one's country under a democratically elected government, and Nigerians voted for President Jonathan en masse.
If the best minds shun public offices, hoodlums and political agberos take over the country and turn it to a madhouse – and we have seen that happen too many times.
The only way Nigeria can begin to build itself from debilitating socio-political rubbles is when people like Abati accept public office and serve the entire country in truth and honesty, no matter the challenges.
Abati has a job to do and I respect him tremendously for attempting to do it the best way he thinks, but you cannot dance atilogwu to owambe drumming. He wants to maintain his old dance steps in a different disco hall and it is painful for many Nigerians to watch. And I do not want to believe that the arrival of an "attack lion" in the Villa has put peer pressure on the once calm and calculated intellectual.
The president's spokesman cannot afford to be rattled to the extent that he lists the president's table menu of boiled plantain and cassava bread just to prove a point. Or even direct vituperations at "they" that voted his employer to power.
Angry responses to critics do not shoo them away, it energizes them. This is a country where in the past, military guns and letter bombs couldn't shut critics' mouths. The pen is mightier than the sword, but both "they" and "them" are equally armed with that same pen now. And Abati's latest criticism is like tying raw meat around one's neck and walking around in a hungry lion's den.
Words are too powerful to be misused and this is something Abati knows too well. The words -"The thing about the President's critics is that they just cannot accept that someone with his simplicity can be President," is way too pedestrian to explain away a people's SOS cry for good governance.
The ever lingering woe with President Jonathan's administration is simply and squarely miscommunication. I find this ironic, considering that he is Nigeria's first Facebook commander-in-chief and the least unflappable. Trying to deflect beer parlour and internet "gist" and genuine criticism of President Jonathan in a day's work will not cut it.
That Abati is an intelligent man is unquestionable, but he must help the president articulate some of his successes so far, not just in traditional media but also in the social media arena that was once courted by him.
Abati was not hired as an attack dog/lion and he should not suddenly be goaded into one. And for the record "they" do not particularly care if the president wedges his head in bed with a bottle of VSOP Ogogoro as long as the country he governs is moving towards the right direction.
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