The Presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, responded to the observation raised by the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) on the just-concluded African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with such unmitigated incivility that easily evinces the pressure currently enveloping the entire apparatus of the Presidency. The intemperate and vile verbiage was symptomatic of a pathetically disoriented presidential lackey!
The trajectory of Abati’s career as a Presidential aide reveals a beginning scripted in deception and, undoubtedly, can only be sustained by deception. It explains why, in his current circumstances, he cannot be expected to deal in the truth. The Palace appointment, as a fitting reward for a hatchet job in mendacious writings in his regular Newspaper column during and after the April 2011 elections, is to him, something that must be desperately clutched unto. We understand; only appalled by the descent to uncouth and gutter language! Reuben Abati just showed, in his last statement, lack of training for his job function and an inbred atavistic incongruence.
I invite the discerning Nigerian public to come along as we sift the facts in the story as told by Abati the battered hireling. President Good-luck Jonathan, as head of the Nigerian delegation, left the country for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to attend the AU summit. In diplomatic arena, that was the Primary objective of the delegation. This presupposes that any other business is secondary! Furthermore, Dr Jonathan indicated to address the summit, and was permitted. But he, in his wisdom, believed other matters were more important than the primary objective of being in Addis-Ababa. Obviously, this line of logic showed Abati as asinine and despicably cretinous. He is obviously hiding the vital truth from Nigerians. Not done, he went on to say that the Minister for Foreign Affairs presented the President’s statement at the summit. We shudder to think that all the Nigerian Tax payers’ funds used in paying the humongous estacodes for Reuben Abati and his colleagues on the President’s entourage was for mere submission of a statement after the summit!
He further asserted that Dr Jonathan was not the only President that was represented by the country’s foreign minister. Again, the poor spinning skills of Reuben Abati came to fore. We know Dr Samura Matthew Wilson Kamara, Sierra Leone’s foreign minister, represented his President, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, who was unavoidably absent at the summit. Abati failed to tell us the other foreign ministers, aside Nigeria’s, that represented Presidents who were physically present for the AU summit! If we may ask: is submission of a statement by a foreign minister after a conference coterminous with the President, using the stage, to articulate the Nation’s position on the regional discourse?
In our earlier communication, the word ‘inebriation’ was not used or implied in describing the reason for the President’s inability to read his statement to the audience at the summit. But Abati, the untutored presidential spokesman, in a clumsily laid out verbosity, imputed this as part of our statement. Could this idiocy indeed be a Freudian slip?
The entire hog-wash Abati chose to call a State-house press statement aptly underscored the incompetence that has become the trade mark of the Jonathan presidency!
As a Party, we really sympathize with Abati for the dislocation in his career path and the utter misadventure the media aide appointment has turned out for him. The future, as a practicing Journalist, is bleak and the past cannot be recalled. He is stuck in the conundrum of a sinking regime. Unfortunately, his choice is to sink with it!
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC.
