Please Rueben Read: My letter to Reuben Abati....

 

Reuben Abati. In a short span of just over a year, the name has become a metaphor for becoming a turncoat. It signifies the rapid descent from the Olympian heights of a highly-respected and widely-read columnist to the undignifying low of a court jester. Even monumental sell-outs like your average South-Eastern politicians have not had it this bad.
Yet Abati remains adamant. In a recent article - 'The Jonathan they don’t know' - in which he attempted a rather amateurish defence of his principal, Abati came off as a spent force in a last desperate bid to remain relevant in the Jonathan administration.
In a bid to show his master that he still has it, Abati started on the rather desperate note of attacking everyone who has had the common sense not to suck to his principal. Perhaps borrowing from his imminent replacement, Doyin Okupe, who has christened himself an ‘attack lion’, Abati clarified that ‘they’ he referred to
in the title of his article are “all 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, who seem to be in competition among themselves to pull down President Goodluck Jonathan.”
He went on to say that “this army of sponsored and self-appointed anarchists is so diverse; many of them don’t even know why or how they should attack the president.”
While an embarrassing turn of events for a once-esteemed man of the ink, it would seem that even though born out of resentment for Nigerians, Abati’s assessment was right on the money:
We are cynics.  We were led to believe a lie that somehow, by some miracle, Jonathan would be a different kind of president.  Sadly, some of us who thought otherwise have been proven right, and no matter what his noisemakers say, we will not believe a word they say.
We are self-appointed activists.  With the likes of Omar and Esele leading an organised protest, we will never make any progress, so we choose to go it alone.
We are not twittering, we are tweeting.
We are a collective children of anger. Who will not be? With our pensioner parents dying in droves while your officials cart away billions of their rightful money, who will not be?  Besides, our anger is fuelled Abati’s generation’s continued insistence on mortgaging our today and tomorrow.  So yes, Mr. Abati, we are angry; try not to anger us even more.
We are Facebook addicts.  In other climes, more sensible leaders would have harnessed the energy of Africa’s top internet audience in order to create new, cutting-edge solutions to today’s problems. However, it seems your principal recognises the power of Facebook only when he wants to declare his intention to run for office.
We are BBM-pinging soap-opera gossips.  Indeed, these channels have proved to be more reliable sources of information than the combination of you, Okupe, and Maku.
We do not want to pull down your principal; we want the best for our country.
We are not self-appointed anarchists.  Actually, you’re referring to the Boko Haram members that your principal announced – to the whole world I might add – are in his government.
It is sad that Reuben Abati, in a bid to show his relevance, is only creating more problems for ‘the world’s most criticised president.’  Perhaps Mr Abati should retire now and go write the book he intends to.
As the curtains fall on the formerly revered Reuben Abati, let Okupe and those who come after him know this: the Nigerian people are resilient and strong. We will match your backs with the earth; you will never have our backs to the ground.

- Ndukwe Onuoha
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