'GEJ na my oga, I must to do better for am'

I just read Dr. Abati’s piece in defence of President Goodluck Jonathan and I was shocked by the initial name calling on Dr. Abati’s part then I remembered that Abati now has competition in the person of Dr. Doyin Okupe.

Dr. Abati refers to Mr. President’s critics as “…all the cynics, the pestle wielding critics, the unrelenting, self appointed activists, the idle and the idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria …army of sponsored and self-appointed anarchists” Now the question I have is: did Dr. Abati belong to this group of ‘anarchists’ when he was a critic himself or is he exempt because he dished out his own criticism in erudite language from the op-eds of national dailies rather than the  ‘open access’  social media?

Dr. Abati also goes on to describe these critics, whom he obviously dislikes a great deal, as ‘unintelligent people’ who spew ‘stupid clichés’! This poses another question: is the yardstick for intelligence and wisdom unquestioning support for President Jonathan?

I know Dr. Abati is doing the job he was paid to do (Mr. Akinnaso take note, Dr. Abati is paid to defend Mr. Jonathan and not just  Federal  Government policy) but I would have expected him to be a bit more circumspect in his language.  After all he is trying to show ‘unintelligent people’ a better way, he is trying to enlighten the ignorant ‘soap opera gossips’ of Nigeria and I had hoped that Dr. Abati, with all his ‘intelligence’, would have adopted a fact based but persuasive style of argument.  Does one convince ‘unrelenting pestle wielders’ to have a change of heart by hurling insults and being shamelessly condescending?

Whilst reading Dr. Abati’s piece, I could almost hear the desperation in Dr. Abati’s tone and it made me wonder who the desperate party is in all this – is President Jonathan desperate for good press or is Dr. Abati desperate to keep his job? Dr. Abati seems to have forgotten that President Goodluck Jonathan is in office because a large section of these ‘unintelligent’ people voted for him and by that token Dr. Abati earns an income because these ‘distracted facebook addicts’ pay taxes!

Even if one were to take Dr. Abati’s article at face value and decide to examine the ‘facts’ of his arguments in defence of his boss, what can any ‘intelligent’ person (Dr. Abati has no time for unintelligent people) eke out of his article?  What is the crux of Dr. Abati’s argument except “take my word for it, I’m very close to Mr. President, I dine with him so I know him better than all you distant rabble rousers” Why should anyone take his word for it? He is not exactly a neutral third party who is just doing what he believes to be morally right in this matter; Dr. Abati is literally writing for his ‘bread and butter’!

Finally, I can’t help but wonder why a temperate, intelligent, humble and tireless servant of the people, at least that is what his ‘close personal aide’ or in social mediaspeak ‘BFF’ would like us to believe, needs not one but two spin doctors.