When a columnist is assailed by a torrent of issues, dire and critical, he often resorts to cooking them all with one pot ( a cauldron if you will). This column has gathered the above in-the-news dramatis personae to x-ray what they have in common or uncommon.
Hurray, Reuben Abati can bite too!: Ouch, we don’t want to think for a moment that our dear colleague, Dr Reuben Abati has been pressured into posturing like an ‘attack dog’ for the president too. Sorry we have been asked to use ‘attack lion’ at least in the spirit of the corps. While I will not divulge who made this all-important correction, you and I know who has been pressuring our Abati to make his bite as ferocious as his bark lest his office would be relocated near Aso Rock kitchen where Mama can rework his media offerings which she thinks are beginning to lapse into annoying literary essays.
Well, if he did not want to heed the warnings, the recruiting of a wild, if not hungry ‘lion’ into the mix has snapped our venerable Reuben into quick march. Who would not, what with the ‘initial gra gra’ of the second lion raising dust everywhere and perhaps getting all the freebies. It didn’t matter that Reuben had done quite well in the past 14 months under the extreme and peculiar circumstances he found himself. He had done his very difficult job with unusual aplomb, gradually elevating his office to a quality presidential instrument of public engagement – reflective, authoritative, genuine and germane.
However, it seems Abati has been pushed to change from the civilized style to the crude Nigerian way. Abati showed us his teeth last Sunday in a widely circulated article: ‘The Jonathan they don’t know’. So much is wrong with the piece apart from the effusion of canker and abuse. Now who are ‘they’? Is it the masses of Nigerians who voted overwhelmingly for Jonathan just last year? Yes Reuben has a ‘new’ job to do now but he is versed enough in the art of public perception; he surely knows that the president lost Nigerians in January when he ambushed them with that vicious New Year gift of ‘subsidy’ removal. Look at the tsunami of incongruities that has trailed that singular, crazy action. Has any problem been solved? Look at the mind-bending corruption unfolding under his principal’s watch. You are right Reuben, we do not know this President any longer.
Abati opened his piece snapping at all manner of ‘enemies’ of his principal calling them all manner of names like cynics, ignoramuses, unintelligent, thoughtless, anarchists and alaseju – the extremist. You must remember this word which General Ibrahim Babangida popularized at the peak of his dictatorship prelude to clamping down on the Nigerian free spirit as represented then by lecturers, unionists, activists and of course, newspaper houses. Did Reuben deliberately refrain from using the English word ‘extremist’ in his write-up and settled instead for the Yoruba term, alaseju?
Need we remind our dear friend that this ignoramus mob of critics has been part of the democratic culture from the beginning of time? One American president once described his horde of critics as “a nattering nabob of negativism.” Let me close with this quote from Abati’s piece: “The clear danger to public affairs commentary is that we have a lot of unintelligent people repeating stupid clichés and too many intelligent persons wasting their talents lending relevance to thoughtless conclusions.” Well Reuben should accept our sympathy but nobody, not even the idiotic columnist will hand him his script to rework before publication. And of course, if he and his principal don’t like the Nigerian smoke, they should quit the Nigerian kitchen.
A Lady Gaga-ed world: now you may begin to wonder what the enfant terrible of American entertainment world, Lady Gaga has got to do with this column? Nothing really except that she is at number 14 in the Forbes list of 100 world’s most powerful women. The salacious, often ill-clad and flesh-flashing musician is listed as a celebrity.( Hey, my ancient reader, celebrity is now a profession in this new world in case you have not noticed, thank you.) Lady Gaga (pardon me I couldn’t be bothered with her real name) comes ahead of the president of Argentina, the prime minister of Australia, the prime minister of Thailand, the president of Malawi and the president of Liberia. She even comes ahead of Queen Elizabeth II of England. She is rated to be by far more powerful (whatever that means) than numerous women of notable achievement and substance including our own Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
The message Forbes is passing to us is that the world has become so terribly dumbed- down and stupid that it places so much values on a young woman who does little else than dress wildly and showcase her body. Can you see the direction the world is travelling?
Ben Obi drops Ogbunigwe on Ndigbo: Chei, our dear elder, Chief Ben Obi, who is adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on inter-party affairs has lobbed a grenade at his people. In his wisdom, Chief Obi has advised Ndigbo not to contemplate the presidency in 2015 until his boss, the incumbent has decided whether he wants a second term or not. It may sound unbelievable if not ludicrous but that is the way of the Igbo elite, he is the quintessential house negro. Give him a small pot of porridge and he mortgages his homestead. It was the same situation in 2003 when Chief Ojo Maduekwe, then minister in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration admonished that it was idiotic for Ndigbo to contemplate the Nigerian presidency ostensibly because his boss wanted a second term desperately.
What has changed in Igboland since 2003? Nothing, excepting that Elder Maduekwe has remained in one miserable appointment or the other since then. Do these people know what Ndigbo suffer by having fewer states with huge population in Nigeria? How many federal projects has been completed in Igboland since 2003? Do they know why Igboland is today a wasteland for kidnappers, assassins and pimps? Our leaders and elders can’t go home anymore and termites build multiple mole hills in their obi. Our elders now observe traditional rites in the cities. E woo, aru eme na ala Igbo. With men like these, who need leaders and elders.
Sanusi: the joker in the (Central) Bank: those who gave Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (SLS) some benefit of the doubt would have by last week, given up hope entirely on him. This fellow has proven for sure that he has no clue (this harmful word again) about running the central bank, the pulse of any nation’s economy. First he is too loquacious, too impulsive and he enjoys grandstanding a great deal. This is not the nature and character of supreme money men of the apex bank ilk. They are hardly seen, hardly heard unless in matters of extreme monetary importance.
Second, who says the banks in the country must be in perpetual reform mode.(it’s the CBN that need a forensic reform). Since 1999, there has been this morbid instinct to continuously tinker with our banks. The result is that the banking system has been thoroughly ravaged by these ill-informed, and one must say, ill-motivated reforms. Now, Sanusi, the current banker of bankers seems to have worked himself into a mire and as we say in my place, a man who has been beaten to the ground can only spray dust and nothing more. Sanusi’s current irrational action of introducing five thousand naira currency notes only signals that he has unraveled completely and the best thing that can happen to him now is to help him out of that seat in the best interest of all. He has become the joker in the bank.
