POLITICS TODAY

By Nasir Dambatta

Going through Reuben Abati’s rather lengthy essay on the trending interview the former Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida granted Arise TV, I was taken aback by the writer’s seeming disdain, even prejudice against the General. It was surprising that Reuben pretended not to have seen anything tangible in the former President’s call for Sixty-and-below age brackets as candidates for the 2023 Presidency. And this is one proposal that impressed many Nigerians who objectively dissected the interview.

Many of us who used to to think Reuben’s articles resonate with the millions of Nigerians have now been compelled to rethink our assumptions. Of late, Reuben’s pen, dripping with venom for elderstatesmen outside the Southwest appears to be his new intellectual low. Or how else does one describe someone doing a critique on a former leader turning a blind eye to the unbeatable number of infrastructural, educational, health, security and unity programmes and policies of that leader. The writer, who has made himself the self-appointed juror and jurist on the ‘sin’ of the Federal Government under the then President Babangida simply went Gaga – hanging all the blames for the nation’s current difficulties on IBB’s shoulder. Is Reuben so presumptive as to think that the only thing bothering Nigerians is the annulment of June 12, despite the eight years of former President Obasanjo from the same Southwest that the late MKO Abiola hails from? This revisionism by Abati is a sad reminder that there are some Nigerian intellectuals who delight in taking us back to an issue that has already resolved itself. IBB’s position on June 12 annulment, particularly the reason of security that he has consistently referred to, is actually a privileged information. For an Abati who was not a party to the decision for the annulment and for IBB who had unfettered access to privileged intelligence information, it is obvious that Abati got it all twisted. It is therefore obvious that the writer turned himself into something like a professional boxer fighting outside the ring, an armchair variant of a critic.

On the SAP riot that Abati wished to hang around the former President’s neck, it was nothing unfamiliar because obviously, such riot was sponsored by elements who wanted to pull down the IBB government.

It is worrisome that Abati has conveniently forgotten that the administration that IBB led has broken the best records in promoting national interest, all-round development that touched lives and launched this country into the modern system of governance. In terms of domestic policies and international relations, Abati knows too well that this nation is yet to see IBB’s equivalent, decades after his exit from power.

It is evident that Abati has succeeded in demonstrating his naivety by pandering to regional sentiments and exhuming the ghost of old arguments that politicians who have had an axe to grind with IBB were fond of doing.
Laced with subtle envy, Abati’s reactionary article has given further vent to the belief that he has all along been compromised in his views in virtually all of the national discourses he jumped into. His article is no less different from what many analysts described as “tribal jingoism” that was once dressed as “June 12 agitation” decades ago. This columnist has obviously jumped into a roller-coaster ride without even asking for the destination. From what I can see in the IBB’s trending interview and Abati’s self-righteous intervention, it is all an account of a former leader who understands the nexus between the past and the present, in the eyes of a regional champion masquerading as critic.

Majority of Nigerians reasoned with IBB on the philosophy of generational power shift and how much damage its abandonment has done to our nation’s socio-political and economic development. Even Abati knows that the Southwest has benefitted immensely from development projects under the IBB regime than even IBB’s immediate constituency of the North. The leader who didn’t use force to convert the radical late Tai Solarin into a “liberal” socialist and the literary hero of the Southwest – Wole Soyinka – into the helmsman of Federal Road Safety Commission, can’t be Abati’s punching bag today. This is unfortunate because Reuben is a comparatively new-breed apologist of the June 12, when placed against the likes of Professor Wole Soyinka and others, who eventually accepted ministerial appointments in IBB’s regime in what was evidently a ‘taming of the shrew’.

Abati’s latest posturing on Nigeria’s current challenges suggests a failure to establish the nexus between the past and the present and therefore creates the impression of an incurable hater of IBB or his immediate constituency of the North. Every social media follower of Abati would readily admit, that the man has always taken a position that tends to potray him as a regional champion. Fresh in our memory was his stand on the recent Abba Kyari saga, where he expectedly called for the head of the supercop due to his open regional resentment, which has now become closely associated with his stance on almost every topical national issue. It is also heartbreaking that Abati’s analysis sought to subtly promote a death-wish for IBB elsewhere in the write-up. This is either a deliberate act of undue provocation of people or loyalists in IBB’s immediate constituency of the North or the personal prejudice fuelled by misplaced regional sentiment. The long and short of my drift is that Abati’s approach towards discussing sensitive national issues definitely needs retooling.

Dambatta wrote from Kawo Kaduna