The Education Reuben Abati Needs Outside PhD!
Posted on November 27, 2024
SUNNY IGBOANUGO
Would any sane man go to Iga Idunganran and demand to buy the palace of Oba of Lagos or a piece of land inside? How much would anyone offer the monarch to cut such a deal? Even if Kabiesi is willing to sell, assuming he is so pressed for cash or the amount being offered is so mouth-watering and irresistible, would his chiefs allow it? Would even ordinary Lagosians including even the area boys that swarm around that area of Lagos?
An accurate response to these questions should produce the right answer to educate Reuben Abati, the main anchor on The Morning Show, the breakfast programme on Arise Television on issues regarding the sale of land in Igboland. For indeed, despite his high educational level and high intellect, he still needs education – a lot of it.
That Abati is an intellectual giant and media guru is difficult to deny or put down even by his worst enemies. But there is more to intellectualism and media face to make things complete. I guess that’s where the problem is with (Doctor) Abati – he insists that everybody must include that prefix in addressing him. So, I must comply.
I guess Doctor Abati has everything anyone could desire in a country like Nigeria where superfluousness takes precedence over substance. His meteoric rise in the academia – getting a PhD at the age of 24 – certainly no mean achievement – speak to this. So is his attainment in the media industry is also enough proof.
Imagine leading the Editorial Page of The Guardian – the almighty Flagship of Nigerian media – where all the intellectual titans of a certain era in the country coalesced as a driving force of the nation’s thought industry – and at such a young age to boot. He couldn’t have been up to 30 at that time. So for this, he becomes a superstar – so elevated by an admiring public. But is that all there is to it?
Somehow, Doctor Abati, seems to reflect the reality of Nigeria. President Olusegun Obasanjo, put a finger to it in one of his recent outings. He narrated how certain people had gone to God to complain about Nigeria. Why should you give this country everything on earth – abundant land with all manner of precious minerals buried in it – so rich that it grows virtually everything – too many waters that are home to the most prized aquatic life – human resources that prove the best across the globe – how could you be this partial?
God was said to have laughed at his accusers and told them to wait and see the type of leaders the country would have. Even those who took that complaint to God, which of course could have included people from Israel, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia or Singapore, would have been aghast at what Nigeria has turned out and would be thanking the same Almighty for not allowing them switch places.
Doctor Abati, as he wishes to be addressed, has virtually everything. But look what his immense gift has done to him. Like many of his ilk unable to manage their endowments, he has been struck with the same disease geniuses suffer – megalomania. He simply lacks the ability or knowhow to manage all the gifts bequeathed in him by nature and learning.
Imagine what he would have been if humility was added onto him as well. But instead, having been so bereft, where that virtue ought to be, sits a deluge of egomania, self-conceitedness, if not narcissism. Even a passive observer notices those features easily on that programme, where he ostensibly makes his own rules and brooks no form of opposition thereof. Who else hasn’t noticed him dismiss his critics as illiterates and uneducated? Who didn’t hear him call others social media rats? Many of such expressions are not only inelegant for use on television especially, but in most cases, forbidden. But he uses them.
“I’ve said it severally on this programme that nobody will tell me not to speak!” That was him last week, clapping back on the backroom staff, who apparently wanted to manage the programme to fit into the time and space allocated to it. Of course, he spoke while others had to recline and recede to their cocoons.
How many times did he have to shout-down his colleagues right there before the cameras? Even the irrepressible Rufai Oseni had had to suffer the impetuous, grumpy attitude and bow to the cajoling, if not bullying on many occasions. Who would have thought that his colleague could face such tongue-lashing in the open studio for the singular sin of not prefixing his name with Doctor?
Who else could have demanded that especially on television where it is a well-known tradition to address people by their first names if not Doctor Abati? It is this penchant for egoism that has been at play since last Thursday’s outing on the programme regarding his infamous comment about Ndigbo not selling land to strangers, which has now raised a lot of dust.
Now, much as I agree that targeting Ndigbo with the short-end of the stick has remained a somewhat state policy under the All Progressives Congress (APC), beginning with President Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was and sustained on a higher scale by Bola Tinubu, his successor, I don’t think that he was playing anyone’s script.
I think he simply went into an overdrive as it is wont with him on many occasions. No doubt, the nature of the programme allows the anchors a lot of latitude to impute their opinions lavishly on given subject matters. But on many occasions, this has not only led to excessive licentiousness, but outright abuse. This was actually the case.
What was in issue? Ojy Okpe, the anchor of What’s Trending segment of the programme, had played a video where Godswill Akpabio, praised the entrepreneurial spirit, what he called the mercantile spirit of the Igbo that impels them to develop everywhere in Nigeria, including building their own residential houses and dwelling with host communities, something he says other ethnic groups lack.
“The Igbo are very proud people, the Igbo are very mercantile, the Igbo are the only ethnic group in Nigeria that when they enter Kano State, they build houses in Kano State for themselves. They don’t rent. When they enter Lagos, they own almost two or three local governments, they build houses and live there. There’s no place they go they don’t make impact. But other Nigerians will come to my place, rent houses and live without building a structure. But the Igbo are not like that.”
This was what Abati reacted to. And what did he say? First was to acknowledge the truism in Akpabio’s comment. He even stressed the popular local saying that anyone that ventures into a community where there is no Igbo should scram immediately because it meant danger. But the problem is in the flipside, which he took the liberty to adduce.
In doing so, he sought to take back with the left what he gave with the right hand, stating that in Lagos, for instance, it was rather the “liberalism” of the people than “conquering spirit” of Ndigbo that was at the base of their massive investment. Really? Pray! What is this liberal spirit supposed to look like when the lands were not given out free?
When did a symbiotic affair based on willing seller, willing buyer translate to one party doing the other a favour. For those who don’t know, it is with the proceeds of such lands Igbo people bought that families established businesses for themselves and children, sent their children abroad where they became high-rate professionals, with some of them becoming mega billionaires in foreign currencies.
This is not peculiar to Lagos. It is true of all the major cities in Nigeria. Families in major towns of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, became very prominent because they sold land to outsiders to develop themselves. Onitsha became the hub of lawyers in the entire Igboland, because families sent their children abroad to study law. The evidence of that enterprises is everywhere.
Many interior Igbo families would like to be like Onitsha where land is hot cake or Aba, where families become entrenched as billionaires because they raised enough capital through land sales to engage in merchandises like textiles, stockfish, same as their counterparts in Lagos. Incidentally, it is the scallywags and urchins in such families that the public seem to focus on.
Besides, could an American in New York claim to be “accommodating” or being “liberal” to a fellow citizen from Texas who bought and built house in the city? Shouldn’t that be an anathema? Should those expression ever come from a public figure like Doctor Abati? Methinks no! That’s a dangerous mindset, the sought that has now become quite prevalent in recent years, especially of the APC-Lagos.
When Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu established the Apapa Wharf, was the thinking like this? Did he acquire land to set up and engage in other businesses that made him the richest man in Africa, because the Yoruba were liberal or because each of the people in the value chain saw opportunities? Did Aliko Dangote establish the Dangote Refinery Limited in Lagos, because the Epe people are the most liberal in Nigeria?
Now coming to the Igbo. Citing what he claimed was the experience of Thomas Owolabi Shobowale (TOS) Benson, late Yoruba politician and lawyer, who rose to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who he quoted as claiming that his Igbo in-laws refused to sell land to him, Doctor Abati had stated how that summed up the “irony of Nigeria about the politics of the federation.”
Hear him: “The same Igbo who are so industrious that they are all over and do well in other parts of Nigeria, you go as a non-Igbo man to go and buy umunna land, you will be told that you don’t belong even as an in-law. That’s by the way of an aside, but these are the issues, in my view!”
