With a mixed feeling of anger and sense of betrayal, I read today February 16, 2012 Dr. Abati’s Right of Reply: Much ado about Stones in SaharaReporters.
With a mixed feeling of anger and sense of betrayal, I read today February 16, 2012 Dr. Abati’s Right of Reply: Much ado about Stones in SaharaReporters.
As I read through the said article, I fathomed two Dr. Abati personae – each representing opposing extremes of viewpoint – staring at me through the bright lights of my desktop computer. Much as I tried to fuse both personae into one articulate and persuasive social commentator that I had come to identify with, I found out that I couldn’t. I felt left only with the strong urge to envision what the reaction by Dr. Abati the social critic would have been to that speech by President Jonathan, the speech that is the cause of the attending brouhaha. My curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself wondering: If Dr. Abati was sitting behind his desk and in front of his computer in Rutam House, and not indulged in whatever he may be indulged in the State House (for sake of decency, I refused to stretch my imagination that far!), what analytical stance would I, like any other devoted reader of our erstwhile pen activist now the latest proselyte in town, be reading in The Guardian today? I could only find one answer, and that is that his write-up as a former persona would be anything other than the professional baloney he spewed in the form of his Right of Reply.
For starters, it is relevant here that we revisit Dr. Abati’s vote of no confidence on the newspaper that gave him much of the platform he needed to “arrive” – The Guardian. Dr. Abati wrote, “I had responded at length to Sylva’s press release in ThisDay - the only newspaper that tried to balance the story. I thought The Guardian used to trump ThisDay in the game of professional balance. What has changed since Dr. Abati left The Guardian? Is it The Guardian that has changed, or is it Abati?
Another important point worthy of analysis is Dr. Abati’s submission, “… but there is a certain penchant abroad, evident also in these comments, namely the theatrical attempt to play to the gallery, by those who seem to believe that belittling the Jonathan Presidency will make them popular no matter how unfair their conclusions may be.” Well, the chicken has finally come home to roost. That statement, more than anything else, is an eye-opener and a testament of some sort; and a body of culpable evidence against our dear Dr. Abati’s decades-old professional hegemony. Who else other than the one who had travelled that road before would know that the motivation for social criticism is mainly the allure of cheap popularity? By that statement, he seemed to tell us that not only were we taken for granted, we had been slyly fed doses of daily pretentiousness in forms of articles, write-ups and opinion pieces by those we inadvertently hold in high positions of camaraderie; chief of whom is Dr. Abati himself. What a gullible and foolish generation they must think we are!
Emphasizing his own indictment of “cynics” who “twist Mr. President’s statements out of context” (reference to stoning in President Jonathan’s speech), Dr. Abati wrote, "The commentators should know that words have embodied meanings, and that in cultural contexts, languages lend themselves to idiomatic and metaphorical expressions which may carry heavier weight as signifying codes." Really? Whose lines should those have been?
I know there probably are other articles by Dr. Abati that speak better to underscore the points being raised here, but I feel content to make reference to an article he penned in The Guardian of June 2009 titled, A Nation’s Identity Crisis. The writer made some valid points in the said article, to the extent that “Music is about sense, sound, shape and skills. But there is an on-going deficit in all other aspects except sound. So much sound is being produced in Nigeria, but there is very little sense, shape and skills.” If we accept these points as facts, we can adduce that a valid extension of same truth applies more to speech than music. It embodies all the four elements Dr. Abati identified (i.e. sense, sound, shape and skills). Those elements distinguish professional writers from sophomoric ones. The writer and speaker cannot convincingly trade his/her acute lack of finesse for the reader/hearer’s lack of understanding of intended meanings. Words should be made clear, factual, and intelligently unassuming; it must not become the reader’s obligation to find the intended interpretation for them.
Since Dr. Abati finds it so convenient to blame the commentators for a lack of appreciation and understanding of idiomatic expressions and metaphor, may I also remind him of the very old Yoruba adage that says "A soro i yan'ro lo pa elempe isaaju," meaning that "a negligent failure to emphasize intended meanings became the kismet of the ancient interlocutor." Even in professional communication practice, the onus falls on the speaker, not the hearer, to properly articulate the points he/she is trying to make. Failure to do that, s/he should be ready to accept responsibility for any speaker-unintended perceptual meaning the reader or hearer may deduce from that web of confusion called speech. Advancing from that conclusion, it becomes easier to assert that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan committed dialectical hara-kiri by failing to fill up the cracks on the walls of his semantics. More unpardonably, Dr. Abati goofed professionally by his failure to predict the inevitable furor that unpopular speech was going to generate. Is that not supposed to be the only job for which he was brought into the grazing range of fat cows?
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