Reuben Abati just complained his phones had stopped ringing, after the frenetic racket of his Goodluck Jonathan years. Would somebody, somewhere please give him a call, on compassionate grounds, to save his golden phones from manic depression?
Ah, of course, Reuben was part of the three-some — or more conclusively, four-some — that zealously harvested foes for their principal, under the guise of building bridges. The list?
Himself, Reuben Abati, the pious christener of the “collective children of anger”, a rather fiery and magisterial riposte to Jonathan’s traducers, in the e-jungle of (anti?)social media.
Doyin Okupe, the literal bull, grunting and charging, in the impeccable and immaculate Goodluck crusade. Why, “Call me a bastard!”, he famously bawled, at the acme of his power hubris, “if APC (then a fledgling opposition coalition, later turned his principal’s electoral nemesis) lasts more than a few months” — or something to that effect.
Well, APC, the political equivalent of the Yoruba customary Ajantala (what the English would call a genius or, at worst, a precocious child), electorally slew the PDP Goliath, with its 16 mighty years of power swagger. And it wasn’t even two years old — until July 31!
Olufemi Olukayode (nee Femi Fani-Kayode), the voluble and fatally persuasive scion of the one and only Remi Fani-Kayode (God bless his combative soul!), the unflinching Demo stalwart, of the Western Region electoral-heist driven crisis, that torpedoed Nigeria’s First Republic. Fani-Kayode, the future Olukayode’s razor-sharp tongue erected Jonathan’s final Golgotha.
And, of course, Olisa Janjaweed Metuh, the PDP publicity generalissimo who, even in what looks like political Siberia, is still very much at his game. Olisa’s latest Janjaweed “release” is his charge that the Buhari presidency was imposing a “communist” economic policy, for checkmating an illicit run on the Naira, via suspect dollar domiciliary accounts. Aghast? Just scream “Janjaweed” and take a deep breath!
This four-some cooked the Jonathan goose.
Even then, Doyin Okupe was in a special class of his own, in contrast to Reuben Abati.
Cherie Blair, QC (Queen’s Counsel, equivalent of Nigeria’s SAN), spouse of Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in her 2008 autobiography, Speaking for Myself, spoke of two contrasting styles, of two giant advocates, doing their thing in court, during her legal pupillage years at London’s Lincoln Inn. Derry Irvine, her boss and later a QC, she recalled, was “an attacking rhinoceros”. But his match, Tom Bingham, QC, “was like a snake, smooth, charming, almost hypnotic”.
Save a few details and, of course, making for local adaptation, Okupe, with his in-your-face brashness and block-buster aggression, could well have been the Cherie rhinoceros in the Jonathan power jungle, in which he brooked no paddy. Abati, was quite the opposite — “like a snake, smooth, charming, almost hypnotic” — except for the few occasions (witness his “collective children of rage” comment) when, as the Americans would say, he really blew his tops!
Well, Abati’s phones have stopped ringing. So, has Okupe’s too stopped jangling?
Okupe, the ebullient Remo prince and medic-turned-government-publicist, is a veteran of many controversial causes. Before June 12, he championed the anti-MKO cause; and his grand but doomed strategy was to plumb MKO in the mud, as he felt Bashir Tofa was comparatively such an overall Lilliputian he couldn’t levitate in MKO’s stratosphere. That strategy resurrected in the Jonathan campaign. But the result was the same, just as it was for Tofa: electoral doom!
Now that the business has ended in the dust, is Okupe’s phone still ringing, in contrast to Abati’s?
Hallo! Hardball is commissioning a crack investigation unit. Please apply!
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Mr. Disu why are you disrespecting the wishes of Bastard Doyin Okupe? I believe he should be obliged. You are also guilty of impunity!