Elder statesman and former Federal Commissioner for Information, Chief Edwin Clark, has taken ex-Presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, to the cleaners, insisting that Jonathan was defeated in the 2015 presidential election because Abati failed to act exactly as a spokesman.
Clark accused Abati, who was Jonathan’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity of sabotaging his then principal by failing to promote his image and achievements despite his advice for him to constitute “a publicity committee made up of eminent journalists in Aso Rock and that media proprietors and senior journalists should be invited to Aso Rock.”
Alleging that this advice were jettisoned by Abati because of the presidential spokesman’s covetousness, the former Federal Commissioner for Information recounted that many journalists and media houses always complained to him that Abati was not carrying them along.
It would be recalled that the former Presidential spokesman had about a fortnight ago written in an opinion titled, “Clark the Father, Jonathan the Son,” where he among other things asked: “Who would ever think Chief E.K. Clark would publicly disown President Jonathan? He says Jonathan was a weak president. At what point did he come to that realisation?
“Yet, throughout the five years, he spoke loudly against anyone who opposed the president,” wrote the then President’s publicist.
But wondering why he came under attack over his comments on Jonathan “for reasons so obvious”, Clark in an email to Premium Times wrote that it was curious that Abati, who he accused of failing to sell Jonathan’s achievements to Nigerians, could accuse him of disparaging a man he (Abati) was never loyal to.
The Niger-Delta leader maintained that he had to at a point blunt out to Abati how negligent he is to his duties by not defending Jonathan against some of the scurrilous attacks against him and also by not promoting the president’s image and well-known achievements of his administration.
“Dr. Reuben Abati has risen to the defence of his last employer too late. He owes the former President apologies for his (Reuben Abati) failure to perform while in office. I should not be used as a scapegoat. I love Goodluck Jonathan and Goodluck Jonathan loves me,” he said.
Clark also recalled that before his appointment by the former President, Abati was one of the strongest critics of the president in his Guardian newspaper column, stressing that, “I do not recall any favourable remark made by Abati all those years when he was the chairman of the Editorial Board [of the Guardian] and syndicated columnist about the former president, His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and the First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan.
“If I recall correctly, they were always the butt of ridicule by Dr. Reuben Abati. In fact, he became so notorious and fearless a critic of former President Jonathan and his wife in the Guardian Newspaper that I had to draw the attention of my cousin the proprietor of the Guardian newspaper to his excesses.
“These vitriolic attacks on former President Jonathan and his wife only stopped when he was appointed the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity by the former president,” he said.
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