Buhari should speak more often to Nigerians – Abati
POLITICS DIGEST – Former presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to engage more with Nigerians by granting more media interviews.
This, he said, would discourage the mushrooming of “conspiracy theories” about a vacuum in power and the politics of absence and/or indifference at the highest levels.
Abati said: “Every president has his or her own style, but deliberately playing possum should not be part of that style.
“President Buhari should speak more often to Nigerians. He should sit down at presidential media chats. Nigeria is not a feudal system where the aristocrat treats the people with disdain.
“In a democracy, the man of power is accountable to the people who expect their leaders to continually justify why they must be in power and office.”
Abati’s comments were contained in an opinion article he penned on his engagement as part of the panel that interviewed the president recently on Arise TV.
Abati noted that other presidents before him appeared regularly on presidential media chats during which they responded to the people’s concerns, but that in six years, Buhari has not granted one presidential media chat.
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“Other presidents gave one-on-one interviews to media houses, or even stand-up interviews with reporters. This president has been unusually reticent and absent,” he noted, adding that on the few occasions that he (Buhari) had spoken to the press, he did so with foreign journalists, a move Abati described as counter-productive, given that it infuriated Nigerian stakeholders.
Abati also punctured a widely held view which had flourished due to the president’s taciturnity – that the man ruling from Aso Rock is not the Buhari Nigerians voted for, but a certain Jibrin from Sudan.
He insisted that the man they interviewed was, indeed, Buhari, and not Jibrin and that he is not senile, as widely insinuated.
He said: “The man that our team sat with and interviewed didn’t sound like a Jibrin from Sudan. He was alert, alive, informed, confident, relaxed, witty and capable of disarming humour.
“He was not the invalid or the senile old man that his critics say he is.”
Abati also had a word or two for those who dismissed the interviewers’ handling of the president during the interview, insisting that the panel did a professional job and not “celebrity showcase” as alleged.
He wrote: “With due respect, I think our team asked serious and relevant questions which brought out Buhari, the man, the person, the persona and the leader…
“The conversation and debate that have been generated by the Arise TV interview is proof enough that this was a useful, impactful, and path-finding contribution to public conversation.
“What we did was not a celebrity showcase, but serious journalism.”
