If you read French, here are links to the newspaper reports.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ARTJAWEB20120126110125/ua-benin-nige,

http://www.benininfo.com/29011201.html

http://www.lanouvelletribune.info/index.php/actualite/une/9969-union-afr,



My Father Is A Motor Car: Reuben Abati, GEJ, And The Addis Ababa Fiasco By Pius Adesanmi[b][/b]

Baba Sala needs no introduction unless you came around in the age iPods, iTunes, and music files. The dinosaurs among us who are more at home with LP records will remember him. He is one of Nigeria’s greatest artists in my book. In one of his memorable radio skits, Baba Sala decides to learn the English language. A friend’s son offers to help with home lessons in basic English conversation. The scenario is classic: the teacher reads a simple sentence from a grammar primer and the student repeats the sentence. We all went through that “repeat after me” ritual in primary school. If you were in French class, your teacher, often from Togo or Benin, screamed “répétez après moi” as you struggled to memorize the antics of Aja Dudu and Monsieur Mayaki.



“My father has a motor car,” says Baba Sala’s teacher, reading from the primer. “My father is a motor car,” choruses Baba Sala. Naturally, the teacher is dissatisfied. He reads the correct sentence again, Baba Sala repeats the error, and a back and forth ensues between the determined teacher and the stubborn student. Frustrated, Baba Sala finally asks the teacher for a Yoruba translation of that problematic sentence. “Baba mi ni moto ayokele kan – my father has a motor car”, replies the teacher. “Excuse me, come again” thunders an incredulous Baba Sala. The perplexed teacher obliges him: “Baba mi ni moto ayokele kan”.

A furious Baba Sala summons the ritualized protocols of the familiar – what we call “see finish” in popular culture – to upbraid his teacher, giving him a long, sanctimonious lecture about lying, lies, and liars. Baba Sala knows the teacher’s family. E don see dem finish, as the popular saying goes. “Your father did what? Bought a motor car? Look at this small boy o! You really must think that I am dumb! Ibo ni Baba re ra moto ohun si? When and where did your father buy a motor car? Have you forgotten that your father and I used to trek to oko egan (the farm) together? Until he died, your father was never able to afford an ordinary bicycle let alone a car. How dare you look me straight in the face and lie to me? You dare to tell me that your father is a motor car. What’s the world coming to?”

The teacher stands his ground and tries to explain to Baba Sala that the sentence comes from the grammar primer they are using for the English lesson. This is where Baba Sala delivers one of the most memorable lines of his career. Says Baba Sala to the teacher: since I have absolutely no doubt that there is a lie hanging ominously in the air, the question is, who is telling that lie, you or the book that you are reading?

These scenarios came to mind as I monitored the recent faceoff between Sahara Reporters’ Omoyele Sowore and Dr. Reuben Abati, a former progressive intellectual who, sadly, is now in charge of President Goodluck Jonathan’s Ministry of Truth. The first cause of disagreement between the two men needs no further elaboration beyond the necessary reiteration of Sowore’s demand for the full list of President Jonathan’s official entourage to Addis Ababa. Dr Abati has not denied reports that he claimed to have forgotten the list in his hotel room in Addis Ababa at the time of Sowore’s initial request last week. We are still waiting and I hope the goats of Addis Ababa are not as ravenous as the goats of Yoruba land. The truant kid who fails his exam can return home at the end of the term and claim that a goat ate his report card. Perhaps a goat invaded Dr Abati’s hotel room in Addis Ababa and ate the list?

While we wait for him to make good on his promise to release the list and thereby prove that the President’s entourage to Addis comprised “not more than 32 people”, as opposed to the higher figures that had been reported, I must again express considerable sadness that this is what Dr Abati has been reduced to: an unrecognizable marionette who must now split hairs to explain the difference between stealing a cow and stealing a goat to the Nigerian people. No, we were about thirty-two people on the trip and not fifty-seven as was reported, as if it was okay to jamboree thirty-two people to Addis Ababa in the first place.

In Addis Ababa, they characteristically mismanaged everything including the question of President Jonathan’s woolly-headed moves for the AU Presidency. Why an incompetent President, whose leadership report card, is evidenced by the distraught condition of Nigeria and ECOWAS, would get ambitious about leading the AU is beyond me. Moreover, the moment news of that scuttled ambition filtered out of Addis, I knew that his Ministry of Truth would enter panic and crisis mode and swing into action. That much was predictable. What I couldn’t predict was the format of the damage control. Would Dr. Abati dare to depart from Aso Rock’s compulsive recourse to irritating lies in every situation?

Spinning, nuancing, and glossing come with the territory of statecraft. Those with no temperament for euphemisms call it deniability. There are countless occasions when the Presidency or the President must not be disgraced, humiliated, or embarrassed, hence the recourse to spin, nuance, and gloss by spokespersons of a given administration as they retail talking points to the public. That much we understand. In advanced democracies, officials of the state try as much as possible to spin, nuance, gloss or stretch the truth with considerable circumspection. You want to make sure that the spin does not cross the border into the province of outright lies because there are consequences for lying to the people. If you lie under oath, that is perjury; if you lie ex-oath and you are caught, the people will wait for you and your principal at the ballot box.

Alas, Federal statehood in Nigeria comes with the sort of unbridled impunity that I described in my essay, “The Nigerian Presidency: Assault with a Deadly Weapon.” Impunity translates to the absence of consequences for even the most grievous travesties committed by the agents of an omnipotent presidency. The absence of consequences means that the Nigerian presidency enjoys the luxury of telling endless lies without repercussion. And who wants to deal with the strictures of spinning, glossing, or nuancing your way out of tight situations when an outright lie would do the trick without unsavoury consequences? This explains why the Nigerian presidency does not just lie primordially, she lies needlessly and continuously about the obvious and the unnecessary. As far as institutions of state go, the Nigerian presidency is a lie telling lies as I explained in my essay, “iro n paro fun ro”.

Precisely because that institution has enshrined lying and lies as the singular basis of her social contract with the Nigerian people since October 1, 1960, she has created a citizenry that knows the opposite to be true of whatever she has to say.

Thus, when Reuben Abati rushed out a press statement claiming that Yayi Boni did not defeat Jonathan in Addis Ababa and that the West African caucus did not reject the idea of his leadership, I knew instinctively that the opposite had to be true, given the history of the Nigerian presidency and her integrity-challenged officials. The first thing I did was to make a number of phone calls to strategic contacts in Cotonou, Lomé, Abidjan, and Dakar to get a firsthand assessment of the situation from the viewpoint of our Francophone friends. Was there a prevailing sentiment of a Nigerian ambition in the build-up to the summit in Addis Ababa? How was this ambition reported in the media? As soon as I heard the other side from various sources on the ground, I did next logical thing: scour the internet for my daily dosage of newspapers from Francophone West Africa.

All the Francophone newspapers that I read reported the exact opposite of what Reuben Abati had claimed in his press statement to Nigerians. Even before the summit, on January 26, 2012, the pan-Francophonic weekly magazine, Jeune Afrique, had reported “murmurs” of President Jonathan’s ambition. The report indicates that Cotonou “was surprised” by the information on the Nigerian president’s ambition. In the penultimate paragraph of its own report, Benininfo.com insists that the names of Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh and Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan had made the round as “candidates” in addition to Yayi Boni but the leaders of West African countries decided to support the candidacy of Yayi Boni.

La Nouvelle Tribune was even more detailed in its own account of the intrigues that led to the collapse of President Jonathan’s ambition in Addis Ababa. The newspaper regaled her readers with juicy details of the situation that Abati had tried to deny in his press statement: President Jonathan’s candidacy; behind-the-scene moves by the Beninois delegation to gain a concession from the Nigerians; the decision by Ghana and Burkina Faso to support Benin Republic in the face of the obduracy of the Nigerian delegation; subsequent public announcements of support for Yayi Boni by Ghana and Burkina Faso to checkmate Nigeria.

According to La Nouvelle Tribune, it was only after these public announcements of support for Boni by other West African delegations, and after further pressure by Ghana, that Nigeria finally saw the handwriting on the wall and backed off. All the Francophone radio stations that I listened to on January 29 and 30, from Gabon to Benin Republic, Togo to Senegal, and Mali to Côte d’Ivoire, pretty much confirmed these details as reported in the newspapers. True, they confirmed it in the celebratory tone informed by the usual Francophone/Anglophone rivalry, complete with the usual hints of giant resentment but they were nonetheless all very consistent in terms of the details of Nigeria’s ambition. And Reuben Abati would have us believe that none of this ever happened! President Jonathan was never interested, was never a candidate! He even worked assiduously for Yayi Boni’s election! Somehow, everybody else in Africa made it all up! Waoh.

President Jonathan and his handlers dreamed up the ill-fated ambition to gun for the Presidency of the AU because their juvenile rivalry with a far better governed South Africa. Nigerians should worry about the modes of actuation of that ambition. A few commentators, including yours truly, have grumbled that a President who has so thoroughly malgoverned Nigeria, serving as undertaker for his citizens via Boko Haram, armed robbery, unemployment, fuel subsidy removal, and general economic hardship, should not be gourmandizing for regional leadership. That view is only partly right. The real problem is what the President didn’t do in the months leading to Addis Ababa. We heard of no scrupulously thought-out leadership vision, no carefully planned roadmaps to continental initiatives with actionable results going to Addis Ababa. The possibility of continental leadership thus becomes a function of somebody’s perfunctory, spur of the moment brainwave, possibly over peppersoup and Sapele water. He was going to become AU President first and think later about what to do, maybe constitute a thousand advisory committees along the way, as is his wont. Does that sound familiar about how he rules Nigeria?

There is worse. If we were dealing with reasonable people, one would have hoped that the humiliation suffered in Addis Ababa would be an occasion for serious lessons and sober reflection. What went wrong? Maybe the days of thinking that the rest of Africa would just queue up behind us because we have 160 million people and oil money to throw around are over. Maybe we should try to put our house in order? Maybe we should face corruption, Boko Haram, youth unemployment, comatose infrastructure, deeper questions of Nigerian statehood and federalism and hope to earn the respect of the continent based on how we run our own lives? After all, when someone promises to buy you new clothes, you examine his own vestments. Africa now has responsible democracies to loop up to in Ghana, Botswana, Benin Republic and South Africa. What should we do to join that league?

These would be the reasonable working questions of genuine leaders in the wake of the Addis Ababa summit. Alas, the rulers of Nigeria are wired differently. They are wired weirdly. On the flight back to Abuja from Addis, they probably were asking: who did we forget to bribe? Should we have promised President Atta Mills an oil block? Looks like funding for HIV/AIDS clinics is drying up in Ghana and a major international agency is pulling out of Accra. Maybe we should offer to take over the funding of Ghana’s HIV/AIDS programme as the giant of Africa? Will they support us at next year’s summit if we did that? Meanwhile, Reuben, don’t forget to release a statement when we land that this never happened o.

I have written repeatedly in this column that Nigerian government officials – especially those in the Presidency – are not believable. They are utterly contemptible liars, direct descendants of Apate, the famed goddess of lies and deceit in Greek mythology. Even without the benefit of my research into the issue at hand, ain’t no chance in hell that I would have believed an Aso Rock statement anyway.

They have lied to the Nigerian people too often for one to grant them such considerations. A lie hangs in the air about what actually transpired in Addis Ababa. There is no doubt in my mind that the account of the Nigerian presidency is a blatant lie. This brings us back to Baba Sala: who is lying about Addis Ababa, Reuben Abati or the press statement he issued?

NB:
If you read French, here are links to the newspaper reports I cited.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ARTJAWEB20120126110125/ua-benin-nige,
http://www.benininfo.com/29011201.html
http://www.lanouvelletribune.info/index.php/actualite/une/9969-union-afr,

http://saharareporters.com/column/my-father-motor-car-reuben-abati-gej-and-addis-ababa-fiasco-pius-adesanmi

The anti-GEJ brigade justs breaks the records for pettiness and idiocy with each passing day.
Thats why the Ghanaians have fodder to poke fun at us.

Whenever you think you are messing up GEJ with some stup!d petty stuff, or paying foreign newspapers to publish stup!d petty stuff, whenever you do these things, realise that you are really only making a fool of yourself and doing harm to your country. . . And Ghanaians will laugh, small as their country is.

Beaf:

The anti-GEJ brigade justs breaks the records for pettiness and idiocy with each passing day.
Thats why the Ghanaians have fodder to poke fun at us.

Whenever you think you are messing up GEJ with some stup!d petty stuff, or paying foreign newspapers to publish stup!d petty stuff, whenever you do these things, realise that you are really only making a fool of yourself and doing harm to your country. . . And Ghanaians will laugh, small as their country is.

Yes,Ghanaians and other citizens of small and less endowed countries will continue to poke fun at the idiocy and pettiness of your paymaster.

If I may ask you where are the the promised palliatives? It is a month since the subsidy removal

Yes,Ghanaians and other citizens of small and less endowed countries will continue to poke fun at the idiocy and pettiness of your paymaster.

If I may ask you where are the the promised palliatives? It is a month since the subsidy removal

Computer translation of first article:

"African Union: Nigeria candidate for presidency?

Officially, only Benin is a candidate for the presidency of the African Union (AU), the Gambia and Guinea are being dropped out. But Nigeria would have expressed interest ,  Bluff or response to the hegemonic will of South Africa, who eyeing the Commission? The summit of African heads of state, held in Addis Ababa from January 29 to 30, will decide.
Who will be the next president of the African Union? Meeting in summit Sunday and Monday in Addis Ababa , the Heads of State and Government of the continent should identify the successor of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema. The geographical logic is that this post has come back to West Africa. Banjul, Conakry and Cotonou candidates were officially but in recent days, the Gambia and Guinea in Benin have indicated that it wished to discontinue. However, the Beninese President Boni Yayi is not assured of winning. Behind the scenes, it is rumored that indeed Nigeria might want to head the AU for a year - information that surprised in Cotonou, where we interpret this decision as a response Abuja in Pretoria, which claims that Once the presidency of the AU Commission. The two instances are not directly related, but it is an open secret that Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan to see a dim view of the South African ambitions. Boni Yayi, who can rely on the support of countries of the Council of Understanding ( Benin , Burkina , Ivory Coast , Niger and Togo ) but will be difficult, if appropriate, to align face in Abuja, Will it cost? Response on January 29.
___________
By Anne-Grangé Kappes , special correspondent in Addis Ababa


Lire l'article sur Jeuneafrique.com : Union africaine : le Nigeria candidat à la présidence tournante ? | Jeuneafrique.com - le premier site d'information et d'actualité sur l'Afrique
"

This GEJ is a very foolish man.

Do you really want to alienate your neighbors in West Africa like this?

President of the AU is purely symbolic anyways. Why needlessly piss off your neighbors?

If you are eventually going to be struggling for supremacy in Africa politically with a powerful country like South Africa, it is best to do so with your backyard fully secure.

LMAO!!!!!


Oh dear!! Even Western Africans are laughing at GEJ.

Ileke-IdI:

LMAO!!!!!


Oh dear!! Even Western Africans are laughing at GEJ.

To be its still ok than being stoned. He was once stoned in Uganda.

@beaf, i used to respect your opinion but i bet to disagree with you on this one. have you been to Ghana before and see how they are managing their economy and the level of development. It is like GEJ is either not ready for this job or incompetent. This is time to face Nigeria problem instead of fighting over AU chair. I am so ashamed for him

@fellow Nigerians, no matter how badly we loathe Jonathans incompetency or love his leadership style, it remains our duty to defend our President against external ridicule. Whatever happens to GEJ has happened to Nigeria because he is our head.

Nigeria remains the most advanced black country in the World. South Africa is not a Black country as they owe their development to Whites.

Insert Quote
@fellow Nigerians, no matter how badly we loathe Jonathans incompetency or love his leadership style, it remains our duty to defend our President against external ridicule. Whatever happens to GEJ has happened to Nigeria because he is our head

I disagree!.  .Constitutionally, it is not our duty to defend the President!. . What the f[i]c[/i]uk?  defend a man who budgets up to a billion naira on food when more than 80 percent of the population starve to bed at night? . . . . . Is there any fairness in this world at all?

Defend a man who lives in houses heavily guarded by a battalion while the rest of the country get torn apart to bits by Boko haram? 

Defend a man who travels around the world on holiday with 2 jets while the rest of us couldn't get to work due to the hike in fuel prices?  who should be defending who? what moral rights do we have to defend our President?  Are we any more than morons if we came out and told the world how fine and dandy we were when it truly hurts like shyt inside? 

Whatever happens to GEJ happens to GEJ.  Nigeria will remain long after he's six foot in the ground!

Nigeria remains the most advanced black country in the World. South Africa is not a Black country as they owe their development to Whites.

By what standards?  the fact that we solely depend on oil export or the fact that after spending billions we still don't have a clue on how to power up the country?  the fact that more than 70 percent are very poor or the fact that the unemployment rate in this country stands above 21 percent?

How can you convince anyone that Nigeria is way ahead of Ghana when quality of life is measured?

If Nigeria is the most advanced black country on earth, then black people are a cursed race

ekt_bear:

If Nigeria is the most advanced black country on earth, then black people are a cursed race

There is no such thing as curse. What you mean is that black people have low IQ ?

It wasn't a comment that you should take literally.

The main point I am making is that Abagworo's remark that "Nigeria remains the most advanced black country in the World" is not worth very much, or something to be proud of.

There is still a lot of work to be done. In fact, so much work to be done it is as if we've not even started the job. . .

Keep in mind that I am Yoruba and an African myself. So if I say something that seems disparaging to black folk, obviously the intent is not to disrespect myself, my family, relatives, ethnic group, etc.

I just like dark, blunt humor (e.g., "are a cursed race.")

Demdem:

To be its still ok than being stoned. He was once stoned in Uganda.

LOL, you're funny.

Citizenship for sale - in Afghanistan - It is not compulsory that you remain a citizen of Nigeria. Cant you get that into your brain?

^^^^
So in a democracy, criticising a sitting president is the same as renouncing citizenship?
Only under Field Marshall Jonathan!
Right from the word go, the republicans have been criticising Obama
Nobody says it is unpatriotic
Obama did not like Bush's handling of relations with other countries and said so. Nobody asked him to become a canadian
As president, he said he would reset relations with those countries

Why Afghanistan anyway. There are many Nigerians in Ghana
and prayer sessions are held in front of foreign embassies for people who want to leave the country
What do you require as further evidence of lack of confidence?
GEJ has been in office for 2 years
And Nigerians who don't even know NL are still taking serious risks trying to cross from North Africa to Europe

^^^^

What is the relevance of all your gibberish to my own comment?

Abagworo:

@fellow Nigerians, no matter how badly we loathe Jonathans incompetency or love his leadership style, it remains our duty to defend our President against external ridicule. Whatever happens to GEJ has happened to Nigeria because he is our head.

Nigeria remains the most advanced black country in the World. South Africa is not a Black country as they owe their development to Whites.

Oga mi, this is 2012 and not 1935. I personally cannot blindly defend a President who invitess ridicule and opprobrium upon himself and , by extension, Nigeria with his actions and inactions. Better we show the world we are politically mature by distancing ourselves from the grossly inept conduct of a President that shames the long held perception of Nigerians by other Africans. Rallying blindly behind incompetence and failure means you suffer from retrogressive "Stockholm syndrome" .

Let us tell ourselves the truth for once and admit that other Africans, while many will probably always despise us, had respect for us in the past. I can confidently tell you that today , thanks to a succession of woeful "democratic" leaders (while many African nations made progress once rid of dictatorship e.g Ghana), Nigeria and Nigerians are no longer viewed with respect at all. We are now the butt of jokes and ridicule because we cannot do anything right currently .

We deserve our dwindling image when , first and foremost, we keep producing Presidents who are the 'weakest link' and who , by any stretch of the imagination, do not deserve to be leading the "biggest black nation on Earth". We will never 'get our groove back' if folks like you keep telling us to persevere with being led by crass mediocrities many Nigerians are far, far, far,far,far, far, far  better than.

Abagworo:

@fellow Nigerians, no matter how badly we loathe Jonathans incompetency or love his leadership style, it remains our duty to defend our President against external ridicule. Whatever happens to GEJ has happened to Nigeria because he is our head.

Nigeria remains the most advanced black country in the World. South Africa is not a Black country as they owe their development to Whites.

yea like yemen, syria and co we should support his incompetency n barbaric tendencies

advance? bloody hell!! if only some people can look beyond their own farm!!

160m largely unemployed unproductive citizens is not advance!

ekt_bear:

This GEJ is a very foolish man.

Do you really want to alienate your neighbors in West Africa like this?

President of the AU is purely symbolic anyways. Why needlessly piss off your neighbors?

If ekt bear can talk this ah then i know the worst has come for Jonathan the Fresh Fart!

Beaf:

The anti-GEJ brigade justs breaks the records for pettiness and idiocy with each passing day.
Thats why the Ghanaians have fodder to poke fun at us.

Whenever you think you are messing up GEJ with some stup!d petty stuff, or paying foreign newspapers to publish stup!d petty stuff, whenever you do these things, realise that you are really only making a fool of yourself and doing harm to your country. . . And Ghanaians will laugh, small as their country is.

Beaf,

Those pendling the fake rumour don't even know the top 5 countries of AU(Nigeria, south africa, algeria, egypte and libya) could not contest the chairmanship of the organisation.


https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-863539.0.html