Abati Says The Opposition Used Propaganda To Sack Jonathan & Not Incompetence Or Cluelessness

Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s senior adviser on media, Dr. Reuben Abati, has dismissed the widespread view that the former president lost the last election because of incompetence and cluelessness.

Abati said in his first major interview in the October/November edition of The Interview, that Jonathan was “a victim of power game” and the vicious propaganda of the opposition.

Leadership Newspaper reports that he said, “All they could focus on was trying to discredit the president. They called him clueless; they said he was incompetent; they said he was a drunkard!”

In a separate interview also featured in the coming edition of The Interview, Mr. Femi Adesina, the senior adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on media and publicity, expressed a different view.

Adesina said he knew that Jonathan would lose and was not surprised when it happened.

“If Jonathan had won the election, Nigeria would have shut down”, he said, adding that the government had run out of steam.

Abati spoke on the last days of Jonathan in the Aso Rock Villa, his own controversial retraction of the article against Buhari, the attitude of the moneybags who abandoned Jonathan in his moment of need, his relationship with former first lady, Patience Jonathan, and his love-hate drama with many of his passionate fans.

Adesina was no less forthright. He spoke on Buhari’s style, the war on corruption and Boko Haram, the CBN’s policy of defending the naira, and his relationship with the president.

The edition, which promises to keep the reader on the edge of their seats, also contains interviews with the incoming vice chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Abel Olayinka; a conversation with Corps Marshal Boboye Oyeyemi; and an insight by social entrepreneur, Chude Jideonwu on how Red Media Africa ran Buhari’s election campaign.