Former presidential spokesman Reuben Abati knocks Edwin Clark for disowning Jonathan

Famous Ijaw leader and former federal commissioner of information, Chief Edwin Clark, recently announced his exit from partisan politics and stated that former President Goodluck Jonathan lacked the political will to fight corruption.

Clark was lending his support to the campaign against corruption being led by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, saying that Jonathan was too much of a gentleman to fight the scourge and helplessly watched while those who worked with him became stupendously wealthy overnight.

One of the principal aides of former President Jonathan has however condemned the statements made by the Ijaw leader. Former special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Dr Reuben Abati in a piece published on Friday titled ‘Clark the father, Jonathan the son,’ condemned Clark and his supporters for “rubbishing a man they once defended to the hilt and used as a bargaining chip for the Ijaw interest in the larger Nigerian geo-politics.”

Noting that Clark was one of the loudest supporters of Jonathan while he was in office, even appropriating the former president as his ‘son’, Abati asked at what point in time the Ijaw leader realized Jonathan was weak.

Abati also adds that if the opposition party had made such a statement while Jonathan was in office, Clark “would have called a press conference to draw attention to the Jonathan administration’s institutional reforms and preventive measures, his commitment to electoral integrity to check political corruption, and the hundreds of convictions secured by both the ICPC and EFCC under his son’s watch.”

The former media aide to Jonathan similarly stated that Clark’s public denial and condemnation of the former president represents “the worst form of humiliation that President Jonathan has received since he left office” and that the former president should probably ask Chief E. K. Clark: “Et tu Papa?” (even you father?) To which the father will probably tell the son: “Ces’t la vie, mon cher garcon” (such is life, my son).

Story: Premium Times