Did Mr. President really go drinking? Adetayo Olalekan (Punch) If you want to find a direct answer to this $10m question, you may have to look beyond this column. May be, you may want to lay your hands on the gospel according to Reuben Abati titled “The Jonathan they don’t know” as widely published in the media in August last year and re-read (if you have read it before). I read in a section of the media that President Goodluck Jonathan drank himself to stupor during the just-concluded 21st ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Africa Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the extent that he missed a speaking slot during the opening session. Some reports suggested that His Excellency was vomiting after the drinking spree. Some others said he was down with diaorrhea and had to turn the toilet to his permanent place of abode. In response to questions from some of my readers who knew I attended the Addis Ababa event, I will serve you details of the behind-the-scene events as witnessed by me and leave you to make your deductions. I just hope I will not run into trouble for divulging too much. Immediately he landed in Addis Ababa on Friday evening, President Jonathan retired to a place called ‘Villa’ inside Sheraton Hotel. At around 8.30pm local time (6.30pm Nigerian time), he granted an interview to a 10-year-old Nigerian girl based in California, Miss Zuriel Oduwole, who was said to be working on a documentary on the African Union’s 50th anniversary. The interview lasted less than 15 minutes. Immediately after that session, the President also granted an interview to a CCTV crew. While that interview was ongoing, a big guest arrived. That visitor was former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He was quickly ushered upstairs. After the interview, one of the President’s aides informed him of the former President’s presence. As he stepped into the elevator to go upstairs, his Principal Secretary, Ambassador Hassan Tukur, led other top aides to seek the President’s permission for them to retire to their hotels to go and get some sleep. In granting the request, Jonathan said he was going to sleep too after attending to Obasanjo. The man who sought the permission on behalf of others told him that they would arrive early enough on Saturday to join him to attend a certain breakfast meeting that would precede the summit’s opening session. The President’ reply was that if he woke up early enough, he would attend the breakfast session and that if not, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abassador Olugbenga Ashiru, should represent him while he gets set for the opening session. That was few minutes after 10pm (8pm Nigerian time). As at the time those aides were leaving him, it was only Obasanjo that was in the ‘Villa’ as a guest. I am not relying on a third party in this narrative, I was there. On Saturday, Jonathan attended that opening session. He even got their early. My colleagues and I were held up in a gridlock caused by the blocking of roads for VIP passage, so Jonathan got to the new AU headquarters venue before us. Obasanjo and another former head of state, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, also attended. Three minutes were allotted to each speaker. The public address system was programmed in such a way that it would go off immediately a speaker exhausted his time. While that session was going on, President Jonathan left the large hall to attend a meeting on the proposed Lagos-Abidjan Expressway on the sidelines of the summit inside one of the smaller conference halls. Ashiru read Jonathan’s speech at that opening session. As an accredited journalist at that summit, I have a report of the meeting released by AU secretariat stating that the Presidents of Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana attended that infrastructure meeting while their counterparts from Togo and Benin were represented. I’m one of those who felt and still feel it was not tidy enough for the President to go and attend another meeting when he knew that he could be called anytime to address the opening session. But Abati, expectedly, has justified it saying that the meeting on infrastructure was also as important as the opening session of the summit. This is all I know about the “appearing and disappearing” of Mr. President in Ethiopia. I rest my case till next week.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:25:32 +0000
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