*Dr. Reuben Abati.
Dear Rubby,
There are moments when one watches a great man occupying a particular seat and quietly wonders: Sir, what are you still doing here? I have been asking myself that question for some time now whenever I watch you on the morning show.
Let me make one thing clear from the outset: this is not an attack on you. On the contrary, it is written from a position of considerable respect for your intellect, your education, your professional journey and the heights you have attained in Nigerian journalism and public communication. You are not a man who wandered into broadcasting because somebody happened to hand you a microphone.
You studied Theatre Arts at the University of Calabar and graduated with First Class honours. You proceeded to the University of Ibadan for postgraduate studies, ultimately earning a PhD. You then built a career in journalism and broadcasting that took you through virtually every important level of the profession before you eventually became Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan. That is not an ordinary résumé. You have been a journalist, an editor, a broadcaster, an analyst and a presidential spokesman. You have been a student and practitioner of communication at levels most Nigerian broadcasters will never experience.
And that is precisely why I am puzzled. Why are you still sitting there? Not why you are still broadcasting. That is an entirely different question. There is nothing inherently inferior about anchoring a morning television programme. Indeed, there is dignity in continuing to practise one’s profession regardless of age or previous position. A former presidential spokesman does not become too important to hold a microphone. But the question is whether the particular environment in which you are holding that microphone continues to be worthy of the experience you bring to it. Increasingly, I am not sure that it is.
The issue becomes particularly uncomfortable when one watches some of your exchanges with Rufai Oseni. Rufai is undoubtedly intelligent, energetic, articulate and confident. He has carved out his own space in Nigerian television and has become a recognisable media personality. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is a difference between confidence and experience. There is also a difference between challenging a senior professional and appearing determined to defeat him before the cameras. And, Rubby, there have been occasions when the latter impression has become difficult to ignore.
I have watched some of those exchanges and wondered whether the producers are still running a morning current-affairs programme or whether the studio has temporarily been converted into a debating arena where the winner is the person who manages to interrupt the other person most successfully. That cannot be the future of serious broadcasting. And here is the irony: you do not need to compete with Rufai. Your résumé already defeated the competition decades ago.
You have been where many broadcasters are still trying to get to. You have occupied offices where the question was not whether a programme would trend on social media but how the government of a country would communicate with millions of citizens and the international community. You have sat in the Presidential Villa. You have dealt with presidential communication. You have spent decades observing the Nigerian media from the inside. So when the subject is broadcasting ethics, journalism or professional responsibility, you are not speaking merely as another television presenter. You are speaking as a man who has spent a lifetime in the profession.
That does not make you infallible. But it ought to make your experience worthy of respect. And this is where I have a problem. Rudeness is not intellectual courage. Interrupting somebody is not proof that you have defeated his argument. Speaking louder is not the same thing as speaking better. And television confidence should never be confused with professional authority.
The younger generation of broadcasters must certainly be allowed to challenge the older generation. Indeed, they should. Journalism would be dead if seniority became a licence never to be questioned. But there is a way to disagree with an elder. There is a way to challenge a professor. There is a way to disagree with a former presidential spokesman. And there is a way to tell a man with decades of professional experience that you think he is wrong without making the disagreement itself the spectacle. That is called professional maturity.
Perhaps Rufai will say that this is television and that robust disagreement is part of what makes the programme interesting. Fair enough. But there is a danger when the presenters themselves become more interesting than the subjects they are supposed to be discussing. The audience did not switch on the television to watch two broadcasters fight for intellectual territory. They came for the news. They came for analysis. They came for information. They came to understand Nigeria.
When two anchors repeatedly find themselves arguing over who is more knowledgeable about broadcasting, journalism or professional ethics, the programme risks becoming a theatre of personalities rather than a platform for journalism. And, Rubby, perhaps this is where you need to ask yourself a difficult question: Have you outgrown the programme?
Not because you are too old. Not because you are too distinguished. Not because morning television is beneath you. But because perhaps your accumulated experience is now better deployed elsewhere. There are interviews you could conduct that require depth. There are young journalists you could mentor. There are books you could write. There are memoirs you could leave behind. There are questions about Nigerian politics, journalism, governance and public communication that only someone with your peculiar journey can properly interrogate.
You have something that cannot be taught in a studio: institutional memory. You have seen Nigeria from inside the newsroom and from inside government. You have watched politicians arrive, rise, fall and reinvent themselves. You have watched the media evolve from the era of newspapers and terrestrial television to the age of social media, citizen journalism and instant outrage. You have seen how power communicates. You have also seen how power tries to manipulate communication. That experience is invaluable. So why spend so much of your remaining professional capital defending yourself in morning television skirmishes? At some point, a man must ask whether the battle he is fighting is worth the ammunition.
And that brings me back to my original question: For how long more, Rubby?
How long will you continue to tolerate an environment in which you occasionally appear to have to defend not merely your position but your professional standing? How long will you continue to sit beside people who sometimes seem determined to prove that experience has become irrelevant? How long will you allow a television chair to become an arena in which your considerable professional history is reduced to an argument over who gets the last word?
You don’t need it. You really don’t.
Your history is already written.
And perhaps there is another lesson here. Leaving a platform is not always quitting. Sometimes it is recognition. Sometimes it is reinvention. Sometimes it is simply knowing that one has reached a point where the next chapter should be written differently.
A great footballer does not have to remain on the pitch until somebody physically removes his boots. A great professor eventually leaves the classroom. A great judge eventually leaves the bench. A great soldier eventually leaves the battlefield. Not because they have been defeated, but because there is dignity in knowing when one has done enough in one particular arena.
Perhaps broadcasting should not be abandoned. Perhaps it should simply be elevated.
Imagine Reuben Abati conducting a serious one-hour interview with a President, former President, governor, business leader, diplomat or intellectual without having to fight for airtime with anybody. Imagine a programme built around your experience rather than one in which you have to share the oxygen of the room. Imagine young journalists sitting at your feet—not arguing with you about the profession, but learning from you about it. That, to me, sounds much more appropriate for the next chapter of your career.
And let me say something else, Rubby. Do not mistake this letter for a call for you to become timid. Far from it. You should remain as sharp as ever. You should challenge. You should disagree. You should interrogate. You should expose weak arguments. But there is a difference between being fearless and being needlessly combative.
The great broadcaster does not merely ask difficult questions; he knows how to listen to the answer. The great interviewer does not merely dominate the guest; he makes the guest reveal something. The great anchor does not need to win every argument; he needs to make the audience understand the issue.
That is the standard to which I would hold Reuben Abati because you have earned the right to be held to a higher standard. Perhaps, therefore, the real question is not, “Can Reuben Abati continue on the morning show?” Of course he can. The real question is: “Is this still the best use of Reuben Abati?”
That is a much more serious question.
And I hope, Rubby, that you will ask it yourself. Because sometimes the most powerful thing an accomplished man can do is not to fight harder for his seat. It is to look at the seat, smile, stand up and say: “Gentlemen, I think I have done enough here. There are bigger things I want to do.” And walk away. Not defeated. Not disgraced. Not pushed out. Simply promoted by his own judgment.
Dr. Reuben Abati, for how long more?