Buhari’s Plan to Kill Sowore, Social Media Bill, and Aisha Buhari’s Hypocrisy

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Minutes before I started writing this column, I watched disturbing videos showing officers of Nigeria’s anarchic DSS physically assaulting Omoyele Sowore in the process of illegally re-arresting him after a judge had ordered, for the umpteenth time, that he and Olawale Bakare be released from detention. The brave judge was also scared away by gunshots.

The videos emblematize Nigeria’s descent into the very nadir of fascistic absolutism. Buhari’s monocratic excesses are turning out to be more toxic than I had feared.

Before he was violently rearrested, Sowore said on camera that operatives of the DSS had told him he would never leave their gulag alive if he didn’t compromise. They want to murder him for demanding that the systemic dysfunction in Nigeria that holds vast swathes of people down be radically overhauled so that the country can work for everyone, not just a criminally and undeservedly favored minority.

Will Nigerians and the world watch idly while Buhari’s agents murder a man who committed no crime? Why is there no groundswell of national rage toward the unjustified criminalization of Sowore by a government that mollycoddles murderous Boko Haram terrorists, that “de-radicalizes” and “integrates” captured terrorists into the military who then cause the mass slaughters of our military men?

I know why. It’s because Sowore is an equal-opportunity tormentor of oppressors. Goodluck Jonathan sympathizers are as angry with him as Muhammadu Buhari supporters are. And since there are numerically insignificant people in the middle, that is, who are neither Jonathanians nor Buharists, he is left in the lurch.

Jonathan partisans on social media try to exploit the amnesia of Nigerians to claim that Sowore is only the victim of karmic retribution for opposing Jonathan’s administration, which putatively granted Nigerians unfettered freedom of speech. Well, several people, including Sowore, are being tried now using a repressive law that was signed by Goodluck Jonathan.

The Cybercrime Act, which Jonathan signed into law in 2015, prescribes a three-year jail term or a fine of 7 million naira or both for anyone convicted of “causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another.”

One of Sowore’s offenses, according to the charge sheet from the government’s prosecutors, is “That you Omoyele Stephen Sowore… did commit an offence to wit: you knowingly sent messages by means of press interview granted on ‘Arise Television’ network which you knew to be false for the purpose of causing insult, enmity, hatred and ill-will on the person of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

As you can see, the charge against Sowore was taken straight from Jonathan’s Cybercrime Act. And this leads me to the fascistic social media strangulation bill being sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa of Niger State. The bill, like the ignorant “hate speech” bill being sponsored by another Niger State senator by the name of Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, duplicates Jonathan’s ridiculously suppressive Cybercrime Act, which already criminalizes “causing annoyance… insult… enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another.” What more do these dolts want?

Last week, Senator Musa said on national TV that the principal inspiration behind his sponsorship of the bill was to punish people behind the previously wildly trending social media rumor that Muhammadu Buhari was going to get married to Ms. Sadiya Umar Farouq, who masquerades as “minister” of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development even though the real minister is Fatima Mamman Daura, Mamman Daura's favorite daughter, who works as a director there.

Well, Aisha Buhari herself confirmed the wedding rumor during her interview with BBC Hausa on October 13, 2019. “Wacce aka ace Buhari zai aura ba ta yi zaton ba za a yi auren ba,” she told BBC Hausa. Rough idiomatic translation in English: "The very woman Buhari was supposed to marry didn't expect that the wedding would not happen."

 In other words, according to Aisha, the wedding rumor had basis in truth and Sadiya, in fact, was prepared for the wedding until it was called off because of the unexpectedly unusual social media attention it generated.

People close to Aisha told me it was actually Aisha and her social media handlers who instigated the social media hype over the wedding in order to embarrass Mamman Daura and ultimately thwart the wedding. And they succeeded.

Nonetheless, the same Aisha Buhari who confirmed that there was indeed a plan for Buhari to get married to his former mistress, Sadiya Farouq, reportedly told TVC’s “Journalists Hangout” that the rumor was fake. “I didn’t take it seriously because even my husband didn’t know what was happening,” she said. “Both of us didn’t know what was happening; they just decided to bombard social media with it. They are now taking to social media to bring down the government itself.”

She was clearly told to say that to manage the damage that my revealing her BBC Hausa media interview to the nation caused. Note that Aisha is barely literate. Her “degree” from the Kaduna satellite campus of Ambrose Alli University was fraudulent. It was acquired after the NUC had banned satellite campuses of universities, which were basically diploma mills, from issuing degrees. She used the illegally acquired satellite campus degree to get admission into NDA to study for a “master’s degree.”

Apart from being illiterate, she’s also a dissembler who exploited her opportunistic fight with the Aso Rock cabal to buy herself undeserved national sympathy. But she’s unraveling now after settling with the cabal. Nigerians should ask her to reconcile what she told BBC Hausa on October 13 and what she told TVC on December 5—if she’s intelligent enough to understand the question, that is.

By the way, Senator Musa, the sponsor of the social media bill, is the same APC party man whose company INEC contracts to produce card readers and PVCs for elections since 2015. That is ethically questionable. Of course, such a morally stained wheeler dealer would want to shut down social media under false pretenses to conceal his shenanigans.

Musa’s shamelessly plagiarized social media bill targets Nigerians not only at home but also abroad. The bad luck for him is that even if he succeeds in passing it into law, it won’t affect Nigerians who live in the US. In 2008, the state of New York enacted what is called  the Libel Tourism Protection Act, which “prevents litigants from enforcing foreign libel judgments in the state unless a New York court finds that the jurisdiction issuing the judgment provides the same free speech protections guaranteed under the U.S. and New York state constitutions.”

A federal version of this law was passed as “Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act” in 2010. Since Nigeria does not have the same free speech protections as America, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that the social media bill will have any effect on those of us who live in America.

That was why I was shocked when Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi reported a US Embassy Political Officer by the name of Jerry Howard to have said that the hateful, ignorant, needlessly duplicative “hate speech” bill he is sponsoring in the Senate is “impressive.”

I doubt that Mr. Howard actually said that. But if he did, he would be guilty of what former President George W Bush once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”: a form of benign prejudice that sets a low bar for people thought to be inferior.

America has no hate speech laws. The US Supreme Court has consistently ruled that hate speech laws are unconstitutional. The cure for hate speech in America is more free speech or, as Justice Louis Brandeis put it, "more speech, not enforced silence." Why should what is bad for America be “impressive” for Nigeria?

In any case, the bill Senator Abdullahi is sponsoring isn’t even hate speech in the proper sense of the term, as I showed last week; it’s a mix of defamation (which is already covered in Nigeria’s extant laws) and a sly protection of corrupt government officials from critical citizen commentary.

Buhari's Lieocracy

By Farooq Kperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi

First shared on Facebook and Twitter on November 17, 2019

The news media first reported that 35 Yemi Osinbajo aides had been fired by the "Presidency." But his media aide, Laolu Akande, said it was a lie. Then Garba Shehu, Buhari's media aide, said it was true and added that the purge was part of a plan to cut the cost of governance.

The sacked aides, however, said they weren’t paid by government; that they were seconded to Osinbajo’s office by donor agencies, thereby undercutting Shehu’s rationale for their firing.

Finally, Buhari returned from London and said the sacked aides were only "redeployed" to other ministries and that we shouldn’t read any ethnic or political meaning to it. But how do you "redeploy" people to ministries who weren’t formally employed by government in the first place?

This is a government by lies, lies, and more lies. Call it lieocracy, if you like.

Aisha Buhari Would Be the First Victim of Social Media Law

By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

If the fascistic social media strangulation bill being sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa of Niger State (BTW, why is Niger State the source of all the fascistic bills in the Senate?) becomes law, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, who fancies herself as “First Lady,” would be its first victim. Here’s why.

Last week, Senator Musa said on national TV that the principal inspiration behind his sponsorship of the bill was to punish people behind the previously wildly trending social media rumor that Muhammadu Buhari was going to get married to his dabino-stealing (former) mistress, Ms. Sadiya Umar Farouq, who masquerades as “Minister” of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development even though the real minister is Fatima Mamman Daura, Mamman Daura's favorite daughter.

Well, Aisha Buhari herself confirmed this wedding rumor during her interview with BBC Hausa on October 13. “Wacce aka ace Buhari zai aura ba ta yi zaton ba za a yi auren ba,” she told BBC Hausa. Rough idiomatic translation in English: "The very woman Buhari was supposed to marry didn't expect that the wedding would not happen." In other words, according to Aisha, the wedding rumor had basis in truth and Sadiya, in fact, was prepared for the wedding until it was called off because of the unexpectedly unusual social media attention it generated.

People close to Aisha told me it was actually Aisha and her social media handlers who instigated the social media hype over the wedding in order to embarrass Mamman Daura and ultimately thwart the wedding. And they succeeded. I hope Senator Musa will come for her when he succeeds with his fascistic social media bill.

By the way, Senator Musa is the same APC party man whose company INEC contracts to produce card readers and PVCs for elections since 2015. That is ethically questionable. Of course, such a morally stained wheeler dealer would want to shut down social media to conceal his shenanigans.

What Everyone is Missing About the “Hate Speech” Bill

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Both the proponents and opponents of the so-called Hate Speech Bill in the Nigerian Senate don’t seem to realize that the bill itself is fundamentally rooted in, and nurtured by, crass and deep-seated ignorance of the very meaning of “hate speech.”

Hate speech doesn’t mean speech that hurts the sensibilities of government officials. Nor does it mean any speech that incites and insults individuals. It simply means speech that besmirches—and incites violence against— a community of vulnerable and marginalized people who are easy targets because of their invariable group attributes such as their ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, racial identity, national origin, gender, age, physical and mental disability, etc.

That is why Encyclopedia Britannica, in common with most recognized authorities, defines hate speech as “speech or expression that denigrates a person or persons on the basis of (alleged) membership in a social group identified by attributes such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical or mental disability, and others.”

Since government officials aren’t vulnerable and marginalized people (they’re actually the very opposite of marginalized people) and don’t constitute a primordial community, they can’t be the victims of hate speech. Yet Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, the sponsor of the “hate speech” bill, recently told the news media that his sponsorship of the bill has exposed him and the bill itself to “hate speech” from Nigerians!

Although both of us share a common Borgu heritage, I don’t know Senator Abdullahi, but he is obviously an uneducated legislative thug who would do well to go back to school for his own good and so he would stop embarrassing our people. Criticizing a clueless, illiterate senator who wants to strangulate people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and constrict the discursive space isn’t, by the wildest stretch of fantasy, “hate speech.”

Senator Abdullahi also said his bill is designed to “seek justice for Aluu 4 and others.” But the “Aluu 4” murder doesn’t exemplify hate speech by any definition of the term. It was jungle justice. The victims weren’t murdered because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability.

Although I am a free speech advocate, I concede that there are groups of people in Nigeria who need hate speech protection. Here is an incomplete list of groups that are habitually the targets of hate speech in parts— or all— of Nigeria, which the bill doesn’t even address:

1. Homosexuals. There is no part of Nigeria where gays and lesbians aren’t subject to violent denunciations on social media, in the traditional media, and in quotidian dialogic spaces. In Europe where hate speech laws are codified, homosexuality is regarded as a “protected attribute,” and people who slur or incite violence against gays and lesbians can be charged with violating hate speech codes. Yet the very Nigerian Senate that is sponsoring a “hate speech” bill has criminalized homosexuality.

2. Shiites. This is perhaps the most vulnerable Muslim sect in the Muslim North. On social media and in mosques, Sunni Muslims perpetually direct wild, unrestrained hate speech against Shiites without any consequences.

They are indiscriminately murdered in the streets by both everyday Sunni fanatics and the government. Yet the Presidency, to which the current Senate is a shameful extension of, has officially labeled Shiites, who have been the victims of murderous persecution, a “terrorist” group.

3. “Fulani herdsmen.” Although the Global Terrorism Index has consistently ranked “Fulani extremists” as the “the fourth deadliest known terrorist group” in the world, most Fulani people are not terrorists, but Fulani people, particularly “Fulani herdsmen,” are stereotyped as inescapably violent and murderous, which exposes them to threats of indiscriminate mass murders in many parts of Nigeria.

 The Global Terrorism Index’s 2019 report says, “There are an estimated 14 million Fulani in Nigeria.” It’s impossible for all 14 million Fulani in Nigeria to be terrorists. If that were true, almost everyone would be dead in Nigeria. Yet in 2017, Apostle Johnson Suleiman said, “And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him. I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!”

That was classic hate speech that could result in a “hate crime.” Being a “Fulani herdsman” does not invariably lead to being a terrorist. To kill someone who has not committed a crime, who just happens to belong to a primordial category of people who commit a crime, is quintessential hate crime. Plus, the vast majority of everyday Fulani herdsmen are poor, illiterate, marginal people whom people and governments habitually cheat and exploit.

4. Christians in the Muslim North. Christians are an endangered group in the Muslim North. They are periodically murdered by homicidal thugs at the slightest provocation. Over the years, certain Muslim preachers, particularly in Hausaphone Muslim northern Nigeria, have typecast Christians as expendable, murder-worthy, inhuman outsiders who are invariably enemies—and who can only be tolerated at best.

The murderous contempt for Christians in the Hausaphone Muslim North is encapsulated in the odious term “arne,” which means “pagan,” but which connotes much more than that. The term functions to denude the humanity of whomever it is directed at. It makes him or her the legitimate target of remorseless cruelty or murder, especially in moments of political or religious tension in the country. An informed and legitimate hate speech bill would protect Christian minorities in the Muslim North from rhetorical—and actual— violence.

5. “Hausas” in the South. In all of Southern Nigeria, Hausa people (which is linguistic shortcut for all northerners even though the North is home to more than half of Nigeria’s over 500 ethnic groups) are pigeonholed as stupid, unthinking automatons who are always roused to mindless violence, who are indistinguishable from cows.

“Aboki,” the Hausa word for friend, has now been misappropriated as a term of disesteem to slur northerners. So is “Mallam,” the Hausa domestication of the Arabic mu’alim, which means teacher, but which is deployed as a term of courtesy for any male Muslim. It is also usual to call northerners “maalu” (sometimes malu), the Yoruba word for cow.

The insults, in and of themselves, are not the issue. The issue is that they homogenize a vast and varied people and prime them for often retaliatory mass murders. When I was a reporter in Nigeria in 2000, I covered the retaliatory murders of northerners in the Southeast in response to the Sharia riots in Kaduna that year. It turned out that most of the “Hausa” people murdered there were, in fact, Christians from Benue and Kogi states who share common boundaries with many states in the Southeast.

The survivors I spoke with told me their entreaties that they were Christians who would have been murdered in Kaduna, along with Igbo people, had they lived there failed to persuade their tormentors. They were told that they were “abokis,” “mallams,” or “malos.”

6. Atheists and agnostics. Nigeria is a hypocritically hyper-religious society with an overabundance of toxic levels of intolerance for people who choose to question or depart from the orthodoxy of received spiritual wisdom. People who question or reject the idea that there is a God who supervises and regulates the affairs of human beings are often reviled and attacked in almost all parts of Nigeria.

For instance, in 2014, Nigeria attracted global attention—and ridicule—when an atheist by the name of Mubarak Bala was committed to a psychiatric hospital in Kano by his family for publicly renouncing his faith in Islam and God. After he was found to be of sound mind and released, he was welcomed by a steady stream of death threats.

As is now obvious, hate speech laws all over the world are enacted to protect weak, defenseless, and marginal social, religious, ethnic, cultural, etc. groups from the tyranny of dominant, mainstream groups. But Senator Abdullahi and his uninformed political bedfellows are more concerned about protecting oppressive, overpampered, corrupt, and unaccountable government officials from the searing scrutiny of the governed than protecting weak, marginal populations.

Postscript:

Many Igbo commenters are crossed that I left out Igbos in my list of vulnerable groups that need hate speech protection. They are right to be disappointed.

However, I couldn't include every group. That was why I called it "an "incomplete list." This is a newspaper column with a word limit, which I actually exceeded by over a hundred words. I thought identifying "Christians in the North" as a vulnerable group takes care of Igbos because most people in the Muslim north who kill Igbos at the slightest provocation can't tell Igbos from other ethnic groups in the South. It is their Christian identity that stands out. But I agree that Igbos are an endangered group in the Muslim North.

Another group that I wanted to include but didn't have the space to include is women. Well, I'm glad this intervention is sparking the right conversation about what hate speech really means.

Government of Buhari’s Family, By His Family, and For His Family

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Before he was sworn in as president in May 2015, Muhammadu Buhari, without prompting from anybody, publicly told his immediate and extended family members to stand back from his incoming government. He even warned that any family member who used his name to peddle influence would face dire consequences.

I was so impressed by this declaration that in my May 16, 2015 column titled “6 Reasons Why Incoming Buhari Government Fills Me with Hope,” I isolated it as one of the six reasons I thought Buhari’s administration would “represent a qualitative departure from the legalized banditry that has passed for governance in Nigeria for so long.” Specifically, I wrote: “Buhari’s symbolic but nonetheless significant gestures like telling family members to steer clear of his government and telling aides to obey traffic laws inspire me.”

It has turned out that Buhari lied, as usual. There is no equivalent in Nigeria’s 59-year history for the height, depth, breadth, and width of his family members’ offensively brash influence peddling and direct involvement with and in his government. None at all! Buhari operates an unabashed “familocracy,” that is, a government that is run by family members for the benefit of family members.

 On November 10, 2019, I used my Twitter and Facebook timelines to share the names of four biological relatives of Buhari’s who work in the Presidential Villa. However, further investigations have shown that there are way more relatives of Buhari’s (and Mamman Daura’s) who work in the Villa—and in the Katsina State government—than I shared.

 Even Buhari family members who are not directly in government are ruthlessly avaricious influence peddlers. There is no Buhari relative today, in and out of government, who isn’t a multi-millionaire. In Daura, they are called “the blood.” They are tastelessly showy and egotistical. They ride the biggest and most expensive cars, own the choicest houses in town, and ride roughshod over people less fortunate than they are.

There’s a widespread joke in Daura that goes something like, “Want to change your one thousand naira note? Go to Shaiskawa.” Shaiskawa is the part of Daura town Buhari and his relatives (or “the blood”) come from. The Buhari family members’ exhibitionistic preening of their newfound wealth is particularly amusing to Daura people because most of Buhari’s nouveau-riche relatives used to vegetate in squalid poverty up until 2015.

Here is a partial list of “the blood” who constitute the nucleus of Buhari’s familocracy. I’ve confirmed these names from multiple sources in Daura and the Presidential Villa:

1. Abdulkarim Dauda. He is Buhari’s Personal Chief Security Officer (PCSO). Like Mamman Daura, he is Buhari’s nephew. His father, Dauda Daura, is Buhari's half-brother from the same father. He is de facto president Mamman Daura’s full biological brother. I exposed a recent secret memo that Buhari sent to the Nigeria Police (where Abdulkarim is officially employed as Commissioner of Police after three unnaturally and undeservedly rapid promotions in three years) instructing it to circumvent time-honored public service rules and extend his service till 2023 even though he should have retired this year on account of being in service for 35 years.

Abdulkarim Dauda being decorated by Abba Kyari at the Presidential Villa. Credit: Daily Post

2. Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf. He is Buhari’s Private Secretary. Don’t be deceived by the “Tunde” in his name. It’s just a nickname, probably inspired by Tunde Idiagbon, Buhari’s deputy when he was a military dictator. Sabiu is the son of Mamman Daura’s full biological sister by the name of Hajia Halima (more popularly known as “Hajja Madam” in Daura) who died last year. As you should know by now, Mamman Daura’s sister is Buhari’s niece since their father (Dauda Daura) is Buhari’s much older half-brother.

Sabiu "Tunde" Yusuf

Sabiu, who is in his 30s, is one of the most powerful people in Nigeria today. He determines who sees and who doesn’t see Buhari. Only Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari can overrule him.  By several accounts, he is now a multi-billionaire, although he had no formal work experience before Buhari became president. He used to sell phone recharge cards in Daura until 2015!

3. Dauda “Zeze” Habu. He is Senior Personal Assistant to Abba Kyari, Buhari’s Chief of Staff who is actually the de facto acting president/VP. His father, Habu Kurma, is Mamman Daura's younger brother. That means his father is Buhari’s nephew.

(The formerly unemployed husband of Fatima Mamman Daura—Mamman Daura’s favorite daughter— is also Abba Kyari’s PA. Fatima, too, is now a director in the newly created Ministry Of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development and actually runs the ministry).

4. Musa Haro. He is PA (Domestic Affairs) to Buhari. His mother, Hajia Kwalla, is Buhari’s biological sister. Hajia Kwalla is a twin. Her twin sister is called Hajia Amadodo. Musa appointed his brother, Hamisu Haro, as his his PA! That’s a PA to the PA! Anything to keep it in “the blood.”

5. Musa Musa Daura (known more popularly as “Musa Terror” in Daura because of his notoriety for murderous violence) is PA to Buhari’s ADC by the name of Lt. Col. M. Lawal Abubakar. Buhari and Musa Terror’s grandmother, Hajia Amadodo, are full siblings. Lt. Col. Lawal is also married to Musa Terror’s full sister. It’s noteworthy that Musa Terror’s father is the Magajin Garin Daura who was kidnapped recently.

6. The House of Representatives member representing the Daura/Sandamu/MaiAdua Federal constituency by the name of Fatuhu Muhammad is the son of Buhari’s late older brother (same father, same mother) by the name of Muhammadu "Mamman" Danbafale. People in Daura told me Fatuhu, who graduated from ABU with a Third Class degree in political science in 2009, improperly rode on the coattails of his uncle to his position; they said he became the APC candidate for House of Representatives without undergoing a “proper primary” election.

Fatuhu Muhammad is his uncle's look-alike

He recently attracted national attention when he revealed, obviously without intending to, that the land border between Daura and Niger Republic isn’t closed, contrary to government propaganda.

7. Rabiya Muhammad Daura. She has been nominated as a commissioner in Kastina State. She is the only woman in the state’s 17-member cabinet. She is the daughter of Mamman Danbafale (Buhari’s late older brother) and full sister of Fatuhu Muhammad.

8. Nuhu Dauda. He is an assistant to the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Sylva, and the family’s “eye” in the ministry.  He is Abdulkarim Dauda’s full brother (see number 1 above). That means he is Buhari’s nephew since his father is Buhari’s half-brother.

Bonus:

9. Ahmed Rufa'i Zakari. He is Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure. He isn’t Buhari’s biological relative, but he is his relative by marriage and informal adoption. Ahmed’s mother is Mrs. Amina Zakari, the controversial INEC commissioner who, along with compromised INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu, helped Buhari to rig the 2019 election. Buhari’s older sister was married to Amina Zakari’s father, the late Alhaji Hussaini Adamu. Apart from being Buhari’s in-law, the late Hussaini Adamu also raised Buhari for some time after Buhari’s father died, so he was, in a sense, Buhari’s adoptive father.

I got at least a dozen other names of Buhari’s blood relatives who work in the Presidential Villa and in “lucrative” ministries at the federal and state levels, but I didn’t have the time—or, frankly, the inclination—to verify the information from sources because the point has already been made.

My whole interest in this is to record it for posterity that Nigeria once had a “president” by the name of Muhammadu Buhari who gratuitously promised that his nuclear and extended family members would never participate in his government but who turned out to be the most nepotistic leader Nigeria ever had; who perpetrated familocratic excesses with both reckless impunity and unparalleled shamelessness.

Related Articles:

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A Buhari Relative is Threatening Me Over the Mamman Daura Birthday Video

Assassination Plot Against Me by Buhari's Agents?

Presidency Pressured Daily Trust to Discontinue My Saturday Column

4 Blood Relatives of Buhari's Who Officially Work in Aso Rock

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Mamman Daura’s Shameful Birthday Bash in London

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Mamman Daura, the guileful, influence-peddling son of Buhari’s oldest half-brother who rules Nigeria from the background of the “Glass House” in the Presidential Villa, turned 80 on November 9. After sponsoring a cornucopia of hagiographic birthday tributes in newspapers, Daura jetted forth to London—along with more than 30 family members—to celebrate at a high-priced London hotel.

His children recorded the glitz, vanity, and epicurean indulgence of the London birthday celebration and shared it with their friends. Somehow, it seeped out to the public and became the trigger for the ventilation of pent-up angst over the Buhari regime’s enduring hypocrisy.

In the cloying tributes written about him on the occasion of his birthday, Mamman Daura was variously—and falsely— described as modest, patriotic, self-effacing, unassuming, and contemptuous of conspicuous consumption. Yet he chose to celebrate his birthday, along with scores of nuclear and extended family members—and government officials—in London. Would it diminish the significance of his milestone if he celebrated his birthday in Abuja—or, in fact, Daura, his place of birth?

Where is the patriotism in celebrating birthdays on foreign soil? Where is the modesty in putting more than 30 family members in first-class flights to London to celebrate a mere birthday while millions of Nigerians, particularly in his hometown of Daura, writhe in unutterable pauperism?

The London birthday bash, incidentally, is co-extensive with Muhammadu Buhari’s presence in London on a "private visit" with public funds. People were understandably crossed that Buhari and Mamman Daura, Buhari’s chief puppeteer, were luxuriating in sybaritic pleasures abroad at a time they selectively closed the borders at home, insisted poor people must eat only local rice, and deepened the misery of everyday Nigerians like never before.

 In the aftermath of the online backlash that the video of Mamman Daura’s London birthday touched off, family members of Daura attempted to withdraw the video from circulation. For instance, a Facebook friend of mine by the name of Dr. Bello Inua Anka, who is married to one of Mamman Daura’s daughters, said I should take down the video from my Facebook and Twitter timelines.

The pretext he used to justify his take-down request was that two of his children were in the video and were being exposed to “hatred.” He said there were “security issues involved” in sharing the video publicly.

I told him I didn’t see anyone say anything about any child in the video. Everyone's focus was on the hypocrisy of closing the borders at home, insisting that traumatized, poverty-stricken people live within their means, using security agencies to physically humiliate and harass poor people for eating foreign rice, etc. while Buhari's family members, and a few favored ones, live off the fat of the land at home and abroad, even going so far as to celebrate the birthday of Buhari’s nephew in London— with ministers and senators in tow. Not even Jonathan was this audaciously insensitive and duplicitous.

I didn’t shoot or edit the video, I reminded him. The video was shot, edited, and shared by his in-laws before it slipped away from their grip. Why should I edit or take it down? His response was baffling. “Your page has more exposure than most, there are security issues involved here. A lot of people with a grudge or another will always pay a visit to your page to feed off what you write,” he said.

How does the appearance of indulgent, well-clad, and well-fed children in a video pose “security issues” when they live privileged, sheltered lives, which ensures that they won’t be in harm’s way? In Bello Anka’s village in Zamfara State, hundreds of thousands of poor kids, through no fault of theirs, are in real danger because they can't feed, because bandits terrorize them and their parents, and because they can't go to school, ensuring that their unfortunate condition will be perpetuated inter-generationally. That’s where the real “security issues” are. But he doesn’t care. The poor don’t matter.

When he didn’t succeed in persuading me to take down the video, he started to threaten me. “By all means don't take it down please. I wasnt [sic] actually begging you just so we are clear. I was being civil by asking you privately. I also said edit if you can and continue with your lunacy. I am indifferent to your grievances against the Nigerian government...I promise you won't get away with this… as long as that video remains on your wall. You clearly have no idea what you are dealing with. You believe too much in your own hype,” he wrote.

Because I’ve received several anonymous  death threats from supporters of the Buhari regime, including a recent one where someone publicly called for my execution—alongwith Chidi Odinkalu and Ahmed Salkida— on Twitter, I decided to make the man’s threats public because he has a name, a face, and a place in the Buhari/Mamman Daura family that can be held accountable if anything happens to any member of my family in Nigeria because he knows he can’t do anything to me in the US.

 Interestingly, this same witless, power-intoxicated buffoon used to fawn over me when I held Goodluck Jonathan’s feet to the fire before 2015. Because he and his parasitic, no-good in-laws are now milking the national cow, he wants me to look the other way as they perpetrate their corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and impunity.

When threats did nothing to get me to take down the video, the Mamman Daura family persuaded Facebook and Twitter that the video I shared of the children, grandchildren, in-laws, and Nigerian government officials (including a senator and a minister) celebrating Mamman Daura's 80th birthday at a pricey London hotel was "private media."  So they both took it down on November 14.

Scores of people have also shared the video on Facebook and Twitter. Why am I the only one they're worried about? Bello Inua Anka said I believed “too much” in my own “hype.” But it’s actually the other way round: it is he and his corrupt, profligate in-laws who believe in their hype about me. There are thousands of Nigerians with way more social media following and influence than I, but it’s my social media commentaries they are disproportionately obsessed with.

Well, although the video no longer appears on my social media timelines, it has already gone viral and is, in fact, archived on this blog. It has also been shared on many other Internet platforms. Will the Mamman Daura family persuade, for example, YouTube and WhatsApp to take down the video? Will they ask Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, LG, etc. to take down the video from millions of computers and phones?

Why are they embarrassed by the video? Of course, it’s because it calls attention to their extortionate profligacy, to their hypocritical licentiousness, to their objectionable immorality, to their ice-cold disdain for the poor, and to their reprehensible double standard.

They haven't realized that by getting Twitter and Facebook to take down the video from my social media timelines, and the online buzz this has created, they've made the video even more popular than it deserves to be. Now if you type "Mamman Daura birth…" on Google, Google’s autocompletion automatically suggests “Mamman Daura birthday video.”

 That means a lot of people are searching for it. According to Google, “The search queries that you see as part of Autocomplete reflect what other people are searching for and the content of web pages.” The forbidden fruit, they say, tastes the sweetest.

These Buhari/Mamman Daura folks obviously have the IQ of their shoe sizes. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people have already seen, shared, and downloaded the video. Only imbeciles lock the barn door after the horse has bolted.

Related Articles:

Video of Mamman Daura Celebrating Birthday in London

A Buhari Relative is Threatening Me Over the Mamman Daura Birthday Video

Assassination Plot Against Me by Buhari's Agents?

Presidency Pressured Daily Trust to Discontinue My Saturday Column

4 Blood Relatives of Buhari's Who Officially Work in Aso Rock

Buhari's Nepotism on Steroids

A Ministry for the Mistress!

A Buhari Relative is Threatening Me Over the Mamman Daura London Birthday Video

By Farooq Kperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

A man by the name of Dr. Bello Inua Anka, who is married into the Muhammadu Buhari family, is threatening me over the PUBLICLY available video that I—and thousands of other Nigerians—shared on social media showing de facto president Mamman Daura celebrating his 80^th birthday with (more than 30!) family members and government officials in a posh London hotel while people starve to death in Nigeria. (See screenshots of his threats).

He asked me— and reached out to a valued friend of mine to prevail upon me— to take down the video on the excuse that his children are in it and that they’re being endangered. How? As I told him, I haven't seen anyone say anything about any child in the video. Everyone's focus is on the hypocrisy of closing the borders at home, insisting that traumatized, poverty-stricken people live within their means, using security agencies to physically humiliate and harass poor people for eating foreign rice, etc. while Buhari's family members, and a few favored ones, live off the fat of the land at home and abroad, even going so far as to celebrate the birthday of Buhari’s nephew in London— with ministers and senators in tow. Not even Jonathan was this insensitive and hypocritical.

I didn’t shoot the video. It isn’t exclusive to me. In fact, it had already done the social media rounds before I shared it on my social media handles. The video was shot, edited, and shared by a member of the Buhari family. Why should I edit or take it down? He said, “Your page has more exposure than most, there are security issues involved here. A lot of people with a grudge or another will always pay a visit to your page to feed off what you write.” Huh?

Anyway, if his threat is limited to suing me in US courts where I live and work, I’m waiting for him. I’ve already notified my lawyers here. But there’s something darker and more sinister in the threat “I promise you won’t get away with this.” I’ve received countless threats from supporters of Buhari’s fascist monocracy. Someone even called for my execution—along with Chidi Odinkalu andAhmed Salkida— on Twitter last week. I dismissed it as the inconsequential overzealousness of a faceless Buhari Media Center (BMC) troll.

But Dr. Bello Anka has a name, a face—and a place in the Buhari family— that can be held to account if anything happens to any member of my family in Nigeria because he knows he can’t do anything to me in the US. 

Interestingly, this same witless, power-intoxicated buffoon used to fawn over me when I held Goodluck Jonathan’s feet to the fire before 2015. Now that the “spoon” is in his mouth, he wants me to let him and his parasitic family members to get away with their unexampled corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and impunity. Ain’t gonna happen!

Related Articles:
Assassination Plot Against Me by Buhari's Agents?
Presidency Pressured Daily Trust to Discontinue My Saturday Column

4 Blood Relatives of Buhari’s Who Officially Work in Aso Rock

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi
In 2015, Buhari warned his family members to steer clear of his government. He lied. His relatives, many of whom wallowed in grubby poverty before 2015, not only now work as his official assistants, they’re now multi-millionaires. Some are billionaires. Here are 4 blood relatives of his that I know for a fact work for him. There may be more. I’ve confirmed these names from multiple sources in Daura and the Presidential Villa:
1. Abdulkarim Dauda. He is Buhari’s Personal Chief Security Officer (PCSO). Like Mamman Daura, he is Buhari’s nephew. His father, Dauda Daura, is Buhari's half-brother from the same father. He is de facto president Mamman Daura’s full biological brother. I exposed a recent secret memo Buhari sent to the Nigeria Police (where Abdulkarim is officially employed as Commissioner of Police after three unnaturally rapid promotions in three years) instructing it to circumvent time-honored public service rules and extend his service till 2023 even though he should have retired this year on account of being in the police for 35 years.

Abdulkarim Dauda

2. Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf. He is Buhari’s Private Secretary. Don’t be deceived by the “Tunde” in his name. It’s just a nickname, probably inspired by Tunde Idiagbon, Buhari’s deputy when he was a military dictator. Sabiu is the son of Mamman Daura’s full biological sister by the name of Hajia Halima (more popularly known as “Hajja Madam” in Daura) who died last year. As you should know by now, Mamman Daura’s sister is Buhari’s niece since their father (Dauda Daura) is Buhari’s much older half-brother.
Sabiu, who is in his 30s, is one of the most powerful people in Nigeria today. He determines who sees and who doesn’t see Buhari. Only Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari can overrule him. By several accounts, he is now a billionaire, although he had no formal work experience before Buhari became president. He used to sell recharge cards in Daura until 2015!
3. Dauda “Zeze” Habu. He is Senior Personal Assistant to Abba Kyari, the de facto acting president/VP. His father, Habu Kurma, is Mamman Daura's younger brother. (Kurma is the Hausa word for deaf. He’s called Kurma because he’s deaf, but this isn’t derogatory in Hausa culture where people are habitually identified by their disability).
4. Musa Haro. He is PA (Domestic Affairs) to Buhari. His mother, Hajia Kwalla, is Buhari’s biological sister. Hajia Kwalla is a twin. Her twin sister is called Hajia Amadodo. My friends from Daura told me last week that Musa “ just bribed the Emir of Daura to be conferred with the traditional title of Dan Madamin Daura.”

Musa Haro

Bonus: 5. Ahmed Rufa'i Zakari. He is Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure. He isn’t Buhari’s biological relative, but he is his relative by marriage and informal adoption. Ahmed’s mother is Mrs. Amina Zakari, the controversial INEC commissioner who, along with compromised INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu, helped Buhari to rig the 2019 election. Buhari’s older sister was married to Amina Zakari’s father, the late Alhaji Hussaini Adamu. Apart from being Buhari’s in-law, the late Hussaini Adamu also raised Buhari for some time after Buhari’s father died, so he was, in a sense, Buhari’s adoptive father.
6. The House of Representatives member representing the Daura/Sandamu/MaiAdua Federal constituency by the name of Fatuhu Muhammad is the son of Buhari’s older brother by the name of Muhammadu "Mamman" Danbafale. Fatuhu became the APC candidate without “proper primary,” as a source told me.
Also remember that Buhari created an entire ministry for his dabino-stealing former mistress, Ms. Sadiya Umar Farouq. I doubt that there’s any parallel in Nigeria’s history for the magnitude and severity of nepotism and personalization of power that we’re seeing now.

Video of Mamman Daura Celebrating 80th Birthday in London

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Here's a video of Mamman Daura, Nigeria's de facto president, celebrating his 80th birthday in LONDON with his children, grandchildren, and political associates, including Senator Amosun and Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika. 

His uncle, Muhammadu Buhari, is also in London on a "private visit" with public funds. They luxuriate in sybaritic pleasures abroad, close the borders at home, inflict hardship on the middle class, and tell the poor to eat only local rice.  Apparently, the good things of life are the exclusive preserve of Buhari, his family, and a select favored few.

Lionheart’s Oscar Rejection and Place of English in Nigerian Identity

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

News of the disqualification of the Nollywood movie “Lionheart” from contention in Oscar’s “International Feature Film” category for this year on account of its use of English in most of its dialogue has once again centralized conversations about the role of English in the constitution of the modern Nigerian identity.

But, first, the outrage over Lionheart’s disqualification is, in my opinion, unwarranted since the rules clearly state that to be eligible to vie for that category, a film must have “a predominantly non-English dialogue track,” and Lionheart’s dialogue is predominantly English.

Nor is “Lionheart” the only—or, for that matter, the first— English-language international film to be disqualified from the Oscars because of its use of English.  The New York Times of November 5, 2019 reported that “The 2015 Afghanistan entry ‘Utopia’ and the 2007 Israeli film ‘The Band’s Visit’ were both likewise declared ineligible” because the dialogues in them are predominantly English.

Nonetheless, I’ve read several Nigerians vent their frustration over the fate “Lionheart” has suffered at the Oscars by suggesting that Nigeria should abandon English as its official language and adopt one of its more than 500 languages as its lingua franca. Of course, that’s sheer wishful thinking.

As I’ve argued many times in the past, the English language is at the core in the constitution of the modern Nigerian identity. Without it, Nigeria in its present form would cease to exist. 

In an April 24, 2010 article, I argued that “English is the linguistic glue that holds our disparate, unnaturally evolved nation together. Although Nigeria has three dominant languages, it also has over 400 mutually unintelligible languages. And given the perpetual battles of supremacy between the three major languages in Nigeria—indeed among all the languages in the country—it is practically impossible to impose any native language as a national language. So, in more ways than one, English is crucial to Nigeria's survival as a nation. Without it, it will disintegrate!”

Another reason it makes no sense to replace English as our official language is that English is now the de facto lingua franca of global scholarship, and we would be shutting ourselves off from the global scholarly community if we shut out English. This is how I captured it in my 2015 book titled “Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World”:

 “Most importantly, [English] is the language of scholarship and learning. The Science Citation Index, for instance, revealed in a 1997 report that 95 percent of scholarly articles in its corpus were written in English, even though only half of these scientific articles came from authors whose first language is English (Garfield, 1998). Scores of universities in Europe, Africa, and Asia are switching to English as the preferred language of instruction.

“As Germany’s Technical University president Wolfgang Hermann said when his university ditched German and switched to English as the language of instruction for most of the school’s master’s degree programs, ‘English is the lingua franca [of the] academia and of the economy’ (The Local, 2014). His assertion has support in the findings of a study in Germany that discovered that publishing in English is ‘often the only way to be noticed by the international scientific community’ (The Local, 2014).

“So most academics in the world either have to publish in English or perish in their native tongues. In addition, it has been noted in many places that between 70 and 80 percent of information stored in the world's computers is in English, leading a technology writer to describe the English language as ‘the lingua franca of the wired world’ (Bowen, 2001).”

English has moved beyond being imperialistic; it's now hegemonic. That is, its dominance isn’t a consequence of forceful imposition; it’s now entirely voluntary. When German, Italian, Israeli, Asian etc. universities switched to English as their medium of instruction, they didn't do so because they were conquered by Britain or the US.

When millions of Chinese people spend time and resources to learn English, they do so because they want to be competitive in the global market. When South Koreans go to the ridiculous extremes of spending thousands of dollars to perform surgery on their tongues so they can speak English with native-like proficiency, they do it of their own volition. (In South Korea, professors can’t be tenured, i.e., granted permanent employment status, if they don’t demonstrate sufficient proficiency in English).

When poor, struggling Indians spend scarce resources to acquire proficiency in English and to “dilute” their accents so they can approximate native-speaker oral fluency preparatory to call-center jobs, they do so because they think it offers a passport to a better life.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek once argued that people who are targets of hegemonic cooptation only voluntarily agree to this process if they believe that, in accepting it, they are giving expression to their free subjectivity. That's effective hegemony.

If English ceases to be the receptacle of vast systems of knowledge that it is now and goes the way of Latin, everyone would drop it like it's hot. This isn't about "race," "inferiority," "superiority," or such other piteous vocabulary of the weak. It's plain pragmatism.

This isn't about English as a language of culture, or as a symbol of colonial domination; it's about the fact that it is the depository of contemporary epistemic production and circulation. You shut it out at your own expense. It is hard-nosed pragmatism to embrace its epistemic resources both for development and for subversion.

Of course, English won't always be the language of scholarship. Like Latin, Arabic, Greek, etc., it would wane at some point, especially when America ceases to be the main character in the movie of world politics and economy, which Trump's emerging fascism is helping to hasten faster than anyone had imagined. It could be succeeded by Mandarin. Should that happen, it would be counterproductive for any country in the world to, in the name of nativist linguistic self-ghettoization ignore Mandarin.

I have argued elsewhere that there is no truth to the oft-quoted claim that no society develops on the basis of a foreign language. On the contrary, it is misguided nativist linguistic self-isolationism that actually hurts development.

Rift in the Presidency

Yemi Osinbajo's media aide, Laolu Akande, tweeted that "a list circulating in the media on... so-called sacked presidential aides is not genuine and ought to be ignored.” Hours later, Buhari's media aide, Malam Garba Shehu, counter-tweeted that, "The Presidency wishes to confirm" that the list was genuine and that it was "not personal or targeted to undermine the Vice President’s office."

Yet they both insist that there's "no rift" between Buhari and Osinbajo! What else must exist to show proof of a “rift”? Fisticuffs between Buhari and Osinbajo? Or a slugfest between Buhari’s aides and Osinbajo’s aides? The Buhari regime obviously needs its own English dictionary to accommodate the unending schizophrenic quirks it evinces in the usage of English words by its propaganda honchos.

Even when you do your darndest to keep Nigeria's official idiocy out of your life for your own sanity, it keeps coming at you with pigheaded insistence.

Never Tell a Past Student You Don't Remember Them

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi
I first learned this lesson from my wife's mother, who is American and who taught mathematics in Nigeria for nearly three decades before she relocated to her home country after retirement.
She taught at (and later became the principal of) Borgu Secondary School in New Bussa, which is now in Niger State. New Bussa used to be my local government headquarters until 1988. So several people from my part of Borgu (which is in Kwara State) attended Borgu Secondary School and were taught by my mother-in-law whom I never knew until I came to America.

My mother-in-law Mrs. Cecilia Crump Erinne

She was an inspirational teacher who produced generations of doctors, engineers, professors, etc. She was particularly popular with students because, being American, she never physically hit a student--like other teachers did. Plus, students loved her American accent and her self-conscious efforts to speak like Nigerians.
Anyway, many people from my area who discover that I'm married to her daughter always ask to speak with her through me, and on no occasion did she ever say she didn't recognize a past student. So I told her she must have an uncommonly capacious memory to remember all her former students, given that she taught almost every student in the school from the 1970s to the early 2000s.
She admitted that it was not humanly possible to remember all her former students and added, "Don't ever tell a past student you don't remember them." You may mess up with their most cherished school memories, she said.
I had a recent experience that materialized this priceless pedagogical wisdom for me. I had an influential Ghanaian teacher in my secondary school that I couldn't stop to think about more than 30 years after he was forced back to his country by the infamous "Ghana-Must-Go" madness. He not only molded me at the inchoate stage of my intellectual development, he was also like a father to me.

My Ghanaian teacher Mr. Selby Lewis

He taught me karate and soccer outside school and often visited my family house. He praised my littlest accomplishments to high heavens and explained away my failings. He was also a philosopher whose delicate words of wisdom still abide with me today.
One day, on a whim, I decided to use by cyber-sleuthing skills to look for him. After days of search, I found him! He was excited to hear from a former student of his, but he said he had not the faintest recollection of me and what we did together. I was incredibly heartbroken and went into a mild situational depression for at least a week.
I still cherish him and nurse no hard feelings toward him for not remembering me. He told me the "Ghana-Must-Go" immigration purge was a traumatic experience for him. He probably chose to wipe clean his memories of Nigeria in order to cope with the emotional aftermath of the purge.
But my experience dramatizes the truism of my mother-in-law's exhortation that, if you can help it, don't ever tell a past student that you don't remember them.

Google as "goggle" and WhatsApp as "whatsUp": Illiterate Pronunciations in Nigeria

By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Why do most Nigerians, including educated Nigerians, pronounce Google as "goggle" and WhatsApp as "WhatsUp"?

As I pointed out in my 2015 book titled Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World, two "O's" always make the long "uu" sound; that's why we pronounce book as "buuk," good as "guud," hood as "huud," etc. 

What explains the choice of Nigerians to pronounce Google as "goggle," which, among other things, means to look stupidly? I'm sorry, but people sound really stupid and illiterate when they call Google "goggle."

And WhatsApp as "WhatsUP"? What's up with that? Who comes up with these grating, uneducated pronunciational habits in Nigeria? Since Nigerians don't call phone apps "ups," why do they call WhatsApp "WhatsUP"?

Yes, the inventors of WhatsApp were clearly creatively playing on the informal American English expression "what's up?" (i.e., "how are you?") in the choice of the name for the app, but the name clearly has "app," not "up," in it.

Nigerians are the only people in the whole world who call WhatsApp "whatsUp." Did people miss the letter "a" in the name of the app? What sort of mass carelessness is that? Who did this to us? Before anyone says it's about differences in accents, this isn't an accent issue. It's simply carelessness. What's difficult in saying "whatsApp" and "Guugul?

Related Articles:
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Assassination Plot Against Me by Buhari’s Agents?

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

This was first shared on my Facebook and Twitter handles on August 2, 2019.

Someone close to the powers that be in Abuja who occasionally shares credible, privileged insider information with me sent me a message this evening (see screenshot) that henchmen of the Buhari regime might be planning to send assassins to murder me in America.

My first inclination was to dismiss this as mere alarmism. But when I recall that Buhari had sent Israeli mercenaries to kidnap Umaru Dikko from London on July 5, 1984 and that his regime hired Israeli agents for a social media dissemination and propaganda campaign this year, according to a May 17, 2019 Associated Press news story titled “Israeli Disinformation Campaign Targeted Nigerian Election,” I realize that the regime is capable of the vilest malevolence imaginable to protect and conceal the unprecedented criminality it’s perpetrating every day in Nigeria.

Several top-level security operatives have told me since 2017 that I would be “toast” if I travel to Nigeria while Buhari is in power. I’ve come to peace with that. But plotting to assassinate me in America just because, out of a patriotic duty to my home country, I've chosen to become the vault of critical news about the Buhari regime’s consuming fascism is beyond the pale—if it’s true.

Agents, friends, and sympathizers of the regime have thrown everything at me—personal attacks, smears, libelous falsehoods, etc. in newspapers and on different websites--and even instructed the management of Daily Trust to stop my Saturday column, but they were like water off a duck's back to me. Their last propaganda effort against me was to commission some fraudsters from Lagos who masqueraded as reporters to claim, without evidence, that I shared false videos during the last election. (The videos were factual even by their own so-called fact-check, so they chose instead to “fact-check” my intentions😂.)

Only numerically inferior bands of nitwitted ethno-regional bigots and government agents believe their smears against me. They are now obviously at their wit’s end and think the only way to silence me is to assassinate me. I hear they’ve arrested Omoyele Sowore tonight for planning mass protests against the incompetence of the regime. I hope they don’t kill him.