tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26257102193743234672024-03-18T02:11:58.586-04:00Notes From AtlantaBlog by Professor Farooq Kperogi about Nigeria, the United States, education, language, politics, identity, culture, and much more. Most of the longer essays here first appear every Saturday in the Nigerian Tribune.Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.comBlogger1421125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-61659843433197251762024-03-16T00:01:00.000-04:002024-03-16T00:01:54.390-04:00Names for Pig and Pig Meat in English Muslims Should Know<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>In the spirit of Ramadan, I am republishing a revised version of an article I wrote in June 2017 in my defunct “Politics of Grammar” column about pig-based meats and foods that Muslims are forbidden from eating but which many of them who visit the West unwittingly eat on occasion because of their poly-appellativeness (my coinage for multiple names.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy03Aqbq35bTE72nEcmQKmN32Rd7p2IEQ30_EksJI3BGlXqydk_mF00X3M-Ly1fsifjrrjQGEtFvMGS50vI_JY2zSOjE8uT2k7qVDGHFSyWOFEnnoDCnlrBRgthAnYcYvHca6pCjHX-oX64p8KAUKhp0qPkHOIqLY1ZTMGY9SPXEKVDq76NZ9lx9dZ0aU/s1024/Pigbyothernames.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy03Aqbq35bTE72nEcmQKmN32Rd7p2IEQ30_EksJI3BGlXqydk_mF00X3M-Ly1fsifjrrjQGEtFvMGS50vI_JY2zSOjE8uT2k7qVDGHFSyWOFEnnoDCnlrBRgthAnYcYvHca6pCjHX-oX64p8KAUKhp0qPkHOIqLY1ZTMGY9SPXEKVDq76NZ9lx9dZ0aU/s16000/Pigbyothernames.jpg" /></a></div><p>The column was inspired by an encounter I had in 2015. A Muslim high court judge from Osun State nearly ate pepperoni pizza (pepperoni is a mixture of beef and pork) at a workshop for Nigerian judges that I facilitated here in the United States. I knew he was an observant Muslim because we’d prayed together, and he’d shared concerns about the ubiquity of pork in Western culinary choices.</p><p>During lunch break, I saw him with slices of pepperoni pizza amid several people. I beckoned to him to come immediately, but he was really hungry, so he said I should give him a few minutes to finish his food. </p><p>I know enough Yoruba to know that pig is called “<i>alede</i>” and eat is “je.” I combined the words to make a sentence that I didn’t think made much sense. He jumped out of his seat instinctively and asked me in English if what he was about to eat contained pork. I answered in the affirmative.</p><p>He went straight to the bathroom and vomited, even though he hadn’t eaten anything. I felt sorry for him. He refused to eat or drink anything thereafter. </p><p>Another inspiration for this column derives from the tales of distress and guilt I’ve heard from many Muslim visitors to the West who consumed pig meat or who were awfully close to doing so out of ignorance of the deceptive appellative trappings of many pork-based gastronomic products.</p><p>For instance, at least five Muslims have told me that they either ate or almost ate a pig-based meat product called “salami” because they were deceived by the lexical similarities between “salami” and “salam” (Arabic for “peace”) and were misled into thinking they were eating halal meat. </p><p>What could be more halal, they thought, than a meat that shares lexical and phonological similarities with “salam,” the short form of the Muslim, Arabic-derived greeting, As-salamu alaykum, and the root word of Islam itself?</p><p>In fact, many African Muslims bear the name Salami as the short form of Abdulsalam or “Abdus Salam (which stands for servant of the Peaceful, “salam” being one of the 99 names of Allah.) (Africans typically add a terminal vowel to every word or name. Thus, “Salam” becomes “Salami.”)</p><p>So how did pig meat come to share lexical similarities with the name of Allah and/or the short form of the most common greeting among Muslims, especially given that pork is prohibited in Islam? </p><p>A northern Nigerian Muslim who ate salami in London in ignorance told me he was sure that the choice of the name was a deliberate “Zionist plot to make Muslims eat pork.” That’s not true. First, Jews, like Muslims, are forbidden from eating pork. Second, the phonemic similarity between “salami” to “salaam” is actually accidental.</p><p>Salami is salted Italian pork sausage (more about this later.) “Salami” is derived from the Latin name for salt, which is “sal.” The Italian suffix “ame” is used to form collective nouns. For example, foglia, which means “leaf,” becomes fogliame when used as a collective noun. So salame actually literally means “salts,” but specifically salted meats. (“Salami” is the plural form of salame). The association of salami with salted pork came later.</p><p>Interestingly, this pork-based meat is called “salam” in Romanian, Bulgarian, and Turkish!</p><p>Well, there are few animals in the English language that trump “pig” in abundance of alternative names for it. </p><p>This includes names that indicate gender (such as “boar” for male pig and “sow” and “gilt” for female pig) and names that indicate age (such as “piglet,” “farrow,” or “shoat/shote” for young pigs).</p><p>A pig is also called a “hog,” a “swine,” a “grunter,” a “squealer,” a “sus scrofa,” a “porker,” and a “cobb roller.” </p><p>Most people know “pork” as the culinary noun for meat from pig, but there are way more pig-based foods and meats than “pork” that several people, especially Muslims who are prohibited from eating pork, are not familiar with. I list 14 more below as a public service.</p><p><b>1. “Bacon”:</b> This is usually served during breakfast at homes and in hotels—along with eggs and sausage. It’s thin, sliced, salted, fried and brownish pork. It’s one of the most traditional culinary treats in the West. It’s so central to the gastronomy of the West that it appears in idioms such as “bring home the bacon,” which means to be the breadwinner, to be responsible for one’s family’s material wellbeing.</p><p>Most people know that bacon is derived from pig, but I have met many Muslim visitors to America, especially from Nigeria, who don’t know this. It’s also less commonly called <b>“flitch.”</b></p><p><b>2. “Banger”: </b>This is chiefly British English. Banger is pork cut into tiny pieces, seasoned, and stuffed in casings. The usual name for this elsewhere is “sausage” (see 3 below). It appears in collocations such as “banger and beans,” “bangers and mash,” etc.</p><p><b>3. “Bratwurst (or just brat)”:</b> Just like “banger” is chiefly British, “bratwurst” is mostly German. It’s a popular German pork sausage, although it’s often mixed with beef. In America bratwursts are called “brats.” (Sausage is any type of minced meat, mostly pork, that is seasoned and stuffed in casings).</p><p><b>4. “Chitlings” or “chitlins” or “chitterlings”:</b> It is the intestines of a pig, which American blacks ate as food during slavery because it was one of the few sources of protein available to them. </p><p>Several decades after slavery, chitlins (also spelled chitlings and chitterlings) are still an African-American delicacy. If you are a Muslim who wants to experience African-American culinary delights, often called “soul food,” be sure to avoid “chitlings.” It’s just a cute word for the intestines of pigs.</p><p><b>5. “Chops” or “pork chops”:</b> I know “chop” means “eat” in West African Pidgin English. But in Standard English it can mean a small cut of meat. It usually, though, is a small cut of meat from cooked pig. That’s why the usual phrase is pork chops, but it is also frequently rendered as “chops,” and that’s where people unfamiliar with the culinary vocabularies of the West might be misled into thinking they are eating a small cut of beef or mutton, etc.</p><p><b>6. “Frank” or “Frankfurter”: </b>This is a type of smooth, minced, smoked pork often served in a bread roll. It is sometimes made of beef or a mixture of beef and pork. It’s generally called “hot dog,” especially in American English, and it’s so named because some people suspected, without any proof, that in Germany, where it was invented in the city of Frankfurt, dog meat was surreptitiously inserted into the meat since Germans ate dogs up until the 20th century. </p><p>Other names for franks or Frankfurters are <b>“dog,” “weenie,” “wiener,” “wienie,</b>” and <b>“wienerwurst.”</b> Although hot dogs or Franks started in Germany, they have become a staple of American street cuisine.</p><p>Thankfully, there are now turkey hot dogs, beef hot dogs, and chicken hot dogs, but the most popular ones are the pork-based ones. It’s always good to ask before you buy.</p><p><b>7. “Gammon”: </b>This is pork taken from the thighs of a pig. It’s derived from the Latin word “gamba,” which means leg. It’s also called jambon or, more commonly, ham.</p><p><b>8. “Kielbasa”: </b>This is the Polish word for pork-based sausage, which has achieved widespread acceptance in American English, especially in northeastern United States. It’s also called “Polish sausage” because it’s originally from Poland.</p><p><b>9. “Liverwurst”:</b> Sometimes people in the West grind the liver of pigs and stuff them in casings. Germans call it leberwurst, which has been Anglicized to liverwurst. It’s also called “liver pudding” or <b>“liver sausage.”</b> Wurst, as you’ve probably guessed, is German for sausage.</p><p><b>10. “Rasher”:</b> This is another name for bacon. Note that because of increasing pressure from Muslims and Jews, there's now bacon or rasher made entirely from beef, turkey, chicken, or goat. If in doubt, ask.</p><p><b>11. “Ribs (or baby back ribs)”:</b> This is meat from the ribs of a pig. But the term can seem like a generic reference to the ribs of any animal. It is also called back ribs or loin ribs.</p><p><b>12. “Pancetta”:</b> It is Italian pork, derived from the belly of the pig. It is dried, salted, and chemically processed.</p><p><b>13. “Prosciutto”:</b> As you’ve probably guessed, it’s also an Italian word. It is ham (see number 7 above) that has been dried and salted.</p><p><b>14. “Sowbelly”:</b> It is salted pork cut from the belly. Other obvious names are “pork bellies” and “pork slab.”</p><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-87249940182023809842024-03-11T18:39:00.003-04:002024-03-11T18:39:18.272-04:00Ramadan Mubarak to you all!<p> <b>By Farooq Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>As we welcome the blessed month of Ramadan, I extend my warmest greetings to fellow Muslims all over the world. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE_1NVcN_mwgpfLbn25eqlOHHYxfiFOnflI_89cCWBrtVKZdENc86ZgcCXsm73-m0qKdRa6qD5ydDYWDW9G1cdpxlTBSBtJF7FwApgBFMQUUTMEgW43ZHiw-NzGtSUrekIMd5JeL58wWGNkVFIiTt6U2EvCB0YOFgmW_M8wfGMhQE6zfykFIMWwYG-4Dg/s4720/ProfFarooqKperogi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4720" data-original-width="3691" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE_1NVcN_mwgpfLbn25eqlOHHYxfiFOnflI_89cCWBrtVKZdENc86ZgcCXsm73-m0qKdRa6qD5ydDYWDW9G1cdpxlTBSBtJF7FwApgBFMQUUTMEgW43ZHiw-NzGtSUrekIMd5JeL58wWGNkVFIiTt6U2EvCB0YOFgmW_M8wfGMhQE6zfykFIMWwYG-4Dg/s16000/ProfFarooqKperogi.jpg" /></a></div><p>This time of reflection, prayer, and fasting is a profound reminder of our faith's beauty and the strength it provides us, especially during challenging times.</p><p>Nigerian Muslims are going into the Ramadan fast amid a whole host of heavy existential burdens: excessive heat, unreliable electricity, and unprecedented economic difficulties.</p><p>Let us use this Ramadan as an opportunity to extend our hands in kindness and generosity to our immediate communities and extended family members facing hardships-- whether through du'a, donations, or raising awareness about their plight.</p><p> May this Ramadan bring you peace, health, and increased faith. May we emerge from this month more spiritually rejuvenated, more compassionate, and more closely bonded as a community of humans irrespective of differences in faith.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-45062744258670440052024-03-09T00:02:00.003-05:002024-03-09T00:02:42.043-05:00Rise of Right-wing Economic Populism in Nigeria<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>Over the last few months, I have unconsciously transitioned from keyboard diarrhea to mental constipation and have pulled back from social media engagements. I even struggle to write my weekly columns.</p><p> It’s precisely because toxic, unthinking, IMF-manufactured, right-wing economic populism has become hegemonic and taken firm roots in Nigeria. Blaming Tinubu for his right-wing economic policies while ignoring the fact that his opponents subscribe to the same policies is the kind of hypocrisy my mental, emotional, or ideological constitution is incapable of tolerating. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje1xa7uk56acb5BYZC2_oiPCMj4IpKm7YBc0gBpQbXgmApS3nUW-CeYqQhcZGQMRXLUlETTWclKkPOOT2D3glZHzV2XMer6ek0AebtUKBjpFxC5tXhZS4Yv3KP1RmkKycsULwoxraG13O3THsNKCEcyEttzTMb-KU1JTHsdCI5qD68zjrDZGTFDCX3GGk/s960/ObiTinubuAtiku.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje1xa7uk56acb5BYZC2_oiPCMj4IpKm7YBc0gBpQbXgmApS3nUW-CeYqQhcZGQMRXLUlETTWclKkPOOT2D3glZHzV2XMer6ek0AebtUKBjpFxC5tXhZS4Yv3KP1RmkKycsULwoxraG13O3THsNKCEcyEttzTMb-KU1JTHsdCI5qD68zjrDZGTFDCX3GGk/s16000/ObiTinubuAtiku.jpg" /></a></div><p>Right-wing or conservative economic populism manifests differently in different countries, but its core lies in weaponizing the general population's concerns and frustrations, particularly around economic issues, to advocate poisonous, anti-people, market-centric, neoliberal economic policies while blaming an invisible elite or establishment class that supposedly controls power and resources to the detriment of the majority.</p><p>In Nigeria, conservative economic populism consists of the intentionally deceitful and absurd but nonetheless successful (at least for now) demonization of subsidies, especially petrol subsidies.</p><p> Nigeria’s elite-created economic woes are fraudulently attributed to the dispensation of subsidies. The masses of unsuspecting chumps in the country are then whipped into a senseless frenzy about an invisible, unidentified class of “subsidy thieves” who putatively suck up our commonwealth through petrol subsidies and who would wither and perish when subsidies are removed.</p><p> That’s classic right-wing economic populism. Well, experience is showing that it’s actually the masses that are withering and perishing after petrol subsidies have been removed. An acquittance who passionately opposed my recommendation to Tinubu to not remove petrol subsidies in <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/04/six-agenda-items-for-tinubus-success.html" target="_blank">my April 29, 2023, column</a> by regurgitating the banal talking points of hard-hearted neoliberal hawks reached out to me a few days ago to admit that he was a gormless fool to believe the propaganda that petrol subsidies didn’t benefit the masses.</p><p>It took the collapse of his small transportation business and the descent of his previously thriving relatives into the dark depths of despair and poverty in less than one year after the removal of petrol subsidies for him to come to the realization that citizens of every country need subsidies.</p><p>Another central plank of Nigerian right-wing economic populism is the advocacy for the devaluation of the naira. It’s also known by the fancy name of “floating the naira.” The idea that the naira is “over-valued” and should be allowed to find its true worth in the crucible of demand and supply is a standard arsenal in the rhetorical armory of conservative economic populists in Nigeria.</p><p>Yet another favorite shtick of the treacherous tribe of neoliberal vampires in Nigeria is to capitalize on the well-known inefficiency of civil service bureaucracies to advocate the privatization of everything and the mass retrenchment of workers.</p><p>Yet these are really old, discredited Structural Adjustment Program policies that the IMF and the World Bank imposed on developing countries, which devastated national economies, caused the untimely deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, which the IMF was compelled <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2016/05/is-it-too-late-to-say-sorry-imf-edition" target="_blank">to slyly apologize </a>for amid mounting evidence of their tragic failure. </p><p>The same rotten and venomous policies have been repackaged, aromatized, and re-presented to developing countries as new and effective elixirs. Every developing country that has embraced them is now coping with potentially explosive internal turmoil. </p><p>Like Nigeria, Egypt recently accepted to devalue its currency by more than 68 percent and remove subsidies that lighten the burden of existence for ordinary folks in exchange for an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-06/egypt-gets-breakthrough-imf-deal-to-lift-loan-size-to-8-billion" target="_blank">$8 billion loan from the IMF. </a></p><p>Everyone within striking distance of becoming president in Nigeria in 2023 subscribed—and still subscribes—to the consensus that the IMF and the World Bank are inviolable economic oracles that must not be disobeyed, that subsidies must be eliminated and the poor be left to fend for themselves, and that the market is supreme and should be left to determine the value of everything. </p><p>In fact, the other day, PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar put out a press statement titled <a href="https://punchng.com/learn-from-argentinas-economic-reforms-atiku-tells-tinubu/" target="_blank">“Argentina’s Javier Milei approach to reforms should serve as a lesson for Tinubu”</a> where he extolled the dangerously right-wing Argentinian president Javier Milei whose rightwing economic populist policies are destroying the fabric of his country. </p><p>“I read a recent report in Reuters titled: ‘Argentina’s market double down on Milei as investors ‘start to believe’,” he wrote. </p><p>Well, the same Western financial establishment is already praising the outcome of Tinubu’s economic policies. A March 8, 2024, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-08/billions-pour-into-nigeria-as-tinubu-s-reforms-start-to-pay-off" target="_blank">report from Bloomberg</a>, for instance, has said that “Foreign investor demand for Nigerian assets surges as reforms instituted by President Bola Tinubu’s administration starts paying off.”</p><p>Similarly, one David Roberts, identified as a former British Council Director in Abuja, bragged the other day that Nigeria’s economy “posted a GDP growth of 3.46% in quarter 4” as a result of Tinubu’s economic reforms. </p><p><a href="https://thenationonlineng.net/nigerias-economy-is-not-in-a-mess-says-diplomat/" target="_blank">He wrote:</a> “Why would a country with a severe infrastructural deficit invest more money on a wasteful expenditure such as cheap petrol, instead of building schools, hospitals, dams and a national railway system? It is evident that it had to go.</p><p>“We joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in saying as much to the Nigerian government. And at long last, it is gone.”</p><p>People outside Nigeria reading about Nigeria in the Western financial press would think Nigerians are now living in El- Dorado as a result of Tinubu’s “reforms”—just like Atiku thinks a favorable Reuters story about the anti-people economic policies of Milei, who is called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/who-is-javier-milei-argentina-new-president-far-right-what-does-he-stand-for" target="_blank">the “Madman of Argentina,”</a> is already yielding excellent outcomes. </p><p>If you do the bidding of the Western establishment, they will always make up statistics to show that your economy has grown. I called attention to this in my June 28, 2023, column titled, <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/06/why-tinubus-hiring-and-firing-frenzy.html" target="_blank">“Why Tinubu’s Hiring and Firing Frenzy Excites Nigerians.”</a></p><p>I wrote: “What shall it profit a country when it pursues policies that cause the economy to ‘grow’ but cause the people to growl? After the economy has ‘grown’ but the people still groan, where is the growth? The most important growth isn't the rise in abstract, disembodied, World Bank/IMF-created metrics but in the improvement of the quality of life of everyday folks.”</p><p>Milei’s Argentina that Atiku is praising is almost in the same right-wing economic hellscape as Nigeria is. Like Tinubu, Milei began his presidency by removing subsidies for petrol and transportation and devaluing the Argentinian peso by more than 50 percent. In addition, he threw scores of workers into unemployment when he reduced the number of ministries in the country. </p><p>He is so market-centric he scrapped a whole host of rules designed to reign in the greed and exploitation of private enterprises. He did this by getting the parliament to approve the principle of "delegated powers" to the executive for one year, which allows him to rule by decree like a military dictator in the name of "economic urgency."</p><p>The result? Like in Nigeria, most Argentinians are having a hard time finding food to eat. A February 1, 2024, CNN story captures it: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/americas/milei-reforms-argentina-agriculture-workers-mate-intl/index.html" target="_blank">“‘I don’t know how I will eat.’ For the workers behind Argentina’s national drink, Milei’s reforms are turning sour.”</a></p><p>Argentinian workers periodically go on strike to protest Milei’s punishing right-wing policies. On February 28, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/argentina-airport-strike-aerolineas-argentinas-ca0e1729aab311f293ea57ca23210fac" target="_blank">all flights were cancelled</a> in the country because air travel workers went on a crippling 24-hour strike.</p><p>A <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-04/spending-plunges-at-shops-in-argentina-with-milei-cuts-hitting-hard" target="_blank">March 4, 2024, Bloomberg report</a> said Milei’s policies had caused spending to plunge at shops in Argentina, that firms were seeing double-digit sales declines for third straight month, that the worth of salaries had plummeted amid a paralyzing 250% inflation, and that recession was deepening in the country.</p><p>The lead to the story says it all: “Consumers in Argentine are running out of options to shield themselves from runaway price increases as President Javier Milei’s austerity measures send the country deeper into recession.”</p><p>That’s Atiku’s exemplar for Nigeria. Peter Obi is, of course, no different. Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, and in fact Yemi Osinbajo are united in their love for rightwing economics, which invariably leads to an increase in poverty, suffocation of workers, rolling back of welfare for common people, etc. </p><p>In a perverse way, they are actually worse than Buhari because they are self-conscious conservative economic ideologues. Buhari is merely a know-nothing, bungling, kakistocratic power monger. </p><p>The real tragedy is that the vast majority of Nigerians who are ensconced in the narrow ethno-religious political silos built around the personalities of the major 2023 presidential candidates don’t realize that on economic policies, which is what really matters, Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, and Osinbajo are more alike than unlike. </p><p>Sadly, Nigerian leftists, who used to be the bulwark against the dangers of conservative economic totalitarianism, have either been coopted or silenced. Only Femi Falana, Majeed Dahiru, I, and a few others consistently stand up to the forces of economic conservatism.</p><p>This state of affairs will ensure that Tinubu’s successor will be another neoliberal ideologue who will bludgeon his way to the presidency using religion and ethnicity as cudgels. When he deepens the misery he inherits, he will blame his predecessor for not being a faithful practitioner of the neoliberal gospel. His own successor will replicate his template.</p><p> After three terms of this right-wing baloney, Nigeria will be irretrievably gone. The time to pivot from the IMF and the World Bank and to reject everyone who is their poodle is now. </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/04/six-agenda-items-for-tinubus-success.html" target="_blank">Six Agenda Items for Tinubu’s Success</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/06/why-tinubus-hiring-and-firing-frenzy.html" target="_blank">Why Tinubu’s Hiring and Firing Frenzy Excites Nigerians</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2024/02/tinubus-accurate-12-year-old-prediction.html" target="_blank">Tinubu’s Accurate 12-Year-Old Prediction on Subsidy Removal Effects</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/10/tinubu-sanusi-subsidies-and-economics.html" target="_blank">Tinubu, Sanusi, Subsidies, and the Economics of Empathy</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2024/02/hunger-protests-why-tinubu-cant-govern.html" target="_blank">Hunger Protests: Why Tinubu Can’t Govern Like Buhari</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2024/02/tinubu-nigeria-is-sinking-and-streets.html" target="_blank">Tinubu, Nigeria is Sinking and Streets are Full of Tears</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-45766884998806894782024-03-02T00:17:00.003-05:002024-03-02T17:09:31.913-05:00Why Nigeria’s Best is Always in Its Past<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p><i>A version of this article was first published in my June 21, 2014 column. It is still relevant today.</i></p><p>The other day I was reflecting on Nigerians’ new favorite pastime: endless griping about the increasingly disabling dysfunction of the country. And I realized that one theme that often stands out when we bewail our present conditions is that we almost always sentimentalize the past. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPbxvg0FSDOfTgvDYBJAZ5yqcD_myIydmAIqGxJD1bo15So2dXmPq0JXYKSOD_EDAt9ynv2ZsOpPuKPsyuX9LpDdYPJdHUE4EDInDV0De6tHW-7_Lcr2_AD0eWeBRy8fReitqRS8Ly_A35IlJKkJpgE7BK2zRLhOPJ0NEFZOcKHdwvTQp-lsL8wmoBvU/s864/AwolowoBelloAzikiwe.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPbxvg0FSDOfTgvDYBJAZ5yqcD_myIydmAIqGxJD1bo15So2dXmPq0JXYKSOD_EDAt9ynv2ZsOpPuKPsyuX9LpDdYPJdHUE4EDInDV0De6tHW-7_Lcr2_AD0eWeBRy8fReitqRS8Ly_A35IlJKkJpgE7BK2zRLhOPJ0NEFZOcKHdwvTQp-lsL8wmoBvU/s16000/AwolowoBelloAzikiwe.jpg" /></a></div><p>In other words, many Nigerians find relief from the worries of the present by taking a mental escape to the past. </p><p>For instance, when Nigerians bemoan the “indigene/settler” dichotomies in many states of the country, they like to recall, for example, that as far back as 1956, a Fulani man from Sokoto by the name of Malam Umaru Altine was elected the first Mayor of Enugu, the political capital of Eastern Nigeria. His religious and ethnic identity didn’t stand in the way of his election—as it certainly would in contemporary Nigeria.</p><p>They also remember that when the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi was governor of Kano State in the Second Republic, he appointed many non-Kano indigenes, including Christians from the South, as advisers and directors. There are several other examples of inclusiveness from the past that we invoke to deplore the politics of intolerance and exclusivity of the present.</p><p>[It should be noted, though, that Vice President Kashim Shettima, as governor of Borno State, blazed a trail in appointing southern Christians as cabinet-level advisers and aides. He appointed a certain Ifeanyi Onwubuya as his Chief Detail. Chief Kester Ogualili was his Special Adviser on Community Relations. One Christopher Godwin Akaba served as his Special Assistant. Babagana Zulum, Shettima’s successor, appears to be continuing with the tradition.</p><p>Lagos State governors, including the current one, have also historically been ethnically ecumenical in their choice of gubernatorial aides and advisers. They usually have advisers from representative parts of the country. There are probably other “inclusive” governors like Lagos and Borno governors that I am not aware of. I welcome any information that helps me to expand my knowledge of this.</p><p> But, of course, this won’t earn our praise or become a reference point of inclusivity, even if it is only merely tokenistic, because it’s still in the present. It takes the passage of time to valorize gestures like this.]</p><p>And when Nigerians bemoan the worsening insecurity in the country, especially in the northeast, they never fail to recall that Borno State, the main theater of Boko Haram’s unceasing carnage, used to be so peaceful that its license-plate slogan is “home of peace.” Now, that slogan reads like a cruel joke.</p><p>On almost every imaginable subject—infrastructure, electricity, standard of education, tolerance, security, governance, leadership, etc.—our past has become our refuge from the scourge of our present. About the only area that Nigerians don’t look to the past for inspiration is telecommunication. No one looks back to the days of NITEL with nostalgia even in the face of the crappy GSM services that private telecom operators provide now.</p><p> I know of no society that valorizes its past, in even the most trivial indices, with as much wistfulness as Nigeria does. Here in the United States, to give just one example, rather than a sentimental longing for the past, I notice a tendency toward chronocentricity, that is, the notion that the present is superior to anything that preceded it.</p><p>For instance, when Americans discuss race relations, they look back at their past with disdain. Even though they are far from achieving racial equality, they all seem to agree that they have come a long way; that every subsequent generation is more racially tolerant and broadminded than the one that anteceded it. </p><p>As some Black American leaders have pointed out, the fact that racial incidents like the Trayvon Martin murder case captured the national imagination and became the subject of intense national debate speaks to the unusualness of such cases and indicates how much progress has been made in race relations. </p><p>Although Americans also complain about declining standards in education, it isn’t as much a national obsession as it is in Nigeria. In fact, studies now show that young Americans actually read more print (and—obviously—electronic) books than did previous generations.</p><p>In many societies, people say things like “this is the 21st century, for God’s sake!” to rail against people who are narrow-minded, who are ensconced in their primordial cocoons, who are opposed to progress. Implicit in this utterance is the idea that the current age is an improvement on the previous ones; that history proceeds in a progressive, not a recursive, direction. Of course, this is not entirely accurate, but it does capture a certain level of confidence about the present—and optimism about the future.</p><p>Nigerians don’t have even this illusory luxury. The past is a lot more comforting than the present and is therefore a better template for the future. But why wouldn’t it be? As a nation we seem to be moving from bad to worse in almost every sphere. </p><p>At a time when most closed societies are opening up and open societies are becoming even more open, we are becoming more wedded to subnational loyalties than ever before. </p><p>And stealing of public money no longer makes headline news unless it’s in millions or billions of US dollars. What is more, we have become so desensitized to death that unless people die in their hundreds, newspaper editors don’t put it on the front page. </p><p>Even universities that are called “ivory towers” because of their putative insulation from the reality of everyday life are affected by this national culture of worshiping the past. University teachers look to the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to reclaim the idea of the university. </p><p>I have never heard or read any Nigerian university teacher brag about improvement in scholarship and pedagogy in the universities in the course of the years.</p><p>No future can be envisioned out of this depressingly dark present. That is why we glorify and idealize the past. But a country whose past is better than its present in most indices of human development is in a bigger trouble than it realizes. And, most certainly, a country whose future lies in its past has no future.</p><p>But, wait! Are we, perhaps, guilty of a phenomenon that psychologists call “rosy retrospection”? That is, the human tendency to look at the past more positively than the present because it has faded from our active memory. </p><p>When I look at the archives of the past that we sentimentalize today, I see the same lamentations of decline and dysfunction that we have become accustomed to. Is it a case of every epoch is the worst until it is succeeded by another— and the passage of time and the frailty of human memory wash off its ugliness? </p><p><b>Bille People in Both Rivers and Adamawa States?</b></p><p>My friend Professor Moses Ochonu called my attention to a status update shared by the sensationally impressive polyglot known as Adedeji Odulesi in which he talked about an ethnolinguistic group called Bille, which he said is found in the “Demsa and Mayobelwa” local government areas of Adamawa State and in the “Degema Local Government Area” of Rivers State.</p><p>He said the dialects of the Bille language in Adamawa and Rivers states are still mutually intelligible, i.e., they understand each other in spite of the wide geographic, historical, and cultural separation between them.</p><p>“Both claim to be brothers and do visit one another,” he wrote. “The Bille from Adamawa are said to have visited their kith and kin in Rivers in 2001, 2012 and during the installation of their new king.”</p><p>If this is true, it’s truly intriguing and thought-provoking because it defies our conventional understanding of language and people. It would serve as another evidence of the labyrinthine complexity of ethnic identities in Nigeria.</p><p>After reading of this, I decided to search up “Bille language” and “Bille people.” The results I got were jarring. All the articles I read about the “Bille people” talk of only Rivers State. There is no mention of them in Adamawa State. </p><p>On the other hand, articles about the “Bille language” talk about the language in Adamawa State. There is no indication I can find anywhere that the language can also be found in Rivers State.</p><p>Yet Odulesi isn’t a flippant person. But is there a Bille person in either Rivers State or Adamawa State who can confirm what Odulesi said about them? I would really appreciate it. </p><p>Should this turn out to be true, it would be a chapter in my forthcoming book on collective identity construction in Nigeria. Please share with people who are from these places.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-90684962360193017092024-02-24T00:00:00.001-05:002024-02-24T00:00:00.124-05:00 House of Reps’ Legislative Banditry Against Universities<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>I would have missed the story of the devious designs by members of the House of Representatives to extort vice chancellors, rectors, and provosts of public universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education if my Facebook friend Dr. Raji Bello hadn’t wondered aloud in a status update why <a href="https://dailytrust.com/tetfund-interventions-vcs-rectors-provosts-lament-extortion-by-reps/" target="_blank"><i>Daily Trust</i>’s February 10 story</a> about this didn’t scandalize the nation.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLg5cCeNYBmB80p13uHGqWdenIO25v3zrV2SLmJMpjnuueMUsBuvlDrcAM38zUV2mS6Nw0SO5wZVYNkp9CFq2sa4ytSb8kStpmCnARS0CmIBE-qIynYcKw-As0WtOxeyMZSPZTmM20dHbMOTHxpqsMkY3ntaUUZVRpxsPx89KKCvKsDg0dYouSlxlE_ko/s1024/Legislative%20banditsNigeria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLg5cCeNYBmB80p13uHGqWdenIO25v3zrV2SLmJMpjnuueMUsBuvlDrcAM38zUV2mS6Nw0SO5wZVYNkp9CFq2sa4ytSb8kStpmCnARS0CmIBE-qIynYcKw-As0WtOxeyMZSPZTmM20dHbMOTHxpqsMkY3ntaUUZVRpxsPx89KKCvKsDg0dYouSlxlE_ko/s16000/Legislative%20banditsNigeria.jpg" /></a></div><p>Dr. Bello’s angst caused me to look for the story. Upon reading it, I was numb with revulsion by the blazing legislative banditry of the House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and Other Services which, according to<i> Daily Trust,</i> coerced heads of “53 federal universities, 63 state universities, 38 federal polytechnics, 49 state polytechnics and many federal and state colleges of education, among other institutions” to “pay N2million to facilitate the ‘verification’ of the documents submitted to the House committee.”</p><p>The background to this alleged legislative brigandage is that in January this year, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu approved the disbursement of N683,429,268,402.64 to public higher education institutions under the TETFund scheme.</p><p>From this amount, every public university will get N1, 906,944,930.00. Every public polytechnic will get N1,165,355,235.00, and every public college of education will receive N1,398,426,282.00.</p><p>Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education Trust Fund, apparently, wanted a share of these billions and chose to invoke the constitution to legitimize their banditry. </p><p>Although the law that established TETFund does not require that the National Assembly approve expenditures of money disbursed by the Fund to higher education institutions, the House Committee has cleverly leveraged a clause from the 1999 Constitution that says, “No monies shall be withdrawn from any public fund of the Federation, other than the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation, unless the issue of those monies has been authorised by an Act of the National Assembly” as the basis to insist that institutions get its imprimatur as a precondition for spending money approved for them.</p><p>Forget, for the moment, the fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution that this thought-process betrays. It is curious that the House Committee is instructing institutions to halt the execution of all TETFund-financed projects for no justifiable reason at all.</p><p>“You are requested to furnish the committee with the full implementation details, including but not limited to the drawings, designs and specifications for all projects procurement and services as contained in your 2024 TETFund Normal Intervention Allocation letter issued to your Institution,” the House Committee wrote to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU).</p><p>This makes absolutely no sense. What purpose does this sort of “oversight” serve? How can you arbitrarily order the stoppage of approved, ongoing, time-bound projects in midstream, and then request details of the projects and the appearance of heads of the institutions where the projects are being executed as requirements for the continuation of the projects? If quality control and oversight were the motivation for this, it should have been before, not after, the fact. </p><p>In any case, as a policy, TETFund requires institutions to “present a strategic plan for at least 10 years, indicating the kind of projects the institution would like to undertake” before funds are approved for them in order “to avoid a situation where some institutions or politicians would hijack or stop the projects initiated by previous vice chancellors,” according to the <i>Daily Trust</i>.</p><p>The House Committee, in other words, is basically duplicating, albeit incompetently, the work that TETFund had done, and confirming the fears that informed TETFund’s 10-year strategic prequalification plans for institutions that benefit from their funds.</p><p>An accountant of a polytechnic told the <i>Daily Trust</i> that the House Committee’s pretense to performing oversight duties over higher ed institutions is an elaborate “racket.” He recalled a previous encounter with the House Committee, which asked his school to bring “Ghana-Must-Go” bags full of photocopied documents to a house hearing. </p><p>“I was really shocked when we arrived together with our rector,” the accountant said. “They didn’t ask us to open the bags; they just asked the rector some questions. Of course, they have been settled far ahead of time. Therefore, within the shortest time we were asked to leave.” </p><p>An unnamed vice chancellor shared a similar experience. “Besides directing us to come with ‘Ghana Must Go’ bags of photocopied documents, we have been forced to pay money in order to get a clean bill,” he said. “I am not sure they are even reading the documents.”</p><p>I am acutely aware that most people are too hungry and too filled with anxieties for how they will survive the next day to care about the extortion of our universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education by rapacious and conscienceless legislative bandits, but this culture should worry us all. The deeper we allow it to settle into a cultural subconscious, the more difficult hopes for a national rebirth become.</p><p>In urging heads of higher ed institutions to resist the House Committee, Haruna Yerima, a professor of public administration at ABU and former member of the House of Representatives who became famous for his praiseworthy and uncommonly bold anti-corruption battles against both the executives and his colleagues from 2003 to 2007, said the legislative extortion of heads of institution is the extension of a broader, older culture of out-and-out legislative brigandage that he’d witnessed. </p><p>“What the VCs, rectors and provosts are complaining of is reminiscent of the ugly past where some lawmakers demanded money to pass the budgets of some ministries and agencies or screen some presidential appointees,” he said.</p><p>This is the legislative equivalent of abduction for ransom. We need to formally recognize and acknowledge that there is now such a thing as legislative banditry. I conceptualize it as the unethical, coercive, or corrupt practices by legislative bodies or their members, which encompass extortion, demanding bribes for favorable legislation, interfering unduly in administrative matters for personal gain, or using legislative powers to intimidate or exploit others. </p><p>The term, of course, derives inspirational and epistemological provenance from the quotidian banditry that Nigerians have now become habituated to. In other words, legislative banditry is banditry conducted within or facilitated by legislative frameworks.</p><p>The alleged behavior of the House of Representatives Committee on TETFund and Other Services is classic legislative banditry. The committee members are accused of exploiting their legislative oversight powers to extort money from tertiary institutions by making unreasonable demands for documentation and payments to facilitate the approval and implementation of projects that are already approved and funded by TETFund. </p><p>This misuse of legislative authority for personal gain or to exert undue influence over public institutions should be condemned by everyone who cares about Nigeria. It should also be resisted by the heads of higher education institutions. </p><p>Higher education institutions are struggling to survive as it is. That was why when it came to light late last year that the federal government had asked universities to turn over 40 percent of all their internally generated revenue to the federal coffers, I wrote a stinging column on November 11, 2023, titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-wants-even-broke-universities-to.html" target="_blank">"Tinubu Wants Even Broke Universities to Fund Him.”</a></p><p>Fortunately, the government reversed the policy after this. It has turned out, nonetheless, that it isn’t uhuru yet. Universities escaped the jaws of executive avarice and jumped right smack dab in the middle of legislative banditry. Who will save them when they appear before pampered, overpaid, and slothful legislative bandits on February 27?</p><div><b>Related Articles</b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-wants-even-broke-universities-to.html" target="_blank">Tinubu Wants Even Broke Universities to Fund Him</a></b></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-84407337279573657362024-02-17T00:00:00.007-05:002024-02-17T00:00:00.253-05:00Tinubu’s Accurate 12-Year-Old Prediction on Subsidy Removal Effects<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: @farooqkperogi</b></p><p>On January 11, 2012, Bola Ahmed Tinubu published a sober, thoughtful, deeply insightful, and penetratingly foresightful article titled “Removal of Oil Subsidy: President Jonathan Breaks Social Contract with the People” that uncannily prefigured the untoward consequences of petrol subsidy removal that Nigerians are currently grappling with. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMQI8kHMsY8vI-1nT0456cpc0GwodJNKQvmGZsOir63-f6tEywykVzjotWH-R10ESh4UShGILkQ2Qac4IlQw9TjvgDX-f1GGFiLGcjq0mrpugRNRAeYHM-YbgWAX-Yzf0CAXcEy8wjMXC8b80AqwCPTtW1qRKyQ4jymKp_5QuohzQ6aBcyfjunz-7SJyI/s1280/BolaTinubuandEmmanuelMacron.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMQI8kHMsY8vI-1nT0456cpc0GwodJNKQvmGZsOir63-f6tEywykVzjotWH-R10ESh4UShGILkQ2Qac4IlQw9TjvgDX-f1GGFiLGcjq0mrpugRNRAeYHM-YbgWAX-Yzf0CAXcEy8wjMXC8b80AqwCPTtW1qRKyQ4jymKp_5QuohzQ6aBcyfjunz-7SJyI/s16000/BolaTinubuandEmmanuelMacron.jpg" /></a></div><p>The article has trended on social media in the last couple of weeks, but I had never taken the trouble to read it until multiple people who I regard highly sent it to me in what seemed like a coordinated torrent of forwards.</p><p>But after reading the 4,000-plus-word article and finding out that it predicted the current petrol-subsidy-removal mass excruciation Nigeria is suffering with almost mathematical exactitude, I became suspicious of its authenticity. It was too good to be true.</p><p>My incredulity compelled me to make inquiries, which led me to realize that the Nigerian Tribune had actually fact-checked the genuineness of the article on May 31, 2023. It not only found that it wasn’t fake but also scanned and uploaded a printed copy of the article published in The Nation, Tinubu’s paper. </p><p>I encourage everyone to read it. In the article, Tinubu derided the 2012 removal of petrol subsidies as the “Jonathan tax,” and the following paragraphs are particularly noteworthy for the mysterious precision of their prescience:</p><p>“Government claims the subsidy removal will create jobs…. The stronger truth is that it will destroy more jobs than it creates. For every job it creates in the capital intensive petroleum sector, it will terminate several jobs in the rest of the labor intensive economy.</p><p>“Subsidy removal will increase costs across the board. However, salaries will not increase. This means demand for goods will lessen as will sales volumes and overall economic activity. The removal will have a recessionary impact on the economy as a whole. While some will benefit from the removal, most will experience setback.</p><p>“What is doubtless is that the Jonathan tax will increase the price of petrol, transportation and most consumer items. With fuel prices increasing twofold or more, transportation costs will roughly double. Prices of food staples will increase between 25-50 percent….</p><p>“Most people’s incomes are low and stagnant. They have no way to augment revenue and little room to lower expenses for they know no luxuries; they are already tapped out. The only alternative they have is to fend as best they can, knowing they must somehow again subtract something from their already bare existence. </p><p>“There will be less food, less medicine, and less school across the land. More children will cry in hunger and more parents will cry at their children’s despair…. Poor and middle class consumers will spend the same amount to buy much less. The volume of economic activity will drop like a stone tossed from a high building. This means real levels of demand will sink. </p><p>“The middle class to which our small businessmen belong will find their profit margins squeezed because they will face higher costs and reduced sales volumes. These small firms employ vast numbers of Nigerians. They will be hard pressed to maintain current employment levels given the higher costs and lower revenues they will face.</p><p> “Because the middle class businessman will be pinched, those who depend on the businessmen for employment will be heavily pressed. States that earn significant revenue from internally generated funds will find their positions damaged. Internally generated revenue will decline because of the pressure on general economic activity. The Jonathan tax will push Nigeria toward an inflation-recession combination punch worse than the one that has Europe reeling. </p><p>“This tax has doomed Nigeria to extra hardship for years to come while the promised benefits of deregulation will never be substantially realized. People will starve and families crumble while federal officials praise themselves for ‘saving money.’ The purported savings amount to nothing more than an accounting entry on the government ledger board. They bear no indication of the real state of the economy or of the great harm done the people by this miserly step.”</p><p>Like I have done for years, Tinubu also fulminated against “European conservatives” whose economic prescriptions are at variance “with the needs of the Nigerian populace.” He even said something that is eerily close to what I wrote in a previous column. “There has been no nation on the face of the planet that has developed or achieved long-term prosperity by devotion to conservative, ultra-free market economic ideas that dominate this government,” he wrote. </p><p>“If no nation has grown using these conservative ideas,” he asked, why are we stuck with them? I have an answer, and it’s three-fold: sadly familiar Nigerian elite self-love, xenophilic obeisance to meanspirited racist wretches at the IMF/World Bank, and a visceral disdain and blithe unconcern for ordinary Nigerians.</p><p>Like Tinubu pointed out in 2012, the removal of petrol subsidies in 2023 merely took money from the so-called oil subsidy cabal and put it directly into the pockets of politicians without hurting the bottom line of the subsidy cabal. The cabal simply pushed the extra cost of importing petrol to consumers. </p><p>In the aftermath of the removal of subsidies, allocations to the three tiers of government rose by 29.05% in just six months. By the end of 2023, governments shared N15.1 trillion, which represented an increase of N3.4 trillion from 2022.</p><p>Note that, according to the Punch of September 22, 2023, N3 trillion was budgeted for petrol subsidies from June 2022 to June 2023 (although it was N1.57 trillion in 2021 and N1.27 trillion from January to May 2022, indicating obvious fraud). In other words, the money that would have been used to keep the pump price of petrol at less than N200 per liter was simply shared between the presidency, governors, ministers, and the rest.</p><p>State governors now receive several folds more money than their normal monthly allocations without a corresponding increase in their expenditures. Because they have way more naira than they have use for (of course, they don’t care about the masses), they convert the extra naira into dollars, which contributes to the relentless depreciation of the naira, according to <a href="https://businessday.ng/business-economy/article/data-links-naira-weakness-to-faac-disbursements/#:~:text=The%20activities%20of%20governments%20after,people%20familiar%20with%20the%20matter." target="_blank">the BusinessDay of February 13</a>.</p><p> In other words, to put it even more crudely, the masses and the economy benefited more from the corruption of the subsidy cabal than from what has replaced it since May 2023. But, as I pointed out earlier, the subsidy cabal isn’t hurt in the least by this change. Apart from pushing the cost of importation to consumers, they are now receiving subsidies through the backdoor to keep the price of petrol from climbing to over N1,000 a liter, which the IMF is now instructing Tinubu to stop.</p><p>The only losers are ordinary Nigerians, small businesses, the informal economy, and the manufacturing sector. After Tinubu said subsidies were gone in May 2023, the GDP of the transportation sector contracted by 50.64% in the second quarter of 2023 and by 35% in the third quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).</p><p>The road transport sector is the most reliable barometer to measure the health of commerce and of the informal economy in Nigeria. Petrol subsidy removal is killing it. A November 28, 2023, BusinessDay headline succinctly captures this: “Subsidy removal pushes transport industry into recession.” </p><p>My job as an inveterate opponent of subsidy withdrawal is made easier by the knowledge that Tinubu knows the truth. He knows for a fact that petrol subsidies are not a waste, especially if the corruption in the administration of subsidies is addressed. He knows that it’s an investment in the people and in the economy. </p><p>Petrol doesn’t just power the transportation sector, it’s also the main source of electricity generation for industries, small businesses, and the vast majority of our people. Given that Nigeria has the worst electricity generation record in West Africa (and possibly in Africa), it’s easy to see why a drastic rise in the cost of petrol activates an across-the-board cost-push inflation and deepens the misery index in the country.</p><p>Tinubu knows this but has chosen to care more for the validation of the sadistic bastards at the IMF and the World Bank than the comfort and wellbeing of his people.</p><p>There’s no doubt that it’s the IMF and its evil twin, the World Bank, that are ruling Nigeria. Tinubu’s government is just a proxy. For example, just two days after the IMF told Tinubu he must remove electricity subsidies (I had no clue such a thing existed given the unreliable electricity in Nigeria) Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu announced that the government would withdraw electricity subsidies.</p><p>The same IMF has also instructed that the surreptitious subsidies the Tinubu administration is paying to stop petrol prices from getting to—or even rising above— N1,000 a liter must be stopped. Get ready for another bumpy ride, Nigerians. Until half the country drops dead from starvation, the IMF, which is the real government in Nigeria, won’t rest. I can guarantee you that.</p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/06/why-tinubus-hiring-and-firing-frenzy.html" target="_blank">Why Tinubu’s Hiring and Firing Frenzy Excites Nigerians</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-63917397034682647242024-02-10T00:00:00.023-05:002024-02-10T00:00:00.134-05:00Hunger Protests: Why Tinubu Can’t Govern Like Buhari<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>The biting hunger and unnaturally rising price spiral in Nigeria instigated primarily by the removal of petrol subsidies and the floating of the naira are threatening to spark off seismic social vibrations across the country. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDLJ9drCICmmPy3k7jULdmyCOGhAt-8Ycated7EKfHufVXPMkWG-hZdA0OMMC1yDZAUPED4iXbWywq4Nvj-uOA4C6D2pSgIKCsFG-Y0CUzb86j77OVXeeCu9FmYJjxGym31-yEyJ0qgv2D_tOoDqJLyTq43ZlHBPXzNDWehDLDgqapxkg7wU5aUz9fVQw/s1500/BolaTinubuandMuhammaduBuhari.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDLJ9drCICmmPy3k7jULdmyCOGhAt-8Ycated7EKfHufVXPMkWG-hZdA0OMMC1yDZAUPED4iXbWywq4Nvj-uOA4C6D2pSgIKCsFG-Y0CUzb86j77OVXeeCu9FmYJjxGym31-yEyJ0qgv2D_tOoDqJLyTq43ZlHBPXzNDWehDLDgqapxkg7wU5aUz9fVQw/s16000/BolaTinubuandMuhammaduBuhari.jpg" /></a></div><p>The spontaneous, hunger-induced eruption of seething communal anger in Minna over hunger in the land a few days ago, which inspired a massive protest by market women in Lokoja and smaller but nonetheless consequential protests by distraught citizens in Suleja, Kano, Osogbo—and counting— is a warning sign. </p><p>President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s swift order for the release of “102,000 metric tons of various grain types from the National Food Reserve and the Rice Millers Association of Nigeria” to bring down the cost of food in the aftermath of these strings of protests suggests that he is aware of the danger that lies in the offing for him. </p><p>Had the current president been Muhammadu Buhari and not Bola Ahmed Tinubu, chances are that the worst that would happen amid the adversity people are going through now would be suppressed, barely audible murmurs. It’s because Buhari is a political cult leader with a firm grip on his followers who worship him and surrender responsibility for their lives over to him. Tinubu has no such appeal.</p><p>A psychologist by the name of Steve Taylor came up with a concept he called “abdication syndrome,” which he said disposes people to invest total, child-like trust in a political figure, a cult leader, an opinion molder, etc. in ways that mimic how children idealize and idolize their parents as unblemished paragons of perfection. </p><p>According to Taylor, “abdication syndrome stems from the unconscious desire of some people to return to a state of early childhood, when their parents were infallible, omnipotent figures who controlled their lives and protected them from the world. They’re trying to rekindle that childhood state of unconditional devotion and irresponsibility.”</p><p>Buhari is lucky to benefit from abdication syndrome in Muslim northern Nigeria, broadly conceived, which explains why he got away with murder for eight years. When he increased petrol prices by a steep margin in 2016, for instance, there were protests in Kano, Bauchi, and other places in SUPPORT of the increase and AGAINST people who planned to protest the increase. Nigeria had never seen anything like that before.</p><p>Even protests against the unabating descent of northern Nigeria into a theater of bloodshed and abduction on Buhari’s watch provoked counter protests from people who have abdicated the use of their brains in the service of Buhari.</p><p>Tinubu not only does not have the benefit of abdication syndrome anywhere in Nigeria, but he also has the misfortune of having to contend with a peculiar character of Muslim northern Nigeria: we feel the pain of, and react violently to, bad policies only when the policies are hatched and executed by people who have no filiation with our natal region.</p><p>It’s no surprise that the hunger protests against the Tinubu administration started from and spread in the North.</p><p>A powerful indication of Tinubu’s lack of firm emotional support base emerged when Osun, his state of birth where he lost the last presidential election to PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, became the first southern state to join the hunger protests. Should the resistance to his punishingly heartless neoliberal economic policies ignite a nationwide convulsion, the Southwest is unlikely to constitute itself as his bulwark.</p><p>In fact, I hazard a guess that should Tinubu’s unfeeling policies activate the sort of destabilizing national upheaval that we saw in 2012 during Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the Southwest won’t be aloof. It is likely to join in.</p><p>And, of course, Tinubu is deeply unpopular in the Southeast, the South-south, and Christian northern Nigeria. In other words, Tinubu is essentially floundering into the most treacherous of social quicksands.</p><p>His only fortification against danger is not just good governance but compassionate governance. The release of thousands of metric tons of grains is a good first step, but it’s not nearly enough to stem the tide of mass rebellion that is brewing in the country. At best, it will only delay the inevitable.</p><p>The truth is that Nigeria can’t survive a total withdrawal of petroleum subsidies without an adequate, systematic, well-planned public transportation system. To do away with petrol subsidies, the government must first create conditions where car ownership and patronage of commercial transportation are a luxury.</p><p>Let’s take Canada as an example. Although Canada is an oil-producing country, it doesn’t subsidize the petrol consumption of its citizens. And it’s precisely because it has great public transportation that meets the transportational needs of its people.</p><p> I met a Canadian here in Atlanta last year who, like most Canadians, doesn’t know how to drive because government-subsidized public transportation is the primary means of moving from point to point. Car ownership is a luxury, and people who choose to shun public transportation deserve the high price they pay for petrol to fuel their cars.</p><p>It’s the same situation in most of Europe. The availability of government subsidized public transportation insulates citizens from the effects of high petrol prices and obviates the need for petrol subsidies.</p><p>It is not so in the United States. Here, as I pointed out in many past columns, petrol is subsidized because most Americans have their own cars and resent public transportation except in such big cities as New York.</p><p>Without first building an efficient, government-subsidized public transportation infrastructure within cities and towns and between cities, towns and states, removing petrol subsidies will always result in the kind of mass affliction that Nigerians are going through now. </p><p>That is why countries like Kazakhstan, Ecuador, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Brazil, which the World Bank and the IMF had forced to remove petrol subsidies, have backtracked and re-instituted subsidies. That is inevitable in Nigeria if the government wants to survive. </p><p><b>Is Olayemi Cardoso Nigeria’s Worst CBN Governor?</b></p><p>I know awfully little about current CBN governor Olayemi Cardoso. I’d just assumed that to deserve being appointed the governor of the CBN, he must at least be minimally competent and conversant with economic policies.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9F1Itirx6DveCaPIO_nj-tp-o9ucoKTEegmy8hkuVjRzKpGJ0977W8espqyKIkXEeBWfo5FskKRoNU8huv59MWkAt795DbteazkCcluzOVanHpBy_bWE3HeV2lPRQ3FvpfD1UV4dYD4FcdBlYZKiN68HVYU-6t7ok9Wu_71OHU1zm2TUU24VyZ06xPg/s1080/CBN%20Governor%20Yemi%20Cardoso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="935" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9F1Itirx6DveCaPIO_nj-tp-o9ucoKTEegmy8hkuVjRzKpGJ0977W8espqyKIkXEeBWfo5FskKRoNU8huv59MWkAt795DbteazkCcluzOVanHpBy_bWE3HeV2lPRQ3FvpfD1UV4dYD4FcdBlYZKiN68HVYU-6t7ok9Wu_71OHU1zm2TUU24VyZ06xPg/s16000/CBN%20Governor%20Yemi%20Cardoso.jpg" /></a></div><p>But he is shaping up to be the most inept and least intellectually prepared for his job. It isn’t just that he is supervising the free fall of the naira through inconsistent policies, he also doesn’t seem to be able to explain to anyone what exactly he is doing, indicating he doesn’t know what he is doing.</p><p>On Friday, I watched Cardoso’s meeting with the senate where he couldn’t answer questions from senators without reading from a prepared script. "I object to this!” a senator yelled in response to Cardoso’s lifeless regurgitation of a prepared speech he obviously didn’t understand. “Let him go back and answer the question!"</p><p>Anyone who can’t respond to a question without reading a prepared text obviously has no understanding of what he is talking about. Albert Einstein famously said, “if you can't explain it simply then you don't understand it well enough." Cardoso’s case is even worse. He can’t explain it at all. It explains why the economy is in a mess and the naira is in a worse shape than it has ever been.</p><p>Cardoso’s most important qualification for the job appears to be that he was Economic Planning and Budget commissioner in Lagos when Tinubu was governor, but the job seems to be above his intellectual and experiential paygrade.</p><p>I know of no CBN governor in my lifetime (until Cardoso) who couldn’t articulate economic policies effortlessly. Even Godwin Emefiele had no difficulty defending his policies. You may question his competence or disagree with his policies, but he could at least clearly formulate thoughts about what he was doing. Cardoso gives me the jitters. Nigeria is in way worse trouble than it realizes with an airhead like that as CBN governor.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-44098193839680939922024-02-03T00:00:00.001-05:002024-02-03T00:00:00.134-05:00Tinubu, Nigeria is Sinking and Streets are Full of Tears<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>The searing torment that everyday folks are going through in Nigeria right now is so dire, so unbearably extreme, and so unexampled in its rawness that even diasporan Nigerians like me who live tens of thousands of miles away from home can feel it not just vicariously but also experientially.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxYNQodaRAEcmFw7XlQX9sm3JN4LYHP3wahHQ9NDDpf33UHyYds_Wb0YsXjuMjo9Q6ITAcToo7wgj8rHCtLbvFvR2HUkL9ik64LMrRMtuS803IXaHFYTW_cocGVYigRLntqHecu_0RH0n1xUv9Y168QA_CDP6TDY7bUzqr79VRc8DhqgdbTM9B0FuapA/s2048/PresidentBolaAhmedTinubu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxYNQodaRAEcmFw7XlQX9sm3JN4LYHP3wahHQ9NDDpf33UHyYds_Wb0YsXjuMjo9Q6ITAcToo7wgj8rHCtLbvFvR2HUkL9ik64LMrRMtuS803IXaHFYTW_cocGVYigRLntqHecu_0RH0n1xUv9Y168QA_CDP6TDY7bUzqr79VRc8DhqgdbTM9B0FuapA/s16000/PresidentBolaAhmedTinubu.jpg" /></a></div><p> The unending streams of requests for help to meet the most basic obligations of life that we get from previously proud, resourceful, and self-sufficient family members, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers are the conduits through which we have experiential encounters with the ongoing cost-of-living turmoil in the country. </p><p>The lower classes are sinking deeper into soul-depressing depths of poverty, despair, and hopelessness, and the middle class is so hobbled by the economic crunch that it is disappearing faster than soap bubbles. The lower and the middle classes are now united by a common sensation of emptiness, agony, and anxiety for the future.</p><p>Every day is worse, less hopeful, and more precarious than the previous day for most Nigerians. Even hope, which French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld assured us is the last thing that dies in humans, is desperately going into a death spiral. That’s an ominous signal President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would do well to not take lightly.</p><p>Nigeria is famous for its superabundant supply of self-regenerating hope even in the midst of the most nerve-racking existential strain. You know you’re dealing with a potentially explosive social rupture when hope is grasping for breath among people who are famed for feasting on hope.</p><p>The current state of affairs isn’t unavoidable. It’s the predictable consequence of the pigheaded pursuit of a ruinous policy of subsidy removal from petrol, the lifeblood of Nigeria. I sounded an early warning about this a month before Tinubu was inaugurated. </p><p>In my April 29, 2023 column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/04/six-agenda-items-for-tinubus-success.html" target="_blank">“Six Agenda Items for Tinubu’s Success,”</a> I specifically warned Tinubu to resist the neoliberal anti-subsidy seduction of Western financial institutions, which they have successfully brainwashed Nigerian economists and civil society members into not just accepting but also aggressively evangelizing.</p><p>I wrote: “I know that there is now an artfully manufactured consent, particularly among the gilded classes in Nigeria, about the undesirability of ‘fuel subsidy.’ I don’t care what it’s called, but any policy (call it deregulation, subsidy removal, appropriate pricing, etc.) that results in an arbitrary and unbearable hike in the price of petrol without a corresponding increase in the salaries of workers and an improvement in the living conditions of everyday people will sink Tinubu.”</p><p>I concluded: “I can assure Tinubu that if petrol price hikes deepen people’s misery, he’ll have a tough time governing.”</p><p>The dramatic spikes we have seen in abductions for ransom all over the country are attributable to the rising tide of unheard-of deprivation that the removal of petrol subsidies has activated. And that’s just one auxiliary after-effect of the removal of petrol subsidies without a cushion or an alternative. </p><p>Other after-effects are the total collapse of the informal sector and what remained of Nigeria’s manufacturing sector. It also instigated the unprecedentedly hyper-inflationary pressures that are being exerted on the economy. Prices of basic goods and services and even of medications for common illnesses are now beyond the reach of people. That’s an unsustainable magnitude of agony.</p><p>But it was always obvious to anyone with even a halfway functioning brain that removing petrol subsidies in a weak, oil-producing economy that is organically petrol dependent, that has no well-developed public transportation system, that has weak infrastructures, and that is the poverty capital of the world would trigger infernal anguish on the vast majority of the people and tank the economy to the ground. </p><p>These are not birth pangs. They are not the pains before the gains. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is condemned to unrelieved darkness. The blight Nigerians are contending with now is the certain and inevitable result of a conscienceless implementation of disconnected and irrelevant economic policies inspired from outside Nigeria.</p><p> I came of age during General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime. IBB started the so-called structural adjustment programs (removal of subsidies, devaluation of the naira, mass retrenchment, etc.), which inaugurated Nigeria’s descent into the abyss. I heard the exact same things the current government is spouting during IBB’s time: that it would get worse before it got better, that after the birth pangs a big bouncing baby would be born, that there was delayed gratification awaiting us if only we could be a little more patient.</p><p>None of the promises materialized. Instead, suffering was elevated to crushing heights. Advanced fee fraud (also called 419) blossomed. Corruption was fertilized. Brain drain to the West got wings. This period also unleashed the naira’s irrecoverable slide into the deep hole of worthlessness. </p><p>Decades after, the same SAP about which hundreds of books and articles have been written and whose irreversible damage we continually lament, has been artfully repackaged, disguised, deodorized, and huckstered by a well-oiled gang of soulless apes who deployed all manner of clever rhetorical trickery to coax Nigerians into consenting to their own self-incineration. </p><p>The idea that petrol subsidies had to go because they were riddled with corruption and that they consumed a disproportionate share of our national budget is a mere propagandistic cop-out. If petrol subsidy administration is rid of corruption (that is perpetrated in cahoots with the government, which explains why no “subsidy thief” has ever been apprehended much less brought to justice), it would consume no greater share of our national budget than any governmental obligation. </p><p>It certainly won’t be anywhere near the colossal venality that is perpetuated at the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development under the guise of giving money to the poor.</p><p>The truth is that we have no original, independent thinkers among people who make or influence economic policies in Nigeria. They are all hopelessly mindless parrots of ill-comprehended economic prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions. They do not have the cognitive and intellectual sophistication to transcend what I call derivative or regurgitative knowledge.</p><p> There is not a single example of a country in the world that has developed on the basis of the prescriptions of the World Bank and the IMF. On the contrary, the only countries that have achieved inclusive growth and development outside the West are precisely the countries that have bucked the World Bank and the IMF. And every country that uncritically adopts the recommendations of these institutions has been wracked by utter devastation.</p><p>Unfortunately, if either Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi were president today, Nigeria would experience exactly what it is going through now. Like Tinubu, Atiku and Obi said they would remove petrol subsidies “on day one.” When you remove petrol subsidies “on day one” in a desperately poor, inordinately petrol-supported economy with no public transportation, you get what Nigerians are going through now. It’s not rocket science.</p><p>Similarly, both Atiku and Obi said they would float the naira and let its fate be determined by the vagaries of demand and supply. When you do that in an import-dependent economy, you can’t escape what the naira is going through now.</p><p>Atiku tweeted in March 2021—and in several policy documents—that “Nigeria must move towards a single exchange rate to be determined by market forces.”</p><p> On April 9, 2022, Obi also tweeted: “The truth is that for long market forces have not determined the exchange rate of the Naira…. It has to end. Let the exchange rate be determined by the forces of demand and supply. It’s that simple.”</p><p>In other words, Tinubu is doing exactly what Atiku and Obi had proposed they would do, and the results would have been the same. The hyperinflation and hurt Nigerians are going through now won’t have been evaded because it is Atiku or Obi who removed petrol subsidies “from day one.” The naira’s glide to the bottom wouldn’t have been avoided because Atiku or Obi “floated” the naira.</p><p>That is why Atiku- or Obi-supporting critics of Tinubu come across as ignorant partisans who have drunk the Kool-Aid of their cult leaders. Atiku and Obi supporters should be grateful that their idols are not president today. They would have been bearing the reputational brunt of the boneheaded, discredited rightwing economic policies they also advocated, which have thrown Nigeria into the current mess.</p><p>Interestingly, in response to Obi’s 2022 tweet rhapsodizing over the imperative of subjecting the naira to the “forces of demand and supply,” a supporter of his by the name of Abel (with the handle @governance9ja) wrote a riposte, which has turned out to be prescient. He wrote: “So @PeterObi will float the currency for a country where most factor inputs into local manufacturing is imported? We already have cost push inflation reducing real income of many Nigerians. Floating naira will ruin many households. @PeterObi and @OfficialABAT are two of a kind.”</p><p>Obi supporters who have wet dreams of a Nirvana if Obi were president should wake up. His economic policies are exactly like Tinubu’s. Personalities aren’t the issue; policies are.</p><p>Tinubu and his team need to face the reality confronting them and change course. I know that Nigeria has been so polluted by neoliberal propaganda that even news that the government was paying subsidies through the backdoor to stop petrol prices from getting to N1,000 per liter was seized upon by the opposition to poohpooh the government, which compelled the government to deny paying any subsidies. </p><p>I’ve never seen this level of self-crushing inanity in my life. Assistance to the needy (which is what subsidy literally means) is now a dirty word that everyone avoids like the plague.</p><p>But the government should know that even hope is dying in Nigeria. When a usually hopeful nation spawns armies of hopeless and angry people through thoughtless economic policies dictated by outsiders, it sows and nurtures the seeds of its self-destruction.</p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/07/subsidy-removal-as-elite-banditry.html" target="_blank">Subsidy Removal As Elite Banditry, Reverse Robin Hoodism</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/06/president-tinubu-and-dangers-of-subsidy.html" target="_blank">President Tinubu and Dangers of Subsidy Removal</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/04/six-agenda-items-for-tinubus-success.html" target="_blank">Six Agenda Items for Tinubu’s Success</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/10/tinubu-sanusi-subsidies-and-economics.html" target="_blank">Tinubu, Sanusi, Subsidies, and the Economics of Empathy</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/thought-subsidy-was-bad-why-is-tinubu.html" target="_blank">Thought Subsidy Was Bad. Why is Tinubu Bringing it Back?</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/08/why-tinubu-must-restore-fuel-subsidies.html" target="_blank">Why Tinubu Must Restore Fuel Subsidies Now</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/07/imfs-neoliberal-sadomasochistic.html" target="_blank">IMF’s Neoliberal Sadomasochistic Paradise is Finally in Nigeria</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-57187665207925579382024-01-27T00:00:00.001-05:002024-01-27T00:00:36.366-05:00North and Tinubu’s Back-to-Lagos Moves<p><b>Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>When my uncle called me over the weekend, he had no time for the customary conversational courtesies that typically preceded our phone chats. He was agitated and wanted to know straight away why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wanted to relocate Nigeria’s federal capital back to Lagos.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNlZqkkYlRhWJxmcfMt22KXXT8KTs5Lwhu6ygqbbwb8eDtWyvwVYw8obt1I3gSepDWrh6bElok8xYnSu_rA0jm2kTu1Jg_Y7Ddiz31HQoBR38t9Yg25PXu5r21vg4OP4TH4WpA5xkB7soiedgITsfiFQBKRPhhGWdzPutNPqM-pIGrQ2nmPW6JHKluJVM/s1024/YemiCardosoandLagosStateGovernor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="919" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNlZqkkYlRhWJxmcfMt22KXXT8KTs5Lwhu6ygqbbwb8eDtWyvwVYw8obt1I3gSepDWrh6bElok8xYnSu_rA0jm2kTu1Jg_Y7Ddiz31HQoBR38t9Yg25PXu5r21vg4OP4TH4WpA5xkB7soiedgITsfiFQBKRPhhGWdzPutNPqM-pIGrQ2nmPW6JHKluJVM/s16000/YemiCardosoandLagosStateGovernor.jpg" /></a></div><p>His questions were pregnant with anger, befuddlement, and a presumption of the truth of his claim. Unfortunately, he is not alone. The notion that Tinubu, the Fourth Republic’s first Lagos State governor and power behind all subsequent governors in the state, wants to strip Abuja of its federal capital status and make Lagos the effective administrative nucleus of Nigeria is gaining wild currency in Muslim northern Nigeria. </p><p>The immediate sparks for the “back-to-Lagos” apprehensions in the North are, of course, the decisions of the Central Bank of Nigeria to move some of its departments to Lagos and of the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development’s resolve to relocate the headquarters of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) from Abuja to Lagos.</p><p>Before the CBN’s policy became public knowledge, a northerner who works at the CBN had confided in me on January 11 that CBN governor Olayemi Cardoso had concluded plans to move the key departments of the Central Bank— or, as he called it, “the entire banking system”— back to Lagos. </p><p>The key departments Cardoso wanted to move to Lagos, he said, were the Banking Supervision Department (BSD), the Other Financial Institutions Supervision Department (OFISD), the Consumer Protection Department (CPD), the Payment Systems Management Department (PSMD), and the Financial Policy and Regulations Department (FPRD).</p><p>“When you move all these departments and many more to come to Lagos,” he lamented, Abuja would become CBN headquarters in name only. Lagos would essentially return to being the real CBN headquarters. What was even more bothersome, he added, was the fact that “they are using one of us, the Deputy Governor Corporate Services Bala Bello” to emasculate the CBN headquarters in Abuja.</p><p>He shared this with me at a time when I was deluged with work and didn’t have the time to independently verify his claims—or to examine the merit of his worries. Two days later, the story appeared on the Abuja-based, digital-native Daily Nigerian, which has been instrumentalized to serve as grist to the conspiracy mills in the North.</p><p>This wasn’t helped by the fact that five days after the Daily Nigerian story came out and before the outrage in the North had blown over, FAAN announced the relocation of its headquarters back to Lagos. These twin events conspired to construct a semblance of intentional, Tinubu-backed first steps in an ultimate, long-hatched ditch-Abuja-for-Lagos scheme in the minds of some Northerners.</p><p>As I told my uncle, it’s legally impossible in a democratic setting to move Nigeria’s capital from Abuja back to Lagos. There is no provision of the constitution or the Federal Capital Territory Act for an option to change Abuja as the federal capital territory. Unless Nigeria disintegrates, Abuja will be the perpetual federal capital.</p><p>So, talk of sneaky designs by Tinubu to return Nigeria’s capital to Lagos is no more than a silly, idle conspiratorial whisper.</p><p>To be honest, I’ve tried really hard to inhabit the minds of some of our people who sense an anti-northern animus as the impetus for the relocation of certain core departments of the CBN to Lagos—or for the return of FAAN headquarters to Lagos.</p><p>Apart from the unwelcome disruption to family cohesion that the transfer of workers, especially married workers, from Abuja to Lagos would represent, I haven’t seen anything remotely anti-North in the policy. </p><p>The CBN has almost zero symbolic, political, cultural, or even economic significance to the North. Plus, Lagos is Nigeria’s de facto commercial capital and the headquarters of most banks. It makes sense that the core operational units of the CBN should be there.</p><p>The return of FAAN to Lagos is an even more straightforward case. It was always in Lagos until former Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika moved it to Abuja. There didn’t seem to be any operational reasons to justify the move since Lagos is the nucleus of Nigeria’s aviation. </p><p>In any case, there is no legal requirement that all government agencies and departments must be headquartered in Abuja. That is why, as Senator Shehu Sani pointed out on Twitter, the National Examination Council (NECO) is headquartered in Minna, the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) is headquartered in Kaduna, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is headquartered in Port Harcourt, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is headquartered in Lagos, the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) is headquartered in Lokoja, etc. </p><p>However, it would be unwise to dismiss with a wave of the hand the anxieties of people who are troubled by what appears, at least on the surface, to be a systematic, carefully planned administrative and political denudation of Abuja which, while a federal territory that equally belongs to all Nigerians, is located in the North.</p><p> It is particularly disappointing that the president’s spokesperson slurred all sceptics and critics of the back-to-Lagos moves as “mischief-makers,” “political opponents,” and “dishonest ethnic and regional champions.” That’s unwarranted and unhelpful bellicosity which, in addition, has no basis in facts.</p><p>It’s true, of course, that the people who started and amplified news of the relocation of some departments of the CBN to Lagos are northern workers, or benefactors of northern workers, at the CBN who do not want to move to Lagos. It is they who successfully elevated their personal discomfort to the status of a collective regional slight. </p><p>For example, in a January 26 Twitter post, one Adamu Hayatu whom I’ve been told is an ally of Muhammad Sani “Dattijo” Abdullahi, one of the CBN’s deputy governors, claimed that “Senator [Ali] Ndume is angry [that some departments of the CBN are moving to Lagos] because his daughter in Consumer Protection Department is moving to Lagos. Her Husband and another guy who is also married to his Second Daughter are all working in CBN. So much for fighting for the North!”</p><p>If this information is accurate, it’s consistent with my initial suspicion. This is a personal fight masquerading as a regional battle. Nonetheless, there are at least two other reasons that fuel the fire of regional angst in the North about Tinubu’s moves.</p><p>One, Tinubu has been a profoundly provincial president whose insularity is outrivaled only by the late Umaru Musa Yar’adua. Just like Yar’adua was elected a Nigerian president but was in reality a Katsina governor in Abuja, Tinubu is also, so far, a Nigerian president only in name. His mindset is still that of the governor of Lagos.</p><p>With a few notable (and in some cases unavoidable) exceptions, Tinubu’s government is largely the re-enactment of his time as the governor of Lagos. It is, for all practical purposes, an unabashed Lagos-centric Yorubacracy. To be fair, though, with the possible exception of Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, all civilian regimes since 1999 have been insular ethnocracies. </p><p>So, it’s not unreasonable to nurse anxieties about a regional agenda when a Lagos-centric president appoints as Central Bank governor a Lagos native (who was the president’s Economic Planning and Budget commissioner when he was the governor of Lagos State) whose first major priority is to relocate central units of the CBN back to his hometown amid runaway inflation and an inexorably relentless slide in the value of the naira.</p><p>It doesn’t matter what the merit of the policy is. People are justified to read meanings into it. Had a president or a CBN governor with a different profile from Tinubu or Cardoso done this, it probably wouldn’t have been amenable to regional weaponization by disgruntled workers.</p><p>Second, although Tinubu got most of his votes from the Muslim North, there is a growing, if uninformed, unease in the region that his governance is being guided by a 53-page August 2011 Yoruba regional script. Written by the Afenifere Renewal Group, a breakaway faction of Afenifere that is associated with Tinubu, the document is titled “Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN)” and advances strategies to fast track the development of Yorubaland. More than 20 Northerners have shared the document with me in the last one week.</p><p>However, it appears that Northerners who think the document is some sinister roadmap to dominate and subdue other parts of the country haven’t really read it. It’s actually a forward-looking roadmap to regenerate Yorubaland. I think every region should have a similar blueprint for its uplift.</p><p>I searched the document for evidence that the group recommended the stripping of Abuja of substantive power or for the relocation of Nigeria’s capital to Lagos. I found none. The closest thing to this that the document said about Lagos was, “The Southwest states, in particular Lagos should take ownership and lead advocacy and execution of the FSS 2020 objective of Lagos as an International Financial Centre (IFC).” (p. 24). There is nothing ominous about that. </p><p>Unfortunately, feelings, not evidence, drive narratives. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-46304346000529789042024-01-20T00:00:00.001-05:002024-01-20T00:00:00.336-05:00How to Stop the Kidnapping Epidemic in Nigeria<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>In the last few weeks, kidnapping in Nigeria has escalated into such a terrifyingly contagious national epidemic that it’s now difficult to keep up with its spread and malignancy. When I decided to dedicate this week’s column to this phenomenon, I kept a record of the abductions that had been reported in the news media. I noted their similarities, differences, levels of severity, and drew parallels with the historical data at my disposal.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAl0mxSo7_pfoxs2VEMchKlz8hXZBEtW5DdYyPlbSV1YqajJzD00v8537meMeIX-48rHy6g-YzsPbsQFRf0o8F4M7NVDxQtTlgRL-o96o3i-k-vSxf7_bCT6k7yJ-GKpAzoh1XAGqWlrbNcaXQUOs4El2UxuqSBXpqxM4dJMvKS-4dnrdg1E4nX2XEEQ/s1440/Tinubu%20and%20service%20chiefs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1028" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtAl0mxSo7_pfoxs2VEMchKlz8hXZBEtW5DdYyPlbSV1YqajJzD00v8537meMeIX-48rHy6g-YzsPbsQFRf0o8F4M7NVDxQtTlgRL-o96o3i-k-vSxf7_bCT6k7yJ-GKpAzoh1XAGqWlrbNcaXQUOs4El2UxuqSBXpqxM4dJMvKS-4dnrdg1E4nX2XEEQ/s16000/Tinubu%20and%20service%20chiefs.jpg" /></a></div><p>I gave up. It was not just simply overwhelming; it kept expanding beyond the bounds of normality. What has become apparent to me is that kidnapping has replaced armed robbery as the crime of choice by outlaws. </p><p>News stories of armed robberies are now few and far between. Criminals have found gold in kidnapping. It’s a relatively low-risk, minimal-effort, but high-reward crime. </p><p>Even the Federal Capital Territory, hitherto the oasis of safety in a national desert of insecurity, is now the theater of some of the most frighteningly lethal abductions. </p><p>Kidnapping isn’t new, of course. It has been with us since independence. And, although Abuja had been a sanctuary, it hadn’t been entirely immune from the plague of kidnappings. In September 2019, for example, the daughter of Dr. Umar Ardo, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s cousin and special adviser, <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/09/kidnapping-in-heart-of-abuja.html" target="_blank">was kidnapped in the heart of Abuja</a> and was released only after a $15 million ransom was paid in bitcoin, according to PM News.</p><p>In the same month, a Nigerian-American professor of political science who retired from a university in Mississippi and relocated to Abuja was kidnapped in downtown Abuja and wasn't released until he paid an N8.5 million ransom. There had been several other unacknowledged abductions in Abuja before now.</p><p> But the scale, frequency, and magnitude of abductions we have been seeing lately are unprecedented, and this poses significant challenges to Nigeria’s security, economy, and societal fabric. The complexity of the kidnapping syndicates, the vastness of the Nigerian terrain, and the often-sophisticated methods employed by these criminals necessitate an innovative approach to combating this menace—if the government is truly interested in containing it, that is.</p><p>Fortunately, it appears the government is interested in finding solutions to this troubling challenge to peace and national stability, especially because it’s now getting uncomfortably close to the seat of power.</p><p>Defense Minister Mohammed Badaru told Arise TV that abductions have skyrocketed in the FCT because kidnappers from the adjoining states of Niger and Kaduna are fleeing the scorched-earth policy of security agents against them, but that “the president has given us the marching forward [sic] and all the support that the security agencies need to end this thing." </p><p>Badaru was saying, in other words, that security forces in Kaduna and Niger aren’t stopping bandits; they are merely scaring them away from their snug hideouts to the FCT. That is not reassuring. Well, if the government truly wants to confront and reverse the menace of kidnapping, there are at least two low-hanging fruits they can pluck.</p><p>One of the most promising technologies to tackle kidnapping is geotagging. Geotagging refers to the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media. It can be used to locate the phones used for ransom negotiations.</p><p> Unfortunately, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami, Nigeria’s former minister of communication who bills himself as a cybersecurity expert and who should lead efforts to use technology to locate kidnappers, chose to lead crowdfunding efforts for ransom payment for some victims of kidnapping. While I appreciate the compassion that drives the effort, how many more people can we crowdfund for to pay ransoms?</p><p>True cyber security experts tell us that each time a kidnapper uses a phone to communicate, the device connects to nearby cell towers, which leaves a digital footprint. Modern smartphones, often used by kidnappers, have built-in GPS capabilities, which further enhances the accuracy of location tracking. Geotagging utilizes this data to pinpoint the location of the phone.</p><p>Many countries have used this method to locate, apprehend, and eliminate kidnapping rings. For example, in Colombia, a country once notorious for kidnappings, security agencies have successfully employed geotagging. In one notable case, Colombian authorities tracked the mobile phone of a kidnapper using geotagging, leading them directly to the hideout and facilitating a successful rescue operation.</p><p>Mexico's adoption of advanced geotagging techniques in collaboration with the United States has led to several high-profile successes. The technology was pivotal in dismantling a notorious kidnapping ring in Mexico City. This shows the potential of cross-border technological cooperation, and Nigeria can replicate that with its neighbors. </p><p>For course, for Nigeria to effectively employ geotagging, there is a need for significant investment in technological infrastructure. This includes the upgrading of cell tower networks for better coverage and accuracy, and the integration of advanced software for real-time tracking.</p><p>Security agencies must be trained in the nuances of geotagging technology. This includes understanding the legal and ethical implications of tracking and developing the technical expertise to analyze and act upon the data gathered.</p><p>Collaboration with international agencies experienced in dealing with kidnappings can provide Nigerian authorities with the necessary technological and strategic support. Sharing of best practices and intelligence can enhance the effectiveness of the geotagging approach.</p><p>The use of geotagging in combating kidnapping in Nigeria offers a ray of hope in a seemingly relentless struggle. While technological solutions like geotagging are not panaceas, they are critical tools in the arsenal against kidnapping. The successful implementation of geotagging, complemented by infrastructural improvements, capacity building, international collaboration, and legal safeguards, can significantly bolster Nigeria's fight against this scourge. As kidnapping continues to evolve, so must the strategies.</p><p>Another low-hanging fruit in the fight against kidnapping is to trace the trail of the ransom given to kidnappers. A security analyst by the name of Kabir Adamu told the TVC recently that most ransom payments aren’t executed through cash, and that banks are complicit in lubricating the “business” of abductions.</p><p>“I will shock you today to tell you that, in almost all the cases we investigated, the ransoms paid to bandits are through our banks,” Adamu said. “I say this with all sense of responsibility. In almost all, it's very few that cash is collected and taken to these guys. They are so brazen and bold that they provide account numbers. And two banks are guilty; I'm not going to mention the names of the banks. But of course, if the security agencies are interested, I will be happy and willing to provide it to them. And that is if they don't already know.” </p><p>This is not new news to me. In an October 23, 2021, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/10/sponsors-of-nigerias-terrorist-bandits.html" target="_blank">“Sponsors of Nigeria’s Terrorist Bandits,”</a> I called attention to <i>Daily Trust</i>’s July 28, 2021, story titled “Kidnappers in FCT Begin Collection of Ransom Through Banks” where we read of a Mrs. Aminat Adewuyi who was kidnapped in Niger State and paid money to an account the kidnappers provided.</p><p> “The ransom payment slip, a copy of which was obtained by <i>Daily Trust</i> showed that Adewuyi’s husband paid N500,000 into an Access Bank account with number 1403762272 and the name Badawi Abba Enterprise,” the paper reported.</p><p>The column went viral, but nothing was done about the identity of Badawi Abba Enterprise to this day. It’s one of several examples. Was it incompetence or complicity on the part of the Buhari government that it knew the identity of kidnappers but refused to do anything about it? Will the Tinubu government be different this time? </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/10/sponsors-of-nigerias-terrorist-bandits.html" target="_blank">Sponsors of Nigeria’s Terrorist Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/09/kidnapping-in-heart-of-abuja.html" target="_blank">Kidnapping in the Heart of Abuja</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/07/video-of-bandit-confessing-to-drinking.html" target="_blank">Video of Bandit Confessing to Drinking the Blood of Dead Victims</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-33621678661913738272024-01-13T00:00:00.001-05:002024-01-13T00:00:00.126-05:00 Tinubu Getting Governance Right but Economy Wrong<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>It takes a special kind of partisan bullheadedness— or an acute amnesia of the immediate past— to fail to acknowledge that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has, in the last few weeks, enlivened governance, shown praiseworthy sensitivity to public opinion, and has exerted unaccustomed social, symbolic, and political presence in the country.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDyjfzw5L2IHINK0GolladEKamAE0gj62L-cvkCJYtaZGhazq7F-6SYPxxBbD1irS_1kp5JaaN-Gkd7NwIe14HZMOAmkiWMwCXvCL8120u11kwmVjgKhOkA44Dx362PuCzlYqu8tqn96z0huc7s1ilcL7CHM7Vk0oIb5fg1xcrq741NGjmEvp0lvwRzF0/s1080/BolaTinubuandKashimShettima.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDyjfzw5L2IHINK0GolladEKamAE0gj62L-cvkCJYtaZGhazq7F-6SYPxxBbD1irS_1kp5JaaN-Gkd7NwIe14HZMOAmkiWMwCXvCL8120u11kwmVjgKhOkA44Dx362PuCzlYqu8tqn96z0huc7s1ilcL7CHM7Vk0oIb5fg1xcrq741NGjmEvp0lvwRzF0/s16000/BolaTinubuandKashimShettima.jpg" /></a></div><p>But it also requires a severely blind partisan loyalty to not admit that Tinubu’s firing of a corrupt minister caught red handed with her hand in the cookie jar, his responsiveness to legitimate public outcries, and his obvious interest in actual governance have not moved the needle in the real living conditions of the majority of Nigerians who are squirming in profound existential hurt as a direct consequence of the unprecedented economic crunch that the removal of subsidies on petrol has activated. I’ll return to this point later.</p><p>I am never shy to publicly admit it when I am wrong. Since January 2022 when it became apparent to me that Tinubu would be president, I was distressed. In a January 12, 2022, social media update, I ventilated this distress when I wrote: “No nation can survive a transition from Buhari's corrupt, do-nothing, geriatric, and dementia-plagued presidency to a drunken, narcotized, geriatric, and potentially corrupt Tinubu presidency.”</p><p>I am not ashamed to concede that I am probably wrong and that the people who insisted that Tinubu would be different from Buhari are right—at least for now. By my training and disposition, I am parsimonious with expressions of commendation for people in positions of power. It’s because I know that the privileges and pressures of power can make people unpredictable or change in a fraction of a moment’s notice. But there is no harm in acknowledging demonstrations of good-faith efforts by people in power.</p><p>The swift, no-nonsense suspension of Betta Edu as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation after irrefutable evidentiary proof of her corruption emerged and public outcry for her ouster grew— and the summoning of the Internal Affairs Minister to explain how a company he is associated with benefitted from Edu’s corruption— has scored the Tinubu administration its most visible reputational mileage in governance yet and has caused many critics to thaw their frigidity toward the administration. </p><p>It doesn’t mean there are no other corrupt government officials who are fleecing the nation, but this is the first time an APC administration has fired a minister for corruption. All past examples of ministers who lost their jobs because of corruption have been during PDP administrations. Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Musa Yar’adua, and even Goodluck Jonathan have records of firing ministers who were credibly accused of corrupt enrichment.</p><p> Yet, Muhammadu Buhari, who rode to power on the strength of the perception and claims that he was “clean” and was intolerant of corruption, not only never fired a single minister on account of corruption (even though Nigeria lost the most money to corruption during his regime), but he also actually weaponized his symbolic power as president to defend the corruption of his ministers and close associates. </p><p>After the alleged corruption of Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazzau and Babachir David Lawal were published, and it was shown that Rotimi Amaechi bribed judges and Abba Kyari accepted a N500 million-naira bribe from MTN to reduce its fine, Buhari’s public response, in December 2016, was, “Terrible and unfounded comments about other people’s integrity are not good. We are not going to spare anybody who soils his hands, but people should please wait till such individuals are indicted.”</p><p>But when corrupt people were indicted, he defended them both publicly and privately. For example, when Babachir Lawal was indicted by the Senate for fleecing internally displaced people in the Northeast, Buhari deployed astonishingly bald-faced lies to defend him. </p><p>In my January 28, 2017, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/01/presidential-lying-in-defense-of.html#google_vignette" target="_blank">“Presidential Lying in Defense of Corrupt “Executhieves,”</a> I wrote: “In his letter to the Senate ‘clearing’ Babachir David Lawal of multi-million naira ‘grass cutting’ corruption scandal, the president said the senate didn't invite Lawal to defend himself. Lie. He WAS invited via a letter, which the permanent secretary attached to his office acknowledged, and via at least three newspaper adverts. But he spurned the invitation and sent a representative.</p><p>“The president also said only three senate committee members signed the letter asking for Lawal's resignation and prosecution. Another lie. Seven senate committee members did.” It was Yemi Osinbajo’s acting presidency that recommended Babachir Lawal’s firing. Left to Buhari, nothing would have happened to him.</p><p>We also <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/11/unravelling-of-corruption-in-buharis.html" target="_blank">learned from the Head of Service of the Federation</a> in November 2017 that Buhari was actually aware of, and even countenanced, the scandalous reinstatement and promotion of Abdulrahseed Maina, the former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force Team who was sacked for stealing 14 billion naira belonging to pensioners. Of course, we all know how Buhari featherbedded Sadiya Umar Farouq who stole way more money than Betta Edu did.</p><p>A separate column needs to be written on Buhari’s corruption and how he gave aid and comfort to the worst corruption in Nigeria’s history. It suffices for now to state that Tinubu’s actions would have been mere unremarkable routines in governance had he not been preceded by the worst, most incompetent, and least transparent ruler in Nigeria’s history.</p><p>Nonetheless, the praises that the Tinubu administration is receiving from unlikely quarters shouldn’t lull it into a false sense of self-satisfaction to the point of being unmindful of the damaging consequences of its punishingly harsh economic policies.</p><p>I was in Nigeria in December 2023 and saw firsthand the extreme, unbearable, and unexampled adversity that the vast majority of people have been thrown into in the aftermath of the removal of petrol subsidies. The level of suffering people are going through now is simply unsustainable. Something will definitely give if nothing is done urgently.</p><p>Since the Tinubu administration has so far shown itself to be amenable to be persuaded on issues that matter to the public, I suggest that immediate steps should be taken to halt the drift to hopelessness that’s taking roots in Nigeria. </p><p>In <i>Monarchs and Mendicants</i>, Dan Groat warned: “Not interested in scarin’ anybody, but people with good sense are afraid of a man with nothin’ to lose.” Lance Conrad reiterated the same sentiment in <i>The Price of Nobility</i> when he said, “Only a fool would underestimate a man with nothing to lose.” Extreme deprivation, such as what most Nigerians are going through now, inspires hopelessness, loss of faith in life itself, and a willingness to bring everything down. </p><p>One of the first moves to stop that is to recognize that it’s way past time to increase the national minimum age across the board. N30,000 is no longer even remotely in the realm of a realistic minimum wage in a country where a liter of petrol is more than 600 naira and a bag of rice is more than N50,000.</p><p>Second, as a matter of fierce urgency, the government should make Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) readily available and affordable across the country as an alternative to petrol if it’s unwilling to bring down the price of petrol. By affordable, I am suggesting that it should be less than N200 per liter. </p><p>The economy is contracting because people aren’t spending, and people aren’t spending because their disposable incomes are being eaten up by the unsustainably high price of petrol.</p><p>Third, Nigerians need to see visible signs of the utilization of the money saved from the removal of petrol subsidies in strategic expansion of railways and investment in inter- and intra-state transportation. This would obviate the need for fuel subsidies.</p><p> We already know that contrary to what government officials and defenders of subsidy removal had said, money saved from subsidy removal won’t go to education or health. Only 7.9% of this year’s budget is allocated to education, and only 5% is allocated to health. That’s not different from previous years. </p><p>There is so much more money for government officials to steal precisely because the removal of fuel subsidies took from the poor what should make life a little easier for them. So, firing corrupt officials will only make sense to ordinary folks if it translates to an increase in the quality of their lives. </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/01/presidential-lying-in-defense-of.html" target="_blank">Presidential Lying in Defense of Corrupt “Executhieves”</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/11/unravelling-of-corruption-in-buharis.html" target="_blank">Unravelling of the Corruption in Buhari’s “Anti-Corruption” Fight</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2018/02/how-buhari-has-lowered-bar-of-governance.html" target="_blank">How Buhari Has Lowered the Bar of Governance</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2018/08/corruption-fighting-corruption.html" target="_blank">Corruption Fighting Corruption: The Tragicomic Case of Obono-Obla</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/10/how-about-other-mainas-in-buharis.html" target="_blank">How about the Other “Mainas” in Buhari’s Government?</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/02/forget-onnoghen-lets-talk-about-buharis.html" target="_blank">Forget Onnoghen; Let’s Talk about Buhari’s Asset Declaration Fraud</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/07/ambassador-campbells-curious-defense-of.html" target="_blank">Ambassador Campbell’s Curious Defense of Buhari’s Corrupt Aso Rock Cabal</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-18037379666814825562024-01-12T11:12:00.004-05:002024-01-12T11:22:50.262-05:00Supreme Court: Congratulations to Kano People<p><b>By Farooq Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>Congratulations to the good people of Kano on the Supreme Court’s ruling today affirming the victory of NNPP’s Abba Yusuf. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_T1s9bvCUeywnKljkoFJvU_IjpGXGHCqXLYu96iqacERE0d_7jD1jbp574yiJYFh_jVR5FH4qYZVCxAjkfi6k4CoN5QPLjK0yFo3-Np6jr0X_B6PC6ZSzIwbiHrM3Gdjr7Paq7vIkBl5BhoBfVeUF9mJxk9IL5mLD8eTEGGWFMcTw5N4-2AUKGLr71E/s2048/Governor%20Abba%20Yusuf.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid_T1s9bvCUeywnKljkoFJvU_IjpGXGHCqXLYu96iqacERE0d_7jD1jbp574yiJYFh_jVR5FH4qYZVCxAjkfi6k4CoN5QPLjK0yFo3-Np6jr0X_B6PC6ZSzIwbiHrM3Gdjr7Paq7vIkBl5BhoBfVeUF9mJxk9IL5mLD8eTEGGWFMcTw5N4-2AUKGLr71E/s16000/Governor%20Abba%20Yusuf.jpg" /></a></div><p>In my November 18 column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-and-ganduje-shouldnt-play-with.html" target="_blank">“Tinubu and Ganduje Shouldn’t Play with Fire in Kano,”</a> I pointed out that both the election tribunal and the appeal court did not even pretend to be fair in their judgments against NNPP and that “If the Supreme Court is guided by its precedents, which is never guaranteed, I have no doubt that it will invalidate the judgments of the lower courts.”</p><p>I am glad that my prediction has materialized—or that my warning has been heeded. </p><p>This is a victory not just for justice but for peace in Kano. Had the broad-day light theft of NNPP's legitimate electoral mandate been given the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, security forces would probably be working hard right now to contain communal convulsions in Kano.</p><p>Kano is my second home. It’s where I earned my most important academic qualification that is the basis for what I am today. So, I have as much emotional investment in its peace and stability as its natives.</p><p>My advice to NNPP, Gov. Abba Yusuf, and Rabiu Kwanwaso is to learn to be magnanimous in victory and shun vengeance. You win more hearts through large-heartedness than through revenge and righteous bitterness.</p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-and-ganduje-shouldnt-play-with.html" target="_blank">Tinubu and Ganduje Shouldn’t Play with Fire in Kano</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">Why the Kano Verdict Can’t Stand</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-10170009292542252252024-01-06T00:00:00.024-05:002024-01-06T22:18:55.986-05:00Foul Stench of Buhari’s Corruption and Betta Edu<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank"> @farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>In a June 23, 2020, article titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/06/sabiu-yusufs-fat-bank-accounts-that.html" target="_blank">"Sabiu Yusuf's Fat Bank Accounts that Shocked CBN Governor”</a> where I revealed that Muhammadu Buhari’s relative Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf had salted away so much money in banks that even former CBN governor Godwin Emefiele was so alarmed that he advised him to divvy up the money into different accounts, I said, “The stench bomb of fetid corruption that will explode after Buhari leaves office would be so unprecedentedly malodorous it would deaden Nigeria's collective nasal sensibility for a long time.”</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAexCBTkM8iXLvvWW77Qq-FljSnGR_GhljTx7fm3-rUpf1mcE-O50meifpozsKBQxxnTu2UnGEh6jZv9syB8moFGBWnAZwVmv2VVNEYJZktAaKs6RcqraVPw13QQX56LqhvetzkxTkJRFEIGMB4vBqWJQ4uKgXSjOQyb9YZpQLcLizT2lUAVfhStTK5pg/s1000/MuhammaduBuhariCorruption.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAexCBTkM8iXLvvWW77Qq-FljSnGR_GhljTx7fm3-rUpf1mcE-O50meifpozsKBQxxnTu2UnGEh6jZv9syB8moFGBWnAZwVmv2VVNEYJZktAaKs6RcqraVPw13QQX56LqhvetzkxTkJRFEIGMB4vBqWJQ4uKgXSjOQyb9YZpQLcLizT2lUAVfhStTK5pg/s16000/MuhammaduBuhariCorruption.jpg" /></a></div><p>At the time, some people thought I was merely being hyperbolic for literary effect. But isn’t that what is happening now? Every day, we are regaled with stories of mindless, freewheeling theft of our public wealth by officials and relatives of Muhammadu Buhari. And what we’ve learned so far is just a tip of the iceberg.</p><p>All that happened during Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year reign was unrestrained, stratospheric, eyewatering corruption the scale of which Nigeria had never experienced. It was a raucous, brazen, cheerfully irresponsible kleptocratic bazaar. While it happened, governance took the backseat, leading me to characterize Buhari’s reign as the era of “ungovernance.” </p><p>The Central Bank of Nigeria under Emefiele and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development under Sadiya Umar Farouq are competing for frontrunner status as outposts of the most decadent kleptocratic predation. </p><p>Emefiele, whom I described in <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/05/emefiele-corrupt-inept-heart-attack.html" target="_blank">a May 14, 2022, column</a> as an “infernally incompetent, exceptionally corrupt, mind-blowingly self-serving, incomprehensibly clueless, overweeningly ambitious, and cruelly insensitive” clown, became the conduit for unmentionable financial crimes against Nigeria involving Buhari’s relatives, close friends, and associates. While feathering his own nest, he was a dutiful poodle of the consciencelessly thieving, ill-famed Aso Rock cabal, which humored him by telling him he would succeed Buhari in 2023.</p><p>“If someone wrote a tragicomic drama script about Godwin Emefiele’s scandal-ridden reign as a central bank governor and his ludicrously insane attempts to run for president using the financial and symbolic resources of the central bank while still a central bank governor who hurls consequence-free insults and wishes death upon critics for calling attention to the manifest conflict of interest that his presidential run represents, literary critics would pillory the script for its implausible plot,” I wrote about Emefiele in my May 14, 2022 column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/05/emefiele-corrupt-inept-heart-attack.html" target="_blank">“Emefiele: A Corrupt, Inept, Heart-Attack-Loving Presidential Wannabe.”</a></p><p>Sadiya Umar Farouq’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has also turned out to be one of the most putrid morasses of venality and fraud during the Buhari years. Sadiya is now predictably dodging the EFCC using the favorite tactic of Nigerian elites entwined in the web of accounting for their corruption: pretense of ill health.</p><p>When I read that the EFCC was inviting her to account for more than N37 billion that she allegedly laundered, I was shocked by the “smallness” of the amount in light of what I know about the magnitude of pillaging she perpetrated at the ministry. I was relieved when I read a January 4th EFCC statement saying, “We are still tracing all the transactions, hence we cannot put a figure to everything now as the investigation is still ongoing.”</p><p>We are talking here of a woman who spent more than N500 million to feed non-existent schoolkids in their homes in Lagos, Ogun, and the FCT while schools were closed in 2020, a woman whom a 2017 Daily Nigerian report said stole dabinos worth millions of naira donated to IDPs by Saudi Arabia during Ramadan (which she hasn’t denied) while she was Federal Commissioner in charge of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons.</p><p>In a June 15, 2023, appearance on the Brekete Family radio show in Abuja, Muhammed Kazaure Gudaji, a member of the House of Representatives representing the Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa, Yankwashi Constituency of Jigawa State who is famous for his brutal forthrightness, verbal directness, and less than perfect English articulation, said what most of us know.</p><p>A rock-ribbed Muhammadu Buhari partisan, Gudaji nonetheless pointed out that enormous theft of public resources took place during the Buhari regime, and that if the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu wanted to be taken seriously, it must arrest and investigate 12 high-profile personages of the Buhari regime. </p><p>He gave their names as former Godwin Emefiele; former EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa (and Magu, too); Group Managing Director of NNPC Mele Kolo Kyari; Former Justice Minister and Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami; former FIRS chairman Muhammad Mamman Nami; Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf; DG of NIMSA Bashir Jamoh; Mohammed Bello-Koko of the Nigerian Ports Authority; Hadiza Bala Usman also formerly of NPA; all CBN deputy governors who served with Emefiele; and the “entire leaders of the National Inter-Bank Settlement System.”</p><p>I have no knowledge of the corrupt dealings of everyone on Gudaji’s list— or whether, in fact, he has a basis to accuse them of colossal corruption—but I have learned not to dismiss the man with a wave of the hand because of his rhetorical unsophistication. And the fact that Emefiele, Bawa, Sadiya, and some CBN deputy governors are under probe months after his plea to Tinubu should tell us that he isn’t a flippant blabbermouth. </p><p>Of course, Buhari is aware of the massive corruption that took place in his government. I know for a fact, for example, that he was aware of Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf’s ill-gotten wealth. I have also been reliably informed that he helped cover the corruption of family members who were caught abroad with unusually large amounts of cash.</p><p>Two weeks ago, for instance, someone close to the Buhari family shared with me a disturbing story of the last-minute monkey business that the Buhari family perpetrated with Buhari’s own active connivance.</p><p>He wrote: “The son of a very prominent Nigerian (he held no official role, but was the most powerful Nigerian after PMB) in the previous government was arrested and detained for 2 days in England for bringing into the country cash worth millions of dollars/pounds. </p><p>“The Nigerian government, with direct intervention of the former president Buhari, intervened and used the Nigerian embassy in London to rescue the son who is in his 30s and related to PMB. This happened when PMB was in Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj so you can guess the period it happened. </p><p>“The money was seized by the UK government initially, but the Nigerian high commission in London insisted that the money was meant for ‘security’. They got the money back and handed it over to the young man who stashed it away in London in preparation for them leaving power.” </p><p>Although I have not independently verified the authenticity of this disturbing story, I have chosen to share it publicly because it is consistent with a pattern I am deeply familiar with. The coming days will reveal the financial crimes Buhari, his family, and associates have committed against Nigeria.</p><p>Unfortunately, some of the crimes Buhari’s people committed in his eight-year reign are reappearing now. It has now come to light, for example, that Betta Chimaobim Edu, the successor to Sadiya Umar Farouq has started the same pattern of theft by her predecessor. </p><p>In a leaked December 20, 2023, memo to the Accountant-General of the Federation, Edu instructed that money designated for “Vulnerable Groups in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Ogun and Lagos,” which amounted to more than N500 million, should be paid into the private UBA account of a Bridget Mojisola Oniyelu in violation of Nigeria’s public sector financial regulation law.</p><p>The regulation says public money should not, under any circumstance, be paid into private bank accounts. “Any officer who pays public money into a private bank account is deemed to have done so with fraudulent intentions,” section 713 of the act says.</p><p>This is a momentous moment for Tinubu. If he does not fire Edu forthwith and bring her to justice, he has already lost the moral high ground to try Buhari’s corrupt honchos. </p><div><b>Related Articles:</b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/05/emefiele-corrupt-inept-heart-attack.html" target="_blank"><br /></a></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/05/emefiele-corrupt-inept-heart-attack.html" target="_blank">Emefiele: A Corrupt, Inept, Heart-Attack-Loving Presidential Wannabe</a></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/06/sabiu-yusufs-fat-bank-accounts-that.html" target="_blank">Sabiu Yusuf's Fat Bank Accounts that Shocked CBN Governor</a></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/08/transformation-of-nigerias-corruption.html" target="_blank">Transformation of Nigeria’s Corruption from Outrage to Comedy</a></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/10/a-ministry-for-mistress.html" target="_blank">A Ministry for the Mistress!</a></b></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-47090821303872587212024-01-01T20:52:00.007-05:002024-01-01T21:22:14.352-05:00Happy New Year, Folks!<p><b> By Farooq Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>We just entered the New Year in America’s Eastern Standard Time Zone! As I say every New Year, new year days are not different from any other day.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFoYArVlIxy5LC9K26lcZvvnGOP1EeTZNQfvVWIuqiqg8D_3g__UeQlqBaoJlnxXRmtNcV58RLD_p6tYgvcLApEF7_l0vN5arEADdOIUG6jxyHRwutx67PXw9KdL-Y4iTJME4HttcYJFI-o3xQ8FjiKyEQfwfhXbfNxxmVo7tN7pxH5nTxEefBkFbhgEc/s1020/ProfessorFarooqKperogi.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="729" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFoYArVlIxy5LC9K26lcZvvnGOP1EeTZNQfvVWIuqiqg8D_3g__UeQlqBaoJlnxXRmtNcV58RLD_p6tYgvcLApEF7_l0vN5arEADdOIUG6jxyHRwutx67PXw9KdL-Y4iTJME4HttcYJFI-o3xQ8FjiKyEQfwfhXbfNxxmVo7tN7pxH5nTxEefBkFbhgEc/s16000/ProfessorFarooqKperogi.jpg" /></a></div><p>They are merely the start of idiosyncratic calendrical arrangements by cultures, of the cultural impulse to impose order on time.</p><p>Although the Gregorian New Year we celebrate today is the most universal, there have been, and there will be, nearly 20 other "new years" in other calendrical systems.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1TiJIB1cD-MBRigju9IhBKy6skj9Kg46h5WTDGRmu0WnynVh3olVNPg6nibnrBMZE6UEcjHSMbXJIrzOIiKRvEt3tO6hSw04N4-LyumPAhlLzS2E3uQnie3lkoLIqcjmMrdsM8yWJDke-ctSIL8x4nBuEu0UqphqCyYmq4DPWJCol47lhFW9_mKCDoM/s1394/New%20Years.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1394" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF1TiJIB1cD-MBRigju9IhBKy6skj9Kg46h5WTDGRmu0WnynVh3olVNPg6nibnrBMZE6UEcjHSMbXJIrzOIiKRvEt3tO6hSw04N4-LyumPAhlLzS2E3uQnie3lkoLIqcjmMrdsM8yWJDke-ctSIL8x4nBuEu0UqphqCyYmq4DPWJCol47lhFW9_mKCDoM/s16000/New%20Years.jpg" /></a></div><p>Having said that, I want to wish all my wonderful friends and followers here a happy Gregorian New Year! </p><p>As we step into this new year, let's embrace the endless possibilities that lie ahead. </p><p>Every day is a new page in the book of our lives, and we are the authors of our own stories. Let's fill these pages with love, tolerance, kindness, courage, and laughter. </p><p>Let's dream big and strive to be the best versions of ourselves. Here's to a year filled with joy, health, and prosperity. May we all find success in our endeavors and peace in our hearts. Cheers to a splendid year ahead!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-62948044475017153382023-12-30T00:00:00.001-05:002023-12-30T00:00:00.132-05:00Rising Salafist and Pentecostal Religious Bigotry in Nigeria<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>It is Pollyannaish daydreaming to expect that two aggressively competing, proselytizing faiths such as Christianity and Islam can ever cohabit in perfect harmony, but in the Nigeria I grew up in, interpersonal relations between Christians and Muslims used to be reasonably cordial and respectful— for the most part.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFQ0XM_woQbCkVG1zq9Rr58qUzr-m-03VmB-IrHLMzlLUqF65ydbKx9WNICVkO2xc282R87sF94-IS0bsCaNORRDUqheUT3A6HRX_PnnD1KHyexIx07MNIkG_jOoX6b9Ege4dtr42zwr1ZRuZb-QGlS3nHD7uUPXp4xOlk5TO1WwJ70KKgJUos4F1TWYs/s1024/Religion%20in%20Nigeria.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFQ0XM_woQbCkVG1zq9Rr58qUzr-m-03VmB-IrHLMzlLUqF65ydbKx9WNICVkO2xc282R87sF94-IS0bsCaNORRDUqheUT3A6HRX_PnnD1KHyexIx07MNIkG_jOoX6b9Ege4dtr42zwr1ZRuZb-QGlS3nHD7uUPXp4xOlk5TO1WwJ70KKgJUos4F1TWYs/s16000/Religion%20in%20Nigeria.jpg" /></a></div><p>That’s now increasingly becoming a challenge, and no moments dramatize this fact than during the momentous religious festivities of the two faiths. During Christmas celebrations, for example, a band of idle, extremist, self-appointed, not to mention ignorant, Salafist moral police comb social media platforms in search of Muslims who wish Christians a merry Christmas.</p><p>When they find them, they troll, attack, shame, and try to ostracize them. They preach that it’s haram to both express any goodwill toward Christians on Christmas day and to eat the food Christians share. There is, of course, no scriptural basis for such odious narrow-mindedness. It springs forth from the wells of bitterness and hate that are dug deep in the hearts of these soulless zealots. </p><p>Most Muslim authorities in the world countenance the expression of goodwill to Christians on Christmas. For example, the official Muslim position in Malaysia is that it’s permissible to wish Christians a merry Christmas. A 2019 ruling by the European Council for Fatwa and Research says it is acceptable to say "Merry Christmas" to Christians. In 2014, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) formally proclaimed that it is not inconsistent with Islamic teachings to say “Merry Christmas” to Christians.</p><p>“Wishing a greeting as an expression of our friendship to people of other faiths won’t damage our faith,” the MUI said in its official statement. “Islam is not a narrow-minded religion. Greetings are more about culture, not faith.”</p><p>And, as the Middle East Media Research Institute reported early this year, “Prominent religious institutions and figures in the Sunni Muslim world, such as Al-Azhar; Dar Al-Ifta, Egypt's official body for issuing religious rulings, and the Egyptian Grand Mufti, all issued rulings this year stressing that Islam permits to [sic] wish Christians a happy holiday. </p><p>“The Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, in fact posted a message on his official Facebook page conveying holiday greetings to Pope Tawadros II, head of the Coptic Church, and to the heads of the other Christian churches and all Christians around the world. He also visited Pope Tawadros in Cairo to convey his greetings in person.”</p><p> The position of prominent Muslim institutions and authorities on this issue derives doctrinal inspiration from the fact that the Qur’an does not forbid Muslims from being charitable, benevolent, and polite to non-Muslims. Plus, there is no unambiguous evidence in the Qur’an or the teachings of the prophet against expressing goodwill to Christians on Christmas.</p><p>Well, Salafist fanatics in Nigeria have a perfect match in new Pentecostal Christian extremists who also wait for Eid-el-Kabir (“big Sallah” in common parlance or ileya in Yoruba) to preach to fellow Christians to reject the ram meat Muslims share with them. It has now become a yearly ritual to have fierce theological debates over whether Christians should celebrate with Muslims during Eid-el-Kabir festivities and, even worse, partake in the eating of the sacrificial rams they slaughter.</p><p>In his August 23, 2021, column titled “Why we should fear the Nigerian Taliban,” Saturday Tribune editor Lasisi Olagunju pointed out that “There are [now] Yoruba Christians who avoid the Muslim Ileya and its delicious sallah meat like sin.” This is a remarkable cultural shift given the famed ecumenical spirit of Yoruba people.</p><p>Journalist Femi Philip Morgan, while bemoaning the loss of theological moderation and the rise of extremism among a new generation of Nigerian Christians and Muslims, lamented in a June 2, 2019, reflection on Facebook that “Ileya has become boring. Christmas has become bland.” In other words, what gave these festivities spice was the participation of people of all faiths. </p><p>This year, I contended with a fusillade of public and private attacks from a gang of Salafist extremists for wishing Christians a merry Christmas on Facebook. Trust me: I blocked all of them. I have zero tolerance for rude, thoughtless, intolerant rubes.</p><p>I wrote: “Merry Christmas to all my Christian fam, friends, and followers here on Facebook and beyond. On this festive day, may the light of love and the warmth of family bring boundless happiness to your homes. </p><p>“As a Muslim, I cherish the beauty of our shared humanity and the spirit of goodwill that Christmas embodies. May this day be a reminder of the love and harmony we can share with each other, regardless of our different paths. Let's celebrate this day with kindness, tolerance, understanding, and hope for a peaceful world. </p><p>“Wishing you all a wonderful holiday filled with joyous laughter, infectious mirth, and abundant blessings!”</p><p>What’s there in this three-paragraph statement to burst a blood vessel over? When has common courtesy toward fellow humans who share a different faith from you become offensive and a reason to defame someone? </p><p>Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of the Northern Region who was also a descendant of Usman dan Fodio, never failed to wish Christians a merry Christmas when he was alive. His 1959 Christmas message made the social media rounds this year. Although it won’t change the minds of the extremists among us, it is worth reproducing in full.</p><p>“We are people of many different races, tribes, and religions, who are knit together by a common history, common interests, and common ideals.</p><p>“Our diversity may be great but the things that unite us are stronger than the things that divide us. On an occasion like this, I always remind people about our firmly rooted policy on religious tolerance. </p><p>“We have no intention of favouring one religion at the expense of another. Subject to the overriding need to preserve law and order, it is our determination that everyone should have absolute liberty to practise his beliefs. </p><p>“It is befitting on this momentous day, on behalf of my ministers and myself, to send a special word of gratitude to all Christian missions. </p><p>“Let me conclude this with a personal message. </p><p>“I extend my greetings to all our people who are Christians on this great feast day. Let us forget the difference in our religion and remember the common brotherhood before God, by dedicating ourselves afresh to the great tasks which lie before us.”</p><p>That’s not different from my Christmas Day message that got the dander of joyless fanatics up.</p><p>I would be a flaming hypocrite and a betrayer of my own background if I align with the bigots from my faith. Although my father was a Sunni Islamic scholar and teacher, his own father (and some of his siblings) converted to Christianity in the 1940s and 1950s in an otherwise over 90 percent Muslim community.</p><p>I was born at a hospital that was established by American Baptist Christian missionaries in my hometown. I attended Baptist Christian missionary schools for my primary and secondary education, and my dad taught Arabic and Islamic Studies in a Christian Baptist missionary school for more than three decades.</p><p>My wife and my in-laws are Christians, and I live in America, a predominantly Christian country, that accepts me for who I am and allows me to thrive and live my dreams in spite of my Muslim faith. Being tolerant of practitioners of different faiths—and of people who profess none—is the only option for me.</p><p>It should be for every Nigerian. Nigeria is a vibrant tapestry of cultures and religions. For as long as we remain one country, learning to live in harmony with each other by sharing resources and celebrating each other's religious festivities is an ever-present imperative. </p><p>No one can intimidate me into embracing bigotry and insularity. If my tolerance toward Christians offends you, you have the option to ignore, unfollow, unfriend, or block me. If that’s not enough, to re-echo Shaykh Azhar Naseer, “please find the nearest wall and run your head into it. Don’t use a helmet.”</p><p> And if you are Allah’s monitor on earth who compiles the names of people to be admitted to al-jannah (paradise), exclude mine. I hope that gives you peace. Happy New Year in advance!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-38786132133320614592023-12-23T11:34:00.002-05:002023-12-27T19:56:48.837-05:00In Nigeria after Nearly a Decade<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>I was in Nigeria from December 12 to December 19 for the public presentation of Dis Life No Balance: An Anthology of Diasporan Nigerian Voice in Abuja and to present a guest lecture on the inclusion of youth in governance in Ilorin, Kwara State. It was my first visit since June 2016, and it was both rewarding and intense.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglppwNK3mo2d3OCK3kzVZAKpkFRaPXTvGnqv1PVAfodOCD2omiPLRIBpVHinNSLKCQ0X0cFD87HV_bAG86i_54FLtZVqOgqP1q7o1-WyY71jvoPKZct6nPZ-61KqGHE0JI6Hd550me8MjwZC-WaYSJDbEtJB9t5ZaZOb6TfqSFoet_FIJIrig2NuycDfA/s1080/DisLifeNoBalanceBookLaunchinAbuja.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglppwNK3mo2d3OCK3kzVZAKpkFRaPXTvGnqv1PVAfodOCD2omiPLRIBpVHinNSLKCQ0X0cFD87HV_bAG86i_54FLtZVqOgqP1q7o1-WyY71jvoPKZct6nPZ-61KqGHE0JI6Hd550me8MjwZC-WaYSJDbEtJB9t5ZaZOb6TfqSFoet_FIJIrig2NuycDfA/s16000/DisLifeNoBalanceBookLaunchinAbuja.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>My self-imposed moratorium on periodic visits to Nigeria for more than seven years was, of course, the consequence of my well-founded anxieties about being hounded, harassed, framed, or even murdered by agents of the Muhammadu Buhari regime. Although I had convinced myself that I was only being (justifiably) paranoid, several people in the upper reaches of Nigeria’s law enforcement agencies had told me that my unrelentingly searing critiques and exposés of the shenanigans in the Buhari regime had made me a marked man.</p><p>Since it is said that discretion is the better part of valor, I chose to stay away from Nigeria when Buhari was in power. It’s better to be paranoid and later find out that you had no reason to be than to be unjustifiably overconfident but end up in the gulag. </p><p>During a recent conversation with Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State, my home state, he asked when I’d be visiting Nigeria. Although I missed Nigeria, I told him I had no plans to visit any time soon. He then asked if I would come if he gave me a reason to visit.</p><p>Although Governor AbdulRazaq had met my wife and me in Atlanta in 2021—and I found him to be a compellingly humble and straightforward man—he was (probably still is) a Buhari supporter. It was unlikely that he would agree to aid security agencies to entrap me, but I voiced to him my unease about falling into the snare of security agencies.</p><p>He assured me that the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration had no plans to hound or harm any critic. Given that he appears to have a spot in the inner chamber of the Tinubu power structure, I took him at his word. </p><p> When I agreed to visit Nigeria and mentioned it to Professor Moses Ochonu and Dr. Osmund Agbo, co-authors of Dis Life No Balance, they suggested that we plan the public presentation of our book around my 10-day stay. We agreed on December 14.</p><p>Meanwhile my wife and my mother were crippled by apprehension about my safety and would probably have stopped my visit if they had had their way. My assurances to them that I would be fine, that my state governor had assured me that I wasn’t in danger of being detained at the airport by security agents, and that I had informed the US embassy in Nigeria about my visit did little to assuage them. </p><p>Nonetheless, my visit turned out to be one of the pleasantest I’ve had. From immigration and customs officers at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos who recognized me by face or by my name and enthusiastically welcomed me, to domestic airline staff in Lagos and Abuja who hailed me in the crowd and extended preferential treatment to me, to scores of people in Abuja and Ilorin who identified, greeted, and took selfies with me, I felt at home, even if a little overwhelmed.</p><p>Even though I was persuaded that I was safe in post-Buhari Nigeria, I didn’t, in my wildest dreams, anticipate the depth and breadth of warmth I encountered everywhere I went in Nigeria.</p><p>Although the public presentation of our book was ancillary to my visit, it was the high point of the visit. But because an elaborate, Nigerian-style book launch was an uncharted territory for us, we grappled with many awkward ethical quandaries. How do you write a critique of the dysfunctions of the Nigerian society and of the political establishment but turn around to invite politicians to it? </p><p>Upon deeper, sober introspection, we found out that there was no contradiction or moral compromise in inviting politicians to the public presentation of our book. For one, if politicians whose policies and politics shape the nation aren’t invited to the public presentation of a book about policies and politics, who should? Plumbers and mechanics?</p><p>We recognized that inviting serving government officials in the executive branch might render us vulnerable to charges of sucking up to the powers that be, which is inconsistent with our personal histories and ideological temperaments. </p><p>But an exception was made for me to invite Information and National Orientation minister Mohammed Idris Malagi with whom I’ve been friends for 25 years. Since my relationship with him precedes and transcends his being in the government, we decided to invite him. </p><p>When he spoke, Malagi reiterated that he and I have a longstanding relationship, and cracked everybody up when he joked that he told me he would give me a bulletproof car when I got to Nigeria because I had shot multiple people in government with my words.</p><p>Deciding who would be our chief launcher was the hardest decision. I suggested former Sokoto State governor and current senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal whom I had the privilege to meet in Washington DC some time ago. He bowled me over with his intimate mastery of the complex ethnic tapestry of Nigeria. </p><p>He demonstrated an incredible grasp of the minutiae of the history, relations, and interconnectedness of the Igbo society. Even the Igbo people present at the conversation confessed to learning more things about themselves from him than they expected. Then the conversation moved to northern Oyo with which I have deep familiarity. He was no less impressive.</p><p>I told my colleagues that he would make a good chief launcher because he strikes me as someone who loves knowledge for its sake, who cherishes intellection, and who would appreciate our work. We might not get a hefty donation to defray the cost of publishing the book in Nigeria, I said, but we might get other kinds of symbolic mileage from his participation in the public presentation of our book. After the event, my co-authors said my judgment was accurate.</p><p>Former Bayelsa State governor Henry Seriake Dickson probably surprised me the most during the book presentation. He skimmed through the book and happened on a page that offered a devastatingly withering critique of the Nigerian politician. He read it out loud. After admitting that it was hurtful, he conceded that it was true and should invite self-reflection and change, not anger and vengeance. That sort of self-conscious distancing and self-reflection is rare among politicians, particularly in Nigeria.</p><p>It was easy, of course, to choose Femi Falana as our guest speaker. He has a well-earned reputation as a defender of the defenseless, as the scourge of oppressors, and as a principled lawyer. His equal-opportunity criticism of everyone, including us the authors, enlivened the occasion and invited thoughtful, productive pushbacks from Professor Abdul Rasheed Na'Allah, Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja and chairman of the occasion, and from Senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal. </p><p>My egbon, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, gave such a thoroughly brilliant, absorbing, insightful, and engaging review of our book he kept all three of us on our toes. He apparently read the entire book within a short time and provided a rich, deep, contextual review of its content in admirably elevated diction.</p><p>On December 18, I was in Ilorin to deliver a talk titled “Youth Inclusion in Governance in Nigeria: Bridging the Gap.” My mother, my siblings, and my nieces and nephews all came from home, Ilorin, and Lagos to receive me. It was an unplanned, unanticipated but deeply emotional family reunion. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji10sFPkpAO3EdeAglkvaHBPKCcNDh2APepWgFLhcZzA3brnDa0RV3ubIaiX7WxkK1DFU4tzXgE1xskbZ4RtAveFiEgSuELm9HpCh_hk1l5GPo_fIIhe2KBDYO02me-hxgTK8NH0z62ZVFPETdJVNeIa8FTf8cBQ1gNJYRDNHjkJyHgXwdn-rH_z6JXK8/s1080/FarooqKperogiMomandSiblings.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji10sFPkpAO3EdeAglkvaHBPKCcNDh2APepWgFLhcZzA3brnDa0RV3ubIaiX7WxkK1DFU4tzXgE1xskbZ4RtAveFiEgSuELm9HpCh_hk1l5GPo_fIIhe2KBDYO02me-hxgTK8NH0z62ZVFPETdJVNeIa8FTf8cBQ1gNJYRDNHjkJyHgXwdn-rH_z6JXK8/s16000/FarooqKperogiMomandSiblings.jpg" /></a></div><p>I had intended to use the lecture to call attention to rampant reverse ageism or gerontocratic condescension, that is, the wrongheaded notion that youth is a disability, that only old age should confer authority on people, which contributes to the systematic exclusion of young people in governance in Nigeria.</p><p>I discovered, however, that Kwara State has more young people in positions of authority than any other state in Nigeria. For example, the commissioner of Water Resources by the name of Usman Lade who welcomed me looked like he was in his late 20s or early 30s. Just yesterday, the governor swore in a 26-year-old lady by the name of Nafisah Buge (from my local government, no less) as the Commissioner of Youth.</p><p>When I discovered that the governor’s cabinet was dominated by young people (and is divided equally between men and women), I honestly didn’t know what to tell him to do differently. I was compelled to acknowledge what I saw and to recommend Kwara State as a model for youth inclusion in governance.</p><p> We need policies at the national level that lower the barriers for youth participation, platforms that facilitate the interaction between young citizens and their representatives, and most importantly, a cultural shift that values and respects the input of our youth—exactly the things I saw in Kwara State.</p><p>In all, I had a great time in Nigeria and look forward to more engagement in the future.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-78708306726356101392023-12-16T01:34:00.004-05:002023-12-16T01:34:25.797-05:00Fake Accents on Nigerian Airplanes and Airports<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>I have been in Nigeria in the last few days for the public presentation of Dis Life No Balance: An Anthology of Diasporan Voices, the book I co-wrote with Professor Moses Ochonu and Dr. Osmund Agbo. I will write on this, all things being equal, next week when I return to Atlanta. Keep a date.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx3W9aszSoXwzJgJAUB5Ys4c1wJUoKsn8fHYgLF79v5AsxzXyujbA1yOUeVZZ7SG_7D8kKS7wVjjRAnUC51XgxkRXWtxbGZIC5sSPUhAwjTuJm8EISVtUgHqPl-MNNWFfsjfCL7RH1sLHfL7XrIDN3WCv8PG2KseQ_hxgpA3uhZhDmtFuZWKh3eOGT8EI/s1080/Nigeria%20air%20hostess.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx3W9aszSoXwzJgJAUB5Ys4c1wJUoKsn8fHYgLF79v5AsxzXyujbA1yOUeVZZ7SG_7D8kKS7wVjjRAnUC51XgxkRXWtxbGZIC5sSPUhAwjTuJm8EISVtUgHqPl-MNNWFfsjfCL7RH1sLHfL7XrIDN3WCv8PG2KseQ_hxgpA3uhZhDmtFuZWKh3eOGT8EI/s16000/Nigeria%20air%20hostess.jpg" /></a></div><p>But my experience traveling through Nigerian airports in Lagos and Abuja brought me face to face once again with the tragedy of atrociously incomprehensible accents that air hostesses and airport announcers routinely torture hapless passengers with. </p><p>In a 2016 column after a visit to Nigeria, I called attention to passengers’ frustration with the maddeningly fake accents at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja that no one understood. Months after the publication of the column, readers wrote to tell me that they had noticed noticeable changes. However, it seems to me that the problem has returned. Even people who make announcements on airplanes have accents that only they understand.</p><p>I reproduce below an abridged version of the column in hopes that it may inspire some reforms:</p><p>I developed a heightened sensitivity to the frustratingly incompetent affectation of a trans-Atlantic English accent (that is, an awkward hybrid of American and British accents) among Nigerian airport announcers when I traveled to Nigeria in November 2015 at the invitation of the British Council to train journalists.</p><p>In fact, to call the accents I heard on airport announcements—and on FM radios—inept affectations of a hybridized Anglo-American accent is to undeservedly humor them. I know most people who travel through Nigerian international airports—and listen to Nigerian FM stations— know what I am talking about. The accents are neither American nor British. Nor are they, for that matter, Nigerian—or anything; they are just abominably inaudible babbles that mindlessly grate on the hearer’s auditory sensibilities with their exaggerated but spectacularly incongruous nasalization of every sound.</p><p>Apparently, Nigerian airport announcers and radio DJs have led themselves to believe that all you need do to sound “foreign” and “cosmopolitan” is to speak every English sound through the nose.</p><p>I don’t care for the bungling, babbling disc jockeys on our FM stations who speak through their noses like people with bad respiratory infections. I do care, however, about airport announcers because their pronunciational imbecility has far-reaching consequences for both Nigerian and foreign users of our airports. Many people have missed their flights because they couldn’t figure out what the heck the announcers were saying. As you will read shortly, I also almost missed my flight recently because of Nigerian airport announcers.</p><p>On all occasions I was at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja last year, I found many Westerners, for whose sake airport announcers speak through their noses, asking Nigerian passengers what the airport announcers were saying; they couldn’t make sense of the irritating blare of nasal cacophony that passed for announcements. </p><p>But they got no help from Nigerians who thought affected nasalized accents were a competent mimicry of Western accents, which should be comprehensible to Westerners. One Nigerian who was approached for help by a white man encapsulated this sentiment when he said: “Na wa o. See as Oyinbo dey ask me to interpret him language for am. The way the announcers dey speak, no be so una people too dey talk—through una nose?”</p><p> I would have rolled on the floor laughing (to use Internet lingo) if I wasn’t insanely incensed at my own inability to make out “Kano” from “Cairo” from the announcer’s voice. Yes, it was that bad: Cairo and Kano sounded exactly alike in the announcer’s nasalized babble. </p><p>I would have missed my flight to Kano if I didn’t trust my instincts to go ask a group of resplendently babbar riga-attired gentlemen in a queue if they were going to Kano. Of course, the pilot’s announcement welcoming us to the “plight” to Kano assured me that I was indeed on the right plane and that my plight with the airport announcer with tediously fake and exaggeratedly nasalized accent was over—at least for that day.</p><p>I discussed this issue with several people at the airport who told me barely audible, affected airport announcers’ accents are becoming a desperate menace. Someone even jokingly called it “a grave national security threat!” </p><p>But this isn’t a joke. I heard stories of Nigerians and foreigners alike who missed their flights because they couldn’t figure out what the announcers were saying. And since passengers can neither see the announcers physically to seek clarification nor have access to even a basic digital airport signage that shows flight itinerary, they are often condemned to the tyranny of the pretentious but incomprehensible accents of illiterate airport announcers.</p><p><b>Real Nigerian Accents</b></p><p>There is one other important reason why the Nigerian airport announcers’ accents are irksome: they don’t represent the range of accents in Nigeria. There are at least three types of accents in Nigeria. </p><p>At the top of the totem pole of Nigerian accents is what I call imported but authentic foreign accents. These are the accents of foreign-born (or foreign-educated) Nigerians in Nigeria (such as the crisp British accents of former House of Representatives speaker Oladimeji Bankole, Minister of Environment Amina Mohammed, human rights activists Ayo Obe and Ayesha Imam; the American accent of former NAPEP coordinator Magnus Kpakol, etc.).</p><p>You also have what I call the Nigerian broadcasters’ accent, fully realized in the mellifluous, articulate accents of broadcasters like Cyril Stober, Kalu Otisi, Yusuf Aliyu Addy, Eugenia Abu, Ruth Opia, etc. And then there is what I call demotic Nigerian English accent, which has regional variations.</p><p> September 18, 2014, CNN article that identified Nigerian English accent as the world’s 6th “sexiest accent,” obviously prefers demotic Nigerian English accents to the first two because it chose the accents represented by King Sunny Ade and Omotola Jalade Ekeinde as its examples of “famous tongues” in Nigerian English accent. “Dignified, with just a hint of willful naiveté, the deep, rich ‘oh's’ and ‘eh's’ of Naija bend the English language without breaking it, arousing tremors in places other languages can't reach,” the article said.</p><p>But it doesn’t matter even if others don’t like our accents. Our accents define us, and it is foolish to run away from them. As phonologists say, “a man without an accent would be like a place without a climate.”</p><p>This new trend to affect foreign accents is dumb because everyone who travels to another country prepares him or herself to hear the accents of the people of that country. They don’t expect to hear accents they are used to at home. (I traveled to Paris recently and the airport announcers and members of the cabin crew on Air France spoke English with an unapologetically French accent). It is also dumb because neither Nigerians nor foreigners understand the affected accents, so it is a wasted effort.</p><p><b>Options for Airport Announcers</b></p><p>But if our airport announcers insist on speaking in accents foreigners would understand, they have at least three options. The cheapest option is to go for training at our TV and radio colleges where polished Nigerian broadcasters like Cyril Stober, Kalu Otisi, etc. trained. If that isn’t good enough, they should enroll for “accent neutralization” training in places like India and Kenya where call-center business has birthed a massive accent modification industry. Or they can buy accent neutralization software and self-train.</p><p>If that is still not good enough, they can emulate South Koreans and commit to what is called lingual frenectomy, which is the removal of certain tissues in the tongue that hinder the ability to speak English with native-speaker accents. </p><p>Yes, I am not making this up; you can look it up. Some South Koreans cut the skin of their tongues so they can have perfect American accents. According to a January 18, 2004, Los Angeles Times article, Koreans are increasingly turning to surgery to correct what they perceive to be their accent deficit, “underscoring the dark side of the crushing social pressures involved in getting a highly competitive society in shape for a globalized world. The surgery involves snipping the thin tissue under the tongue to make it longer and supposedly nimbler.”</p><p>I am being tongue-in-cheek, of course, when I said Nigerian airport announcers should undergo lingual frenectomy like South Koreans. I don’t wish that on anybody. But anything is better than the pervasive but exasperatingly unnatural accents of our airport announcers.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-3619253413746480522023-12-12T19:02:00.002-05:002023-12-12T19:33:33.011-05:00Invitation to our book launch in Abuja on Dec. 14<p><b>By Farooq Kperogi</b></p><p>Many of you are aware that my friends Professor Moses Ochonu, Dr. Osmund Agbo, and I wrote a book on Nigeria titled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Balance-Farooq-Moses-Osmund/dp/B0CHGH2BSK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GH94NBD59ICJ&keywords=dis+life+no+balance&qid=1702427564&sprefix=Dis+Life%2Caps%2C414&sr=8-1" target="_blank">"Dis Life No Balance: An Anthology of Diasporan Nigerian Voices."</a> We're now in Nigeria to launch it on December 14 at the National Press Centre in Abuja from 10 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoyuxTKBOKpX83w-4FCtTLZIqI_u0aZqxF3a5BBGutj9FWaBH4bLUX71Ljd75VH9trSHlvUBUj9lPRBEXjdsKiri6Ts1GQdFqC5DDPpCChbqiC1Mmihlla3FSEIrAxMheeNsupaP_n_4q9lv_ZCK72K8uJpkfdNqfBOBvz6RHfLpLWJDsKs5CAQiKuw5I/s1600/Book%20launch.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoyuxTKBOKpX83w-4FCtTLZIqI_u0aZqxF3a5BBGutj9FWaBH4bLUX71Ljd75VH9trSHlvUBUj9lPRBEXjdsKiri6Ts1GQdFqC5DDPpCChbqiC1Mmihlla3FSEIrAxMheeNsupaP_n_4q9lv_ZCK72K8uJpkfdNqfBOBvz6RHfLpLWJDsKs5CAQiKuw5I/s16000/Book%20launch.jpg" /></a></div><p>The public is warmly and heartily invited. We hope to meet many of you our social media friends there.</p><p>Many prominent Nigerians have agreed to be at the book launch. Former Sokoto State Governor and current Senator Aminu Tambuwal will be the Chief Launcher; Femi Falana, SAN, will be the Guest Speaker; and former presidential spokesman and veteran journalist Segun Adeniyi will be the book reviewer.</p><p>The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris Malagi, will grace the occasion.</p><p> So will former Kano State Governor and Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, and former Minister of Aviation Chief Osita Chidoka.</p><p>The book presentation will also feature a panel discussion on the topic, “Defying the Odds: Nigeria’s Path to Hopeful Horizons.” The panel, which will be moderated by veteran journalist and Editorial Board Chair of Blueprint Newspapers Hajia Zainab Suleiman Okino, comprises newspaper columnist and TV analyst Majeed Dahiru, lawyer and election law expert Amina Ciroman Miango, and epidemiologist and renowned bibliophile Dr. Muhammad Shakir Balogun</p><p>We hope to see you this Thursday!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-44460570890828000002023-12-09T00:00:00.047-05:002023-12-09T00:01:28.058-05:00Why the North Suddenly Cares about Northern Lives<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>It should be made clear from the outset that I am overwrought with immense grief by the heartbreaking but unintentional killing of 126 innocent men, women, and children celebrating Maulud at Tudun Biri village in Kaduna State on December 3. </p><p>Nothing can compensate for this. No excuse can rationalize it. And the outrage that this issue has generated against the Tinubu government is richly justified.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijE2pzOcMfcwk6nmjmZamyZMu-PflO1Wiw2UKT7WALBkbh8bADcE-pVngNuYOgFg67EYQdtKEQriNsAXKcP_JT7ni-YpDD4ZxwzXipTiPoMNfA-qx_2b2c0cPkVg2rMTPqtbk_1jkPN90mgqH4RxpGLzEAPkqT4AfgyTisxseqoLT-0YSulPVz56WRYdE/s720/Sheikh%20AhmadGumi%20and%20ProfYusufUsman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijE2pzOcMfcwk6nmjmZamyZMu-PflO1Wiw2UKT7WALBkbh8bADcE-pVngNuYOgFg67EYQdtKEQriNsAXKcP_JT7ni-YpDD4ZxwzXipTiPoMNfA-qx_2b2c0cPkVg2rMTPqtbk_1jkPN90mgqH4RxpGLzEAPkqT4AfgyTisxseqoLT-0YSulPVz56WRYdE/s16000/Sheikh%20AhmadGumi%20and%20ProfYusufUsman.jpg" /></a></div><p>But it’s oddly hypocritical that there are suddenly vocal elements from the North—particularly the Muslim North, which went into a dreamless slumber during Buhari’s reign of bloodshed—carrying on as if this cruel, indefensible, even if involuntary, killing of innocent Muslims in the name of fighting outlaws is unprecedented. </p><p>Well, on January 17, 2017, the Nigerian Air Force also “mistakenly” dropped two—yes, two— bombs on an IDP camp in Rann, Borno State, which killed 236 innocent men, women, and children, according to Human Right Watch Nigeria’s revised estimate as reported by the <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nigeria-idp-camp-bombing-death-toll-adjusted/3689824.html" target="_blank">Voice of America on January 24, 2017. </a>The Nigerian military said it mistook the poor refugees for Boko Haram terrorists.</p><p>There was pin-drop silence from the Muslim North—and from the same people who’re—or pretend to be— outraged by and bent out of shape about what happened at Tudun Biri. Those of us who ranted and raved in righteous rage about it because Muhammadu Buhari showed scant concern for the lives that were snuffed out by the military, he was commander-in-chief of were hushed up, harassed, attacked, and defamed.</p><p> In a January 21, 2017, <i>Daily Trust</i> column titled, <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/01/buharis-gambian-gambit-as-borno-burns.html" target="_blank">“Buhari’s Gambian Gambit As Borno Burns,”</a> I wrote the following words that have now somehow materialized, except for the little fact that Tinubu isn’t a southern Christian: </p><p>“Imagine for a moment that Nigeria's current president were a man called Goodluck Jonathan (or, for that matter, any southern Christian), and the military ‘mistakenly’ dropped a bomb on hapless internally displaced Boko Haram victims, killing scores of them and critically injuring many more. Imagine again that such a president didn't deem it worth his while to visit the state where this grievous tragedy happened, but instead chose to go to another country to resolve the country's political differences. What would we northern Muslims be saying by now?”</p><p>Several of my fellow northern Muslims attacked me for this. My traducers were particularly incensed that I inserted scare quotes around the word “mistakenly.” They thought it implied that I meant Buhari had deliberately ordered the murder of civilians in Rann. But I merely inserted quotation marks because I was acknowledging that the military owned up to the killing and called it a mistake.</p><p>When Mubi, Adamawa State’s second largest town, was overrun by Boko Haram terrorists in 2014 and then President Goodluck Jonathan decided to visit Burkina Faso to resolve the country's political crisis, he was roundly condemned in the country, particularly in the North. I wrote a stinging column on this myself.</p><p>“Amid the heartrending humanitarian disaster that Boko Haram has wreaked on Mubi, the president chose to travel to Burkina Faso to 'resolve' the country’s political crisis. Which sane person goes to put out another person’s fire while his house is up in flames?” I wrote in a November 8, 2014, column titled, <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2014/11/state-of-emergency-and-worsening-boko.html" target="_blank">"State of Emergency Amid Worsening Boko Haram Insurgency."</a></p><p>But when I wrote to condemn Buhari for ignoring Rann and, like Jonathan, choosing instead to visit the Gambia to resolve the country’s political crisis, I got rhetorically violent pushbacks from the very people who should be hurt by Buhari’s blithe indifference to the tragedy in Rann. </p><p>All that Buhari did after more than 200 civilians were killed by two Nigerian Air Force bombs was to delegate an aide to issue a familiarly stereotyped expression of “regret” through his Twitter handle. Neither he nor his deputy physically traveled to Borno State to condole with and comfort the people.</p><p>President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s response to the Tudun Biri tragedy is comparatively better. Within a few days of the disaster, he delegated Vice President Kashim Shettima to visit the community and express his condolences. </p><p>“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent us to commensurate with the people of Kaduna over this tragic incident. The calibre of people that are here with me is a testimony [to] how deeply touched the president was by the incident,” Shettima said during the visit, as if to draw a contrast between this government’s response to a horrendous tragedy and the previous government’s response to a similar but more horrific involuntary mass massacre. </p><p>There’s always more that can be done, but that there was a presidential visit to the site of the tragedy—unlike in the past—is worthy of acknowledgement. I have advocated for this sort of empathetic leadership for years. I would be a hypocrite not to acknowledge it when I see it.</p><p>In condemning Buhari’s symbolic unconcern over the unintentional killing of IDPs in Rann, I wrote, “Now, a presidential national broadcast to mourn this tragedy and a personal visit by the president to give emotional strength to the bereaved won’t bring back the lost lives, but it would show respect for the dead and show that the president cares and takes responsibility for the fatal error of the people he is commander-in-chief of.”</p><p>There has been no presidential broadcast from Tinubu, but there was a presidential visit to bereaved families, yet the Tudun Biri tragedy has attracted more attention and anger in the North than the Rann one did. It’s obvious what’s responsible for the double standards: the ethno-regional identity of the president. </p><p>Had Buhari—or, for that matter, any northern Muslim—been president when the Tudun Biri Maulud merrymakers were involuntarily killed by the military, there would have been no expression of indignation from most of the people who are hyperventilating now. </p><p>Although Sheikh Ahmad Gumi was consistently critical of the Muhammadu Buhari government for eight years, which he undermined with his curious defense of bandits, he is increasingly coming across as merely using the Tudun Biri as an outlet to ventilate pent-up ethno-regional anxieties about a southern presidency.</p><p>That’s also true of former National Health Insurance Scheme DG/CEO Professor Usman Yusuf who became critical of the Buhari regime only after he was fired from his position. He is now furtively religionizing and regionalizing the Tudun Biri mass deaths. </p><p>''This is a religious procession,” Yusuf told Channels TV. “What would have happened if a religious Christian Procession in Plateau or Kaduna was bombed? Big Churches from the South specifically would have raised their voices all over Nigeria.” </p><p>This seems to me like an underhanded religious incitement because what the villagers were doing at the time of their unfortunate death was incidental to the fact of their death. They could very well have been at the marketplace selling goods. </p><p> Yusuf knows that the most effective way to rouse the raw passions of northerners, whether they are Muslims or Christians, is to make appeals to religion. Except that Yusuf’s attempt at religious manipulation is undermined by the reality that both the president and the vice president—and, to complicate things further, the two ministers of defense— are Muslims.</p><p> Why would they be interested in killing fellow Muslims? This same logic undermines Gumi’s claim that the Tudun Biri killing was “deliberate.”</p><p>Finally, Bashir Ahmad, former special assistant on digital communications to Muhammadu Buhari who saw no evil during Buhari’s reign suddenly went into an amnesic, conspiratorial frenzy over the Tudun Biri tragedy on Twitter. </p><p>“Haba! You can’t kill 126 innocent souls — a hundred and twenty-six civilians, and just call it a mistake. I can’t even remember a time when the troops killed such a number of terrorists anywhere in this country at once. @HQNigerianArmy, Nigerians are waiting to hear from you how this ‘mistake’ will be corrected and what measures you’d put in place to prevent a recurrence,” he wrote.</p><p>Thankfully, people shut him up by reminding him of Rann where 236 Muslims in IDP camps were mistakenly bombed to a cinder when Buhari was president and Buhari didn’t deem it worth his while to visit the survivors.</p><p>When your sense of rage and outrage is activated or suppressed by the primordial identity of the person in power, you have no conscience. </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/02/insecurity-will-only-expand-and-fester.html" target="_blank">Insecurity Will Only Expand and Fester with Buhari</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/12/only-buharis-switch-to-christianity.html" target="_blank">Only Buhari’s Switch to Christianity Will Nudge the North</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/05/the-revolution-wont-start-from-northor.html" target="_blank">The Revolution Won’t Start from the North—Or Anywhere</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/01/buharis-gambian-gambit-as-borno-burns.html" target="_blank">Buhari’s Gambian Gambit As Borno Burns</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/12/why-north-bleeds-and-people-sleep.html" target="_blank">Why the North Bleeds and the People Sleep</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/12/to-secure-northern-lives-first-secure.html" target="_blank">To Secure Northern Lives, First Secure Northern Brains</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2014/11/state-of-emergency-and-worsening-boko.html" target="_blank">State of Emergency and Worsening Boko Haram Insurgency</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-26243750561345715642023-12-02T00:00:00.016-05:002023-12-02T00:00:00.135-05:00How to Stop Judicial Coups Against Democracy in Nigeria<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), one of Nigeria’s most prominent pro-democracy NGOs, invited me to make a virtual presentation from my base in Atlanta to a national seminar it organized last Thursday on “targeted judicial reforms and enhanced judicial integrity in post-election litigation.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it, but here are the thoughts I would have shared on the topic.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5dRdVP3u8rSORRPL0MKhYqpRV4grDsAOTNBtQUCX_UlBDO1iUV1MEeIsj0uZO0FtEOdfLveMZsyHd6uQh-OGxZnOpNKJ8KyLeZuX1Hash0kCBRPC6ugUqO5OUraDyftCBfZFm3OBbfX9w7wfukX0tlxMT4MvOLeWRWPxSV_bCKXnsc2s4_LVN8T2mXQ/s960/Nigerian%20Judiciary.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb5dRdVP3u8rSORRPL0MKhYqpRV4grDsAOTNBtQUCX_UlBDO1iUV1MEeIsj0uZO0FtEOdfLveMZsyHd6uQh-OGxZnOpNKJ8KyLeZuX1Hash0kCBRPC6ugUqO5OUraDyftCBfZFm3OBbfX9w7wfukX0tlxMT4MvOLeWRWPxSV_bCKXnsc2s4_LVN8T2mXQ/s16000/Nigerian%20Judiciary.jpg" /></a></div><p>It’s oddly ironic that the judiciary, which should be the bulwark of democracy, has become such a dreadful terror to democracy that people are seeking to protect democracy from it. The courts have become <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/02/supreme-court-as-graveyard-of-electoral.html" target="_blank">the graveyards of electoral mandates</a>. Judges have not only descended to being common purchasable judicial rogues, but they have also become juridical coup plotters.</p><p>The major preoccupation of pro-democracy activists is no longer how to keep the military from politics and governance but how to save democracy from the judiciary. In other words, in Nigeria, our problem is no longer the fear of military coups but the cold reality of frighteningly escalating judicial coups.</p><p>A "judicial coup," also called a juridical coup d'état, refers to a situation where judicial or legal processes are deployed to subvert the choice of the electorate or to unfairly change the power structure of an existing government. </p><p>In other words, a judicial coup occurs when the courts are used to achieve political ends that would not be possible through standard political processes. In a judicial coup, the courts make rulings or interpretations of the law that drastically alter the balance of power, often favoring a particular political group or leader.</p><p> This can include invalidating election results, removing elected officials from office, altering the constitution through interpretive tyranny, or other significant legal actions that have profound political implications.</p><p>Before 2023, judicial coups happened in trickles and were barely perceptible. The big, bad bugaboo used to be INEC. When the Supreme Court made Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi the governor of Rivers State on October 25, 2007, without winning a single vote, we thought it was merely a curious, one-off democratic anomaly that was nonetheless morally justified because Celestine Omehia—who won the actual votes cast on April 14, 2007, and sworn in as the governor on May 29—was illegally replaced as PDP’s candidate after Amaechi won the party’s primary election.</p><p>Our collective toleration of this strange supersession of normal democratic procedures to produce a governor conduced to more aberrations. </p><p>On January 14, 2020, the Supreme Court produced its first unofficial “Supreme Court governor” in Hope Uzodimma of Imo State when it used dazzlingly fraudulent judicial abracadabra to subvert the outcome of the governorship election in the state. </p><p>The Supreme Court’s judicial helicopter zoomed past PDP’s Emeka Ihedioha who won 273,404 votes to emerge as the winner of the election; flew past Action Alliance’s Uche Nwosu who came second with 190,364 votes; zipped past APGA’s Ifeanyi Ararume who came third with 114,676 votes; and glided gently into the yard of fourth-place finisher Uzodimma of APC with only 96,458 votes. </p><p>It then declared that the fourth shall be the first, enthroned Uzodimma as the governor, and dethroned Ihedioha whom Imo voters and INEC had chosen as the legitimate governor. </p><p>I recall being too numb by the scandal of the judgment to even experience any sensation of righteous indignation. Then came the Ahmed Lawan judgment, and I was jolted to my very bones. A man who didn’t run for an election, who admitted he didn’t run for an election, and who gave up trying to steal an election that he himself admitted he didn’t run for, much less win, was declared the “winner” of the election by the Supreme Court. </p><p>Because I closely followed the case and shaped public discourse on it, I was so incensed by the judgment that, in a viral February 6 social media post, I called Supreme Court justices <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/lawan-and-supreme-court-of-shameless.html" target="_blank">“a rotten gaggle of useless, purchasable judicial bandits,”</a> which prompted an unexampled official response from the Supreme Court that dripped wet with undiluted bile. </p><p>However, many judges, including some conscientious Supreme Court judges, agreed with me. For example, in his farewell speech last month, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad re-echoed my sentiments about the Supreme Court and cited former Court of Appeal justice Oludotun Adefope-Okojie who, in her own farewell speech, approvingly quoted my description of Supreme Court justices as “a rotten gaggle of useless, purchasable judicial bandits.”</p><p>The judicial banditry I talked about has assumed a different, worrying dimension. It has now become full-on judicial sabotage against the soul of democracy itself. In unprecedented judicial roguery, the Appeal Court has invalidated the election of all 16 PDP lawmakers in the Plateau State House of Assembly and handed unearned victories to APC candidates. It also nullified the victory of PDP’s Governor Caleb Mutfwang and asked that APC’s Nentawe Yilwatda Goshwe, who lost in the actual election, be declared the winner.</p><p>The case of the judicial theft of Kano State’s governorship election from NNPP to APC is too well-known to warrant restating. In all these cases, the judiciary invoked matters that were extraneous to the actual vote (called “technicalities”) to decide whom to crown as winners of the elections.</p><p>It’s now so bad that courting the votes of the electorates is no longer an important component of the democratic process since politicians can get from the courts what they lost at the ballot box. That’s a dangerous state for any democracy to be in.</p><p>The judiciary is becoming an unacceptably treacherous but overpampered monster that is exercising powers that are beyond the bounds of reason. It needs to be stopped through a holistic reworking of the electoral act.</p><p>The first thing that needs to be spelled out more clearly and more forcefully in a revised electoral act is that pre-election matters are not litigable after the winner of an election has been announced. All pre-election petitions should be litigated before the conduct of elections. Post-election litigations should be limited to the conduct of the elections. Since this happens once in four years, it should not be too much of a burden for the judiciary.</p><p>The second change that needs to be enshrined in a revised electoral act is a provision that divests courts of the powers to declare winners and losers of electoral contests. I am the first to admit that this is problematic because it limits the mechanism for redress available to politicians in cases of INEC-engineered electoral robberies. But in situations where courts can glibly overrule the will of the electorate by invoking procedural inanities that are extrinsic to elections to declare winners and losers, I would rather deal with INEC alone.</p><p>The conduct of elections can be improved in the future to the point that manipulations can be significantly reduced. But I can’t say the same for a rapacious, unjust, and mercenary judiciary such as we have today. </p><p>In any case, in all functional democracies, it is voters, not the courts, who elect and remove people from positions of political power. If the courts find sufficient evidence of irregularities in the conduct of elections, they can order a rerun. But they should never be invested with the power to declare winners and losers. </p><p>The last suggestion I have for the revision of the electoral act is to constitutionalize the imperative to finalize the adjudication of all election petitions before the inauguration of elected officials into their offices. There are two reasons for this.</p><p>First, it is disruptive to put elected officials through the hassles of post-election litigation while they are already officially in office. Governance is often put on hold during the pendency of litigations, and lots of state resources are expended to bribe judges, hire lawyers, and bring witnesses. That’s unfair to Nigerians.</p><p>Second, at least at the presidential level, once someone has been declared the president and is inaugurated, they automatically assume enormous symbolic power that is almost impossible to reverse. They also have access to enormous resources that they can deploy to influence the course of justice.</p><p>Whatever we do, we must curb the excesses of our out-of-control judiciary before it finally murders what remains of our democracy.</p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/nigerian-judiciary-as-lost-hype-of.html" target="_blank">Nigerian Judiciary as Lost Hype of Justice</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-and-ganduje-shouldnt-play-with.html" target="_blank">Tinubu and Ganduje Shouldn’t Play with Fire in Kano</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">Why the Kano Verdict Can’t Stand</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/lawan-and-supreme-court-of-shameless.html" target="_blank">Lawan and Supreme Court of Shameless Judicial Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/a-reply-to-supreme-court-of-illiterate.html" target="_blank">A Reply to a Supreme Court of Illiterate Judicial Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/02/supreme-court-as-graveyard-of-electoral.html" target="_blank">Supreme Court as Graveyard of Electoral Mandates</a></b></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-79726459811727672572023-11-25T00:00:00.003-05:002023-11-25T00:03:08.619-05:00Nigerian Judiciary as Lost Hype of Justice<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>The idea that the “judiciary is the last hope of the common man” is a banal, flyblown cliché that is habitually huckstered in Nigerian judicial circles and uncritically repeated in the Nigerian commentariat. But that’s mere hype. There has never been any moment, at least in my lifetime, when the judiciary was the unalterable guardian of justice for common people.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8FMvp-mrYyMu6J5Yli41yfC2wBuywMkWRXp6UWf8CxQh_ZRQ1CuSzBItAoTQtkoRPIemY-ToUjGOb6XnvCtjkBRm39Nc2WMADjs6L5-IZl-xCAdPD5A6_mlEnsXES33dgTsGb4Lh_fbZ_CoD5T8mu7HfMpinmgkawUG1kCpxmYN9QCuP0hSVreDPaGew/s1080/CJN%20Olukayode%20Ariwoola.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8FMvp-mrYyMu6J5Yli41yfC2wBuywMkWRXp6UWf8CxQh_ZRQ1CuSzBItAoTQtkoRPIemY-ToUjGOb6XnvCtjkBRm39Nc2WMADjs6L5-IZl-xCAdPD5A6_mlEnsXES33dgTsGb4Lh_fbZ_CoD5T8mu7HfMpinmgkawUG1kCpxmYN9QCuP0hSVreDPaGew/s16000/CJN%20Olukayode%20Ariwoola.jpg" /></a></div><p>The judiciary has shown occasional flashes of independence and forthrightness, but it has also been routinely instrumentalized to oppress “the common man,” to protect the self-interest of people in power, and to deodorize the moral stench of the gilded and perfumed but inwardly stinky elite class.</p><p>The raft of scandalously unjust and predetermined appeal court judgments against the non-APC governors of Kano, Plateau, and Zamfara states bears the testimonies of a compromised and barefacedly mercenary judiciary and of the fact that what is lost isn’t hope but hype.</p><p>I am not one of the people for whom justice is said to have been done only when the opposition wins in court. I am politically unaffiliated and see not a smidgeon of ideological distinction among all the major political parties in Nigeria.</p><p>In fact, I stood out from the crowd in thinking that the judiciary’s affirmation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s victory at the polls was justified by evidence and logic. In my September 16, 2023, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/pepts-verdict-and-task-before-supreme.html" target="_blank">“PEPT’s Verdict and the Task Before the Supreme Court,”</a> for example, I argued that the legal challenges of PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and LP’s Peter Obi to Tinubu’s win were the weakest I've seen in my life.</p><p>Even if the judiciary had overturned Tinubu’s victory, neither Atiku nor Obi would have been constitutionally qualified to be declared president because they didn’t win up to 25 percent of votes in 24 states. Atiku won 25 percent or more of votes in 21 states while Obi won 25 percent or more in a mere 16 states plus the FCT.</p><p>I wrote: “The centerpiece of the electoral petitions against Tinubu’s victory was that Tinubu should be disqualified from running for the last presidential election because of a whole bunch of things they alleged against him, most of which revolved around questions of his irrefutable moral turpitude. Unfortunately, immorality isn't always illegality. </p><p>“The petitions were high on emotions, conjectures, moral posturing, grandstanding, logical absurdities (such as insisting that candidates must win 25 percent of the FCT to win a presidential election thereby making Abuja more important than every part of Nigeria, that Tinubu should be disqualified for a voluntary civil forfeiture of drug money in the US more than three decades ago, that Tinubu should be disqualified because of false and ignorant claims that he didn't graduate from Chicago State University, or for perjuries he committed more than 20 years ago, etc.) than on legally sound, substantive arguments about the election itself.”</p><p>APC and LP minions attacked me for this—and, of course, for<a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/10/neither-tinubu-nor-atiku-forged.html" target="_blank"> my defense of the legitimacy of Tinubu's Chicago State University degree</a>— and said I was paid by Tinubu with whom I’ve never had any association and whose politics and policies I intensely resent. The PDP and LP politicians I used to be on good terms with stopped communicating with me. </p><p>But I don’t live for anyone’s validation and don’t derive my inspiration from the noise of the shrill majority. I’ve transcended that a long, long time ago. So long as I am telling the truth, I don’t care who hates, loves, condemns, or commends me.</p><p>I’ve gone to this length to show that I have no partisan loyalty to any person or group. To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with being a partisan; I just am not one. </p><p>When I said the appeal court judgments against non-APC governors seem like premeditated judicial manipulations, I am not saying this from the resources of my emotions—or to get back in the good graces of the anti-Tinubu crowd. No, it’s because the facts point to it.</p><p>Take, for instance, the confusion over the contradictory judgment of the court of appeal in the Kano governorship case. It’s evident that the appeal court judges at some point dug deep into their consciences and ruled in favor of justice by vacating the judgment of the lower court that overturned NNPP’s victory. But something later contaminated their consciences, which compelled them to rewrite their judgment.</p><p>However, in rewriting their judgment, they neglected to clean up everything they had written. What we see as “contradictions”—or what they call “clerical errors”— are merely surviving remnants of their previously unspoiled consciences. Only someone who doesn’t understand English would call entire meaningful sentences “clerical errors.”</p><p>A law dictionary defines a clerical error as “a small mistake made when writing or copying something down, like typing the wrong number or misspelling a word. It's not a big mistake that affects the outcome of a case. Courts can fix clerical errors even after a judgment has been made. It's like when you accidentally write the wrong letter in a word and then go back to fix it.”</p><p>Quashing a previous judgment and recommending that the appellant be paid 1 million naira can’t be a clerical error. It is exactly what happens when two different judgments are merged into one and the expurgation of some parts of the judgement weren’t done tidily. It’s a classic case of a pre-written judgement gone wrong. </p><p>Recall that in an August 29, 2020, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/08/aso-rock-cabals-judicial-cabal-on.html" target="_blank">“Aso Rock Cabal’s Judicial Cabal on Election Petitions,”</a> I revealed that “there is a judicial cabal at the Court of Appeals of Nigeria that writes judgments for election petition tribunals” and that “The actual writing of the judgments is usually done by a consortium of justices and legal practitioners…. This subversion of justice by a conclave is a low-risk-high-reward undertaking. Members of the judicial cabal are routinely compensated with promotion and financial reward.”</p><p>Similarly, courts are usually guided by the doctrine of judicial precedent, which the <i>Oxford Dictionary of Law</i> defines as “judgement or decision of a Court used as an authority for reaching the same decision in subsequent cases.” </p><p>When a court dismissed a previous case as incompetent because it was a preelection matter when it was filed by one party but accepts it as the basis for overturning the votes of hundreds of thousands of citizens when it was filed by another party, you don’t need to be smart to know that something is amiss.</p><p>As I once pointed out, precedents may be modified, but they are rarely overturned without a compelling reason, certainly not within a few years after they were established. That is what legal scholars call<i> stare decisis</i>, that is, the doctrine that courts should follow earlier judicial decisions.</p><p>Even conscientious APC drumbeaters confess in private that they are manipulating the judiciary to take over Kano, Plateau, and Zamfara as indemnity for the 2027 presidential election. They see the states as high-reward but low-risk states to grab.</p><p>One APC supporter told me my apprehensions about Kano devolving into sanguinary fury as a result of the brazen theft of NNPP’s victory there—which the Supreme Court will give final imprimatur to— didn’t take into account the fact that Kano explodes only when the trigger is religious. I hope he is right because, as a pacifist, I resent violence and the shedding of blood, particularly for political or religious reasons. But there is also such a thing as foolish optimism. </p><p>In Plateau and Zamfara, the cast of characters in the gubernatorial contests there also all share similar primordial characteristics, so although the events there are being dictated from Abuja, ordinary folks won’t be roused to primeval anger by electoral robbery. That’s the calculation of APC. Again, this strikes me as blind and unrealistic optimism.</p><p>More than that, though, justice matters. People’s victories shouldn’t just be arbitrarily stolen through the judiciary because the president is “strategizing” for a second term when the first one has barely taken off.</p><p>Variety is the spice of life. Nigeria’s democracy would be unbearably dreary if APC imposes itself on most states of the federation. It is this sort of inordinate power grab that caused PDP to splinter irretrievably—and that ended previous experiments at civilian rule. But the people at the helm of the APC are too inebriated by the temporary political dominance they enjoy to see the big picture.</p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/11/tinubu-and-ganduje-shouldnt-play-with.html" target="_blank">Tinubu and Ganduje Shouldn’t Play with Fire in Kano</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">Why the Kano Verdict Can’t Stand</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/pepts-verdict-and-task-before-supreme.html" target="_blank">PEPT’s Verdict and the Task Before the Supreme Court</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/a-reply-to-supreme-court-of-illiterate.html" target="_blank">A Reply to a Supreme Court of Illiterate Judicial Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/02/supreme-court-as-graveyard-of-electoral.html" target="_blank">Supreme Court as Graveyard of Electoral Mandates</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2020/08/aso-rock-cabals-judicial-cabal-on.html" target="_blank">Aso Rock Cabal’s Judicial Cabal on Election Petitions</a></b></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-57756667076351454622023-11-18T00:00:00.001-05:002023-11-18T00:00:00.137-05:00Tinubu and Ganduje Shouldn’t Play with Fire in Kano<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>In a predictable, premeditated, and carefully choreographed judicial charade, the Court of Appeal on Friday upheld the verdict of the Kano State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal that reversed the electoral triumph of NNPP’s Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State. I sincerely hope this assault on justice isn’t the spark that ignites an inferno in Kano—and in the country.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuYPEyenGE4RzYVVw4PqQG8oyVlEZ3gD4wa54X8MHC3HWEnmCbWa11vA6bvxKDK-Dn0pXShGkFq7P44Vvm1UKFAhMj_iETjOaYZreYE41NnT_qj5Y3JUWtjim57C_vGo8g7g-uUoF2TtIlcIaMQv7rrR3q2cgvVNNWT7PSjMV12Kr-VBGOkuM8oXVAvmY/s1080/Ganduje%20and%20Kwankwaso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuYPEyenGE4RzYVVw4PqQG8oyVlEZ3gD4wa54X8MHC3HWEnmCbWa11vA6bvxKDK-Dn0pXShGkFq7P44Vvm1UKFAhMj_iETjOaYZreYE41NnT_qj5Y3JUWtjim57C_vGo8g7g-uUoF2TtIlcIaMQv7rrR3q2cgvVNNWT7PSjMV12Kr-VBGOkuM8oXVAvmY/s16000/Ganduje%20and%20Kwankwaso.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>The signs had been evident since early October that a predetermination had been made that irrespective of the facts, the flawed, preplanned judgment of the election petition tribunal must be preserved at all costs. </p><p>For example, on October 6, the Head of the Legal Department of INEC in Kano State by the name of Suleiman Alkali wrote a curious letter stating that INEC, which had declared NNP’s Yusuf as the validly elected winner of the governorship election in Kano, was no longer interested in defending its declaration. </p><p>“I have been instructed by the commission headquarters that INEC as an umpire has no reason to appeal any judgment,”<a href="https://www.arise.tv/inec-hq-overrules-kano-office-over-withdrawal-of-appeal-against-kano-guber-tribunal-judgment/" target="_blank"> he wrote.</a> “Consequently, the National Commission in charge of Legal Services and National Commissioner in charge of Kano zone directed that the appeal be withdrawn and all processes for all appeals should be forwarded to the Kano Office.” </p><p>In response to the jolt and outrage that the letter generated, Sam Olumekun, INEC’s National Commissioner and chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee, said Alkali wasn’t authorized to write the letter, pointing out that the letter had “since been withdrawn and the officer reprimanded.” We weren’t told the nature of the “reprimand” because it was a lie.</p><p>That was exactly what played out when INEC acted in cahoots with Ahmed Lawan to steal APC’s Bashir Machina’s Yobe North Senatorial District primary win, which the Supreme Court affirmed in a shameless show of what <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/lawan-and-supreme-court-of-shameless.html" target="_blank">I called judicial banditry.</a> </p><p>(Retired Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed quoted his colleague’s quotation of my abrasive censure of the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/637956-what-retiring-supreme-court-judge-dattijo-muhammad-said-about-cjn-nigerian-judiciary-full-text.html" target="_blank">in his parting shots</a> at his colleagues even though he and his colleague didn’t give me credit— and slightly misquoted me. I said in a February 6 article titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/lawan-and-supreme-court-of-shameless.html" target="_blank">“Lawan and Supreme Court of Shameless Judicial Bandits”</a> that "Nigeria's Supreme Court is, without a doubt, a rotten gaggle of useless, purchasable judicial bandits. The highest bidder gets their judgement." Dattijo used "voter" where I used "rotten.")</p><p>Anyway, on September 5, 2022, an INEC lawyer by the name of Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, had filed an affidavit at the Federal High Court to <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/09/inecs-machina-machination-part-of-2023.html" target="_blank">discredit the result of its own election</a> that had declared Machina as the winner of the Yobe North APC senatorial primary election. </p><p>In the aftermath of the shock and fury that attended this, Festus Okoye, at the time INEC’s National Commissioner and chairman of its Information and Voter Education Committee Festus, repudiated Ikpeazu’s affidavit and said, “the Commission will review its quality assurance protocols, including the preview by appropriate ranking Officials of all processes filed on its behalf to ascertain their correctness in all material particulars with all reports and all information at its disposal before their presentation so that a situation like this is not repeated.”</p><p>Well, that situation was repeated in Kano in October this year, almost exactly a year later. It seems to be a well-practiced pattern. INEC first flies a kite, sees how high it flies, then crashes it. But the whole point is to prepare the minds of the public for what is being hatched so as to minimize its shock value when it finally materializes.</p><p> If the outcome of the Ahmed Lawan and Bashir Machina case is any guide, it means INEC is deeply complicit in Ganduje’s chicanery and plot to steal Yusuf’s governorship. It might also mean that the “judicial bandits” I talked about at the Supreme Court are waiting in the wings to feast on another stolen electoral dinner. I hope I am wrong.</p><p>The second indication that this appeal court judgment was a well-rehearsed theater came when the appeal court completed its deliberations on November 6 but deferred its judgment until November 17 and then requested that security be heightened in Kano in anticipation of the publicizing of its judgement. Only people in a dry run for the abortion of justice ask for anticipatory protection from their potential victims.</p><p>As I pointed out in my September 23, 2023, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">“Why the Kano Verdict Can’t Stand,”</a> it is apparent that former Kano State governor and current APC national chairman Abdullahi Ganduje has resolved to damn all consequences and use the federal might at his disposal to wrest the power that his party and his flunkey lost to Rabiu Kwankwaso and his son-in-law in the governorship election. </p><p>“APC appears intent to get back through judicial manipulation what it lost through the ballot box,” <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">I wrote.</a> “It’s a higher-order, more sophisticated, and less primitive version of the broad-day electoral heist they perpetrated in 2019 after former Governor Abdullahi ‘Gandollar’ Ganduje lost to the same Abba Yusuf.”</p><p>In a defiant disregard for potentially untoward consequences, Ganduje—of course, with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s blessing—has decided to pull all strings to snatch judicial victory from the jaws of electoral defeat.</p><p>As I will show shortly, both the election tribunal and the appeal court are not even pretending to be fair in their judgments. They have already been handed a verdict and mandated to fish for evidence to justify it. The verdict, of course, is that NNPP’s Abba Yusuf must go and must be replaced by APC’s Nasiru Gawuna.</p><p>In rhetorical studies, we call that finalism, that is, a conclusion in search of evidence. Psychologists call it "motivated reasoning," that is, tendentious interpretation intentionally designed to produce a predetermined outcome. Philosophers call that armchair hermeneutics, that is, reasoning that ignores the evidence.</p><p>The <a href="https://dailytrust.com/kano-govship-why-court-of-appeal-sacked-yusuf-affirmed-gawunas-election/#google_vignette" target="_blank"><i>Daily Trust</i> reported</a> Justice Moore A. Adumein as predicating the nullification of Yusuf’s victory on the fact of his not being a member of the NNPP when he was nominated by the party. “As rightfully found, Yusuf Abba was not a member of the NNPP at the time he was purportedly sponsored by his party and he was not qualified to contest the March Governorship Election,” Justice Adumein reportedly said.</p><p>Yet, in quashing the election of APC’s House of Representatives member Musa Iliyasu Kwankwaso and reinstating NNPP’s Yusuf Umar Datti as the validly elected member to represent Kano’s Kura/Madobi/Garun Malam Federal Constituency seat, the same appeal court said two weeks ago that “the issue of membership of a political party is an internal affair, which no court has jurisdiction on,” <a href="https://leadership.ng/appeal-court-reserves-judgement-in-kano-govship-tussle-sacks-apc-lawmaker/" target="_blank">according to the LEADERSHIP</a> newspaper.</p><p>I had thought that this was settled law. As I wrote <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">in a previous column</a>, “A May 26 Supreme Court ruling also says rival parties have no right to question the validity of the internal decisions made by other parties unless they can prove that they suffered demonstrable harm as a result of the internal decisions another party took. So, the Kano governorship election tribunal’s verdict on this issue will be as dead as a dodo upon appeal.” </p><p>The question now is, why is NNPP’s Yusuf being held to a different standard? I get that Kwankwaso and Yusuf didn’t handle their victory well. Instead of being happy, their victory roused destructive vengeance and mean-spiritedness in them. But that’s no reason to steal their legitimately earned victory. </p><p>I am certain that NNPP will take this case to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court is guided by its precedents, which is never guaranteed, I have no doubt that it will invalidate the judgements of the lower courts. </p><p>But this is clearly not a legal issue. It’s a battle for political supremacy in Kano between Ganduje and Kwankwaso in which Ganduje is deploying the courts as cudgels to fustigate Kwankwaso.</p><p>My advice for President Tinubu is to be very watchful because this is really treacherous territory. Righteous anger over obvious injustice—on top of ongoing existential torment in the country—can spark violence whose consequence we can’t predict. </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/09/why-kano-verdict-cant-stand.html" target="_blank">Why the Kano Verdict Can’t Stand</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/lawan-and-supreme-court-of-shameless.html" target="_blank">Lawan and Supreme Court of Shameless Judicial Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/02/a-reply-to-supreme-court-of-illiterate.html#google_vignette" target="_blank">A Reply to a Supreme Court of Illiterate Judicial Bandits</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/09/inecs-machina-machination-part-of-2023.html" target="_blank">INEC’s Machina Machination Part of 2023 Machiavellianism</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-65847591536251816382023-11-11T00:00:00.009-05:002023-11-11T00:00:00.133-05:00Tinubu Wants Even Broke Universities to Fund Him<p><b> By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank"> @farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is really having a ball—at the expense of the rest of Nigeria. He has become so comfortable in his presidential self-indulgence that he now wants to wring water from stones and deposit it into an ocean. Our stone-broke universities are the stones. The presidency is the ocean to which Tinubu wants to pour the water he wants to extract from stones.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs5LC4bPDyQPifEYf3uEeT9q-ZnA3x4SwiGzUhB05HWDvBVSMKE9YHR35ctn_t7yzFeW-LgRWdgsUD-mBwEsVSlQ1x7q3thq_bbMq0gQZQQtUhkqgC3FqRuwf_cPe7EPQ6QHbIS454RjeYVy6L7YsVgYVx28CcT675KslGi3X4dc8w3qm5pywbpU4AB1w/s1152/President%20Bola%20Tinubu.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs5LC4bPDyQPifEYf3uEeT9q-ZnA3x4SwiGzUhB05HWDvBVSMKE9YHR35ctn_t7yzFeW-LgRWdgsUD-mBwEsVSlQ1x7q3thq_bbMq0gQZQQtUhkqgC3FqRuwf_cPe7EPQ6QHbIS454RjeYVy6L7YsVgYVx28CcT675KslGi3X4dc8w3qm5pywbpU4AB1w/s16000/President%20Bola%20Tinubu.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>It wasn’t enough that he signed a N2.176 trillion Supplementary Appropriation Act on Wednesday in Abuja mostly to fund decadent presidential pleasures, such as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nigeria-budget-tinubu-yacht-spending-income-inequality-1449807f70ba537e5c71f9a7f4581262" target="_blank">$38 million for the presidential air fleet</a>, $6.1 million for a presidential yacht, and even more millions of dollars for presidential “repairs,” presidential feeding, foreign SUVs for the First Lady’s office and for legislators, etc.</p><p>Now, he wants struggling, cash-strapped federal universities that are barely surviving to turn over 40 percent of all their internally generated revenue to the federal coffers to fund more presidential sybaritism and elite indulgence. I didn’t believe it when someone first called my attention to it.</p><p>The LEADERSHIP newspaper <a href="https://leadership.ng/amid-cash-crunch-federal-govt-asks-varsities-others-to-remit-40-revenue/#google_vignette" target="_blank">reported this week</a> that the Accountant-General of the Federation by the name of Mrs Oluwatoyin Madein sent a memo to all federal universities titled “Implementation of 40% Automatic Deduction from Internally Generated Revenue of Partially Funded Federal Government Institutions.” </p><p>Signed on her behalf by Felix Ore-ofe Ogundairo, the director of Revenue & Investment in the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the memo said, “I am directed to inform you that the Honourable Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy (HMF&CME) has approved the implementation of a 40% auto deduction from the Gross Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of all Partially Funded Federal Government Institutions in line with the Provision of Section 62 of Finance Act, 2020 with effect from November, 2023.</p><p>“Agencies/parastatals to not more than 50% of their gross IGR and the remittance of 100% (hundred percent) of the remaining 50% (fifty percent) to the Sub-recurrent Account. While all statutory revenue lines like Tender Fees, Contractor’s Registration Fees, Disposal of Fixed Assets, Rent on Quarters, etc shall be remitted 100% (hundred percent) to the Sub-recurrent Account.</p><p>“Consequently, all partially funded Agencies/Parastatals must align their budget requirements and ensure total compliance with the provision of Section 62 of Finance Act, 2020 and Finance Circular, 2021.”</p><p>This makes absolutely no sense at all. I am not talking of the blindingly poor grammar of the memo. The memo concedes that federal universities are merely “partially funded” by the federal government. That’s an acknowledgement of their financial precarity since they are supposed to be fully funded by the federal government, which established them.</p><p>In order to survive and live up to the demands of their mandate in spite of progressively vanishing support from the federal government that set them up, many universities devised creative and not so creative strategies to generate funds to stay afloat, which aren’t even sufficient. Now a government that has beaten every known record for eyewatering presidential profligacy wants to share in whatever little money financially distressed universities were able to raise to keep them from going under. </p><p>This is a wantonly cruel suffocation of federal universities that are barely hanging on! It betrays not just a profound poverty of imagination but a studied design to snuff out the last evidence of life in our universities. Since children of the elite no longer attend public universities in Nigeria, it’s easy to see why the government wants to kill them by stealth. </p><p>It’s a continuation of the conservative, right-wing, anti-people, neoliberal orthodoxy that is obviously the governing philosophy of the Tinubu administration. It’s probably also a pre-emptive move against legitimate demands for the funding of federal universities since the administration has said it has now saved trillions of naira from the removal of petroleum subsidies.</p><p>The initial argument was that money saved from the removal of petrol subsidies would be invested in education and infrastructure. That has turned out, at least so far, to be a big fat lie, as some of us had predicted. The money is instead being used to pay for the hedonic thrills and delights of people in power while the majority of the population sinks irrecoverably into the abyss of misery and deprivation.</p><p>But someone needs to tell honchos of the Tinubu administration that universities are not money-making enterprises. They are social services. Social services are an investment in the people, not revenue-generating ventures to fund the government. It’s sad that this needs to be pointed out.</p><p>Every single country on earth that transitioned from backwardness and stagnancy to success and progress has had to invest enormously in its universities. For example, Singapore’s transition from a Third World to a First World was enabled by its investments in its universities. </p><p>Singapore has now become a hub for education in Asia, and is known for its world-class faculty, cutting-edge research facilities, and strong emphasis on innovation. It didn’t happen overnight or by mere wishes. It happened because the government of Singapore has consistently invested in its universities.</p><p>South African universities are world-class and drive the country’s development because the central government there has committed massive resources to the higher education sector. Public universities receive substantial funding from the government, which is responsible for their high academic reputation, significant research output, and impressive contribution to national growth.</p><p>India, the world’s most populous country, with its large and diverse higher education system, has several well-funded public universities that are the drivers of the country’s match to greatness. Institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) receive substantial government support, which enables them to excel in technology, management, and research.</p><p>China has the second largest economy in the world after the United States. One of the secrets for its transition from dingy deprivation a few decades ago to gleaming prosperity now is the significant increase it made over time in its investment in its higher education sector. Top public universities like Tsinghua University and Peking University receive substantial government funding, which arms them with the arsenal to compete globally in terms of research output and academic excellence.</p><p>It speaks to the lack of foresight and self-interestedness of the ruling elites in Nigeria that instead of investing in our universities with an eye to the future, they want to squeeze money out of them—and with it the last vestige of life in them.</p><p> This is governance by banditry. How do you ask institutions you should fund but that you have starved of funds for decades to turn around to fund you? Where in the world does that happen? </p><p>The government is, in other words, asking federal universities to self-annihilate, to self-immolate, in order to feed an already overfed and overpampered federal government whose only reason for existence seems to be to indulge in hedonistic frivolities amid widening existential torment brought about by its own incompetence and cruelty. </p><p><b>Related Articles:</b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/10/nigerias-not-broke-its-political-elites.html" target="_blank">Nigeria’s Not Broke; It’s Political Elites That are “Broque”</a></b></p><p><b><a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2016/05/sacrifice-by-poor-amid-subsidies-for.html" target="_blank">“Sacrifice” by the Poor Amid Subsidies for the Rich in Nigeria</a></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-7257397422283609752023-11-09T01:00:00.002-05:002023-11-09T01:00:49.147-05:00 I Did NOT Write Article on Fairness of Tinubu’s Appointments<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>A November 5 Sunday Tribune article by Bolanle Bolawale titled <a href="https://tribuneonlineng.com/have-tinubus-appointments-been-equitable-and-fair/" target="_blank">“Have Tinubu’s appointments been equitable and fair?”</a>— which justifies, rationalizes, and explains away what some people have called Tinubu’s Yorubacentric appointments— has been misattributed to me.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqivjdewsOudYiaySJreaRs5lOnDrTF6ve2k2bT4p6P54QiCLaLoElpVSMcKTv4O2IHXoYwdZTGZpjWeAz3PVonvGy1l7thtFttxELZdFe1xUcwpLEIEsM0L0JRRtgiG3c5ML4sI3gcu5ozrefsNQ0VgHMjd6o88J11phG4WqvcazDsd07z4dR12v1EAo/s900/PresidentBolaTinubu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="675" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqivjdewsOudYiaySJreaRs5lOnDrTF6ve2k2bT4p6P54QiCLaLoElpVSMcKTv4O2IHXoYwdZTGZpjWeAz3PVonvGy1l7thtFttxELZdFe1xUcwpLEIEsM0L0JRRtgiG3c5ML4sI3gcu5ozrefsNQ0VgHMjd6o88J11phG4WqvcazDsd07z4dR12v1EAo/s16000/PresidentBolaTinubu.jpg" /></a></div><p>It turned out that the <i>Nigerian Tribune</i>’s webmaster posted Bolawale’s “On the Lord’s Day” Sunday column in the space for my Saturday “Notes from Atlanta” column on Tribune’s website in error. I had no idea this had happened.</p><p>I first became aware of it early Sunday morning when I got scores of messages from random people commending and condemning me for the article, which I had not the slightest hint existed. </p><p>Because I had no clue what was going on, I genuinely thought the people who emailed me had lost their minds. I thought they were mass hallucinating or suffering from fuel-subsidy-removal- and hunger-induced psychosis—until one of them sent me a link to the article, and it had my byline!</p><p>I immediately texted a Tribune editor and asked what was going on. He reached out to the webmaster who profusely apologized and said the mix-up of Bolawale’s column and mine was an honest, unintentional error. </p><p>The webmaster immediately corrected the mistake. If you go to Tribune’s site, the article <a href="https://tribuneonlineng.com/have-tinubus-appointments-been-equitable-and-fair/" target="_blank">now appears in Bolawale’s “On the Lord’s Day” column.</a> His contact details are on the site, too.</p><p>I thought that was it. But I have now discovered that the column has gone viral on WhatsApp and has been republished on many fringe websites. Multiple people still share it with me and wonder what motivated me to write it.</p><p>I want to put it on the record that I did NOT write the article. My “Notes from Atlanta” column on the back page of the Saturday Tribune appears only on Saturdays (duh!) and is always also published on my blog and on Facebook and Twitter. </p><p>Plus, anyone who has read me consistently would know that the language in the column does not bear my stylistic imprints. </p><p>This is the third time (as far as I am aware) that I have suffered this sort of misattribution. The first was the misattribution of <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2021/09/why-political-power-damages-brainand.html" target="_blank">my column on how power damages the brain</a> to Pat Utomi in late 2019. </p><p>Although I wrote <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2019/10/epidemic-of-plagiarism-in-nigerian.html" target="_blank">multiple articles to call attention to this</a>, and Pat Utomi himself wrote a column in <i>ThisDay</i> to deny authorship of the article, some people still misattribute it to him.</p><p>Then in June 2022, someone (maybe some people) intentionally misappropriated my March 5, 2002, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/03/tinubu-dogara-and-prison-and-poison-of.html" target="_blank">"Tinubu, Dogara, and the Prison and Poison of Religious Politics,"</a> retitled it as <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/07/false-article-attributed-to-me-on.html" target="_blank">"ARE YOU CHRISTIANS REALLY A MINORITY IN NIGERIA,"</a> proceeded to attribute to me things I didn't say in my original column, circulated it on WhatsApp groups, and got it published on numerous peripheral websites.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2625710219374323467.post-74216529878913455522023-11-04T00:00:00.014-04:002023-11-04T13:46:33.477-04:00What Critics of Rufai Oseni Don’t Know about Journalism<p><b>By Farooq A. Kperogi</b></p><p><b>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi" target="_blank">@farooqkperogi</a></b></p><p>A viral, contentious dialogic confrontation between Arise TV’s Rufai Oseni and one Jesutega Onokpasa, identified as a lawyer and “APC chieftain,” on October 30 has once again centralized conversations about who a journalist is and what constitutes journalism, which I’d addressed in previous columns.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDc1cPa5NQMhyphenhyphenT9B9o1N_iViE3k5q8RobJH7LadcJTRQTJlX5RDPsRrkFQP_ngQInVLLDlZFnoxVvjuAsYQCC-KBtB79nvMKmzcaSKW3KRubjvNJ1fhgtUPohA5d4RbFEzVzQfxnKrDjABckrLoh3da598EoSc9WPoCUr7ZBL7ODzEDAUNSbP11m4R64k/s692/Rufai%20Oseni%20andJesutega%20Onokpasa.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDc1cPa5NQMhyphenhyphenT9B9o1N_iViE3k5q8RobJH7LadcJTRQTJlX5RDPsRrkFQP_ngQInVLLDlZFnoxVvjuAsYQCC-KBtB79nvMKmzcaSKW3KRubjvNJ1fhgtUPohA5d4RbFEzVzQfxnKrDjABckrLoh3da598EoSc9WPoCUr7ZBL7ODzEDAUNSbP11m4R64k/s16000/Rufai%20Oseni%20andJesutega%20Onokpasa.jpg" /></a></div><p>In the exchange, Oseni asked Onokpasa a legitimate, well-chosen question about the deleterious consequences of the removal of fuel subsidies on ordinary citizens and on the national economy. Onokpasa tried to prevaricate. He said Tinubu didn’t remove fuel subsidies. Buhari did before he left.</p><p> That’s technically true, but it was Tinubu’s recklessly precipitous and ill-advised announcement in his inaugural speech that subsidies were gone for good that sparked an instantaneous but totally unjustified spiraling of the cost of petrol, which also touched off a devastating hyperinflationary inferno that’s still consuming Nigeria.</p><p>As any journalist invested in the pursuit of the truth should do, Oseni vigorously pushed back against Onokpasa’s equivocation. Unable to defend his position with the resources of evidence, logic, and reason, Onokpasa launched unprovoked ad hominem verbal assaults on Oseni.</p><p>He threatened to walk out of the interview, belittled Oseni as a “boy,” a “badly brought up little boy,” and then questioned Oseni’s professional journalistic credentials in order to delegitimize him and his uncomfortable questions.</p><p>“Listen, Rufai. This is not animal psychology,” he said in a fit of groundless gerontocratic and professional arrogance. “It is law. If you want to be a journalist, you can be a journalist, and you should learn the ropes ahead of you. You can never be my mate.”</p><p>Another APC chieftain by the name of Joe Igbokwe was reported to have said on Friday that he won’t rest until Oseni is fired from Arise TV. “He is not a Journalist. He has no training in journalism,” Igbokwe reportedly wrote on Facebook. “Now if Arise TV still wants Rufai they should send him to the Department of Mass Communication University of Lagos. Journalism is special [sic] profession. It demands tack, smooth and sound engagements, discipline, organization, common sense, commitment, civilization, respect for human dignity.”</p><p>The obsession with Oseni’s course of study at the university (some people said he studied animal science or zoology, a reason Onokpasa made the absurdly snarky remark about fuel subsidy removal not being “animal psychology”) and the attempt to delegitimize his journalistic credentials because of this betrays deep-rooted ignorance of journalism.</p><p>The practice of journalism preceded its formal study by centuries. The University of Missouri in the United States awarded the world’s first undergraduate degree in journalism in 1909. But there had been journalists and journalism in the world centuries before 1909. So, to say someone isn’t a journalist because they have no formal certification in journalism is actually stupid.</p><p>Although journalism is now formally studied all over the world, it has resisted licensing to regulate entry into and exit from it in keeping with the openness that is at its core. In other words, anyone can be a journalist even if they didn’t formally study journalism or mass communication.</p><p>More than that, though, as I pointed out in my April 15, 2023, column titled <a href="https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2023/04/partisan-comparisons-of-channel-tvs.html" target="_blank">“Partisan Comparisons of Channel TV’s Seun and Arise TV’s Rufai,”</a> some of which I reproduce in the paragraphs that follow, journalism has three broad traditions: advocacy, reporting, and exposé. </p><p>The advocacy tradition is the first and oldest. In this tradition, journalists didn’t pretend to be “objective” or ideologically unaffiliated. News, in the sense in which we understand it today, was scarce. Opinion, partisan opinion I might add, was the stuff of journalism. Note, though, that the word “journalism” didn’t exist in English at the time.</p><p>The advocacy tradition got a rival in the 1830s in the United States with the advent of what was called the “penny press,” which inaugurated the reporting tradition we recognize as the only form of legitimate journalism in most parts of the world today.</p><p> Incidentally, it was in 1833 that the word “journalism” emerged in English for the first time after a reviewer of a book about journalism in French titled <i>Du journalisme</i> translated the French <i>journalisme</i> to “journalism” and remarked that such “a word was sorely wanted” in the English language.</p><p>The reporting tradition prioritizes documenting facts, describing the world as reporters see it, ferreting out the “best obtainable version of the truth” incrementally through constant reportage, and recording the thoughts and perspectives of people other than the reporters. That was the time the notion of “objectivity” in journalism was born. It was coterminous with the growth and reification of the scientific method, called positivism in social science scholarship. </p><p>Journalists in the reporting tradition “professionalized” journalism by embracing the “scientific” hype of the nineteenth century, which manifested in the notion of “objective journalism,” an unrealizable ideal that journalists have now abandoned in place of fairness, balance, and accuracy. </p><p>By the early 1900s, journalism began to be offered as a degree in U.S. universities in furtherance of the professionalization of the field. But not being formally trained in journalism has never been disqualifying in the history of journalism, not only because journalism education itself is relatively recent but also because such an attitude would violate the intrinsic openness of journalism.</p><p>The third tradition of journalism is the exposé tradition, known today as investigative journalism, whose goal is to reform, not merely to inform, society. Like advocacy journalism, it doesn’t pretend to be neutral or “objective.” As former Minister of Youth and Sports Sunday Dare said of the guerrilla journalism that he and his colleagues practiced in the 1990s, it is animated by “partisan objectivity in defense of the truth.”</p><p>Over the years, these traditions have meshed and overlapped. In many traditional news organizations, views are separated from news. Views are represented by columns and editorials and news by reportage of facts. In other words, peddlers of opinions, even biased opinions, are journalists in the advocacy tradition.</p><p>There has never been any expectation in the history of journalism that opinions should be “objective.” In fact, “objective opinion” is a silly oxymoron. If it’s objective, that is, undistorted by personal dispositions, emotions, bias, etc., then it’s not an opinion. Opinions can never be objective. Only facts can. Opinions are, by nature, subjective and idiosyncratic.</p><p> Being opinionated doesn’t delegitimize people from being journalists. That’s the first kind of journalism the world knew before the reporting tradition came less than 200 years ago.</p><p>In broadcast journalism, moreover, a different tradition emerged in the United States, which has been exported globally, and that tradition is the popularization and lionization of news anchors and leveraging of the star power of news anchors to sell news. The loud discomfort that government officials and APC chieftains evince when they confront Rufai Oseni makes him a highly prized employee that Nduka Obaigbena would be stupid to fire. </p><p>Plus, as I wrote when Femi Fani-Kayode lost it because a <i>Daily Trust</i> reporter had asked who was “bankrolling” his tour of PDP states, asking questions that get a politician’s dander up, that inflame a politician’s passions, is a treasured skill in journalism. </p><p> Here's why: Politicians reveal the most headline-worthy information when reporters cause them to lose control of their emotions. Loss of emotional control forces them to depart from their scripted, predictable, choreographed, and often mendacious and boring performances. Oseni does a better job of it than most trained journalists.</p><p>I, like every journalism teacher worth the name, teach my journalism students the skill to ask politicians trenchant questions that have the capacity to cause the politicians to throw tantrums because politicians, in a state of meltdown, such as we saw in Onokpasa’s histrionics, let their guards down and involuntarily divulge the truth.</p><p>Smart politicians know this. Instead of allowing themselves to be immobilized by impotent anger, they respond to high-pressure, “embarrassing” questions with poise, and disarm adversarial reporters with humility, grace, and gentleness.</p><p>Finally, why was Onokpasa hung up on Oseni’s age vis-a-vis his? As I once pointed out, one of Nigeria’s enduringly lumbering cultural burdens is that it’s hopelessly trapped in regressive reverse ageism, i.e., the idea that only old age, not youth or knowledge, should confer authority on people. </p><p>Everyone who is older than the next person thinks his numerical age bestows some superiority on him over a younger person.</p><p>Emotional and intellectual age are immaterial in this culture of reverse ageism, so that even emotionally immature and cognitively empty dimwits trapped in adults’ bodies think of themselves as superior to biologically younger but intellectually superior people because of the accidents of their years of birth.</p><p>But if you’re older than someone, someone is also older than you are, and the person you’re older than is also older than someone else. It’s an infinite continuum.</p><p>Only backward, lowbrow bumpkins are hung up on age and invoke it to delegitimize valid criticism that they can’t confront with the force of their intellect. Let Oseni breathe!</p><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/blogspot/JOnr"><img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~fc/blogspot/JOnr?bg=99CCFF&fg=444444&anim=0" height="26" width="88" style="border:0" alt="" /></a></p></div>Farooq A. Kperogihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13257188893371334162noreply@blogger.com2