Dr Farooq Kperogi – Emporium Reporters

Fani-Kayode: All Great Journalists Are “Rude” By Farooq Kperogi

August 27, 2020 Emporium Reporters

I really didn’t want to comment on Femi Fani-Kayode’s viral communicative primitivism toward Daily Trust’s Calabar correspondent by the name of Eyo Charles because of my knowledge of the state of Fani-Kayode’s mental health, but I’ve read senior Nigerian journalists on social media rail against the Daily Trust reporter for asking a “rude question,” and feel an obligation to intervene. Rude question? Well, there’s no such thing as a “rude question” in journalism. A Chicago journalist and humorist by the name of Finley Peter Dunne once said, more than a…

Arewa Anti-Buhari Protests and the Squeaky Wheel Theory By Farooq Kperogi

June 17, 2020 Emporium Reporters

For the first time since Buhari has pretended to be in power, scores of people in Buhari’s home state of Katsina have been protesting his blithe unconcern as hundreds of men, women, and children are senselessly murdered every week in the North. People who had said Buhari was an irreproachable demi-god who could do no wrong suddenly see wisdom in protesting. People who once protested in SUPPORT of Buhari’s petrol price hike that smolders them and AGAINST people who opposed it are suddenly waking up to the realization Buhari has…

Ibrahim Agboola Gambari: A Presidential Babysitter Who Won’t be as Powerful as Abba Kyari By Farooq Kperogi

May 13, 2020 Emporium Reporters

On paper, Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari’s choice as Buhari’s Chief of Staff is so far the regime’s most luminous appointment. Gambari is undoubtedly one of Nigeria’s most credentialed and globally visible citizens for whom the position of Chief of Staff to the President is actually a positional, even symbolic, downgrade. Ordinarily, the office of the Chief of Staff to the President is informal, discretionary, and of no consequence. Its inconsequence is underscored by the fact that the constitution does no recognize it and does not require the president to appoint…

Curious Posthumous Deodorization of Abacha’s Grand Larceny By Farooq Kperogi

May 7, 2020 Emporium Reporters

If you want Nigerians to forgive your iniquities and celebrate you, just die. That’s why Sani Abacha, whose unprecedented theft of Nigeria’s national treasury, is being rehabilitated through the backdoor by dishonest revisionists. Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s perpetually narcotized Attorney General and Minister of Justice, described recently recovered Abacha loot as “Abacha’s assets,” implying that Abacha didn’t steal the recovered money but saved it for Nigeria for a rainy day. Although he retracted his statement in the aftermath of withering social media pushback, his agenda was unmistakable: he wanted to follow…

Abba Kyari’s Death, End of a Surrogate Presidency, and the Coming Chaos By Farooq Kperogi

April 18, 2020 Emporium Reporters

To say I was shocked by Abba Kyari’s death would be to tell a lie. Being an asthmatic patient who routinely had “breathing problems” that necessitated periodic trips to London hospitals—in addition to being a diabetic who was older than 65—it would have been nothing short of miraculous if he survived COVID-19. In spite of who he was, especially the last five years of his life on earth, as a Muslim, I won’t speak ill of him in death. But I won’t write undeserving and deodorizing posthumous extolments of him,…

Hanan Buhari and Unprecedented Abuse of Presidential Powers By Farooq Kperogi

January 11, 2020 Emporium Reporters

The Presidency said it isn’t a legal violation or even a subversion of convention for Buhari’s daughter to use a publicly funded presidential jet for private purposes. That’s flat-out untrue. But even if it were true, things don’t always have to be illegal for them to be condemnable. Something can be condemnable because it’s unethical or immoral, even if it’s legal. Making a tax-funded presidential jet available for the private use of Buhari’s daughter is straight-up unethical, even borderline illegal. Of course, it’s entirely defensible, even expected, for Buhari’s family…

Who Should be Called a “Dr”? A Physician or a PhD? By Farooq Kperogi

January 5, 2020 Emporium Reporters

There was an interesting Facebook conversation among a group of Nigerians last week on who, between medical doctors and PhDs, are more deserving to be addressed as “Dr.” I’ve written about this before, so let me share my thoughts once again with people for whom this sort of thing is interesting. By convention, both medical doctors and PhDs can prefix “Dr.” to their names. But, here, there’s a clash between etymology (origin and development of words) and pragmatics (how words are actually used by speakers of a language). The word…

Tinubu’s Dangerous Dance with the Cabal By Farooq Kperogi

December 22, 2019 Emporium Reporters

The cabal is toying with Bola Tinubu like a yo-yo—and he is naively, if gingerly, playing along— in readiness for his eventual political incineration by or before 2023. And the cabal is being ruthlessly Machiavellian about it. Tinubu has been given a fake promissory note that he’ll be APC’s presidential torchbearer in 2023. On the strength of this worthless promissory note, they’ve sought his permission to destroy some of his most trusted foot soldiers. With his consent, they’ve consigned Osinbajo to symbolic Aso Rock prison. Tinubu endorsed Fowler’s replacement at…

An Example of Daily Trust’s Pro-Regime Guidelines for Columnists By Farooq Kperogi

December 20, 2019 Emporium Reporters

Expand the photos below to read an example of the childish “guidelines” Daily Trust management periodically sends to its columnists. Note that it never sent such guidelines (at least to me) when Obasanjo, Yar’adua, and Jonathan held sway. It’s obvious that the writers of this memo (and others like it in my email inbox) have zero understanding of what a newspaper column means. There’s nowhere in the world that newspaper columnists are told how to write and how not to write, what to write about and what not to write…