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US Based Columnist & Journalism Prof. FAROOQ KPEROGI
Talk about prominent Nigerians in Diaspora who are very distasteful about how past leaders and government of Nigeria have been misleading and causing hardship to common man, then Professor Farooq Kperogi and a few others quickly come to mind. He is a US-based author, media scholar, newspaper columnist, blogger and activist. His passion for his homeland is unravelled and he doesn’t hide it. He is a known voice, writer and crusader in advocacy for good and credible governance in Nigeria. The immediate past administration of former President Mohammadu Buhari was constituently criticized by the Kperogi for his style of leadership which said was ethnocentric.
Few weeks ago, Professor was in Nigeria for his book launch amidst other social engagements. He was also hosted by the erudite Professor Toyin Falola in Lagos where a number of reputable journalists were invited to be part of the event.
City People Publisher, Seye Kehinde and his Reporter, Jamiu Abubakar were privileged to be at the occasion. We interviewed him and talked about what he thinks about the new government administration led by President Bola Tinubu. He also spoke at length, giving his take about the 2023 presidential elections. Below are the excepts:
In the last eight years, your position about Nigeria has been clear. Now we’ve had a change of administration. In the few months of this administration, do you see any departure from the past?
Yes, I’ve seen some departure and I’ve seen some continuity. Departure in terms of motions, not movements. We said, we think that motions and movements are the same. We had a previous government that was in power for eight years, never filled with something as easy as membership of governing councils of federal agencies. And so, since the civil service is the engine room of governance, governance is basically grounded. And I kept writing about it and hoping that someone would do something about it. A lot of civil servants reach out to me and say we have projects to execute, but we cannot because by law we need a board to approve of these projects and there’s no board. And I thought this was a low hanging fruit. First of all, use it to even reward people who supported it, constitute those boards and give Chairman, they’re going to be happy. But even that, they couldn’t do it. And so the engine of government is just basically grounded. That isn’t happening now. I’ve seen a lot of appointments, even criticized appointments and I have my own criticism of some of the appointments. But at least someone is doing some appointments. I also see someone in a way trying to create some symbolic presence. And the subject of my column two weeks ago was the presidential visit to the site of the accidental bombing of Maulud celebrating Muslims. Something similar happened. Several similar such incidents happened during Buhari. He never as much as acknowledged that something like that happened personally. In Iran, a small town in Borno, the same Nigerian military bombed the place twice and killed nearly 300 people. And when I read it, I was overwrought with emotions, grief, but the president did not even acknowledge it. The next day he traveled to the Gambia to solve their political problems there. And I wrote a column there and I called it gambian gambit. And the only thing he did to acknowledge was to ask his aide to send a tweet that they regretted that and that was it. No presidential visit of any kind. But this time around when something similar happened, the vice president visited there. Of course, it’s an entirely different conversation. Why should they be bombing citizens that frequently? That shouldn’t happen at all. There’s no basis, no explanation, no justification can warrant that. But at the same time, I have criticized the lack of compassion, leadership, and lack of symbolic presence. If I see someone doing it, I think I’m digital. At least someone has gone there and apologized and said we are going to compensate you. We are sorry that happened. That wouldn’t happen again. So in that way, I’m seeing changes, but in terms of sensitivity to the needs of everyday folks, I don’t see any change. We are journalists here. There’s a famous mock Reiki Journalist in the United States in the 1920s that I’m very fond of, whose name I’m struggling to recall, but he exposed corruption in government and corporations and even became a political activist supporting politicians who appear to be progressive, who appear to have, he will support them, endorse them right about them. But when they got power, they became indistinguishable from people criticized and their leaders criticized. So he came up with one pc expression. He said, look, power is what all men seek and once they get it, they abuse it. The same story. And I’ve seen that also when people get into power that their first priority is to themselves. Of course there will be exceptions. And I’m sure people are going to say there are exceptions, but exceptions don’t prove the rule. They just show that, well, they actually make the rule more potent. Fuel subsidies, I’ve been a huge critic of that right from the beginning. And before it even started, In April, I wrote a column where I said that if Tinubu removes fuel subsidies, he is going to have a hard time governing. And I gave a lot of reasons. I live in the United States, where fuel is subsidized and right now Americans are paying less for petrol than Nigerians are. It doesn’t make any sense when the minimum wage there is $8 per hour and here we have one of the lowest minimum wages in the world. Not only do we have the lowest minimum wages in the world, salaries have not increased. People are suffering and then you are increasing fuel prices because you say, well, you need to free up money to do other things. But, well, what have you done since it has been removed? People are suffering and it affects me because I come from a poor background. I have family, friends whose quality of life has nose-dived. So in that way I don’t see any difference. Concerned with the everyday realities of folks, I don’t see a difference. I just see the same people being self interested and self loving and not caring about everyday folks.
How would you describe Pres. Tinubu’s style of leadership ?
Well, he’s still emerging. He hasn’t quite taken shape, but I would say his appointments are a lot too provincial for my liking. Although I’ve seen some recalibrations lately, it is both Yoruba-Centric and Lagos-centric. And I was discussing with someone, a Yoruba person from Osun State, and I said, people in the north have, frankly, no moral right to complain? Because his defense then was, I can only work with people that I trust, which was a very lame defense, because why would you want to vote for everyone? But then you can only trust some. That doesn’t make sense. That’s why the north is not able to come out with the same moral clarity that he would have come out if Buhari was something different. That’s why there’s just more food noises. But I had thought that Tinubu’s, I had been very critical of him, but there are certain things I admit about him, which is that he chooses his lieutenant very carefully, and he prioritizes competence in the choice of people who are around him, and that’s why almost everyone, you may disagree with them, you can abuse them, but you can never say the people around Tinubu are incompetent people. We can’t say that with Buhari because for Buhari, most importantly, your religion, whether you perform or not, relevance to him. But you can’t say that with Tinubu. So I was hoping that he would look for talents from all over the country within his inner cabinet to give you that sense of national outlook, particularly because he’s himself a product of a very broad based national coalition. He got more votes from the north than he did from even the southwest. And as I said, the sense of shame that many northerners felt because of Buhari’s betrayal. And I’m saying this thing for the benefit of my own deep inside knowledge. A lot of northerners who didn’t even like Chidibu were ashamed by the nature of the betrayal that Buhari was hatching. This is just not our nature. This is just not who we are, and you do this, and you succeed, we will never be able to say to anyone that we’re trustworthy people. Even if you don’t want to support this guy, at least don’t sabotage him, and that was something. So there are a lot of people who came up and supported him just for the fact that someone cannot support him for eight good years. Through all these eight years, Buhari didn’t think that Tinubu should have criticized him, but he never did. He was strategically quiet and in fact, was supportive in ways that endangered his popularity within his own home base. And then finally, like when the EndSar protest was launched, he hunted with the hair. So he wasn’t quiet. He wasn’t too sure.He didn’t want to offend the people in Aso Rock because they were already saying he was the one that sponsored the EndSars protest. So, I would say those appointments could be way broader than they are, but maybe it’s going to change along the line. But I think we should transcend this. If you have to build a nation, let’s have a president who will be fair to all. Obasanjo did that to a very large extent. His Chief-of- Staff was a Northerner, General Mohammed Abdullah. And now, Buhari has made us believe that to be a chief of staff, you have to come from the same ethnic group, you have to share values, but that was not the template that Obasanjo left. And so it would be great to have a nation where the head of state trusts or the president trusts people from every part of the country enough to make them part of the kitchen cabinet.
What’s your take on the outcome of the 2023 election?
I would say the outcome of the election did not shock me. At some point in June 2022, I wrote an article that said President Bola Tinubu, because I had come to the conclusion at that time. Of Course the primary election hadn’t taken place. But from my sources, inside the Aso Rock, I knew that he had won it because the intrigues of the Aso Rock cabals failed. Buhari clearly did not want Tinubu to be the nominee. And he had a plan to impose Ahmed Lawal, and it collapsed on them. And once I knew that that had collapsed, I knew that he was going to win the primary election. And if he won the primary election, I knew he was going to win the presidential election. Why? Because his opposition was divided. We have Kwankwaso with his 1 million plus votes, and we have Peter Obi, who takes the southeast. And at the time, if you recall, when I wrote that Peter Obi would be a strong force in the election, people thought I was being naive. They said, you see; it’s not social media. The pulse that I feel is more than the social media. And social media itself is a reflection of what happens in the real world. And a lot of people who mocked me, who said I was being naive, who even said I was supporting Peter Obi because my wife is from Anambra. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking of those things. People are just over-hypothetical. But that turned out. He performed way better than a lot of traditional politicians thought he would. And then Atiku, of course that’s the same coalition that was one in 2019 splintered into 2. But of course, the conduct of the election itself was horrible, like most elections. And one of the things with Nigerian politics, even when they’re going to win the election, they will still rig it, just in case. That’s why Obasanjo in 2003, rigged Ogun State so much that there were way more voters than the registered voters. And he didn’t need to do that because at that time, his support in the southwest was solid. But he still needed to rig. He felt that he needed to rig. Yar’adua did the same thing, or it was done for him. He was so ashamed by it that he came out to apologize. But that election, even if he slept without campaigning, he would have won it. Why?
Because Buhari was unelectable at that time. He was a regional champion. He was seen as a religious fanatic. And he himself did not even make any effort to expand his scope beyond the Muslim North. And even within the Muslim north, it was the Hausa speaking Muslim north. He didn’t even campaign in Kogi and Kwara and all those other places where there are Muslim. But he thought he would win the national election anyway. There was no way he could win it. And Yar’adua knew that. Yar’adua had acceptance in the southwest, the southeast, in the north central, and he himself is from Katsina. So they were going to divide the vote with Buhari, but he still went ahead and rigged so much that the man himself, who was a beneficiary of rigging, was so ashamed that he initiated the processes for electoral reforms that led to Jega himself emerging as INEC Chairman. So when people always make references to the defective conduct of elections, to delegitimize elections, it’s fine.
But for me, and I know this got me into a lot of trouble with my friends, and people who follow me. When I said this election, yes, it was effective, but I don’t see how Tinubu would have lost the election even if it was free and fair and conducted properly. Why? Because the opposition, they would have decimated him almost effortlessly, was divided needlessly. Well, maybe not needlessly because, and I see the basis for people in the southeast saying, we want to be president at this point. We have supported PDP every year, in all election cycles. And if the three big ethnic groups have produced president, we are the only ones who are excluded and this our time. And I see logic in that sentiment, except that politics doesn’t always work that way.
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