Dear Mr. Shola Adenekan,
You may wish to know that I hold Professor Farouk Kperogi in high esteem just as I do to all human beings including President Muhammadu Buhari. If you think it is your democratic right to inscribe in print the name of Buhari on both sides of a dog and stroll around Nigerian towns and cities why should anyone think I am insulting the honourable Professor Kperogi by merely referring to Americanised and Europeanised Nigerian intellectuals as a bunch of exaggerated democrats who practise democracy in words and not in deeds?
You inquired, "Please tell us, what sort of democrat are you as a Nigerianised democrat?; How is your interpretation of democracy more 'real' than our version of democracy?"
Your first question is premised on false belief that there is a Nigerianised democrat. All Nigerians are Europeanised and Americanised democrats since we transformed from Westminster Parliamentary System of government to Presidential one and the country is governed in English language which 95% of Nigerians cannot speak, read or write. 98% of Northerners do not know what federal revenue allocation means and they strongly believe that it is Allah and his apostle, Mohammed, that give money to their governors to cater for their well-being. Thus, the Governors are not to blame if Allah and Mohammed do not give them money for onward transmission to the people. Similarly, 98% of Southerners do not know what federal revenue allocation is and the strong belief that God is the distributor of money is endemic. With regards to your second question, while you restrict democracy to the right of individual to cast vote for candidate of his/her choice and rights to freedom of speech, as calling a dog with the name of President, I am much more concerned about economic democracy. When there is economic democracy, there will be no need for *charity* as every Nigerian will get his/her basic needs of life.
You wondered, "Is it not right for people who truly care about democracy to discuss Buhari's mistakes?"
As human beings we all make mistakes now and then and since Buhari is not exempted from making mistakes, there is nothing wrong in discussing such, whenever occasion arises. I am only opposed to people taking delight in intellectual somersaults and logical acrobatics, twisting and turning facts to celebrate half-truths. Take, for instance, the case of Kanu which Professor Kperogi tried to simply as a small child rascality. Kanu was in the US to solicit for weapons to fight Nigeria. Thereafter, he traveled to Nigeria secretly and lodged in at airport hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, with a fictitious name, Ezebuiro Nwannekaenyi. Kanu has a Nigerian Passport with his name as Nwannekaenyi Nnamdi Ngozichukwu and a British Passport, with his name as Nnamdi Kenny Okwukanu. Please, take note of the two different names belonging to Kanu in the passports. When he was arrested at the Ikeja airport hotel on October 14, 2015, the Police found broadcasting and Communication gargets set for use with him. One of Kanu's associate, Benjamin Madubugwu had his home at Ubulusiuzor, Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State, raided by the Police and they recovered assorted arms and ammunition. Another associate of Kanu is a telecommunication Maintenance Engineer, David Nwabuisi. He was arrested on July 15, 2015 after he had admitted installing a Radio Biafra Transmitter on an MTN master in Ngwo, Enugu State, after receiving N150,000 from an IPOB member, Chidibere Onwudiwe. David Nwabuisi was employed by Ericsson, the firm managing mast sites for MTN in Nigeria. In view of the above account, I disagree with Professor Kperogi that the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu was an over-reaction by the government. Treasonable felony is never treated with kid gloves anywhere in the world.
Finally, I don't know about the rule of dog ownership in Europe and America where you are sojourned. You can do readers favour by posting video picture of people roaming around in the streets of Europe and America with their dogs wearing human names printed on both sides of the stomach, on this forum. My request is premised on the belief that you know the difference and psychological impact of calling a dog a human name and inscribing the name in print on both sides of the dog's stomach.
S.Kadiri
Skickat: den 28 augusti 2016 08:03
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Naming a Dog and Buhari's Emerging Democratic Tyranny
Americanised and Europeanised Nigerian intellectuals are known for their being exaggerated democr
ats who always dress themselves in beautiful garments of democracy only in words and not in practice. That explains why they dissipate so much energy on the fate of Mr. Joe Fortemose Chinakwe, who is being arraigned in court for behaving in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace. Our exaggerated democrats are saying that in Europe and America, one can name animals anyhow and as such there was nothing wrong in Mr. Chinakwe's naming his dog *Buhari.* But a name given to a pet animal in Europe and America is only known to the owner of the pet animal and his/her immediate close relatives or friends. Unlike Mr. Chinakwe the name given to a pet animal in Europe or America is never inscribed in print on both sides of the animal. If Mr. Chinakwe had named his dog Buhari without inscribing it in print on both sides of the dog, nobody would have cared to report him to the police as a plaintiff had done against Mr. Chinakwe. We must not forget that there are people who bear Buhari either as a surname or first name beside President Buhari. In fact, a man whose father's name is Buhari in the neighbourhood of Mr. Chinakwe's place of abode has threatened to kill him if he could lay hands on him for insulting his father. In Europe and America, one is stung if one touches the wasp-net with the head, as in Nigeria.
Mr.Chinakwe has been granted bail by the court, but he has not been able to fulfil his bail condition of N50,000 as his family has been able to raise only N20,000. Therefore, he has been remanded in police custody. If Mr. Chinakwe had been in Europe or America, there is likelihood that he might have been jailed for not taking proper care of his dog. A person who could take proper care of his dog should be able to fulfil a bail condition of N50,000. For now, what the Europeanised and Americanised Nigerian intellectuals who sympathise with Mr. Chinakwe should do is to send him money to fulfil his bail conditions and pay his defence lawyer. It is very disgusting to see that the degree of energy dissipated by the democratic pretenders have never been witnessed in the cases of treasury looters whose trials have been buried by the corrupt judiciary. Nigerians wallow in abject poverty and destitution today because of the backwardness imposed upon the country by those who held the lever of power in Nigeria from 1999 to 2015. Taunting Buhari in this wise is an invitation to argue about nothing and to learn nothing.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com > för Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 27 augusti 2016 15:51
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Naming a Dog and Buhari's Emerging Democratic TyrannyMy column in today's Daily Trust:--
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Buhari's administration is shaping up to be perhaps the most intolerant and petulant civilian administration in Nigeria. But it isn't the intolerance and petulance in and of themselves that are disquieting; it is the crying incompetence of this government's handling of dissent, which often ends up popularizing and lionizing nonentities.
It started with Indigenous People of Biafra's Nnamdi Kanu. He was spewing his rib-tickling inanities on the fringes of the Internet and on a barely known radio station. Then, suddenly, when he started attacking President Buhari, Nigerian authorities moved in swiftly to contain him. They announced that they had successfully jammed his radio station, but came back a few days later to refute an alleged libelous falsehood the station made against Buhari!
Of course, news of the "jamming" of the radio and the press release refuting what the station reportedly said against Buhari (after it was supposed to have been jammed!) caused the station—and the ideology it espouses—to make national and international headlines. And there was an enormous spike in the number of searches for "Radio Biafra" and "Nnamdi Kanu" on Google and other search engines.
This, combined with Buhari's unambiguous antipathy toward the southeast, has sparked a resurgence of Biafran and neo-Biafran movements and periodic sanguinary communal upheavals. This was completely avoidable. If the government had ignored (or quietly diluted) Kanu and his Radio Biafra and demonstrated even token large-heartedness toward the southeast (and the deep south) in the immediate aftermath of Buhari's epochal electoral triumph in spite of opposition from the region, we wouldn't know of Kanu and IPOB. But Nigerian authorities couldn't stomach an insult at Buhari.
Now another man by the name of Joe Fortemose Chinakwe has become an international celebrity. He has been arrested, detained, imprisoned, and charged to court just because he named his dog Buhari. This is the height of petty intolerance.
Worse bile was directed at previous civilian presidents in the country. Tafawa Balewa, Shagari, Obasanjo, Yar'adua, and Jonathan were often at the receiving end of so much thoroughgoing hate, but the world didn't know about this because no one was arrested and imprisoned. (Comedian Ali Baba said he named one of his dogs "Obasanjo" during Obasanjo's administration and publicized it. In northern Nigeria, Jonathan and Attahiru Jega were called some of the vilest names I have ever heard—and in songs, too.) Public office is not for huffy crybabies.
I have read many Muslim commenters point out that giving a dog a Muslim name was offensive in and of itself. I agree. The problem is that the name wasn't given to the dog to spite Muslims; it was given to make a political statement. If Buhari's name was Smith Punapuna, the dog would be named precisely that.
But Buhari isn't even a Muslim name in the strict sense of the term. As I pointed in previous articles, the name Bukhari (which we render as Buhari in Nigeria because many Nigerian languages don't have the guttural consonant that the phoneme "kh" represents), is derived from Bukhara, which is the name of a town in what is now Uzbekistan in the former USSR.
The person who popularized the name is a 9th-century author of hadith collections known as Abū 'Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismā'īl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mughīrah ibn Bardizbah al-Ju'fī al-Bukhārī.
In Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi, "i" is added to the name of a town to indicate descent from the town. So "Bukhari" simply means someone from (the town of) Bukhara, what Hausa speakers would call "Dan Buhara." It's like someone taking offense because someone named his dog Dan Kano, Dan Daura, Dan Hadejia, etc., which, though names of towns, are borne by some northerners as last names (without the "dan").
But that's not even the most important point. How many people will the Buhari administration arrest for getting under the president's skin? In other words, how many people will this administration make undeservedly popular because of its intolerance and incompetence? Many frustrated people who feel they have nothing to live for in light of the present economic crunch in the country are going to name their dogs after Buhari. Watch out. It's now the surest way to cheap popularity, and the intolerance and incompetence of this government will ensure that they get all the attention, and possibly financial benefits, they crave.
But it isn't only after Buhari that dogs will be named; dogs will also be named after key ministers of the government.
As I am writing this column, I read that a woman by the name of Ada Ogbonna has named her dog after the comically loudmouthed Lai Mohammed. "Meet my dog, Lai Mohammed," she wrote on Facebook. "I named it after someone I admired."
There will be several such publicity baits. A competent government with some clue won't swallow such easy baits. This is all part of democracy. I live in America where the president of the country is called all sorts of dreadful names without consequences. For instance, many racists named their dogs Obama, but Obama disarmed them by naming his dog Bo, which is short for Barack Obama.
We can't pretend to be practicing democracy and clamp down on people for merely saying hurtful things that get on our frail nerves.
This is particularly telling coming from a government that is caught flatfooted in almost everything, a government that daily inflicts misery on its poor citizens while its power structure feeds fat on the misery of the poor. It's troubling when a government that took six months to appoint a predictable cast of characters as ministers wastes no time to arrest a person for naming his dog Buhari. It is concerning when a government that is mute in the face of the horrendous mass murder of hundreds of Shiites in Zaria arrests inconsequential people because they got under the skin of the president.
Maybe Buhari is not even aware that someone has been imprisoned because he named his dog after him. Maybe. But people who are close to and love the president should tell him that the emerging pettiness and intolerance of his administration are becoming intolerably embarrassing.
You can't be paying over-sized attention to minor, inconsequential irritants while the country burns under your watch.
Related Articles:
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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