Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Reply to Kperogi.doc

Dear Professor Gwamna,

I have held you in the highest esteem since I first had the privilege to know you. Your sky-high zest and your uncommon courage to rise to the top in spite of tall odds is a source of inspiration to me and many more people than I can persuade you to believe. My friend Moses, whom I am sure will speak for himself, shares these sentiments about you. A measure of how highly we estimate you was demonstrated by the fact that when you invited us to Missouri for the Zumunta convention, which we had never participated in, we left everything aside and attended. We had reservations about regional associations, but we said your reputational capital was sufficient to wipe away our anxieties. So we attended, and we had a good time there.

Although I had never heard of, much less known, Professor Pita Agbese before, I also found him to be a gracious, witty, smart, complaisant person. I felt honored to know him and was particularly excited to discover that he was friends with and schoolmate of Professor Attahiru Jega, my mentor at Bayero University, Kano. The impressions that registered in me about Professor Agbese are, to be frank with you, inconsistent with the sort of unprincipled, uncritical, and conscienceless cheerleading of Buhari's fascism that I've later discovered he habitually engages in. My own sense is that he conscripted you into this since he travels to Nigeria more frequently than you do and seems to be friends with senior military officers. But I may be wrong. It's also not my business whom he chooses to align with. I get that.

Now, let's address the substance of your response. You are from southern Kaduna. People in that part of the country are at the receiving end of unceasing government- and military-assisted mass slaughters by Fulani herders. In addition to mass murders by Fulani brigands, every prominent Adara political leader is in jail as I write this. Professor Agbese's people, the Idoma, were, and still are, also the victims of horrendous mass slaughters and forceful displacement by Fulani marauders. Your "Association of Nigerian Scholars in the Diaspora," to the best of my knowledge, has never issued a single statement on these and other troubling issues that threaten the very foundation of Nigeria.

Every single statement your association has issued so far has been in defense of Buhari's government, and especially of the military. How can you in good conscience advance the claim that the military led by Buratai and other corrupt, incompetent service chiefs have defeated or weakened Boko Haram when more soldiers have been murdered by Boko Haram in the last two years than at any time since the Boko Haram insurgency started, when scores of soldiers are starving on the frontlines, when scores of civilians are still being murdered in the northeast on a daily basis, when vast swathes of land in Borno and Yobe are still under the control of Boko Haram, and when poor, defenseless people in these states still pay taxes to the ruthless, homicidal thugs that constitute Boko Haram?

I agree that America has its own problems and shouldn't be the police of the world. I also agree that American soldiers committed and commit war crimes in the Middle East and elsewhere and aren't held to account. Nevertheless, these facts do not vitiate the accuracy of the US State Department's report on the unacceptable human rights violations by the Nigerian military that your association appears invested in defending at all costs. In fact, there is nothing in the US State Department's report that hasn't already been pointed out by Nigerians in the national media and on social media.

I respect your and Professor Agbese's right to association and freedom of speech, but I hope you also respect my right to be disappointed that people for whom I have profound regard have become cheerleaders of fascism in their homeland from the comfort of their diasporic location. Be well and say hello to madam for me.

Farooq

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author 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

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 6:26 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

From Dr. Bitrus Gwamna  

                                                                                  A Reply to Kperogi  

Dear Colleagues: 

Let me begin this note by first acknowledging my familiarity with Professor Farooq Kperogi, not only through his pithy write-ups on numerous social media platforms but several phone conversations, email exchanges and a physical encounter in Columbia,  Missouri, last July.  His amiable disposition is a sharp contrast from the passion conveyed in his articles on this forum.  I also have established a rapport with Professor Kperogi's ideological counterpart, Professor  Moses Ochonu.  Like Farooq, Moses has a most charming disposition.  I am indeed grateful to them for positively responding to the request by the planning committee of last year's Zumunta National Convention  to address our gathering.

 

Second, Professor Pita Ogaba Agbese and I acknowledge our full membership of the Association of Nigerian Scholars in the Diaspora [ANSD). This association was conceived several years prior to the 2015 Nigerian elections for conversations and discussions on literary and socio-political themes.  The association is yet to be registered as our membership is yet to decide on the appropriate platform for dispensing the outcomes of our deliberations and increasing our membership. We know that the association does not need to be registered for its members to call for conferences or express their views on issues which concern them or our country. Our last physical encounter with each other was September 1^st at Eagan, Minnesota, during which members of the association analyzed Nigeria's security situation and proposed a set of policy options for a lasting peace in the country. Our discussions are long and exhaustive as there is a desire on our part to reach a consensus or a majority decision on any issue before a communique is issued.  Alas, Professor Agbese and I whose names represent the Association of Nigerian Scholars in the Diaspora have been embarrassed by the verbiage contained in the write-up that has angered Professor Kperogi.  Had it undergone the editing process that has been put in place by our members, he and those displeased with its contents might have had little cause to fault our stance. We believe that the current military chiefs have done an outstanding job in containing the Boko Haram menace and we urge that the progress and the momentum against Boko Haram and other threats to peace and stability in Nigeria sustained. On Emefiele, the governor of the Central Bank, we did not see the need for Nigeria to move in a different direction on fiscal or monetary policy. It is interesting that those who always excoriate President Buhari on appointments which they alleged were anchored on nepotism would not applaud the president for nominating Emefiele for a second term as CNB governor.

 

We also felt that US reports on human rights in Nigeria are written from a holier-than-thou attitude on the part of the US State Department. The US record on the treatment of its minority populations leaves much to be desired. Moreover, while the US is quick to condemn the actions of security forces in other parts of the world, it has refused to subject its own security forces to standards required under international law. The contempt in which the current US administration under President Donald Trump holds international norms is clearly demonstrated by Trump's decision to pardon American soldiers who had been convicted of violating US and international law. We wish that one day, our nation too would issue annual reports on human rights in the US. However, in the meantime, we don't feel obliged to accept everything the US says about Nigeria. We do not consider the US a god or an oracle whose opinion on Nigeria cannot be challenged.

 

We will not seek to deprive the learned professor of his right to rail against the current Nigerian presidency detesting the head of the administration with every ounce of his energy.  However, to arrogate to himself, the right to decree what structures should exist or claim the academic label is not only uncharitable but smacks of dictatorship, an attitude unworthy of his stature as a scholar.  I have been on this forum long enough to witness the good, the bad and ugly among members when arguments fail to mollify their egos.  Yes, facts are sacred, but the interpretation of various narratives leads to different outcomes. 

 

We will be careful to properly edit the contents of our publications to ensure that we are accurate in our communication with those who are exposed to our deliberations and conclusions, but we will not tailor our beliefs to please anyone for fear not to be tagged fraudulent.

 

While we appreciate Prof. Kperogi's determination to protect our integrity when he saw a publication that aroused his suspicion, we would have laid his suspicion to rest if he had contacted us before rushing to this forum to declare our association as fraudulent.  Cordially Yours,

Bitrus Gwamna, also writing on behalf of Pita Agbese.

On Sat, 25 May 2019 at 11:20, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Attachments generally do not work well. You may have to repost—copy and paste method/

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://sites.utexas.edu/yoruba-studies-review/

http://www.toyinfalola.com 

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa  

http://groups.google.com/group/yorubaaffairs 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Dr. Bitrus Gwamna" <bgwamna@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 5:13 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Reply to Kperogi.doc

 

 

 

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