Tag: By Farooq A. Kperogi

The 18 Year-Old Age Limit for School Certificate, By Farooq A. Kperogi

ADEOLA YUSUF

“In most countries of the world, children don’t start primary school until they are 6, and young adults don’t start university until they are 18. That used to be true in Nigeria, too—until parents chose to skirt the law, upend time-tested tradition, and commit mass child abuse in the name of fast-tracking the education their children.”   The directive by education minister Professor Tahir Mamman to the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council to not register candidates who are below 18 for next year’s school certificate…

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Rising Ethnic Tension Between Hausa and Fulani, By Farooq A. Kperogi

ADEOLA YUSUF

The cultural and ethnic melding of Northern Nigeria’s Hausa and the Fulani people is so deep, so labyrinthine, so time-honored, and so unexampled that a fictitious ethnic category called the “Hausa-Fulani” was invented by Nigeria’s southern press to describe the emergent ethnic alchemy it has produced. Northern intellectuals resented the label at first. For example, the late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, the famously iconoclastic professor of history at the Ahmadu Bello University who was ethnically Fulani and who was the scion of the Katsina and Kano royal families, condemned the…

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Reuben Abati’s Revolt Against Broadcasting’s Titular Conventions

Farooq A. Kperogi

    “Abati studied Theater Arts, not Journalism, and was a print journalist for most of his professional life,”   Reuben Abati’s Revolt Against Broadcasting’s Titular Conventions, By Farooq  A. Kperogi   Arise TV anchor and former presidential spokesman Dr. Reuben Abati stirred a conversation in Nigeria’s journalism circles a few days ago when he upbraided an on-the-scene Arise TV correspondent by the name of Mary Chinda for addressing him as “Reuben” instead of “Dr. Abati.” In Western broadcasting conventions, which Nigerian broadcasters have adopted, status, positional, and titular differentials…

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Same Old Cruel Lies to Justify Fuel Price Hike, By Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Malam Mele Kyari, said on November 23 that the Buhari regime will inflict yet another pain at the pump by jacking up petrol prices to N340 per liter in February 2022. If this materializes, it would be the fourth time the regime has increased petrol prices in a five-year period. Every indication points to an irreversible resolve on the part of the regime to go through with the increase. The perennially predictable propaganda against “subsidy” has already…

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Ikoyi Tragedy and Casual Bigotry Against Yoruba Muslims, By Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

Amid the grief of the heartrendingly tragic collapse of the 21-storey luxury apartment building in Ikoyi, Lagos, a sadly familiar, barely acknowledged but nonetheless insidiously widespread anti-Muslim bigotry in Yoruba land came to light. A Yoruba Muslim by the name of Adebowale Sikiru revealed in an interview with a YouTube news channel called AN 24 that he was rejected for a job at the Ikoyi construction site because of his Muslim faith. He applied for the position of a site engineer and was found qualified enough to deserve being invited…

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Former Emir of Kano’s Manic Megalomania in Kaduna, By Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

On October 12, I received a message on WhatsApp, which the platform flagged as being “forwarded many times,” about how former Emir of Kano Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (or whatever he calls himself these days) caused Governor Nasir el-Rufai to fire his Chief of Staff for the “offence” of referring to Sanusi as the “former emir of Kano.” Because WhatsApp has become a cesspit of false, malicious misinformation, my default inclination was to dismiss the forwarded message as yet another fetid rhetorical garbage huckstered by low-IQ philistines who are still after…

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