My Outrage Fatigue About Nigeria

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

My Outrage Fatigue About Nigeria

 By Farooq A. Kperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

In the last few months, I’ve noticeably scaled down the frequency and intensity of my social media involvement with Nigeria, and scores of people have reached out to ask why. The short answer is that I am suffering from a psychological phenomenon called outrage fatigue.

Late African-American civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer colorfully characterized this state of mind as being sick and tired of being sick and tired. It is instigated by sustained sensations of powerlessness, hopelessness, mental exhaustion, and cynicism, which ultimately lead to indifference and even compassion fatigue.

My outrage usually flows from a wellspring of righteous indignation over injustice, avoidably missed opportunities, elite cruelty, and preventable existential catastrophes. It is nourished by expectations that its forceful ventilation will jolt people to act and cause policymakers to make amends for the good of the society.

That was what Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist James Earle “Jimmy” Breslin meant when he said, “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

But outrage, rage, and even compassion are not a permanent condition; they are intrinsically temporary. It’s impossible to keep your sanity while you are in a perpetually agitative emotional state. In other words, outrage fatigue is an unconscious self-defense mechanism. It’s the mind’s way to decompress and regain equanimity.  

It’s bad enough when outrage changes nothing and when both the people on whose behalf you’re outraged and the people whose bone-headedness activated your outrage use you for target practice in throwing vituperative darts for daring to be outraged. But it’s worse when people pretend that the consequences of ignoring well-intentioned outrage are unanticipated. 

Today, every section of Nigeria is enveloped in profound existential turmoil thanks to both the inability and unwillingness of the Muhammadu Buhari regime to confront the problems that afflict the country. 

Boko Haram, which the regime used to brag about “technically defeating,” has now established a foothold in Niger State; several rural communities there now periodically pay the terrorist group millions of naira that they can’t afford just to buy fleeting peace. And Niger State is contiguous with the Federal Capital Territory. It’s only a matter of time before the group takes over Abuja.

This is in addition to daily and ceaseless mass deaths and abductions in almost every part of the country—and calls for dissolving the Nigerian union in the East and in the West. Even for those of us who live outside Nigeria, the emotional toll is enormous.

But in several past columns, I’d warned about the dangers of allowing Buhari to come back for a second term. I warned that Buhari’s almost congenital incompetence and degenerative mental decline, not to mention the coterie of duncical babysitters that surround him and rule on his behalf, should cause the nation to not allow him to rule for a second term.

 The persistence of my warnings, in fact, caused the presidency to pressure Daily Trust to stop my column in December 2018, but the paper wrote a front-page comment this week lamenting exactly the same things I prevised the nation of. 

I foretold what is unravelling now since at least 2017. For instance, in a December 16, 2017 column titled “There Must be an Alternative to Buhari and Atiku,” I wrote: “Given Buhari’s provable incompetence and undisguisedly subnationalist proclivities, which have plunged the nation to the nadir of fissiparity, allowing him to rule for another four years could sound the death knell for the country. This is no hyperbole.”

In an April 21, 2018 column titled “Buhari: From Criminalizing and Dividing Nigerians to Dissing Nigerian Youth,” I wrote: “If Buhari’s second term, which he appears poised to get, doesn’t end Nigeria as we know it, nothing ever will again.”

In an October 13, 2018 column titled, “Atiku’s Emergence and End of the Road for Buhari,” I observed that “There is no question that Buhari is the absolute worst president Nigeria has ever had the misfortune to be burdened with. He is thoroughly and irredeemably incompetent, not to mention unapologetically bigoted and lazy. Only a sick country would reward such a person with a second term.”

I ended the column with the following ominous words: “A Buhari second term will end Nigeria as we know it. Of that, I am sure.”

In a November 19, 2018 Facebook update titled, “NextLevel: Follow Detached Leaders to Your Death,” which I later developed into a full-length column, I wrote the following:

“The creativity deficit in APC’s NEXT LEVEL campaign slogan and graphic is truly unnerving, but it powerfully encapsulates, without intending to, the frighteningly escalating sense of foreboding that a Buhari second term would mean for Nigeria. The photo shows Buhari and Osinbajo insouciantly detached from the people they are leading. Buhari appears as a clumsy, clueless leader who can’t even get his steps right: unlike Osinbajo, he skips a step on the staircase as he leads Nigerians to perdition.

“Both the leaders and the led wear sheepish, vacuous grins as they head to their damnation like moths to a flame. The photo shows them climbing up the edge of a cliff from where they'd fall into the cruel, unforgiving blue ocean that surrounds them. This is a depressing graphic, but I give it credit for its fidelity in capturing the ruination that Buhari is inexorably leading Nigeria to.

“The ‘NEXT LEVEL’ slogan is also a powerful linguistic affirmation of the depressing future the graphic evokes. There’s no question that Buhari’s record as president these past three years has been an unrelieved disaster. Nigeria now leads the world from the bottom in almost everything. Insecurity used to be limited to the northeast, but it has now become democratized nationally. Prices of commodities have gone through the roof. Governance has ceased. Governing boards of several federal agencies are still not constituted, which means the nation is literally at a standstill. The economy has tanked, and everyday folks are writhing in unspeakable agony, but the president bragged about never being in ‘a hurry to do anything.’

“Imagine what the ‘next level’ of this would be. That’s what the Buhari campaign is warning you about.”

In a December 15, 2018 column titled “Death of the Electoral Bill and the Coming Electoral Theft,” I said Nigeria and the world “can't afford the tragedy of a war-torn Nigeria, which a Buhari second term will surely precipitate.”

In another update, I wrote: “Buhari isn't even misgoverning; he isn't governing at all. I call it ‘ungovernance.’ Buhari is by far the worst president Nigeria has ever had since independence. And I don't say this lightly. His second term would signal the death of Nigeria as we know it."

There are several such warnings littered liberally in most of my columns and social media interventions before the 2019 election. Of course, as l always remind my readers, I have no prescient or oracular powers. No human being does. But every perceptive person can make informed predictions about the future based on a knowledge of the past and the present.

It was always easy to see that a Buhari second term would spell doom for the country, democratize bloodbath, and push the country to the edge of the precipice. No one deserves admiration for knowing this.

A popular leftist American bumper-sticker slogan says, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Well, I am paying attention. It’s just that I have reached the elastic limit of my outrage because Nigeria’s current tragedy is self-inflicted, predictable, and preventable.

Related Article:

Young People Have Mentally Checked Out of Nigeria

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

After The Book of Job . Imam Ali alaihi salaam’s Sermon Number Three in Nahjul Balagha

is the next most eloquent testimony to the virtue of patience...

Religious or not, Sabr – patience is the watchword.

Even the old, not so religious dog is familiar with the proverb, “the patient dog eats the fattest bone!” down here on earth and that he doesn’t have to wait until he gets to the dog heaven, if indeed there is such a place for man’s so called “best friend”

Once again, it’s mostly all about him.

Once again, “scores of people have reached out”, this time, to ask him “ why?”

So, it’s high time that the world champions in patience, the big & magnanimous hearts among us beat expansively in extending our sympathy/ empathy to the fatigued Kperogi, to embrace and to encourage him: Don’t give up the fight.

The message is clear: If you listen carefully you will hear: Members don’t get weary -

and as the bard put it, in the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest

“So when you see your neighbour carrying something

Help him with his load

And don't go mistaking Paradise

For that home across the road”

Lansana Gberie, one of my favourite Sierra Leonean journalists - in this case a purveyor of sometimes truly elegant, stiff upper-lip prose, never got weary and just look at him today - he’s looking as fresh as a daisy, over there in Switzerland...

[Femi Segun]

' It’s bad enough when outrage changes nothing and when both the people on whose behalf you’re outraged and the people whose bone-headedness activated your outrage use you for target practice in throwing vituperative darts for daring to be outraged. But it’s worse when people pretend that the consequences of ignoring well-intentioned outrage are unanticipated.' FK 

Many thanks again for this insightful, if depressing article. The issue of rage and anger against mediocrity in governance, the failure of development, and the attendant effects on our collective identity is what has occupied my mind for a long time. I presented a paper on the regional approach to fighting corruption at a UNECA Conference in Botswana, sometime in June 2018. I made the point that just as there was a wave of continental anger against apartheid, which eventually led to its death kernel, there is a need for a wave of regional anger against corruption. I emphasized that given the corrosive effects of corruption on different aspects of our lives, we should not only talk about tackling it, we should all be angry. This approach explains why I get so miffed and pensive when people use all manner of excuses to justify incompetence and failure of governance, even on this forum. When one has the presence of mind to highlight the failures of leadership, regime apologists accuse you of religious or ethnic profiling. When you point out that Nigeria can be better governed, they ask you to provide solutions as if there are no litany of suggestions that have been prescribed for decades. If anyone is serious about seeing a better governed Nigeria, the Arise O Nigeria series written by Alagba Salimonu Kadiri on this forum contained what to be done. Besides, several Ph.D. theses, consultancy reports, and party manifestoes surely contain what a development elite would gladly consult. 

You are right that people on whose behalves you exercise anger get back at you through all forms of insults, name-calling, and inuendoes.  For many people, the sense of anger has become discounted and eroded through a lack of empathy. It used to be that when one hears that someone was killed, compassion swells up in the heart, regardless of the identity of the victim. But now, there is what I call relativization of evil. In a bid to appear liberal and cosmopolitan, people explain away all sense of logic in defending the indefensible. They tell us we must not criticize because no one is perfect. They tell us Buhari is doing his best, even as the country has become one large killing field. They tell us it is politicians planning for 2023 causing all the problems. 

As I mentioned in a past intervention, we need a new depth of thinking to grapple with the challenges confronting us in Nigeria and Africa in general. We need to take a second look at our culture-the culture that hates merit and promotes mediocrity, that relishes in egocentrism, reifies material accumulation at all costs, promotes lone stars, that stifles dissent and hegemonizes thoughts.  We also need to build new sensitivity to the value of human lives. Today, we count numbers, not values.  If we value human lives, the government will not use region and religion to cite Festus Adedayo in a Premium article of last week, to keep looking away from bandits whose locations are well known, while killing IPOB members who are only trying to defend themselves against the marauding Fulani herdsmen. If we value human lives, we will not continue to defend a government that looks away while people in Benue State, Plateau state, Ogun State have become refugees in their own ancestral lands because of the audacity of Fulani herdsmen who claim all lands in Africa belong to them. If we value human lives, we will think of how to crush Boko Haram whose terrorist activities have led to the death of thousands of people and displacement of millions more in the Northeast. We will not be giving excuses like Lai Mohammed has been doing that even in America, kidnapping takes place. 

Rather than giving up, we need to mobilize more people to be angry against the ongoing perfidy, irrationality, and sheer incompetence in governance, not only at the macro but at the micro and meso levels. A wave of continental anger is required to save Africa from itself  Just as we saw colonialism as a common enemy, we must see corruption, ineptitude in governance, and other forms of societal ills as common enemies to which we must channel our positive energies to confront. 

Femi Segun

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Hamlet:

“O God, God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

Sometimes it’s a matter of understanding.

That’s why, sometimes, I feel sorry for Kperogi, stoically self-cast in the role of Warner – especially if he sees himself as playing the role of Plato in the parable of Plato’s cave, bravely desirous of leading at least scores of his disciples from the darkness and into light, or the role of Moses (not his buddy, Ochonu) I mean Moshe Rabbeinu, the Prophet and Leader.

As pointed out by rabbinic commentators, concerning the children of Israel and their sojourn in Egypt, as guests of the later Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, it would have been difficult for those born into slavery, born into thinking that that was their natural place/ station in the natural order of creation, and since they knew no other way of life – it would have been difficult to sell such people a dream or a hope of freedom. Similarly, some people – especially those who shrug their shoulders resigned to their weary lot in this life, as if the “benefits” from corruption are rewards that are to be enjoyed as blessings from heaven whilst they themselves continue shuffering and shmiling but at least religiously hoping, as it is inscribed on many a danfo, “ God dae!” - God, and this glimmer of hope when you reading : “How Nigerian ‘corruption’ is a cautionary tale for the UK – by Chibundu Onuzo

Re - “Rather than giving up, we need to mobilize more people to be angry against the ongoing perfidy, irrationality, and sheer incompetence in governance, not only at the macro but at the micro and meso levels. A wave of continental anger is required to save Africa from itself  Just as we saw colonialism as a common enemy, we must see corruption, ineptitude in governance, and other forms of societal ills as common enemies to which we must channel our positive energies to confront.” (Femi Segun)

I may change my mind about all of the above and all of what’s below after listening to a near future Toyin Falola Interview starring Pastor Adeboye, because, first of all I want to know whether he himself is angry or not angry.

Unfortunately, not everyone is angry. This is perhaps due to the undisputable fact is that no one is born into slavery in Nigeria and that’s one reason why the word “freedom” has a different clang. And even if some people were born into some kind of slavery there are those who would be directed to some words of solace from St. Paul who famously advised, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” (Some say that it’s a Bible citation that was often quoted by the slave masters when they preached salvation to Chicken George on the plantation)

The problem is further compounded by the refusal of some ethnic, religious, corrupt elites, senti-mental regional loyalists to criticize what is so manifestly wrong because doing so would hurt their cause, would be akin to biting the hand that’s feeding them – so just as you cannot separate the dancer from the dance so too the loyalists are by definition part and parcel of the corrupt structure under review. Whether we like it or not, near or far, we are all part of the mess, part of the towering corrupt structure which has to be first destroyed – just as the Tao says.

“Well, it ain't nobody's fault
But our own,
Still, at least we might could
Show the good sense
To know when we've been wrong,
And it's already taken too long.
So we bring it to a stop
Then we take it from the top,
We let it settle on down softly
Like your gently falling snow
Or let it tumble down and topple
Like the temple long ago.” (Let it all fall down)

Then there’s the dilemma of those sitting on their hands or sitting on the fence, refusing to take sides O Jare!

This message is for them, if there is a God and if there is a Nigeria:

“If you want a friend, you must also be willing to wage war for him: and to wage war, you must be capable of being an enemy”

(From Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Writing about Nigeria under Buhari's presidency, Farooq Kperogi breast-thumped in his article below thus, "I foretold what is unravelling now since at least 2017." What has the prophet been foretelling since 2017, one may ask? That question soon became obsolete as the prophet's forecast on Buhari changed to warning when Farooq wrote, "But in several past columns, I'd warned about the dangers of allowing Buhari to come back for a second term." And what was the warning from prophet Farooq against Buhari coming back for the second term in 2019 based on? The base of his warning,Farooq disclosed thus, "I warned that Buhari's almost congenital incompetence and degenerative mental decline, not to mention the coterie of duncical (sic) babysitters that surround him and rule on his behalf, should cause the nation to not allow him to rule for a second term." 

The word, *congenital* is an adjective which means present at birth. Medically, the term congenital anomaly means birth defect. Therefore, the description of Buhari, by Farooq Kperogi, as almost congenital incompetent at birth must be based on Farooq Kperogi's medical knowledge of the person, Buhari. That is why it must be interesting to know when and how exactly Farooq got to know that Buhari was almost congenital incompetent at birth since, at least, 2017. Furthermore, readers would need to know on what Farooq Kperogi premised his diagnose of degenerative mental decline of Buhari. In medicine, the term degeneration is a noun defined as physical and/or mental decline that involves tissue and cellular changes and the loss of specialized function. Degenerative is an adjective derived from the word degeneration and whenever physicians talk about degenerative disorder in a person, they mean any of the several conditions that lead to progressive loss of function (e.g., chorea, Parkinsonism). Perhaps, the intention of Farooq was to impress his readers with sophisticated medical terminologies but, unfortunately, he ended up saturating his readers with highfalutin nonsense. If, according to Farooq Kperogi, Buhari was at birth born almost incompetent and afflicted with degenerative disorder at least since 2017, how then was Buhari able to attend and address in person the United Nations General Assembly's meeting of December 24, 2019? Here follows excerpts from near 16 minutes Buhari's address at UNG, " No threat is more potent than poverty and exclusion. They are the foul source from which common criminality, insurgency, cross-border crimes, human trafficking and its terrible consequences draw their inspiration. Poverty, in all its manifestations, remains one of the greatest challenges facing our world. Its eradication is an indisputable requirement for achieving sustainable development."​  ​https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2019/09/24/president-buharis-full-speech-at-74th-session-of-unga/ 

President Buhari's full speech at 74th Session of UNGA - P.M. News President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday addressed world leaders at the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. He assured that Nigeria will live to expectations in its leadership. The Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the UN, Amb. Tijani Muhammad-Bande, took office as President of the 74th session of the GA on Sept. 17. In […] www.pmnewsnigeria.com

​Although Farooq Kperogi rehashed his writings from 2017 to support his claim of predicting the current socio-political situations in Nigeria, a careful reader will easily discover that all his articles contained a quack's assertions on Buhari's health and not about socio-political forecasts based on sound political/economic analyses of the country. Farooq seems to lack the experience and cognitive ability, known as wisdom, to analyse political and economic deeds of Buhari's government in order to detect wrongs and proffer solutions. That, of course, may be too much to expect from him if we recall a part of his exchange with a member on this list serve, Tuesday, November 1, 2016, who requested him to engage in problem solving discussion on Africa instead of the juveline schoolyard insults he used to spit on opponents and to which he responded, "You take yourself .... and what you do here .... too seriously. You think you can help Africa's cultural and economic *burns* by what you write here? Seriously? Is this list serve some supernational African government that can solve Africa's problems? If you want to solve Africa's problems, get off the list and go do something about it. Good luck to you." It is crystal clear from his response that his aim of writing on this list serve is to exhibit his latest acquired English vocabularies, to ridicule Buhari's English pronouciations, award his speeches *F* in grammar, and to imaginarily diagnose him demented. We all know that the base of insecurity in Nigeria was grounded 36 years ago and that it has nothing to do with the person of Buhari.    

Beginning from 1985, Nigerians have seen how the country has been torn apart by ruling imposters. Thenceforth, we have seen, from year to year, how an absolute minority of Nigerians have succeeded to live in total abundance without labour (work) input. At the same time, the absolute majority of Nigerians, despite hard labour and toil, live in abject penury. In Nigeria, the euphemism for stealing public funds and impoverishing citizens is called corruption. The promise of Buhari's APC to fight corruption and recover stolen funds was responsible, not only for his winning the Presidential election in 2015 but, for winning majority seats in the National Assembly. As I have asserted in my previous posts on this forum, Buhari would need the cooperation of the other two arms of the government to fight corruption i.e., fighting stealers of Nigeria's developmental and security funds, effectively. Buhari did well by setting up Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) chaired by professor Itse Sagay. Based on the draft of PACAC to the President, Buhari submitted Special Crimes Court Bill to the National Assembly and pleaded to it on November 19, 2019, to hasten work on passing the Bill which would accelerate hearings and judgments on corruption, armed robbery and kidnapping cases. Background to the effort of Buhari to set up Special Crime Courts was to solve the problem of myriads of corruption cases that had piled up since 2007. As of date, the Special Crime Courts Bill is yet to be passed, ironically, by the APC majority controlled National Assembly.

As a Nigerian, it fills me with such revulsion and utter bewilderment each time I read (hear) about a Nigerian public officer being arrested and arraigned in court for stealing billions in naira value appropriated for developmental projects and the accused public officer is granted bail while the case is adjourned sine die. Permit me to illustrate with two out of hundreds of corruption cases from 2007 still unresolved till date. Chief James Onanefe Ibori was governor of Delta State from 29 May 1999 to 29 May 2007. He was first arrested by the EFCC on 12 December 2007 at Kwara State Lodge, Abuja, where his friend, the Governor of Kwara State then, Bukola Saraki, had granted him refuge. He was charged for theft of public funds, abuse of office, money laundering and many others. He pleaded not guilty and he was granted bail, whereafter the case was knocked into coma in addition to the fact that the Chairman of the EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu and some of his investigators were haunted out of office. The case against Ibori was awakened in 2009 and on 17 December 2009, Justice Marcel Awokulehin, presiding over Federal High Court, Asaba, absolved James Onanefe Ibori of all the 170-count charge of corruption and money laundering brought against him by the EFCC.

However, in 2005, the Metropolitan police in London had begun to take interest in James Ibori after coming across a $20 million cash down purchase order for a private jet, made through his London Solicitor, Bhadresh Gohil. Unknowingly to Ibori that British police were on his trail, he flew to Dubai, UAE, on 25 April 2010. At the request of UK, he was arrested in May 2010 and extradited to UK from the UAE on Friday, 15 April 2011. The following day, Saturday, 16 April 2011, The Crown prosecutor in the UK filed money laundering and fraud charges against James Onanefe Ibori at the Westminster Magistrate Court in London. According to the BBC, "British Police accuse him of stealing $250 million (£160m) over eight years" in office as governor of Delta State.​ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17181056

​However, Ibori on Monday, February 27, 2012, pleaded guilty to 10 charges of fraud and money-laundering during his eight years as governor of Delta State and admitted to stealing 50 million pounds ($79 million) from Delta State and laundering same in the UK.

Judge Anthony Pitts, at the end of a two-day sentencing at Southwark Crown Court in London, on April 17, 2012, told Ibori, "During those two terms (as governor) you turned yourself in very short order into a multimillionaire through corruption." Pitts said it was one of the biggest money-laundering cases seen and that the 50 million pounds Ibori had admitted to stealing may be "ludicrously low"fraction of his total booty. The Judge continued, "The figure may be in excess of 200 million pounds, it is difficult to tell. The confiscation proceedings may shed some further light on the enormity of the sums involved." ​https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-nigeria-ibori-idUSL6E8FH3J820120417

​The judge, Anthony Pitts' approximation of Ibori's theft to 200million pounds was premised on documents the British police actually presented to the court. By pleading guilty to stealing only 50 million pounds, Ibori had hoped that the court would give him a slap on the wrist since 2/3 of the actual amount stolen would silently be confiscated by Britain. The online London Guardian of 17 April 2012 reported, "The Metropolitan police estimates that Ibori embezzled $250 m (£157 m) of Nigerian public funds."  However, Ibori was setenced to 13 years in prison and he has since returned to Nigeria after serving half of the sentence. Under normal circustance, when a thief is caught, tried and convicted with the stolen property recovered, the entire property is returned to the rightful owner undiminished. The 50 million pounds Ibori admitted to have stolen from Delta State and laundered in the UK had remained in the coffer of Britain since 9 years ago, when Buhari was not in power. Then on March 9, 2021, the Attorney General of the federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UK on the return of Ibori loot to Nigeria, now said to be £4 . 2 million and not the £50 million which he admitted he had stolen and laundered in UK and for which he was convicted in April 2012. What happened to the rest £45.8 million?

Among the former governors investigated, and charged in court in 2007 was Orji Uzor Kalu, PDP Governor of Abia State from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2007. Six months before his tenure expired, he formed a political party called, Progressive People's Alliance (PPA) on which platform he contested the Presidential election of 21 April 2007, in which he came forth with 608,803 votes. Knowing what fate would befall him after leaving office, he quickly purchased from Abia State High Court an ex-parte order on 31 May 2007 which prohibited the EFCC from arresting, interrogating, detaining and prosecuting him in any court of law in Nigeria. Nevertheless, EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu arrested and charged Orji Uzor Kalu in court on July 27, 2007, for stealing 5 billion naira from Abia State, during his tenure as a governor. Kalu was granted bail and ordered to surrender his international passport to the court registrar. Shortly after his passport was confiscated by the Court, Kalu planned to flee from Nigeria. Therefore, he approached the court to allow him to travel to the US where he claimed his wife, Ifeoma Ada Kalu, was to undergo brain surgery and his presence was required to sign necessary papers before the operation could be performed. Kalu presented to the court a letter from Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston Massachussetts, signed by one Dr. Peter Black. Kalu did not reckon, as it happened, with the court seeking EFCC's opinion on his application for the return of his passport. EFCC quickly forwarded an email to the hospital to confirm Kalu's claim. In a reply signed by Heather Galvin, an assistant to Dr Peter Black, denied that his principal would ever sign such a letter as there was no patient named Ifeoma Ada Kalu in that hospital, implying that the signature in the letter presented to the court by Orji Uzor Kalu was forged. In normal countries, Kalu should have been in jail for forgery and perjury, but not Nigeria.

When the case resumed, Kalu's lawyers claimed that the EFCC disobeyed Abia State's Court order restraining it from arresting, detaining and prosecuting him. Besides, they wanted the Court to determine whether the EFCC and the federal government were competent to prosecute a case involving the revenue of a State's government. This was not resolved until 18 March 2016, by the Supreme Court which held that the Federal High Court where Mr. Kalu was arraigned is not bound by the injunction given by the High Court of Abia State and his prosecution was competent. Thus, the case was remitted back to the Federal High Court for commencement of Kalu's trial. Despite the fact that Kalu had the theft case hanging on his neck, he joined the APC to contest and win the senatorial seat for Abia State to the National Assembly, in 2019. Thus, a criminal suspect became a lawmaker. However, his case was revived and on December 5, 2019, Orji Uzor Kalu was convicted by a Federal High Court in Lagos for stealing N7.2 billion from Abia State during his 8 years governorship tenure. Five months later, approximately, May 8, 2020, the Supreme Court nullified the trial and conviction of Kalu on the ground that the Constitution does not permit a judge elevated to a high court to return to a lower court to conclude a part-heard case. Justice Ejembi Eko, who delivered the Supreme Court lead judgment also declared as unconstitutional the provision of section 396 (7) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, on which the then President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa (retired), relied on to authorise Justice Mohammed Idris to return to the lower court to conclude the trial after his promotion to the Court of Appeal. Kalu was released to continue as a law maker in the Senate and as at the time of this writing, he is yet to be put on a new trial by the EFCC as directed by the Supreme Court who found his correct conviction at the lower court pronounced by a wrong judge!!!

 Almost all Nigerian public officials are afflicted with behavioural disorder which psychologists call Compulsive Stealing Syndrome (CSS). CSS afflicted Nigerian public officials are characterised by repetitive and uncontrollable looting, quasi-ambitious positioning to steal, love of power for the sake of securing greater chance to steal and deprive, and preferring to steal with the intention of impoverishing people. The very day, Friday, 8 May 2020, when the Supreme Court of Nigeria nullified, on technical ground, the conviction of former Governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, for stealing N7.2 billion and ordering retrial, a federal high court in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of N426.7 million in possession of a retired Brigadier General, John Onimisi Ozigi. While in service, he had used his personal company, Diamond Head Venture and Development Company Limited to steal military funds. His salary per month before retirement was N750, 000. We have seen how Service Chiefs and top military officers, under President Jonathan, charged to court for stealing billions of naira of defence funds were granted bail and thereafter entered into plead bargaining to refund parts of their loots in lieu of being prosecuted and imprisoned. The cause of armed robberies, kidnapping for ransom, insurgency, banditry and herders/farmers clashes, is the heartless stealing of public funds by public officials. Whenever these public officials are arrested and charged in courts, they are granted bails and cases are either not decided expeditiously or remain pending for life. Although in law, granting bail to an accuse by a Judge is discretional, and in exercising that discretion Judges are compelled to weigh into their decision the severity of the offence and its overall effects on the society at large. Therefore, the law expects a kleptomaniac whose stealing of public funds leads to misery, suffering, abject poverty, hunger and starvation, untimely death and insecurity, to be kept in protective custody until judgment is pronounced and if need be, up to the highest court in the country. If the intention of law in this aspect is fulfilled, the accused looters will be interested in getting their cases decided expeditiously. As it has been proved, Judges in Nigeria have been caught in tradng judgments for cash reward but the National Judicial Council granted Judges immunity from prosecution while in office in disregard of the contents of the constitution. In many instances, Judges issued injunction orders prohibiting law enforcement agents from arresting, interrogating, detaining, and prosecuting suspected treasury looters. Where is the rage of Farooq and other Nigerians.

There is nothing Buhari can do, constitutionally or legally, about the epidemic outbreak of Compulsive Stealing Syndrome (CSS) among public officials who are the real precursors of insecurity in Nigeria. If President Muhammadu Buhari should constitute himself into a court of law to sentence looters of public funds to prison, he would be called a dictator. The amount of funds that have been, and which are still being, stolen are outragiously enormous. Stolen funds from Nigeria by public officials, some observers say, will build the kind of Dubai's beauty six times in Nigeria. Therefore, our collective rage should be directed against the National Assembly for refusing to pass Buhari's Special Crimes Court Bill and against the Judiciary for failing to conclude cases of looters of our nation's collective patrimony brought before them expeditiously.

S. Kadiri

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com>
Sent: 01 May 2021 06:29
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My Outrage Fatigue About Nigeria

 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Plenty of history narrated innl order to absolve Buhari of culpability in the present crisis ravaging Nigeria.

Buhari can do nothing about corruption, yet he campaigned on a war against corruption platform.

It's also possible that Buhari can do nothing decisive about the terrorist crisis gripping the nation, yet he campaigned on a platform of bringing terrorism to an end.

Is it not better then, for Buhari to resign?

Thanks

Toyin

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​At the risk of being blasphemous, I will say, if you make Jesus or Mohammed the President of Nigeria with the present structure, especially with the Nigerian Judiciary, the result of their governance will not be different from that of Buhari. Thus, solution to the epidemic of Compulsive Stealing Syndrome among Nigerian public officials, is not for Buhari to resign but for you and me and the rest of Nigerians to force the judiciary to adjudicate speedily on cases of robbers of our national patrimony that have been pending in the Courts since 2007. Alternatively, Nigerians, in unison, should compel the National Assembly to immediately pass the Special Crimes Court Bill, which will accelerate the incarceration of treasury looters and creators of insecurity, sent to it by Buhari since 2018. Constitutionally and legally, Buhari has no power to eradicate theft if the courts refuse to convict perpetrators.

S. Kadiri  

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: 10 May 2021 13:45
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My Outrage Fatigue About Nigeria

 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

But, this man has been around in politics since forever.

Why are we just being told he is so helpless?

Why has he been struggling for decades to become President if he is so inadequate?

He boasted about Boko Haram eradication, yet they are much more powerful now than when GEJ was leaving, taking over parts of Niger state next to Abuja.

His 2015 entry was the signal for Fulani Herdsmen militia terrorists and their Miyetti Allah handlers to become part of govt as they recurrently justify massacres of Nigerians, hold entire states and communities to ransom, empty communities through terror and occupy them, all with various degrees of covert and overt support from Buhari's govt.

This is the worst govt in Nigerian history along with that of Abacha.

This cannot continue.

Toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Baba Kadiri,

Most instructive: Psalm 1

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful...(King James Version)

This too, just for the record. As usual, once again, many thanks for these your exertions.

Without your timely interventions and correctives, so many spurious allegations spouted by the likes of Kperogi, in this forum, would go unchallenged and by default could pass as gospel truths, thereby rendering us more or less guilty of being accessories to his crimes and supporters of his calumnies. If we were to remain quiet, either because of fatigue / lack of the requisite patriotic interest or a deficit in Pan-Africanist energy, we would be found wanting in the sense that says and to which we could plead guilty, that “silence means consent” even as time without number we go on quoting what some learned men have said previously about the continuous triumph of evil due to the silence of good men.

Understandably, that’s the only reason to spill any ink or to waste your spittle on the likes of Kperogi, who is officially almost 50 (fifty) years of age if not older and thinks that he is still a spring chicken. Malcolm (no big grammar), the Rev Dr. Martin Luther King (great orator) were cut down before they could celebrate their fortieth (40^th) birthday. Bob Marley passed away at 37, Alexander the Great at 32, Jimi Hendrix at 27…

Sebastian Kurz was elected Chancellor of my forefathers’ Austria at the age of 31…

Eric Blair ( George Orwell) was born in India, attended Eton but never put on any airs like your countryman Kperogi, not about the English Language or anything else which just goes to illustrate what Malcolm Little, meant when he quipped about folks like Kperogi, “They taught you little” ; just as the autodidact Pope’s long satirical poem’s most delicate line, “ A little learning is a dangerous thing ” and as proof of that we witness every day about the pint pot, that ” it’s the empty barrel that makes most noise”

Mind you, Baba Kadiri, you who have written so politely, “Farooq seems to lack the experience and cognitive ability, known as wisdom, to analyse political and economic deeds of Buhari's government in order to detect wrongs and proffer solutions.” -

I should like to politely remind you that at least Pope did not scribble, “A little wisdom is a dangerous thing “ That’s why we have this section in the Hebrew Bible: The Wisdom Literature . Lots of it (wisdom)

And let me also politely remind you about this Islamic principle: If a little of something such as poison, or Kibr or alcohol or tale-bearing which the true Prophet of Islam salallahu alaihi wa salaam refers to as “eating your brother’s flesh” – is haram, then a surfeit of that kibr and alcohol and “eating your brother’s flesh” is obviously also haram.

At any such game, two can play. and the one will excel the other. He should do his best, not to get me started. Kperogi forever busy correcting President Trump’s English, as if Trump gives a rat’s ass about what Kperogi says or about Kperogi’s towers when Kperogi can't even get himself elected chief rat-catcher in Ilorin or Maiduguri.

Imagine if an Oyibo said just a few things that Kperogi has said about President Buhari and other dignified Nigerians, wouldn’t we call them out as “racists”? And should the President of Ghana (God forbid) say similar things about the President of Nigeria or the Supreme Leader of Iran would that not precipitate a crisis in International relations?

Lest we forget ourselves and our little learning, this was the very first Quranic revelation:

“Read! in the name of your Lord who created

Man from a clinging substance.

Read: Your Lord is most Generous,–

He who taught by the pen–

Taught man that which he knew not.”

There’s also Surah Al-Qalam (The Pen) and a lot of guidance to be found therein even for Muslims who say that they are “not religious”

It should go without saying - axiomatic - that it’s cultural, fat-face Kperogi’s predilection in exalting himself and denigrating persons’ whose opinions are at variance with his own self-esteem hence his referring to you and me who he has never met as “vermin” - such references to other people’s fathers and august grandfathers, poetically speaking perhaps reminiscent of his decrepit father who apparently never taught him anything about respect for his fellow Muslims, his elders and his betters. Ditto his febrile overuse of words like "geriatric “- not in referring to the late President Mugabe, but to his own kith and kin.

So how educated is Kperogi, really? Is his Swedish as polished as yours? I wonder. Is he intelligent enough to boast like this boast that’s attributed to George Bernard Shaw : “I can think of no writer in English Literature, not even Sir Walter Scot who I more despise than Shakespeare, when I match his intellect against my own”

Some Sierra Leone music: Dr. Oloh

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

It was some years ago that some Nigerian opposition party or the other promised that if their favoured presidential candidate was not elected then they would ensure that Nigeria would be made “ungovernable!” That’s precisely the anarchy, chaos, lawlessness without accountability and general ungovernability that they had in mind and that we are now witnessing unfolding on a daily basis.

Of course there’s generally no smoke without fire and Nigeria’s doomsday Prophet, Prophet Kperogi did prophesy not too long ago that it would be just matter of seconds before Boko Haram would be invading Abuja, his exact words of warning : “It’s only a matter of time before the group takes over Abuja.” Isn’t that what he said?

So, I didn’t nearly jump out of my skin when I read the following news report today : Boko Haram Militants Invade Nigerian Capital, Abuja. It’s not certain that the doomsday prophet hadn’t got some wind of the Boko’s intention in which case there was a nothing prophetic about this forehand knowledge probably from some of his Boko Haram sources scattered among the scores of informants he seems to have at Aso Rock and all over the Naija Federation.

Something sinister is definitely afoot and what Femi Fani-Kayode said two days ago at Roots, The State of the Nation adds that more grist to the mill. I’m more inclined to listen more carefully to Apostle Femi Fani-Kayode than to Nigeria’s doomsday prophet and his numerous unverified and unnamed demonic sources.

Correction. Sir Walter Scott 

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Femi Fani-Kayode blowing his mind :

(4) Femi Fani-Kayode | Facebook

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

The making Nigeria ungovernable declaration was attributed to extremist members of the Northern Muslim elite in the effort to unseat GEJ.

Buhari belongs to that elite, by both ethno-religious affiliation and publicly demonstrated ideology.

Therefore claiming that attributed declaration as the cause of the current crisis makes me wonder how you came to that conclusion.

Thanks

Toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Elementary, my dear Watson!

It was not 100% of the Nigerian Electorate that elected President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and in 2019 and according to the system it’s winner takes all…

It was not even 100% of what you refer to as “the Northern Muslim elite” that elected Brother Buhari when he defeated Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 and as you can see from the 2015 election results Jonathan polled 12,853,162 votes, Brother Buhari, 15,424,921.

According to the 2019 election polls when Brother Buhari faced a fellow member of your so called “The Northern Muslin elite “ in the person of billionaire Atiku Abubakar Brother Buhari walloped Atiku by a whopping 14% of the total votes cast

As you must have noticed, the mayhem gradually started escalating after Brother Buhari won his second term. The anarchy, ransom kidnapping etc. is now at it’s highest level since the time of Goodluck Jonathan.

Please take a closer look HERE and ask yourself this question: Why would Brother Buhari want to make things difficult for himself by making Nigeria ungovernable whilst he is sitting in the saddle as the President?

And why is the Senate and the corrupt judiciary obstructing his efforts to bring the miscreants to Justice?

Apart from the implosions from poverty etc, the ethnic and religious tensions along all the well known fault lines and fissures, in sum total, the simple answer is that it is a conglomeration of all the anti-Buhari forces plus what Femi- Fani-Kayode is talking about here.

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Buhari is a terrorism enabler.

He is in bed with terrorists, so what they gain, he gains.

The escalation of Fulani herdsmen terrorism with recurrent massacres by them in the Middle Belt began in 2015, shortly after Buhari came to power.

That is the genesis of the current nationwide crisis.

Why not share what you think is valuable about Fani Kayodes summartion and why you see it that way?

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju: Salutations !

Why do like making such scurrilous statements?

Brother Buhari would like to see a peaceful and prosperous nation. I was in Nigeria ,in Bakana on 6^th of August 1983 and witnessed that sham ( heavily rigged election). I was in Port Harcourt on 31^st December 1983 when Brother Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon took over for that purpose. I saw Sani Abacha in Port Harcourt two weeks earlier…...

Taking the temperature of the now volatile country, even the most cautious weather forecaster will say that the temperature is high (hot) and the air is dry and combustible this late Harmattan. Let us pray that peace will rain down to cool the atmosphere a little this coming Wednesday evening to Thursday 13th May which is the Eid-ul Fitr festival in Nigeria a time for everybody to wish their neighbours “Eid Mubarak!”

Of course after the Eid, things will slide back to normal, Boko Haram will be back in business again, just as before. If Kperogi’s vision was not from Shaitan then just as he said, it’s just a matter of time before Boko Haram “takes over Abuja.” - not merely invades, but takes over, Nigeria’s capital Abuja. I don’t know exactly what “ takes over” means in Nigerian English but in ordinary parlance there’s a degree of completion, finality. The idea of a terrorist force taking over Abuja implies taking complete control of your capital Abuja and maybe raising their flag over it as conquered territory, Abuja, the capital of Boko Haram’s Islamic Republic / Caliphate of Nigeria,, the territory an essential part of dar al Islam , next step you start paying your taxes to them. You've heard the song, “First we take Manhattan”? In this case, it’s “ First We Take Abuja !” Then Anambra.

Everybody is testing to see how far they can go with pushing beyond limits. With the al-Aqsa Mosque as the centre of gravity in the Middle East, if Netanyahu is not careful with Joe Biden sitting easy in the White House saddle, the Trump-Kushner Abrahamic Accords might blow up in his face if he pushes too far and too hard in trying to sell the Israeli electorate the myth that he’s the only one who can deal with “the Palestinian terrorists” and with Iran, certainly more effectively than Yair Lapid - just as in Nigeria in the run up to the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Elections each frontrunner for the presidency will be promising how they will make Nigeria heaven on earth, by first of all wiping out insecurity, and that is assuming that by then Boho Haram has not already installed their own President in Abuja and to hell with the 2023 “elections”; but authu billahi minashaitan nirajeem, let’s see what further predictions, premonitions and perorations Sheikh Kperogi will try to entertain us with in his forthcoming Sabbath columns.

Back to seriousness. You say, “The making Nigeria ungovernable declaration was attributed to extremist members of the Northern Muslim elite in the effort to unseat GEJ.” OK, GEJ was democratically unseated when Brother Buhari won the 2015 election. So, which are the forces that are making Nigeria ungovernable for Brother Buhari, and what is their motive?

I have nothing to add or subtract from what Femi Fani-Kayode has said about foreign interests wanting to fragment nation states or wanting Nigeria to explode into disintegration etc. etc etc. Much more interesting, what do you think about his conspiracy theories? 

 Keep in mind that with 200 million people and growing, Nigeria is a huge market, Bear in mind also, that the more Nigeria disintegrates the more the corrupt elite, the lootocracy will exile themselves to where they have stashed their loot 

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