Sir Winston Churchill once said, and I quote “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
An American politician named Frank Clark also pointed out that “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”
Since the assumption of this administration into Office, a lot has happened, happening and a whole lot will happen in the course of their stewardship, good, bad and ugly. Hopefully, we will eventually avoid the last one, but in every government, in every situation, the first two are always inevitable.
A nation without critics to check the excesses of its public officials is doomed, but in the same breath, a nation with critics with personal agendas who lack wisdom is equally doomed.
Since the coming of this government, a lot of critics have emerged as expected. What is been hard to swallow is how some critics allow their selfish agenda to becloud their sense of reasoning. One of those critics is Professor Farooq Kperogi, who have been the hardest non-partisan critic of President Buhari, atleast as far as we know for now. But the way and manner in which the Professor of journalism and emerging media have gone on and on about criticising the President in a misguided way has made a lot of people that used to respect him, questioned his sincerity and even the danger his style of journalism portrays for our society and aspiring journalists.
Journalists these days both local and international have formed the habit of reporting issues without research or investigation. They just report based on sentiments depending on their agenda or from which divide a brown envelope is handed to them. This is quite ironic, considering that the three arms of Governments (Executive, Legislators and Judiciary) are supposed to be kept on their toes by critics and Media, but when these same media people are compromised because of their personal or Partisan affiliation, it then becomes a cause for alarm.
In 2015 after President Buhari assumed office, our Dear Professor Kperogi wrote a piece titled “6 Reasons Why Incoming Buhari Government Fills Me With Hope”
http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/05/6-reasons-why-incoming-buhari.html?m=1
In the piece, he praised both President Buhari and his now media aide, Garba Shehu, laying down things we should expect and not expect from this government. In his own words, “the incoming Muhammadu Buhari administration won’t be perfect by any means. It will disappoint us in some areas, betray us in others, even annoy us sometimes, but I am confident that, after all is said and done, this incoming government will represent a qualitative departure from the legalized banditry that has passed for governance in Nigeria for so long. There are at least 6 reasons for my hopes,” he concluded before going into the details of the reasons.
I am personally glad President Buhari hasn’t disappointed. Going by Professor Kperogi’s forecast, there is nothing that has happened in this government and is still happening that Mr Kperogi didn’t predict and which we unanimously believe is as a result of the excesses of the past and successive administrations. The question thin is so what CHANGED for Mr kperogi that he has turned into a vicious critic? Is it possible that Mr kperogi was expecting an appointment or brown envelopes from the Government and seeing that it’s not forthcoming has resorted to chastising the government and switching up his style of criticising President Buhari to get noticed? I personally have pondered for sometime now on why Mr Kperogi has chosen to be some sort of nuisance in his write ups, but I think I have finally come to the conclusion that Mr Kperogi might not be the Angel he is protraying himself to be. After all, he admitted himself in the article above that he had to blackmail his way into Obasanjo’s government by writing scathing Articles against the government before he was appointed into the then Presidential Communication Unit (PCU).
Mr Kperogi has repeatedly bragged that he is comfortable and contented in his position at the moment, but his style of writing begs to differ. He has consistently held on to the issue of the so called Buhari Media Centre in which he claims the organisation is a covert centre aimed solely at engaging in propaganda, but Mr Kperogi has refused to name one propaganda this organisation has peddled. He also claimed that the members are unknown, but it has been proven to him time after time that members of the so called BMC always indicate in their profiles that they are belong to the group and having the aim similar to the work Mr Kperogi did in PCU during Obasanjo’s tenure.
The members of the so called BMC like Ayourb, Barrister Abdullahi, Johannes Tobi, Ayo Akanji to mention a few have been appearing on television and radio programmes, defending and shedding lights on the policies of Buhari Administration as well as rebutting the lies and propaganda peddled against the Buhari Government by the corrupt agents of past administration and characters like Mr Kperogi himself. So what else does he want? Except there is something of course he is not letting the general public know, his actions have become an act of desperation and a ploy for attention to either get appointed or get monetary reward, an expectation I believe will never see the light of day because Buhari as I know him is not the kind of person to give bribe or give in to blackmails.
Mr Kperogi claims the so called BMC members open anonymous accounts on social media to write propaganda for the government and attack those that write against the government in comment sections, but has refused to provide facts to back up his claims or even mention those handles and yet he calls himself a Professor of journalism. May be Mr Kperogi needs to go back to school of journalism to refresh his knowledge of profession.
There are many Farooq Kperogi’s in Nigeria today who feel the best way to warm their way into the government is by writing scathing articles or forming lies against the government. Some of them are either sponsored by our past corrupt elites who are having a hard time now or are motivated by their own selfish agenda after they dine with people in government, but become as silent as a catacomb.
The new lucrative business in town is to pretend to be activists or intellectual activists who peddle blatant lies just to advance their selfish agenda. I call them Emerging Commercial intellectual writers and activists who gets paid by corrupt and dubious politicians to write propaganda against the Buhari government. It is a dangerous precedent being laid by today’s intellectuals. To make matters worse, these same set of critics don’t like being criticised. Farooq Kperogi on social media blocks every one who fails to agree with his write ups, but nags all the time about Buhari supporters lacking tolerance to criticism. Such a double standard.
It might be possible Mr Kperogi thinks he is entitled to an appointment in this government since he contributed to writing against the last administration which is commendable, but you can only be entitled if you contested for an election and won. If you don’t, then the right to appointing people into the government is reserved for the elected officials. If Mr Kperogi or any intellectual for that matter who aren’t card carrying members of any party feels entitled, then they should feel free to stand for election, campaign vigorously and win to bring the necessary Change they feel Nigerians deserve, but I for a fact know they won’t, because they are opportunists. All they will continue to do is blackmail their way in to the arms of governments that give in to their tricks. They are too lazy to stand for election, but tricks and opportunism is their tactics. We will continue to rebut the Farooq Kperogis of this world and expose them for who they truly are.
In Mr Kperogi’s words “Ultimately, the people Buhari will disappoint, I hope would be his visceral critics and his hyper-partisan supporters who want him to be a northern version of Jonathan—petty, vindictive, small-minded, and intolerant. This fills me with hope.
I guess we know which Group Mr kperogi belongs to now.
Mu’awiyyah Yusuf Muye can be reached on twitter @MP_Muye
