Opinion

Borgu, Northern Nigeria and Yoruba history, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

1 year ago

January 11, 2025

Farooq Kperogi

Borgu, Northern Nigeria and Yoruba history, By Farooq Kperogi

My December 21, 2024, column titled “Kemi Badenoch’s Yoruba Identity Meets Inconvenient Truths,” where I set out to show that, contrary to Kemi Badenoch’s claim, the Yoruba and the “North” have had and still have a lot in common, hurt the ethnic susceptibilities of many Yoruba nationalists who misunderstood me as creating a hierarchy of historical and cultural dominance in which the Yoruba are inferior.

That was not what my column was about. If it comes across that way, it’s because people are gazing at the past with the lenses of the present. Historians call that presentism. Presentism animates the sort of defensive, ahistorical, knee-jerk, decontextualized, and emotive reactions that some people gave to my column.

Notions of collective identity with definite ethnographic boundaries are relatively new all over the world. I made this clear to Dr. Lasisi Olagunju who wrote a 3,526-word response to my column last Monday in which he cherry-picked evidence from the self-comforting presentist fantasies of certain Yoruba historians to countermine my arguments. Here’s my response to his response.

Dr. Olagunju took issue with my restating of a well-known, uncontested socio-historical fact: that “Yoruba,” the collective name for the people of western Nigeria, is an exonym that traces etymological provenance from what is now called northern Nigeria and that it originally referred only to people from Oyo, not other subgroups such as Ijebu, Ondo, Ijesa, Egba, etc.

It explains why Oba Sikiru Adetona, the Awujale of Ijebuland, still says the Ijebu are not Yoruba and are not even descendants of Oduduwa. It also explains why, as I pointed out in my October 26, 2019 column titled “Fulani and Origin of the Names ‘Yoruba’ and ‘Yamuri’,” Nigeria’s first modern newspaper, called Iwe Irohin fun awon Egba ati Yoruba (Yoruba for “newspaper for the Egba and Yoruba people”) indicated from its name that the Egba and the Yoruba were different ethnic groups who nonetheless belonged to the same linguistic group.

In other words, as of 1859 when the newspaper was set up, the Egba didn’t call themselves “Yoruba.”

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That the name Yoruba is an exonym from the North of Nigeria for the people of Oyo is so settled in the literature that I am befuddled that anyone would contest it with mere implausible conjectures and self-created oral histories.

For example, in his 1984 article titled “Yoruba Ethnic Groups or a Yoruba Ethnic Group? A Review of the Problem of Ethnic Identification” published in África: Revista do Centro de Estudos Africanos, Professor Biodun Adediran argued that the term Yoruba wasn’t native to Yoruba and was, in fact, a word first used for Oyo people by northerners.

He said, “the term first appeared in Arabic sources and in European accounts based on information from the Hausa country,” arguing “It was probably the Hausa who first gave the name ‘Yarribah’ to their Yoruba-speaking neighbours. Since the Oyo were the sub-group the Hausa came most frequently in contact with, the name easily became synonymous with ‘Oyo’” (p. 62).

Adeniran also argued that the term “Yoruba” initially remained confined to “the dictionary of those who invented it” (p. 63) and gained broader use only in the early 19th century due to increased interactions between the Yoruba and their northern neighbors. During this period, local wars fostered sub-group pride, leading many non-Oyo groups to reject “Yoruba” as a foreign name.

It was only toward the end of the century, when Europeans insisted on its use and referred to the Alaafin as the King of the Yoruba, that even the Oyo (to whom the name originally referred) began to embrace the term (p. 63).

In his 2019 book, Partitioned Borgu: State, Society and Politics in a West African Border Region, Dr. Hussaini Abdu investigated it further and found that the Hausa themselves borrowed the term Yariba (or versions of it) from the Baatonu people of Borgu, known to the Yoruba as Bariba, Baruba, or Ibariba, who are Oyo’s northwestern neighbors. The Baatonu, as I argued before, refer to the Oyo people as “Yoru” (singular) and “Yorubu” (plural), with “Yoruba” used in third-person references.

Abdu traces the name’s spread to Songhai-Borgu interactions, later reinforced by interviews with Baatonu slaves in Sierra Leone and popularized through European travelers and missionary records, such as Samuel Johnson’s 19th-century writings. This theory aligns with the historical and cultural links between Songhai, Borgu, and Oyo, including the spread of Islam to both Borgu and Yoruba land by Songhai-speaking Mande from ancient Mali, reflected in the Yoruba term for Islam, “imale.”

This is consistent with collective naming practices all over the world. Immediate neighbors typically name each other, which others then adopt. Olagunju cited the examples of “Hausa” (which came from the Songhai) and “Fulani,” which came from the Hausa.

The older Hausa name for Yoruba people was Ayagi (see my August 19, 2022, article titled “‘Ayagi’”: Earliest Nupe-Influenced Hausa Name for Yoruba People” based on my review of Professor Rasheed Olaniyi’s work), not Yariba, which strengthens Abdu’s research about the Borgu origins of the name Yoruba.

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Of course, Katanga, the name of the old capital of the Oyo Empire was, according to Professor Stefan Reichmuth, the “Hausa name for Old Qyo,” adding, “This term which might even be originally a stranger’s name of northern origin was in the late nineteenth century coming to be accepted as an overall ‘national’ name not only by the Oyo themselves but by other related groups as well.” (p.157).

However, in his 1934 book titled A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary, G.P. Bargery defined Katanga as the Hausa word for a “wall of a house or compound” (p. 583).

Well, in their 2015 article titled “’Lucumi, ‘Terranova’, and The Origins of the Yoruba Nation,” published in The Journal of African History, Henry B. Lovejoy and Olatunji Ojo point out that all the collective names by which the Yoruba people were known are exonyms. They also agree that “Yoruba” came from the North.

Most importantly, they found that the term “Yoruba” does not appear in European slave records, slave-owner documents, or early self-references by the Yoruba people themselves before the 19th century. So, Olagunju’s argument that Baatonu people might have imitated the name from Oyo people whose Alaafin sought refuge in their land seems highly unlikely.

Yoruba isn’t the only exonym by which the “Yoruba” people were known. A common name in slave records that historians have found is “Lucumi” (or Lukumi). Lovejoy and Ojo found that while the term could mean “my friend” in Yoruba, or “female lover” or “concubine” in the Owo dialect, it was the name Bini people called people in eastern Yorubaland.

They said it originated as a pejorative Edo term for foreigners, likely slaves, who spoke unintelligible languages, including Yoruba. In Edo, they pointed out, oluku means “young animal,” while mi or mie translates as “that” or “to have.” The term’s dual meanings in Yoruba and Edo, they said, suggest an ironic basis for its later identity formation.

“Nagô,” a self-appellation of the Anago subgroup of Yoruba, became the dominant term in Brazil for enslaved Yoruba speakers. Fon-speaking Dahomeans adapted this term as “Anagonu” to refer broadly to Yoruba-speaking groups (p. 355).

“Aku,” derived from the Yoruba greeting “eku,” was also used to identify Yoruba-speaking recaptives in Sierra Leone following British anti-slavery efforts in the early 19th century.

Nonetheless, as I pointed out in my 2019 column, which Lovejoy and Ojo supported with more scholarly evidence, the people of Western Nigeria aren’t called “Yoruba” today because the Borgu people called them so, or because they were identified by a version of that name by Songhai, Hausa, and Fulani people.

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They self-identify as “Yoruba” precisely because returnee slaves of Yoruba descent chose the name, popularized it, and encouraged people in the region to embrace it. More significantly, though, it was because colonialists insisted on it even when other subgroups protested its imposition.

To put it cheekily for Kemi Badenoch, the same Europeans who stitched the North and South together to form Nigeria were the ones who insisted on calling her Ondo and Ijebu kin “Yoruba,” a northern label originally meant for the Oyo, a group her people weren’t even part of. Oh, the irony!

Dr. Olagunju reproduced passages from his favorite Yoruba nationalist historians to dispute specific claims about Borgu’s immersion in Oyo’s history but dismissed the claims of the well-regarded Akinwumi Ogundiran’s well-received book, The Yoruba: A New History, which supported some of my claims, as suspect because he “did not cite any authority to back this claim.”

Never mind Dr. Olagunju’s unsupported claim that I. A. Akinjogbin said Borgu was under Oyo “until 1783.” Well, he made no such statement. What he actually wrote was that Oyo’s “tributaries included at least parts of the Nupe and the Bariba countries” (p. 450). How “parts of” a territory paying tribute translates to the entire country being under Oyo’s rule is beyond me.

Nonetheless, later Yoruba historians have challenged the exaggerated narratives of Oyo’s rule and reach and undermined claims such as Akinjogbi’s and the predecessors that inspired him. For example, Professor Olayemi Duro Akinwumi, in a 1992 article titled “The Oyo-Borgu Military Alliance of 1835: A Case Study in the Pre-Colonial Military History published in Transafrican Journal of History wrote:

“The extent of the Old Oyo Kingdom had been a subject of debate among the professional and non-professional historians. Crowder, for example, had given the impression that Oyo at its peak of glory extended far and wide to cover north, south, west and east of the kingdom…. Among the states incorporated into the Kingdom was Benin on the east, and Dahomey on the west. Samuel Johnson (1960:179) went further by including a portion of Nupe, Borgu and Dahomey. It is now certain that the Kingdom did not embrace all the Yoruba and the non-Yoruba states as claimed by many authors” (p. 160).

Dr. Olagunju doubted that the bashoruns of the Oyo empire were of Borgu origins even when Professor Ogundiran pointed it out in his book. Well, they were more than bashoruns. According to Professor Babatunded Agiri, whom Dr. Olagunju quoted in his response to me, “This process, by which the earliest Yoruba dynasties lost their political power to an invading Borgawa group, is also found in the Save area (now in Dahomey).

“Here the invasion probably took place sometime in the seventeenth century or slightly earlier. That the ruling dynasty in Old Oyo was non-Yoruba is also supported by the existence of a relic of an extinct (and probably Yoruba) dynasty in the lineage of the Basorun” (see “Early Oyo History Reconsidered” by Babatunde Agiri, History in Africa, 1975, p.7).

Agiri also pointed out that, “The Oranyan dynasty was from Borgu and the traditions of its origin in Old Oyo emphasize this link. The conquest of Old Oyo by the Borgawa dynasty must have occurred well before the fifteenth century” and that Borgu “established satellite dynasties in the Yoruba towns in the area, including Oyo, replacing the former Nupe influence there” (p. 10).

He said Alaafin Abipa owed his success in reestablishing his dynasty at Old Oyo to the large following of warriors from Borgu who accompanied him and that some of these warriors were rewarded for their services by being permitted to replace the rulers of some former Yoruba settlements such as Kishi, Igboho, and Igbeti.

“Others became rulers of new settlements like Ogbomoso, located in strategic areas to guard the state against further Nupe incursions. Thus, the post-Igboho period witnessed another influx of Borgu men and blood among the Oyo but, as with the earlier conquerors, their descendants have been absorbed completely into Yoruba culture-a culture which probably expressed a broad continuity with the earliest inhabitants,” he wrote (p. 10).

However, in his 1985 article, “How Many Times Can History Repeat Itself,” Professor Robin Law argued that the Alaafins of Oyo were of Borgu origin. He dismissed the idea that these rulers were returning Oyo refugees, labeling it a stereotypical narrative used to legitimize foreign rule.

Instead, Law suggested a Borgu conquest, noting that several northern Yoruba towns, including Saki, Kisi, Igbeti, Igboho, and Ogbomoso, had royal dynasties of Borgu descent. He linked the foundation of Igboho to a significant influx of Borgu settlers, who likely introduced cavalry, enabling them to dominate northern Yorubaland despite their small numbers.

Law also questioned the traditional timeline, proposing that the Borgu dynasty’s arrival at Igboho could predate the 16th century (p. 47), which annihilates the notion that Borgu could ever be a tributary state of Oyo, especially because there is not a single ruling dynasty in all of Borgu that traces ancestry to Yoruba.

All that this shows is that the Yoruba and the North have always been intertwined since precolonial times. That’s not a reason to force a union of the people or to deny anyone the prerogative to take pride in their ethnic or regional identity. It’s merely to set the records straight.

Borgu, Northern Nigeria and Yoruba history, By Farooq Kperogi

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Related Topics:Borgu northern Yoruba history

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Opinion

Understanding Ahmad Gumi Controversy and Nigeria’s Security Power Structure

Published

2 days ago

May 19, 2026

Trends Admin

Understanding Ahmad Gumi Controversy and Nigeria’s Security Power Structure

By Mudashir “Dipo” Teniola

The conversation did not begin with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi. Like many discussions about Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, it started with another painful story — the abduction and killing of a schoolteacher in Oyo State. Frustration filled the room like thick harmattan dust before someone shifted the mood with a pointed remark:

“But this Gumi sef, despite everything, he’s still moving freely.”

That single sentence captured a deeper national confusion: how can a cleric repeatedly associated in public discourse with dialogues involving bandits, kidnappers, and armed groups continue to operate openly while the government’s response appears cautious and restrained?

To ask that question is not necessarily to defend or condemn Ahmad Gumi. Rather, it is to move beyond headlines and confront the complicated realities of Nigeria’s power structure — a system shaped by history, institutional relationships, religion, military culture, and elite influence.

Why Public Outrage Feels Understandable

Many Nigerians, especially in Southern Nigeria and among Northern Christian communities, react strongly to Gumi because their anger is rooted in lived trauma.

They remember the violence that plagued the Kaduna–Birnin Gwari corridor, the March 2022 Abuja–Kaduna train attack that left passengers kidnapped for months, and the repeated mass abductions in Zamfara and other northern states that normalised ransom negotiations and deepened public fear.

During some of the country’s darkest moments, Gumi’s visits to forest camps, his advocacy for negotiation alongside military action, and comments interpreted by critics as sympathetic to bandits generated widespread backlash.

For victims and their families, complex political analysis often matters less than justice and safety. Their frustration is therefore legitimate. When many Nigerians ask, “Why is this man still free?” they are expressing accumulated national pain and distrust in state institutions.

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Still, public anger alone does not fully explain the situation.

Who Ahmad Gumi Is Beyond the Headlines

Public conversations often reduce Gumi to a “controversial cleric,” but his background is far more layered.

He is:

Son of the late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, one of Northern Nigeria’s most influential Islamic scholars with longstanding ties to the old Ahmadu Bello political establishment.
A trained medical doctor who served in the Nigerian Army Medical Corps and retired with the rank of captain.
An Islamic scholar who furthered his religious studies in Saudi Arabia.

The military aspect of his identity is particularly important in understanding his influence.

In Nigeria, military affiliation often extends beyond active service. Retired officers frequently maintain strong institutional relationships, networks, and influence long after leaving the armed forces. This does not automatically provide immunity, but it can shape how the state approaches sensitive figures connected to security-related matters.

For many within government and security circles, Gumi is not viewed solely as a cleric. He represents a combination of religious authority, elite northern pedigree, and military familiarity — factors that complicate any simplistic interpretation of his role in Nigeria’s security discourse.

Nigeria’s Long History of Negotiating With Armed Groups

Another uncomfortable reality is that Nigeria’s security strategy has rarely relied on military force alone.

Successive governments have, at different times, adopted negotiation or reintegration strategies with violent non-state actors. Examples include:

The Niger Delta Amnesty Programme introduced under late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
Reported backchannel discussions with factions linked to Boko Haram.
Quiet engagement efforts by some northern governors seeking dialogue with armed bandit groups before publicly distancing themselves from such approaches.

Gumi has also claimed in previous interviews that elements within the Nigerian state were aware of, or indirectly involved in, some of his engagements with armed groups.

Whether Nigerians agree with that approach or not, these realities place him within a broader historical pattern of state inconsistency in handling insecurity.

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That inconsistency partly explains why many citizens struggle to understand why he has not faced harsher official consequences.

Why Many Nigerians Perceive Double Standards

For many observers in Southern Nigeria, comparisons are often drawn between Gumi and separatist figures such as Nnamdi Kanu or Sunday Igboho.

To such critics, the difference in state response reinforces perceptions of ethnic or religious bias within Nigeria’s power structure.

However, reducing the matter solely to religion or ethnicity oversimplifies a more complex system.

In Northern Nigeria, religious authority, military influence, bureaucracy, and political elite networks have historically overlapped in ways that differ from the more fragmented power structures in many southern states.

As a result, when Gumi speaks, some Nigerians hear not just an Islamic cleric but echoes of a broader establishment network with historical institutional influence.

At the same time, dismissing all criticism against him as Islamophobia or anti-Fulani sentiment is equally dishonest. Many citizens genuinely fear that rhetoric perceived as accommodating bandit grievances may unintentionally normalise criminality or deepen the suffering of victims.

The Bigger Lesson for Nigeria

The “Ahmad Gumi phenomenon” is not about mystery or untouchability. It reflects the layered realities of power in Nigeria.

In the country’s political and security landscape, influence is rarely straightforward. Military history, religious authority, elite networks, ethnicity, and institutional memory often intersect in ways outsiders may not immediately understand.

Recognising this complexity does not excuse insecurity, nor does it erase the pain of victims. But it helps explain why figures like Gumi occupy controversial yet enduring spaces within national conversations.

The killing of innocent Nigerians — from abducted teachers to victims of mass kidnappings — demands a more effective security strategy, stronger governance, and reduced tolerance for criminal economies built around ransom and violence.

Nigeria cannot move forward if outrage replaces analysis or if difficult national questions are reduced to simplistic talking points.

Understanding the structures that shape influence in the country is uncomfortable, but necessary. Nigeria is a deeply layered society, and navigating it requires the ability to hold multiple truths at once: anger over violence, awareness of institutional realities, and a commitment to justice without fear or favour.

Only then can the country move beyond endless outrage toward meaningful understanding and lasting solutions.

Understanding Ahmad Gumi Controversy and Nigeria’s Security Power Structure

Opinion

War against Nigeria’s academic title fraud, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 weeks ago

May 9, 2026

Trends Admin

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Farooq Kperogi

War against Nigeria’s academic title fraud, By Farooq Kperogi

The federal government’s decision to prohibit recipients of honorary doctorates from prefixing “Dr.” to their names is one of the most unexpectedly sensible things to come from officialdom in a long while. It is a small decision with large symbolic consequences, which strikes at the heart of one of Nigeria’s most ridiculous epidemics: the vulgar worship of titles by vain, title-crazy, empty-headed “big men” and “big women” who use purchased honorary academic garlands to conceal the poverty of their intellect.

For years, I have called attention to this national embarrassment. In my October 13, 2012, column titled “Finally, Some Good News from Our Universities,” I praised the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities for its Keffi Declaration on honorary doctorates.

The declaration had four main resolutions: serving government officials should no longer be awarded honorary doctoral degrees, universities without PhD programs should not award honorary doctorates, honorary degrees should be limited to three a year, and recipients of honorary doctorates should not prefix “Dr.” to their names.

I wrote then that this gladdened my heart because honorary doctoral degrees had become cheap candies tossed at anybody with access to stolen public funds, political influence or obscene wealth. I also wrote that the hardest part to enforce would be the directive forbidding recipients of honorary doctorates from styling themselves “Dr.”

I ended the column by wishing the vice chancellors and the NUC good luck in enforcing the “don’t-call-yourself-a-doctor” declaration because, even then, I knew that the vanity economy in Nigeria was too entrenched to be defeated by a gentleman’s agreement.

I returned to the subject on June 7, 2025, in a column titled “Fight Against Vanity Academic Titles in Africa” and again in a September 27, 2025, column titled: “Rarara: There is No Such Thing as ‘Honorary PhD.’” In the June 7, 2025 column, I commended Ghana and Malawi for confronting this same disease.

Ghana’s Tertiary Education Commission had issued what it called a “final caution” to politicians, businessmen and businesswomen, men and women of God and other public figures to desist from publicly using honorary doctoral and professorial titles. It described the practice as deceitful and unethical, said it dilutes the integrity of higher education and warned that it would name and shame violators and take legal action against them.

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That was the right tone. Nigeria now needs the same hard-tackle approach.

The new federal directive, announced by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, gives legal and executive muscle to what the Keffi Declaration lacked. Alausa said the recent trend in the award of honorary degrees revealed “a growing abuse and politicisation of this academic privilege.” He said honorary awards had become instruments of political patronage and financial gain, including the conferral of degrees on serving public officials, which he said should not happen.

He was right. In Nigeria, honorary doctorates have become ceremonial laundering machines for mediocrity. A man can pillage a state treasury, donate a fraction of the loot to a financially desperate university and emerge at convocation as “Dr.”

A politician who cannot compose a sentence in English can be decorated with an honorary doctorate in letters. A businessman whose only contribution to society is predatory proximity to power can become “Dr.” before the sun sets. A pastor or an imam can weaponize congregational awe by adding a fraudulent academic halo to ecclesiastical authority.

The tragedy is that the fraud works. In a country where titles can stand in for thought, the prefix “Dr.” confers instant solemnity on vacuity. It intimidates the unlettered, flatters the insecure and deceives the undiscerning. It allows intellectual lightweights to parade themselves as sages. It turns empty suits into “thought leaders.” It enables barely literate political hustlers to sit in front of television cameras and be introduced with the academic reverence they never earned.

Alausa’s directive, which he says has the backing of the Federal Executive Council, is emphatic that recipients of honorary degrees should not prefix “Dr.” to their names in official, academic or professional usage. They may use the proper post-nominal form after their names, such as D.Lit. (Honoris Causa), LL.D. (Honoris Causa), D.Sc. (Honoris Causa) or D.Arts. (Honoris Causa).

That is the established convention in most serious academic cultures. An honorary doctorate is ceremonial recognition. It is not an earned research degree. It is not a medical qualification. It is not a license to impersonate scholarship.

The NUC’s February 2026 guidelines reinforce this point. The commission said honorary doctorates are non-earned degrees awarded honoris causa to acknowledge distinguished merit, outstanding public service, scholarly impact, creative achievement or significant contributions consistent with the mission of the awarding institution.

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It also said recipients may use the approved title after their names, though they may not use “Dr.,” which is reserved for holders of earned doctorates and medical professionals. The NUC also barred recipients from using honorary doctorates to practice as scholars, supervise research or oversee academic units.

That is an important clarification because Nigeria’s title maniacs do not stop at social vanity. They convert symbolic recognition into institutional fraud. Some use honorary doctorates to join university governing councils as if they were scholars. Some supervise intellectual work they cannot understand. Some convert fraudulent professorships and honorary doctorates into political capital. The distinction between honor and qualification disappears.

Minister of State for Education, Professor Suwaiba Ahmad, supplied the missing link between 2012 and 2026. The Keffi Declaration, she explained, was originally a guide developed by vice chancellors, but it had no legal backing. The new federal approval gives it authoritative backing and makes implementation possible. That is the difference between wish and policy.

Still, policy without enforcement is mere decorative “grammar,” as we like to say in moments of joviality in Nigeria. But we do know that our country is a graveyard of beautifully phrased directives. If the government is serious, enforcement must begin immediately and publicly.

First, the Federal Ministry of Education and the NUC should issue a gazetted directive to all universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, ministries, departments, agencies, state governments, professional bodies, media houses and corporate institutions. The directive should make clear that honorary doctorate recipients cannot be addressed as “Dr.” in official correspondence, convocation brochures, government documents, event programs, university publications or institutional websites.

Second, the NUC should create a searchable national registry of honorary doctorate recipients. Each entry should include the recipient’s name, awarding institution, year of award, approved post-nominal title and a prominent warning that the award does not entitle the recipient to use “Dr.” This registry should be updated annually, as Alausa has proposed. It should also identify universities that violate the rules.

Third, every university should be required to send the names of proposed honorary degree recipients to the NUC before convocation. No pre-clearance, no award. A university that awards an honorary doctorate to a serving public official, exceeds the permitted number or fails to orient recipients on proper title usage should lose the right to award honorary degrees for a fixed period.

Fourth, the NUC should adopt Ghana’s name-and-shame method. There should be a public list of offenders: “Mr. X, recipient of an honorary LL.D. from Y University, continues to fraudulently use Dr. in official communication.”

Nigerians fear public disgrace more than they fear rules. Ghana understands this cultural psychology. Its Tertiary Education Commission did not merely whisper disapproval. It threatened legal action and public exposure. That is how to deal with vanity addicts. Soft persuasion will not cure people who have converted self-inflation into an identity.

Fifth, the media must be recruited as an enforcement partner. Alausa already hinted at this. Newspapers, television stations and online platforms should adopt a style rule that forbids the use of “Dr.” for honorary degree holders. When a politician sends a press statement as “Dr. So-and-So,” editors should strip the title. Television anchors should refuse to introduce honorary degree holders as doctors. News reports should use their earned titles or plain names.

Sixth, government institutions should reject documents that misrepresent honorary degrees as earned credentials. Nomination forms, procurement documents, board appointments, conference programs and official biographies should require credential accuracy. Anyone who lists an honorary doctorate as an earned doctorate should be treated as having made a false claim.

Seventh, the Corporate Affairs Commission, INEC and professional licensing bodies should update their templates to distinguish earned degrees from honorary awards. If a candidate’s public profile says “Dr.,” the source of the doctorate should be declared. If it is honorary, the prefix should be removed.

This might seem like pettifoggery. It is not. It is intellectual hygiene. Academic titles exist because they signify arduous training, disciplined research and certified expertise. When politicians with more money than mind rent those titles from compromised institutions, they degrade the labor of people who spent years earning them.

Nigeria has tolerated too many counterfeit majesties. We have fake prophets, fake patriots, fake democrats, fake philanthropists and now fake doctors. The federal government has made the right move. The harder task is to make the move bite.

Without Ghana-style public humiliation, legal consequences and institutional refusal to dignify fraudulent prefixes, Nigeria’s vanity doctors will continue to swagger through public life with borrowed feathers. The country should strip them of the feathers. Let them answer their fathers’ names.

War against Nigeria’s academic title fraud, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso are Tinubu’s most reliable campaigners, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

3 weeks ago

May 2, 2026

Trends Admin

Farooq Kperogi

Atiku, Obi, Kwankwaso are Tinubu’s most reliable campaigners, By Farooq Kperogi

There is really no opposition in Nigeria in the true sense of the word. There are only politicians who have been temporarily kicked out of the inner sanctum of power and influence but who share no fundamental difference with the current temporary occupants of the power structure. Nonetheless, if all the people vegetating on the margins of the power structure came together, they could easily displace those within it in 2027.

Although the coalition of so-called opposition politicians angling to get back to power in 2027 has not articulated a coherent blueprint to show that it will be different from President Bola Tinubu (I strongly believe they are indistinguishable from him), it can effectively instrumentalize the crying incompetence, in-your-face corruption, ethnic bigotry, insufferable arrogance, unabating misery and insouciance that have become the hallmarks of Tinubu’s administration to convince a traumatized nation that it can offer an alternative.

It doesn’t matter if they will replicate or even exacerbate Tinubu’s unrelieved disaster when they get to power. Even the prospect of temporary relief from Tinubu’s unending torment is enough to get most people to give them a chance. But they have shown that they lack the discipline, cohesion and foresight required to wrest power from Tinubu.

Even before they have had a chance to come together, they are splintered. This became clear in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling that restored David Mark’s leadership of the ADC. Neither Peter Obi nor Rabiu Kwankwaso said a word about it.

There are credible rumors that Obi and Kwankwaso didn’t react to the Supreme Court judgment because they had already moved on. They are said to be heading to the NDC and no longer care about what happens to the ADC.

In other words, we are back to the 2023 factionalization of the “opposition.” Both Obi and Kwankwaso appear to be allergic to the internal democratic processes of political parties. They want to be canonized as candidates without contest. Since they can’t find that, they are moving away.

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Atiku Abubakar may emerge as the candidate of the ADC, if the ADC survives, that is. He might choose Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate. Should this happen, the opposition will be fatally fractured, as it was in 2023.

Even now, the verbal darts between Atiku’s supporters and Obi’s and Kwankwaso’s supporters are more caustic and more venomous than the exchanges between either camp and Tinubu’s supporters.

In fact, Tinubu is the net beneficiary of their maximalist posturing and internal warfare. Obi and Kwankwaso supporters say they would rather let Tinubu continue for another four years than support Atiku’s aspiration to replace him. Atiku’s supporters, for their part, say they would rather put up with another Tinubu term than support an Obi/Kwankwaso presidency.

Beyond their crude, petulant name-calling, Obi and Atiku supporters advance arguments in support of their positions, both of which benefit Tinubu. Obi’s supporters say since it isn’t the turn of the North to produce a president, Buhari having ruled for eight continuous years before Tinubu took over, if another southerner can’t be presented as the opposition’s candidate, they would rather support Tinubu to complete the South’s turn.

Atiku’s supporters, on the other hand, turn that logic around and say that if Obi is supported to displace Tinubu in 2027, he would “eat into” the North’s turn, which they believe should start in 2031. They don’t believe Obi’s promise to rule for only one term since there is no legally binding or constitutional constraint that would forbid him from reneging on his promise.

There is a precedent for this in Goodluck Jonathan, who was “allowed” to complete Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s term on the understanding that he wouldn’t seek another term in 2011. He not only ran and won in 2011, he ran again in 2015 and almost won.

So, the argument of Atiku’s supporters is that supporting Tinubu to complete his term benefits the North more than supporting Obi because there is certainty, in their reckoning, that power will move to the region without contest after Tinubu’s term. It’s irrelevant if Tinubu’s policies incinerate them before power rotates back to the North.

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It isn’t the logic or admissibility of the arguments of both camps that is the issue here. The point at issue is that in fighting each other, the opposition is fighting for Tinubu. His economic strangulation of the masses of our people takes the back seat. The insecurity that is ravaging the country, which he seems either unable or unwilling to confront and stamp out, is rendered irrelevant.

In other words, Tinubu’s most potent weapon isn’t INEC with its partisan chairman or a compromised judiciary. It is the opposition. Interestingly, the two main groups in the opposition like to accuse each other of “working for Tinubu” to ensure that their candidate doesn’t win. The truth is that they are both assets to Tinubu and are working for him for free. They are both weapons fashioned against each other for the benefit of Tinubu.

And that’s why I consider Tinubu’s excessive, underhanded zealousness in suffocating the ADC and other opposition parties from becoming viable platforms to challenge him a self-sabotaging strategic blunder. He could have a clear win, because of the selfishness and disunity of the opposition, and still be dogged by a crisis of legitimacy because he didn’t allow a fair contest.

On April 23, I wrote a Facebook post about two contradictory impulses of Nigerian politicians. I said Nigerian politicians are some of the most incurably optimistic specimens of humans you can find on earth. That’s why you have opposition politicians who can’t even agree on who their candidate will be in 2027 say with cocksure certitude that they can wrest power from a man who defied all odds to get to power while out of it and has since consolidated power by ensuring that INEC and the judiciary are in his pocket.

But I also pointed out that Nigerian politicians can be some of the most cowardly people while outwardly projecting faux bravery. That is why a politician who has 32 governors, INEC, the judiciary, an unrivalled war chest and a gravely divided opposition is still so fearful of his chances of winning that he doesn’t want the opposition to even have a platform to challenge him.

Tinubu joked on April 14, 2026, that he could send Godswill Akpabio to the opposition to “scatter them.” Days later, on April 20, his chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, publicly urged ADC lawmaker Leke Abejide to remain in the party so that he could “fight them” and “scatter them.” Abejide said yesterday that Gbajabiamila was only joking, just like his boss, Tinubu.

An English proverb says, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” That is, people often reveal serious truths while pretending to joke.

ADC’s fate is currently hanging in the balance, and if the past is any guide, the David Mark leadership of the party might lose in the federal high court. That would be an avoidably self-inflicted political injury for Tinubu. He doesn’t need to use the instruments of the state to “scatter” the ADC, the NDC, the PRP or any other potential platform opposition politicians might need. The opposition is doing a better job “scattering” itself than he can ever do, even with the instruments of the state.

Tinubu may not need to defeat the opposition because the opposition appears determined to defeat itself. An opposition that lacks the self-denial, strategic patience and moral urgency necessary to galvanize popular resentment and win power doesn’t deserve power.

Until Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and others understand that power is rarely handed to the disunited, the vain and the impatient, they will remain Tinubu’s most reliable unpaid campaigners.

Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism