Opinion
Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage
Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage
Former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s autobiography triggered questions about the onomastic etymology of “Badamasi,” his former last name, which appears to share historical and semantic kinship with the Yoruba “Gbadamosi.” It also activated interest in his paternal heritage about which he has been strategically coy, which I captured in my last column.
Because I know that the best system of inquiry for facts is necessarily question-oriented, self-critical, and cumulative, I shared a perspective I had heard about the provenance of Badamasi but expressed doubts about its reliability and historical accuracy and invited further reflections from others.
Saturday Tribune editor Lasisi Olagunju took up the challenge and, relying on insights from the late Sheikh Adam Abdullah El-Ilory, proposed that Badamasi originated from Ghadames (sometimes spelled Ghadamis), a historic Berber town in what is now Libya.
The town’s citizens are called Ghadamisi. It’s in line with the Middle Eastern practice of adding “i” to the end of the names of villages, towns, cities, and countries to form demonyms. Bukhari (which we domesticated as Buhari in Nigeria), for instance, means a native of the town of Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan, a West Asian nation that used to be a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Olagunju also referenced a fawningly Anglophilic, pro-colonial autobiography written in Arabic by a certain Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi, who arrived in Kano in 1903, titled, “Your Humble Servant: The Memoirs of Abd Allah Al-Ghadamisi.” He wondered whether this might be the book IBB mentioned as his grandfather’s favorite and that inspired him to name his son after its author.
He then suggested that the Yoruba Gbadamosi is more faithful to what he thinks is the original form of the name than the Hausa Badamasi since the voiced labial-velar plosive “gb” found in many Niger Congo languages, including Yoruba, is closer to the voiced uvular fricative “gh” in Arabic.
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Well, Olagunju’s proposition appears to suffer a factual collapse when it is burdened with the weight of historical, chronological, and even sociolinguistic evidence.
First, anyone who reads Professor Razaq ʿDeremi Abubakre’s 2017 book chapter titled “Stefan Reichmuth’s Wanderings in Arabicized and Islamized Yorubaland” will come across an Ilorin Muslim scholar and poet by the name of Badamasi “from Ile Saura, Agbaji, Balogun Ajikobi Ward, who was one of the first people to produce Yoruba poetry in Arabic script (p.373).” He died around 1891.
This suggests that even Yoruba Muslims have borne the name Badamasi since at least the 1800s, years before Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi appeared in Kano.
Second, it is unlikely that Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi’s autobiography is the book IBB’s grandfather was fond of and that students of Arabic in Hausaland read for pedagogical and spiritual nourishment because the commentary on the book by Muhammad S. Umar and John O. Hunwick, which Olagunju references, describes the book as betraying “imperfect knowledge of written Arabic” and full of “simple errors of Arabic grammar.”
Such a book can’t be a model that Islamic scholars venerate and teach. In any case, it wasn’t a piece of Islamic scholarship. The memoirs, Umar and Hunwick point out, “construct a discourse that portrays colonialism positively through a particularly laudatory proclamation of the good deeds of colonial authorities….”
Third, Olagunju’s claim that “Because, sometimes an author gets more famous than his work, al-Ghadamisi’s name appears to have overwhelmed the book’s title” doesn’t seem to be true. Only one copy of Abd Allah el-Ghadamisi’s book has survived, according to Umar and Hunwick.
Fourth, although traders and Islamic scholars from Ghadames have lived in Hausa land since at least the 16th century, sociolinguistic evidence suggests that it is implausible for Hausa speakers to domesticate the Arabic phoneme “gh” to “b.”
When Hausa speakers borrow Arabic words with the phoneme “gh,” which doesn’t occur naturally in Hausa, they adapt it to “g” (and occasionally to “k”) but never “b.” So, it’s socio-linguistically improbable that Ghadamisi would ever become Badamasi to Hausa speakers. It would most likely be Gadamisi.
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Now, what might be the root of Badamasi? Someone on Facebook by the name of M.Y. Kabara (I wonder if he is a progeny of the famous Nasiru Kabara family in Kano who died in my final year at Bayero University) pointed me to Arabic sources that seem to definitively show that the name Badamasi owes its presence in (northern) Nigerian Muslim onomastic universe to an Egyptian poet by the name of Muhammad bin Ahmed bin Ismail bin Ahmed Al-Sharaf Al-Badmasi Al-Masri. (Miṣr is the Arabic name for Egypt).
He was born in 1808 AH (equivalent to around 1405) in the small village of Badamas and died in Mecca at the age of 40. He was famous for a book of Arabic poetry he wrote in praise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) titled “al-Qasīdatul Mukhmasah,” which is very popular with Sufi Muslims and Arabic students in (northern) Nigeria.
I am certain that it’s the book IBB’s grandfather loved so much that he named his son after it—like many people in the North did and still do.
Kabara pointed out to me that because “every quintet in Arabic poetry can be called ‘mukhmasah,’” the book of poetry has come to be known by the name of its author to differentiate it from similar works.
According to Dr. Ihab El-Sherbini, author of the book “Stories of Mansoura’s Streets,” Badamas, the poet’s hometown, used to be called “Potamos,” which means “river,” but that Copts (descendants of ancient Egyptians who are now mostly Christians that are associated with the Coptic Church) called it Badamos. After the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, Badamos evolved to Badamas.
Over time, the Badamas village ceased to be territorially independent. It’s now a neighborhood of the Egyptian city of Mansoura.
Based on this new knowledge, I am prepared to suggest that Gbadamosi and Badamasi are mere onomatological false friends, that is, they are names that sound alike but that are actually different and descended from different sources.
I suspect that the Yoruba Gbadamosi traces descent from Ghadamisi, most probably from Abdallāh b. Abī Bakr al-Ghadāmisī, a 17th-century Arabic poet and Islamic scholar born in Timbuktu who wrote the famous Manāhij al-Sālikīn fī Manāfiʿ al-Qurʾān al-Karīm (“Paths of the Seekers to the Benefits of the Noble Qur’an”) that is popular with West African Sufis.
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Curiously, the resolution of the etymology of IBB’s middle name coextends with new hints I’ve encountered about the probable ethnic identity of his paternal ancestry.
The village of Kumurya in Kano where IBB told a biographer his paternal roots are located was founded by the Agalawa, a historical trading community in Hausaland, originally of Tuareg (Berber) stock who migrated into the Kano region in the 18th century.
Though now fully assimilated as a sub-group of the Hausa people, the Agalawa trace their ancestry to nomadic Tuareg origins in the southern Sahara. I owe this insight to Rabiu Isah Hassan who first pointed it out to me on Facebook and provoked me to read further.
In his 2005 book titled “Ecology and Ethnography of Muslim Trade in West Africa,” Paul E. Lovejoy points out that early Agalawa immigrants in Hausaland occupied a lowly social status because “Most had been enslaved from Sudanese populations (p. 16).” They were derisively called “Bugaje” (is the famous Dr. Usman Bugaje of Agalawa origins?) as a collective plural and “Buzu” as a singular form.
Over time, they acculturated, dominated commerce, became prominent in Islamic scholarship, and have now become indistinguishable from the native Hausa population, except that they tend to have a lighter complexion than Hausa people, which causes many people to mistake them for Fulani.
Is IBB aware of this history of his paternal ancestry but chose to conceal it for fear of exoticizing and alienating himself, especially in the eyes of southerners who tend to delegitimize people’s Nigerian origins when they find out that the ancestral origins of (mostly northerners) people can be traced to spaces outside what is now Nigeria?
No northerner would question the legitimacy of anyone’s “Nigerianness” because of the accident of the location of their distant ancestral roots. It’s a consequence of the originary syncretism of modern northern identity. We are all mixed with all sorts of stemma from a vast array of places because we were never an insular, landlocked people.
Many of Kano’s prominent merchant dynasties, for example, have Agalawa roots, a famous example being the family of Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, who was West Africa’s richest man in the early 20th century. Since Aliko Dangote’s mother is from the Dantata family, it means he is at least half Agalawa. He himself might even be ancestrally Agalawa.
What’s there to conceal about this, especially because our heritage—ethnicity, linguistic group, even religious traditions—is merely incidental to us. We didn’t choose it, so there is no basis to be proud or ashamed of it.
Farooq Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based Professor of journalism.
Farooq Kperogi: New insights into “Badamasi,” “Gbadamosi,” and IBB’s paternal heritage
Opinion
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AFCON 2025: Flipping Content Creation From Coverage to Strategy
AFCON 2025: Flipping Content Creation From Coverage to Strategy
By Toluwalope Shodunke
The beautiful and enchanting butterfly called the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) emerged from its chrysalis in Khartoum, Sudan, under the presidency of Abdelaziz Abdallah Salem, an Egyptian, with three countries—Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia—participating, and Egypt emerging as the eventual winner.
The reason for this limited participation is not far-fetched. At the time, only nine African countries were independent. The remaining 45 countries that now make up CAF’s 54 member nations were either pushing Queen Elizabeth’s dogsled made unique with the Union Jack, making supplications at the Eiffel Tower, or knocking at the doors of the Palácio de Belém, the Quirinal Palace, and the Royal Palace of Brussels—seeking the mercies of their colonial masters who, without regard for cultures, sub-cultures, or primordial affinities, divided Africa among the colonial gods.
From then until now, CAF has had seven presidents, including Patrice Motsepe, who was elected as the seventh president in 2021. With more countries gaining independence and under various CAF leaderships, AFCON has undergone several reforms—transforming from a “backyard event” involving only three nations into competitions featuring 8, 16, and now 24 teams. It has evolved into a global spectacle consumed by millions worldwide.
Looking back, I can trace my personal connection to AFCON to table soccer, which I played alone on concrete in our balcony at Olafimihan Street—between Mushin and Ilasamaja—adjacent to Alafia Oluwa Primary School, close to Alfa Nda and Akanro Street, all in Lagos State.
Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish-British sociologist who developed the concept of “liquid modernity,” argues that the world is in constant flux rather than static, among other themes in his revelatory works.
For the benefit of Millennials (Generation Y) and Generation Z—who are accustomed to high-tech pads, iPhones, AI technologies, and chat boxes—table soccer is a replica of football played with bottle corks (often from carbonated drinks or beer) as players, cassette hubs as the ball, and “Bic” biro covers for engagement. The game can be played by two people, each controlling eleven players.
I, however, enjoyed playing alone in a secluded area, running my own commentary like the great Ernest Okonkwo, Yinka Craig, and Fabio Lanipekun, who are all late. At the time, I knew next to nothing about the Africa Cup of Nations. Yet, I named my cork players after Nigerian legends such as Segun Odegbami, Godwin Odiye, Aloysius Atuegbu, Tunji Banjo, Muda Lawal, Felix Owolabi, and Adokiye Amiesimaka, among others, as I must have taken to heart their names from commentary and utterances of my uncles resulting from sporadic and wild celebrations of Nigeria winning the Cup of Nations on home soil for the first time.
While my connection to AFCON remained somewhat ephemeral until Libya 1982, my AFCON anecdotes became deeply rooted in Abidjan 1984, where Cameroon defeated Nigeria 3–1. The name Théophile Abéga was etched into my youthful memory.
Even as I write this, I remember the silence that enveloped our compound after the final whistle.
It felt similar to how Ukrainians experienced the Battle of Mariupol against Russia—where resolute resistance eventually succumbed to overwhelming force.
The Indomitable Lions were better and superior in every aspect. The lion not only caged the Eagles, they cooked pepper soup with the Green Eagles.
In Maroc ’88, I again tasted defeat with the Green Eagles (now Super Eagles), coached by the German Manfred Höner. Players like Henry Nwosu, Stephen Keshi, Sunday Eboigbe, Bright Omolara, Rashidi Yekini, Austin Eguavoen, Peter Rufai, Folorunsho Okenla, Ademola Adeshina, Yisa Sofoluwe, and others featured prominently. A beautiful goal by Henry Nwosu—then a diminutive ACB Lagos player—was controversially disallowed.
This sparked outrage among Nigerians, many of whom believed the referee acted under the influence of Issa Hayatou, the Cameroonian who served as CAF president from 1988 to 2017.
This stroll down memory lane illustrates that controversy and allegations of biased officiating have long been part of AFCON’s history.
The 2025 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, held from December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026, will be discussed for a long time by football historians, raconteurs, and aficionados—for both positive and negative reasons.
These include Morocco’s world-class facilities, the ravenous hunger of ball boys and players (superstars included) for the towels of opposing goalkeepers—popularly dubbed TowelGate—allegations of biased officiating, strained relations among Arab African nations (Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco), CAF President Patrice Motsepe’s curt “keep quiet” response to veteran journalist Osasu Obayiuwana regarding the proposed four-year AFCON cycle post-2028, and the “Oga Patapata” incident, where Senegalese players walked off the pitch after a legitimate goal was chalked off and a penalty awarded against them by DR Congo referee Jean-Jacques Ndala.
While these narratives dominated global discourse, another critical issue—less prominent but equally important—emerged within Nigeria’s media and content-creation landscape.
Following Nigeria’s qualification from the group stage, the Super Eagles were scheduled to face Mozambique in the Round of 16. Between January 1 and January 3, Coach Eric Chelle instituted closed-door training sessions, denying journalists and content creators access, with media interaction limited to pre-match press conferences.
According to Chelle, the knockout stage demanded “maximum concentration,” and privacy was necessary to protect players from distractions.
This decision sparked mixed reactions on social media.
Twitter user @QualityQuadry wrote:
“What Eric Chelle is doing to journalists is bad.
Journalists were subjected to a media parley under cold weather in an open field for the first time in Super Eagles history.
Journalists were beaten by rain because Chelle doesn’t want journalists around the camp.
Locking down training sessions for three days is unprofessional.
I wish him well against Mozambique.”
Another user, @PoojaMedia, stated:
“Again, Eric Chelle has closed the Super Eagles’ training today.
That means journalists in Morocco won’t have access to the team for three straight days ahead of the Round of 16.
This is serious and sad for journalists who spent millions to get content around the team.
We move.”
Conversely, @sportsdokitor wrote:
“I’m not Eric Chelle’s biggest supporter, but on this issue, I support him 110%.
There’s a time to speak and a time to train.
Let the boys focus on why they’re in Morocco—they’re not here for your content creation.”
From these three tweets, one can see accessibility being clothed in beautiful garments. Two of the tweets suggest that there is only one way to get to the zenith of Mount Kilimanjaro, when indeed there are many routes—if we think within the box, not outside the box as we’ve not exhausted the content inside the box.
In the past, when the economy was buoyant, media organisations sponsored reporters to cover the World Cup, Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and other international competitions.
Today, with financial pressures mounting, many journalists and content creators seek collaborations and sponsorships from corporations and tech startups to cover sporting events, who in turn get awareness, brand visibility, and other intangibles.
As Gary Vaynerchuk famously said, “Every company is a media company.” Yet most creators covering AFCON 2025 followed the same playbook.
At AFCON 2025, most Nigerian journalists and content creators pitched similar offerings: on-the-ground coverage, press conferences, team updates, behind-the-scenes footage, analysis, cuisine, fan interactions, and Moroccan cultural experiences.
If they were not interviewing Victor Osimhen, they were showcasing the stand-up comedy talents of Samuel Chukwueze and other forms of entertainment.
What was missing was differentiation. No clear Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The result was generic, repetitive content with little strategic distinction. Everyone appeared to be deploying the same “Jab, Jab, Jab, Hook” formula—throwing multiple jabs of access-driven content in the hope that one hook would land.
The lesson is simple: when everyone is jabbing the same way, the hook becomes predictable and loses its power.
As J. P. Clark wrote in the poem “The Casualties”, “We are all casualties,” casualties of sameness—content without differentiation. The audience consumes shallow content, sponsors lose return on investment, and creators return home bearing the “weight of paper” from disappointed benefactors.
On November 23, 1963, a shining light was dimmed in America when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
As with AFCON today, media organisations sent their best hands to cover the funeral, as the who’s who of the planet—and if possible, the stratosphere—would attend. Unconfirmed reports suggested that over 220 VVIPs were expected.
While every newspaper, radio, and television station covered the spectacle and grandeur of the event, one man, Jimmy Breslin, swam against the tide. He chose instead to interview Clifton Pollard, the foreman of gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery—the man who dug John F. Kennedy’s grave.
This act of upended thinking differentiated Jimmy Breslin from the odds and sods, and he went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1986.
Until journalists and content creators stop following the motley and begin swimming against the tide, access will continue to be treated as king—when in reality, differentiation, aided by strategy, is king.
When every journalist and content creator is using Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Jab, Jab, Jab, Hook” template while covering major sporting events, thinkers among them must learn to replace one jab with a counterpunch—and a bit of head movement—to stay ahead of the herd.
Toluwalope Shodunke can be reached via tolushodunke@yahoo.com
Opinion
“Christian Genocidization” of the Kaiama massacre, By Farooq Kperogi
“Christian Genocidization” of the Kaiama massacre, By Farooq Kperogi
“Christian Genocidization” of the Kaiama massacre, By Farooq Kperogi
Kperogi is a renowned Nigerian columnist and United States-based professor of Journalism
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