Pantami: Kperogi’s Abusive Scholarship and Other Ethical Fraud
By Sani Wakawa
TECHDIGEST – In his typical fashion, our Nigerian-American plump dude and self-acclaimed intellectual Farook Kperogi is at it again, lacing important arguments with his inflated sense of self-importance and exposing himself to unwarranted ridicule as for obvious reasons, he has been trending on social media, particularly Facebook since yesterday as “Shugaban yan hasada, (king of envy),” due to his crude take on the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Ali Isa Pantami’s ascension to the rank of a Professor by the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO).
A “compulsively inveterate contrarian,” as he once described himself in an interview with Daily Trust Editor, Abdulazeez Bello, Kperogi’s obsession with attacking powers that be has constantly peached him against the ethics of truth and fairness which has in turn exposed him as a serial liar that had to put down several of his libelous claims when confronted with overwhelming facts.
Even the Saturday Tribune where Kperogi is a columnist has confirmed from authority of the Federal University of Technology, (FUTO) that Pantami applied for the post and passed assessments for his appointment as a professor.
The university also also insisted that the appointment of the minister to the position of professor “followed required due process.”
The Registrar of FUTO, Mr John Nnabuihe, said: Pantami was assessed alongside other internal members who were also appointed as professors.
Nnabuihe defended the promotion as deserving, saying it was “based on his qualification which he merited through long years of research works.”
Nnabuihe said that after Dr Ibrahim graduated in Computer Science, he started as a lecturer at the Abubakar Tafawa Belewa University and later went to another university in Saudi Arabia and was thereafter appointed as an “Associate Professor,” which was where he stayed for some time until he was appointed as the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) which he said was “like a research institute.”
According to him, in such a research institute, somebody could be there and at the same time would be publishing papers that could make him qualify. He said based on that, a particular university “could decide to appoint someone as a professor.”
It happened when Kperogi paddled the fake news that former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki had died in custody and when he was accused of sharing fake news he mentioned a Whatsapp audio as his source, it happened when he paraded an old video clips from a shared a Kannywood movie scene where one actor, wearing Nigeria’s Army camouflage uniform, were shown crying over the death of his colleague, as Nigeria’s Army fighting Boko Haram in the Northeast., it happened , it happened at it happened.
Infact, Kperogi’s tendency for consistent, recurring and habitual attitude of peddling fake news and share concocted stories and lies have led to several scathing articles denting his ‘media scholarship,’ and placing questions of the integrity of his so called “sources.”
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It was the same Kperogi that in September 2016, “heard it from an impeccable source” that the Aso Villa Clinic’s 2017 budget was more than the combined budget of all the 16 Teaching Hospitals in Nigeria.
It was the same Kperogi who concocted a well-spiced lie that President Buhari spent 6million pounds to treat ear infection in London.
It was the same Kperogi who heard it from “authoritative source” that the botched Nigeria Air Logo was designed at the cost of 183 million Naira.
It was the same Kperogi fabricated a WhatsApp message claiming that a “friend in the security sector expressed concern over your safety as a result of possibility of a plot by the Buhari regime/cabal to assassinate you in the state,” which he curiously has not uptill date reported to the US authorities.
In its investigative report, fact-checking social media influencers who shared fake news during Nigerian general elections, International Centre For Investigative Reporting, Dr. Kperogi’s name appeared twice, sharing unverified, fake videos as an authoritative evidence of rigging by INEC during the 2019 elections.
Kperogi will claim anything he hears from any source as long as it portrays him as a “brilliant” and “well connected” personality who though resides in the US, knows it all in Nigeria. Rather than advance his public image which he so maniacally seeks, he has succeeded in leaving in the trail of his wakes a person who can best be described as a scholar of bitter and abusive language who has no problem flouting ethical standards to his own end even when he knows his assertions are libelous.
You will never see Kperogi appreciating anybody, his standards are always supreme, and he writes in a manner that treats his subject condescendingly out of certain grudge or malice he mus have held against them. That is why I am particularly glad that Kperogi did not attend a Harvard or an Oxford, but state Universities in the US, otherwise, for a man who disrespects even his former lecturers, his boastfulness would have been beyond containment.
No wonder those who knew this side of his personality disorder like Daily Trust, have withdrawn him from their beat.
Based on his antecedents, a Kperogi has no moral standing whatsoever to question Pantami’s ascendancy to the professorship and I am glad that the argument is not centered on the fact that he, Pantami, lacks the knowledge and capacity which is something even his most vicious haters cannot take away from him.
It is even more sickening how Kperogi could heartlessly condescend to calling out the deceased Professor Dora Akunyili, of blessed memory, just to make a point.
Domiciling in a foreign land and attacking Nigeria’s institutions with an obviously ridiculous intent says a lot about Kperogi’s grudge, part of which I suspect that it was because Pantami never gave his relative that appointment he had lobbied for on his behalf, which Kperogi himself had admitted in a previous article.
It is not an offense for someone of Pantami’s standing to not only have goals and aspirations, but is working towards and achieving them, Kperogi of all people should know that. Having made my point, the man is welcome to come after me with his “jabbajastic” English weapon, who cares!
Wakawa writes from Kano.
