TheCable

BY HARUNA ABDULLAHI

From obvious indicators, Farooq Kperogi’s recent outburst on the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, are snippets of a subtle, but coordinated effort to make the VP a victim of weaponized pen-for-hire.

Kperogi, in one of his writings making the rounds, ostensibly linked the vice president to a memo issued by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), which revealed the creation of an “Office of Directorate of Politics and Governance” bearing a directive to be replicated at all levels of the church – zone, area, and parish.

According to the memo, the initiative was designed to coordinate the engagement of its people who are willing to be involved in politics as well as mobilise support for them when required. But in shrewd enthusiasm, Kperogi would run away with watery claims by the Peoples Gazette which interpreted it as an “arrangement to mobilise sweeping support for [Osinbajo’s] ambition” to be president.

To make matters worse, he resorted to using uncomplimentary remarks targeted at the VP, where he, among other diatribes, was quoted as saying: “There’s no Christian in government in Nigeria’s history who has ever been as narrow-minded, as culturally clueless, and as insular as Osinbajo…”

As every discerning reader would know, it’s always best to take Kperogi’s words with a pinch of salt. Curiously, his recent outbursts leave one wondering if he was testing his guns in a bid to lead a malevolent attack on the VP in the build-up to the 2023 presidential elections even when the VP is yet to throw his hat in the ring.

Otherwise a seasoned journalist in fair estimation, it’s most saddening that Farooq Kperogi’s years of a self-seeking philosophy has ultimately beclouded his sense of objective judgment. Hence, it’s not surprising that he is shifting focus to the VP when he ridiculously claimed that pentecostal Christians see Osinbajo as their representative in government and think he is the fulfillment of Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s oft-quoted prediction that one of them would become Nigeria’s president during his lifetime. Such a baseless claim!

If only Kperogi bore the courage to admit his error of judgment, wash the voodoo off his face, and come to full wakefulness, he would have since realized that the presidency cabal which attempted to frame Osinbajo for corruption was unhappy about his fruitful relationship with President Buhari; how he has been a dependable deputy, exhibited unflinching loyalty, and effectively delivered on the visions of the social investment programs.

If he isn’t also losing his instincts as a journalist, how possible is it that he runs away with such frivolous claims fingering the VP as being nepotistic, when, in an interview on BBC Hausa Radio, the senior special assistant to the vice president on legal matters, Balkisu Saidu, had dismissed such preposterous claims with listed evidence that most senior positions on the VP’s office are held by Muslims, including individuals from the north.

In his usual subjective bias, Kperogi is creating an imaginary push and pull between pentecostal and Salafist theocratic craziness which he assumes would provide friction for the matchstick and the matchbox to collide, but was mistaking to drag Osinbajo into his fictitious narrative. On the contrary, the VP has proven to be a detribalised leader, accruing untainted regard for every Nigerian irrespective of their tribal or religious leanings. Osinbajo’s national credentials are way past Kperogi or anyone’s half-baked political mischief. And this, Nigerians know too well.

Lest Kperogi forgets, staying uptown in the US and letting loose a weaponised pen to settle scores with some perceived political wrongdoers is nothing other than unnecessarily steering societal grey areas and fault lines. Perhaps, he should bear in mind that in the comity of right-thinking members of the society, a writer is judged on not how brute his pen has been but on how fair, compassionate and reasonable his pen has been.

A writer that sees nothing good in others and always writes to condemn where condemnation isn’t necessary, is not only a pen bully but also a persona using condemnation to deflect necessary scrutiny of the life he leads. If a writer’s life is good and smooth, his pen would certainly see the goodness of others.

Kperogi must, however, realize that our gifts of writing should always tarry with responsibilities of being fair umpires to the subjects of our writing. In this case, the writer fails even some little concerns of being fair. By faulty assumptions, the writer used fiat to associate the VP with the actions of a church of which he was a former parish pastor. Semantically, the writer, with no justifiable and corroborative evidence, insisted that the church’s intent was purely for the benefit of the VP. This is a fallacy taken to its illogical conclusion. The question Kperogi ought to have considered is this: isn’t faulty equalisation still a writer’s trap? Is the writer now equalising the activities of RCCG to the desk of our vice president? How quick!

If as writers, our habitual trade-in motto is to always write to condemn, then we need other writers to write and bring us back from the precipe of our self-induced pieces of damnation. As writers, the pedestals upon which we write to condemn others should not be taken as the absolute stance of trancing the victims of our pen. Our pen violence may turn its hydra-headed face on our ills, that’s when it may dawn on us that writers aren’t superhumans at all.