The Kperogi affair and the road to authoritarian totalitarianism

In line with the basic role of the media as the watch dog of the society, Kperogi has been unrelenting in demanding for good governance from the administrations of Olusegun Obasanjo to the Umar Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan in a manner devoid of partisanship and ethno-religious bias. That Kperogi has continued on the path of telling inconvenient truth to power by calling out the Buhari administration on its numerous instances of maladministration is only consistent with his pedigree as a courageous advocate of good governance.

In the over three years since it came on board, the Buhari administration has increasingly become intolerant of opposition and criticisms of whatever form. This high level of intolerance for citizen engagements by the current administration has a lot to do with the man at the head of government, President Buhari. Apparently imbued with a messianic complex and an inflated sense of self-righteousness, Buhari equates loyalty to his personae to patriotism of the Nigerian state. This reality is reflected in the manner that the directive principle of state has been compromised on the basis of partisanship and sectional interests. This style of leadership is largely responsible for the abysmal performance of the Buhari administration, which has left Nigeria in economic doldrums as the poverty capital of the world, highly insecure as the third most terrorised country on planet earth and one of the most corrupt countries in the world having slipped 12 steps from 136th in 2014 to 148th in 2017 in the Transparency International’s corruption perception index.

Despite this obvious failure of the Buhari administration in the three key areas of its campaign promises in 2015, it expects well meaning, courageous and patriotic Nigerians like Kperogi to deviate from their consistency of holding governments accountable irrespective of share ethno-geographic or religious affiliation as some others have done. That Kperogi has held all governments accountable with the same standards of demand for good governance is indicative of his aversion for ethno-geographic and religious bias. Not only has Kperogi refused to become a chorister in the Buharists choir of ignorance, he actually exposed the dubious propaganda scheme, under the banner of Buhari Media Centre BMC, which was created to disingenuously misinform, mischaracterise and mislead unsuspecting members of the public on the true state of affairs in Buhari’s Nigeria. Kperogi revealed the structure of the BMC as sophisticated propaganda machinery, which operates with fascist precision. Thanks to Kperogi, Nigeria was saved from descending into a state of mass hypnotic ignorance akin to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where Napoleon is always right. That in an administration of supposedly man of integrity has to deploy the use propagation of falsehood to promote its principal, defend his misrule and attacks his opponents underscores the very point of Buhari’s dishonest integrity.

Unfortunately, the Buhari administration has weaponized the mass poverty its acute mismanagement of the economy has resulted into. Having reduced the economy to life support leaving businesses to rely largely on government patronage, the owners of Daily Trust Newspapers may have been pressured to yield to the demands of regime agents to drop Kperogi’s incisive column. Kperogi’s column was not dropped because it was divisive, libellous or incendiary. It was dropped because it was considered too critical of Buhari’s failed leadership style.

The Kperogi incidence, which is consistent with the Buhari administrations effort at curtailing freedom of the press, is indicative of a slide towards authoritarian totalitarianism in clear reversal of the modest gains of a consolidated liberal democratic culture between 1999 and 2015. It is now a common happenstance for publishers, editors and reporters of media organizations in Buhari’s Nigeria to be routinely harassed and detained by security forces with demands for the sources of their stories.

It is clear that President Buhari like many others before him has learnt nothing from history about the fact that power is transient. Buhari has failed to learn the vital lesson of being the ultimate beneficiary of any good governance culture he institutionalises while in power and will also be a major victim of any bad governance structure he abets. The media is the fourth and most important arm of government. Whereas, the executive is limited by fixed terms, the legislature by fixed sessions and the Judiciary by service period, the media neither expires nor retires. The media keeps watch day and night, year in year out on the society while holding governments accountable to the people. Buhari may have forgotten that the vibrant Nigeria media held the government of Goodluck Jonathan accountable while exposing its weaknesses to his electoral advantage. Out of power, Jonathan has to also rely on the most important arm of government, the media for protection from rights violation and advocacy for better deal from government as an ordinary citizen. Similarly, Buhari will be out of power someday and just as he benefited from a liberal democratic culture wherein the press was free from regime suppression, he will once more rely upon the media and especially Kperogi’s column, which now runs on the back page of the Saturday edition of the Nigerian Tribune, to hold government accountable for his rights and privileges as an ordinary citizen.

Misquoting Goodluck Jonathan