An Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media, Kennesaw State University in the USA, Farooq Kperogi, tells SUNDAY ABORISADE that President Muhammadu Buhari should reject the controversial award and punish his aides who have embarrassed him with the scam award
What is your reaction to the controversial award received by President Muhammadu Buhari from the King Centre on Monday?
Well, it wasn’t the King Centre that conferred the so-called ‘First Black History Month National Black Excellence and Exceptional African Leadership Award’ on Buhari. The sister-in-law and nephew of the late Martin Luther King Jr. did. But they are not members of the Martin Luther King family in the American understanding of notions of family. They are relatives, or extended family members, of the late King who have no power to give awards to anyone on behalf of the Martin Luther King family, which is formally represented by the King Centre. The King Centre’s verified Twitter account, in fact, disclaimed any association with the award in a March 28 tweet, which I shared on my Facebook wall.
What came to your mind when you first saw the pictures of the ‘award ceremony’?
Scam! Scam! Scam! That was what came to my mind. Anyone with even the vaguest familiarity with the United States would know that the award is a transparent, easily detectable fraud. The name of the award is the first dead giveaway. In America, Black History Month is celebrated in February, not in March. So, it makes absolutely no sense to give a Black History Month award at the end of March. And, of course, the structurally ungainly, awkwardly superlative phraseology of the award screams fraud! Second, since the King Centre, which formally represents the King family, gives no awards of any kind to anyone, on what basis and under whose organisational platform did King’s sister-in-law and nephew give an award to President Buhari? Can private individuals from a country just wake up and decide to give an award to the president of another country? Would it make sense, for instance, for the wife of Chief Awolowo’s younger brother and the son of his sister to bypass the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation and go to America to give an Annual Yoruba Day award to President Donald Trump in May — never mind that the day is celebrated in April — in their personal capacities? Won’t that be the height of absurdity?
Additionally, not even Martin Luther King’s immediate family members, not to talk of his relatives, have the power to give ‘Black History Month awards’ on behalf of the 42 million African Americans in the United States. There is no such thing as a ‘Black History Month Award’ on anything. The only award the MLK family sponsors is the ‘Coretta King Book Award’, which recognises and rewards the best books written by black Americans. So what came to my mind when I saw photos of the “award” was that some relatives of the late King were pimping his name for a quick buck. The only reason the Presidency bragged about the so-called award was that they wanted to exploit the symbolic capital of Martin Luther King’s name to lend unearned legitimacy to themselves.
Are you convinced that the award presentation was facilitated by some presidential aides?
Of course! It’s obvious that the President didn’t personally solicit Martin Luther King’s relatives for the award. The word is that it was (allegedly) facilitated by Abike Dabiri-Erewa through a Ghanaian contact with has links to King’s relatives. I haven’t personally confirmed that, but it’s highly unlikely that President Buhari was personally involved in this.
Based on your findings so far, is it possible for the Presidency to have procured the ‘award’ with $3m as being rumoured?
An online news outlet alleged that $3 million was paid to secure the award for the president, but I haven’t independently verified this. What is not in doubt, though, is that these sorts of shady awards are never free. They are always sneaky pecuniary schemes that prey on the status anxieties, inferiority complex, and xenophilic propensities of our leaders who need the awards to conceal their incompetence and sense of low self-worth.
What do you make of the explanation given by Abike Dabiri-Erewa as reason for the media centre’s tweet?
It’s both factually inaccurate and a cringe-worthy exercise in prevarication. First, Naomi King isn’t, as she claimed, the “matriarch” of the King family. No such position exists in the American family structure.
Plus, she is only an in-law to Martin Luther King. She has her own foundation called the A.D. King Foundation set up in honour of her late husband, who was the late Martin Luther King’s brother. One of the family members, who stood by Buhari when he received the fraudulent award, drew the ire of Black America recently when he said Trump wasn’t a racist after he called Africa and Haiti “shitholes.” Go figure! More than anything, though, as I pointed out earlier, what self-respecting nation hankers after awards for its president from the private citizens of another country? That’s the issue we should ponder over.
Will you advise President Buhari to reject the controversial award?
You can’t reject what you have already accepted and celebrated with fanfare. Nonetheless, returning the award might redeem the president a bit.
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