By Nwankwo NWAEZEIGWE, PhD
Prof Farooq Adamu Kperogi’s two articles intended to vilify the dogged Awoist Amazon and Leader of British Conservative Party Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch are not only lavish displays of historical incongruities but a magnetic field of historical distortions intended to veneer the substance of historical truism. This is often the case when a non-professional historian engages in intellectual picketing in a historical matter.
The first article titled, “Kemi Badenoch’s Yoruba Identity Meets Inconvenient Truths”, published Saturday December 21, 2024, in his personal blog Notes from Atlanta was his flagship rejoinder to Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s historically veritable assertion, “Being Yoruba is my true identity, and I refuse to be lumped with northern people of Nigeria, who were our ethnic enemies, all in the name of being called a Nigerian.”
Going through the above piece my impression is that of a scholar-journalist struggling through mismatch of historical facts to debunk Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s assertion that she is absolutely Yoruba and does not accept the idea of lumping herself with her ethnic enemies. This mismatch of historical facts not only deviated from the trajectory of Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s assertion exposed Farooq Kperogi’s limited knowledge of Nigerian history as it relates to pre-colonial intergroup relations.
Historically, the North by British colonial delineation is ethnographically made up of no less than two hundred and fifty ethnic groups of which the Yoruba form a part in the present Kwara and Kogi States. Did Farooq Kperogi in his logical sense of a scholar attempt to ask if the Yoruba of the same Northern Nigeria are included among the northern people of Nigeria Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch described as her ethnic enemies?
Did Farooq Kperogi ask which Northern ethnic groups are the real ethnic enemies of the Yoruba Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch spoke about, judging from extant historical precedents? Did Farooq Kperogi deem it equally necessary to ask Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch to explain the basis of her assertion? These are the fundamental hypothetical questions a professional historian or any rational scholar will put forward before arriving at conclusion.
It is surprising to note that in no single paragraph did Farooq Adamu Kperogi attempt to debunk Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s assertive statement that the North are the ethnic enemies of the Yoruba. All his arguments on pre-colonial intergroup relations between the Yoruba and the North are pitiably anchored on the pre-colonial interactions between the Old Oyo Empire and his adopted Baatonu people of Borgu which he sees through the historical lens of the etymology of the name “Yoruba.”
There is therefore obvious evidence that Farooq Kperogi does not understand what the North, which forms Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s basis of argument, stands for in the context of present Nigerian politics. Basing his argument solely on the etymology of the word “Yoruba” to vilify Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s position on her ethnic identity is not only fraught with historical inadequacies but smack of intellectual pettiness constructed on a befuddling ignorance of the historical dynamics of the present Nigerian nation.
This intellectual pettiness laced with befuddling ignorance of historical dynamics of the Nigerian nation was ignominiously exhibited by Kperogi’s monstrous statement, “If Badenoch truly fancies herself as Yoruba, she’d be wise not to rattle the ancestral tree; she might be startled by just how much Northern Nigeria comes tumbling out of its branches.”
From the above sensational illogicality, it is clear that Farooq Kperogi does not understand what ancestral tree means in both historical and ethnographical terms. It also underscores Kperogi’s low-level understanding of what the North means in Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s conception. Is Kperogi telling us that the North is constructed on one ancestral tree or monolithic ethnic identity? Is Farooq Kperogi equally telling us that the Borgu eponymous root of the word “Yoruba” as he claims equally translates to origin of Yoruba people from Borgu? So what ancestral tree was he talking about?
The same intellectual pettiness laced with befuddling ignorance of the historical dynamics of the Nigerian nation was carried further in his second article titled “Borgu, Northern Nigeria, and Yoruba History” published Saturday, January 11, 2025, also in his personal blog Notes from Atlanta, which was indeed a response to Dr. Lasisi Olagunju’s rejoinder to his December 21, 2024 article.
Farooq Kperogi’s misleading contraptions further received a back-up from his Fulani kinsman Yushau A. Shuaib with an article titled “On the Etymology of ‘Yoruba’ by Northerners” published in Nigerian Tribuneonline issue of Monday January 13, 2025. Yushau Shaibu’s article is indeed fascinating not only because it fervently raised the issue of historiography in support of Farooq Kperogi against Lasisi Olagunju’s account on the etymology of the word “Yoruba”, but because it equally explains Farooq Kparogi’s misapplication of historical facts.
In other words, when Yushau Shaibu wrote, “Stories may incorporate history, but not all stories are historical”, he was indeed making an obvious reference to Farooq Kperogi’s article on Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch. Prof C. Behan McCullagh in his article titled, “Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation”, published in Vol. 39, No. 1, 2000 issue of History and Theory informs us that, “It is useful to distinguish history that is misleading by accident from that which is the result of personal bias; and to distinguish personal bias from cultural bias and general cultural relativity.” This is where Farooq Kperogi erred in his wobbly flamboyant intellectual promenade against Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch.
As a historian, I do not contest the Northern etymology of the word “Yoruba.” This has always been my view. I do not also contest the fact that it was originally a reference to Oyo sub-ethnic group of what is collectively known as Yoruba in Nigeria today, before its collective application as a common ethnic identity through the literary influence of such Oyo-born returnee freedmen as Bishops Samuel Ajayi Crowther and James Johnson. Indeed, the distinctive ethnic facial mark of a typical Oyo (Yoruba) is the multiple vertical scarifications on both sides of the cheek.
But the question is to what extent does this matter of etymology of the word “Yoruba” contradict Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch’s assertion, except as applied by Farooq Kperogi as a witty distraction to the main subject matter? This is because it is common knowledge that the term “Yoruba” as an identity definition of an ethnic group only applies to Nigeria. In Benin Republic where Farooq Kperogi’s Fulani maternal and paternal grand-parents migrated from, Togo and Ghana, the Yoruba are known as Anago. In Sierra Leone where they constitute the most influential Creole group, they are known as Aku.
Farooq Kperogi might not be aware that there are six Yoruba towns in Igboland, located in the present Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State whose language is still referred to as Olukwunmi and not Yoruba by their Igbo neighbors. Like Farooq Kperogi who is ethnically Fulani but currently claims Baatonu of Borgu identity, and Gambari-Fulani of Ilorin bearing Yoruba names and speaking Yoruba language while retaining their Fulani cultural identity, the Yoruba-speaking people of Igboland bear Igbo names, claim Igbo ethnic identity, and speak Igbo, while retaining their Yoruba language and cultural identity. The same sequence of nomenclature equally applies to Farooq Kperogi’s Baatonu people of Borgu who are variously known among the Yoruba as he aptly noted, by the names “Bariba, Baruba, or Ibariba.”
In historical terms, every original identity or name associated with any individual, town or ethnic group is an exonymous derivative. Every individual is given a name without his consent from birth. The same applies to names of towns and ethnic groups. The Benin kingdom is variously referred to as Ado and Idu respectively by the Yoruba and Igbo. The origin of the word “Igbo” still remains a riddle among historians, ethno-linguists and ethnographers.
The Hausa gave the Tiv the name “Munshi”, while the term “Hausa” was imposed by Arab traders against their original names of Habe, Arewa and Maguzawa. The term “Fulani” which was alien to pre-colonial Nigeria and even today to most West and Central African nations outside Nigeria originated from a Hausa derogatory reference to Fulani Islamic mendicants (beggars) begging for Fura (Millet cake balls) to supplement their Nunu (Cow milk).
Generally, to the Hausa, the present people collectively known as Fulani are made up of two different ethnic groups sharing one common Fulbe language—the real Fulani known as the Bororo who are the depository of cattle herding, and the Toronkowa or Torodbe who represent the sedentary Fulani ruling class. This explains why the general term for the Fulani in both Cameroon and the Central African Republic is Bororo.
In fact, the earliest name applied by the British in reference to the Fulani was Fellata which was Kanem-Borno, Sudanese and Arab term. Elsewhere in West Africa, they are variously known as Fulbe, Fula, Peuhl, and Peul. All these references by incident of historical dynamics are exonyms. One does not therefore understand the basis of Farooq Kperogi’s highfalutin arrogance clothed in embarrassing ignorance of the historical application of the concept of exonym when he sardonically wrote:
“I can bet my bottom dollar that most northern Nigerians are uninterested in any claim to kinship with her, either. Well, since Ms. Badenoch hates northern Nigeria that much, she might also consider rejecting even the term Yoruba, as it originates from—of all places—northern Nigeria! “Yoruba” is, after all, an exonym first bestowed upon the Oyo people by their northern neighbors, the Baatonu (Bariba) of Borgu, before it was shared with the Songhai (whose scholar by the name of Ahmad Baba has the distinction of being the first person to mention the name in print as “Yariba” in his 1613 essay titled “Al-kashf wa-l-bayān li-aṣnāfmajlūb al-Sūdān”).”
Dr. Nwaezeigwe was formerly Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and presently Odogwu of Ibusa