Farooq Kperogi's defense of Deji Adeyanju, a significant flaws and ethical breaches

 Farooq Kperogi is rightly acclaimed as a versatile academic and a titan of Nigerian media commentary. But, a closer examination of his record reveals significant flaws and ethical breaches that complicate his stature. For instance, during a period of grief, he publicly alluded to Aisha Buhari as being "divorced" from her recently deceased husband. In another instance, he diagnosed former President Muhammadu Buhari with "dementia" without medical authority.

These are not mere differences of opinion but rather demonstrative examples of a troubling propensity to cross the lines of public decency and responsible commentary in pursuit of provocation. Our discernment of his work must account for moments where his analysis appears to veer into ethically questionable territory. 

It was in this context that I encountered his latest post: a curiously defensive and, I would argue, recreant polemic aimed squarely at undermining the legal merit of Peter Obi's suit against Adeyanju.

While Professor Farooq Kperogi's column presents itself as an "unemotional perspective," it is, in fact, a masterclass in constructing a narrative that selectively weaponises facts to defend defamation under the guise of robust public discourse. Its central flaw is the conflation of verifiable facts with malicious insinuation, and its argument, while intellectually stylish, is fundamentally unsound both legally and ethically.

The core of Kperogi's defense rests on two pillars: the legal doctrines of "truth" and "fair comment." But, his application of these doctrines is dangerously expansive. It's one thing to state that Peter Obi, as governor, invested state funds in a company linked to his former business interests, a matter of public record. It is entirely another to label that action "fraud" and its perpetrator a "fraud" and a "scum." The first is a fact that can be contextualised; the latter is a defamatory conclusion that imputes criminal intent without proof. The law recognises truth as a defense only if the defamatory imputation itself is true. Proving an underlying fact (the investment) does not automatically prove the truth of the malicious label (fraud) slapped onto it. Adeyanju’s rhetoric is not commentary; it is character assassination masquerading as critique.

Similarly, the "fair comment" doctrine protects honest expressions of opinion based on true facts. Kperogi points to the leaked audio as grounds for Adeyanju calling Obi a "religious bigot." But again, Adeyanju’s language transcends fair comment. A fair comment would be, "Obi's appeal to religious solidarity was divisive and cynical." Branding him a "bigot" is a definitive, pejorative judgment of character that the factual record does not incontrovertibly support. The doctrine is not a license to leap from a single data point to a damning and absolute personal indictment.

Kperogi’s argument commits a critical error by excising Adeyanju’s most egregious and unsupported claims into a narrow, dismissible sidebar. He admits that claims like Obi "pays all influencers online" are baseless and that calling him "always a scum" is a reckless personal insult. Yet, he bizarrely argues that Obi should only sue on these "narrow grounds," as if a defamation suit is a surgical strike rather than a response to the entire, toxic ecosystem of falsehoods that Adeyanju has cultivated. A defendant cannot poison the well with outright lies and then claim protection for the entire contaminated body of his speech because a few droplets within it contain mineral traces of truth.

The most pernicious part of Kperogi’s thesis is the assertion that public figures like Obi are "cowards" for suing and that such lawsuits are inherently "SLAPPs" (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). This is a grave misunderstanding of power dynamics. While SLAPPs are a real tool of the powerful, the premise that a private citizen activist is inherently the "weaker target" is naive. In the court of public opinion, amplified by social media, an activist like Adeyanju can wield immense power to shape narratives and destroy reputations with near-impunity. To suggest that a public figure must silently endure a relentless campaign of defamation, which includes both verifiable facts and outright lies woven together, is to demand they relinquish their right to a legal defense entirely. The right to "counter in the marketplace of ideas" is nullified when the marketplace is being flooded with sewage. Litigation is not always intimidation; sometimes, it is the only tool left to demand accountability for outright falsehoods.

Kperogi’s column operates on a dangerous slippery slope. By arguing that because some allegations have a basis in fact, Obi therefore forfeits his right to challenge any of them, he creates a charter for defamers everywhere. All one must do is mix a teaspoon of truth into a barrel of lies to gain immunity. The health of Nigerian democracy is not served by allowing activists to be "uncouth" and "defamatory." It is served by fostering a culture of rigorous, responsible criticism that respects the line between holding power to account and engaging in wanton character annihilation.

Peter Obi's lawsuit is not an attempt to criminalise uncomfortable facts. It is a challenge to the malicious and unsupported conclusions that Deji Adeyanju has grafted onto those facts. A truly "unemotional perspective" would recognise that the law exists precisely to adjudicate this difference, and that no one, regardless of their stature or profession, should be expected to accept being called a "fraud" and a "scum" as simply the price of a public life.

LABOUR PARTY PRESS STATEMENT: OPEN NOTE TO DEJI ADEYANJU — AMBITION WITHOUT PRINCIPLE IS WORSE THAN SUBSTANCE ABUSE

By Prince Tony Akeni, 

Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim)

Deji Adeyanju & Prince Tony 

Substance abuse go far beyond narcotics intake, meth, _colos,_ heroin or other cerebrum invading and dementing hard drugs. 

Ambition without principle is worse than substance abuse. Any mental activity conceived in the labyrinths of ambition-damaged mind which distorts rational thinking and actions, either at a cost to the individual or to society at large, is as dangerous or more dangerous than substance abuse. 

These include uncontrollable drive for material acquisitions instead of society serving legacy, typical of officials of the ruling administration. It accounts for the pathologically obsessive attack rabies Deji Adeyanju harbours in his blood streams against His Excellency Peter Obi.

When ambition is unbridled and abused, blackmail becomes a strategy. The French social philosopher Oscar Wilde captured this when he wrote: "Ambition is the last refuge of the failure." George MacDonald was even closer home on Deji Adeyanju about greed driven hatred in his defining words: "Ambition is the evil shadow of aspiration."

Learning from mentors, Daniel Bwala and Reno Omokri

With the advent of the emilokan Presidency in 2023, Deji has learned crucial financial lessons. He learnt from his new mentors, the once merciless scorners and critics of President Tinubu, Daniel Bwala, the president's Special Adviser on Media & Public Communications, and Reno Omokri, the lynch pin of Nigeria's stomach infrastructure pseudo-critics. 

Deji learned that the shortest route to Tinubu's lake of federal treasury, bloated by the removal of subsidy, is to volunteer bootlicking services in either Tinubu's sycophancy orchestra or enlist in his infantry of attack dogs trained for the jugulars of APC's opposition leaders, chief of whom is Mr. Peter Obi. 

It is therefore not difficult to understand why, over the last several months, Deji Adeyanju frequently digs into Omokri's and Bwala's bags of heathen lies and blackmail manuals in pursuit of Tinubu's pockets and Tinubu's support for Deji's 2027 ambitions. 

One will, however, advise that Deji should not let the lures of corrupt administration politicians acquiring estates, plazas and mansions all over the capital and countryside make him succumb to unbridled ambitions for same.

Appointment or wealth by blackmail of the Labour Party's presidential phenom, Mr. Peter Obi, should not blind him to the true depths of the multi-dimensional sufferings of the Nigerian people on whose behalf he once claimed to be an activist for good governance, neither the excruciating urgency for the rescue of the Nigerian nation from second colonization by the ruling APC.

A good Nigerian 

Fortunately, there are still good Nigerians contrary to the view that holds otherwise. Fair-minded and upright citizens who do not need inducement, personal benefit or bribe to stand up for the truth.

One such Nigerian, Mr. Ike Abonyi, a reputable journalist and author, was present in July 2022 when the Labour Party's presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections, His Excellency Peter Obi, in his uncommon humility, simplicity and amity, met Deji Adeyanju for a mutual conversation about their political interests in the 2023 elections. This involved Obi running for Nigeria's Presidency on the platform of the Labour Party, and Deji for the Abuja Municipal Federal Constituency seat in the National Assembly potentially also on the platform of the Labour Party. 

It was Mr. Abonyi, a common friend of both Obi and Deji, who brokered and witnessed the meeting from its first minute to the end. With a rational, psychologically stable individual, it was the kind of privileged private conversation between two citizens that ought to have been treasured and kept that way eternally. But not so with Deji. Instead Deji turned it into a feedstock of garbage fiction for his imaginary social media empire. 

On his part Abonyi has since publicly attested that not one moment in the entire meeting which he moderated was Obi involved in any act or confession of corruption involving investing Anambra state's money in his private family business while he was governor of the state. Deji has not countered or contradicted him.

Traditional "welcome" kola, logistics goodwill

In most parts of Nigeria and many African societies, it is age-old tradition to offer a guest the traditional kola nut fruit, complemented with supporting physical cash called "wedge" down south. Where the kola nut is not available, the custom is these days commonly monetized.

In modern times, this tradition has expanded into logistics goodwill, and sometimes affinity empathy where a host extends money support to a visitor that may have travelled some distance or denied himself other activities of the day to visit a host, especially a financially well-off host.

It is not called bribe but custom because it is not given to cover up, solicit or co-opt the visitor into an act of corruption, crime investigation or scandal. 

Thus, even if, without conceding, Peter Obi had offered Deji Adeyanju a physical kola nut or the monetized version of the custom, it is not an act of corruption but a courtesy of custom.

It therefore amounts to an extremely malevolent, duplicitous and despicable misrepresentation of an African tradition for Deji to convert the gesture to an arsenal of political blackmail as Deji has notoriously set out to do against Peter Obi before the world. 

To garnish his fairy tale with a facade of credulity in his double-down on a Channels TV interview, Deji added that during the conversation with Peter Obi, Obi confessed to him that he invested Anambra state funds in his private family business, the bases upon which Deji accuses and defames Peter Obi as "corrupt." An illogical, infantile, apparent concoction.

However, from all over Nigeria and far beyond our borders, the Labour Party is delighted with and thankful for the feedback we are receiving from millions of Nigerians on Deji's self-immolating tinder of lies.

Nigerians are asking: what did His Excellency Peter Obi give Deji a "bribe" envelope for, two months after winning his own Presidential ticket of the Labour Party at Asaba? Was it to help Deji bribe his way through party primaries over which Obi had no control and did not assert one? 

What, in Deji's poorly woven imagination, led Obi to confess to him that as governor he dipped his hands into Anambra state treasury? Was it for forgiveness of sins because at that time Deji was the in-house catechist of Anambra Government House Chapel and Treasury?

Deji knows this.

In every election of Nigeria since 2023 to date, Tinubu sets the tone for violent brigandage, killings and mayhem against opposition voters and citizens throughout Nigeria. 

The traumatic memory of countless pro-Obi voters lynched, bloodied and some gunned to death, including pregnant victims and housewives during the 2023 elections are still fresh. This anomaly has been emphatically entrenched as the norm in Nigeria's elections especially following Tinubu's political philosophy of "snatch, grab and run" away with ballot results and power. Deji Adeyanju knows this.

On the contrary, all over the country, rightfully loud and strident against bad governance, members of Peter Obi's Obidient movement peacefully type their views on public governance, protests and dissenting opinions from keyboards and digital space from the quiet of their homes. They do not bear guns, hurt a soul or kill. Deji  knows this.

On the other hand, Tinubu's APC youths and zealots run wild committing mayhem, murder, myriad havoc and life threatening violence against dissenting voices all over the country, especially during election activities. Deji Adeyanju knows this. 

On November 24, 2024, over mere NURTW drivers union election conflict, a conflict over which the Appeal Court of Nigeria had already delivered judgment against President Tinubu supported faction of MC Oluomo, thugs of the President's violence and mayhem generalissimo, Oluomo, audaciously stormed in broad day the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) headquarters in Utako. 

Armed with guns and other dangerous weapons, MC Oluomo's thugs broke into the NUJ headquarter conference hall where the Appeal Court victorious drivers faction were holding a press meeting. 

The thugs seized and beat up everyone within their grip, violently chased out the participants and in the process destroyed the cameras and equipment of several journalists who were covering the event. A felony committed with impunity before the eyes and right in the hive of the Nigerian press. Adeyanju knows this.

Yet Deji obsessively and frequently but wrongly label the peaceful Obidient movement of Peter Obi as an unruly, abusive and intolerant body, as he disingenuously depicted in his recent Channels TV interview. Only sheer hypocrisy and his vaulting narcotics-like ambition to join Reno Omokri and Daniel Bwala for Tinubu's employment, contract or consultancy showers can be responsible for that.

Otherwise, how could Deji switch his once copiously confessed preference for the benevolent dove personality, sterling economic intelligence and towering character content of Peter Obi whom Deji has hailed numerous times as the best presidential choice in the entire country, suddenly switch preference and campaign for President Tinubu whose violent supporters massacre voters and send some to early graves in virtually every election since 2023? 

Doesn't Deji know this?

Tony Akeni Le Moin

Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim)

Tuesday September 2, 2025