Thanks to Chinakwe (who started it all) and, of course, Farooq the
analyst given to rigour, I went clawing and digging and sniffing, and,
bow-wow, I came upon Jim Dratfield's book, Dogography, which features
interesting illustrations and quotes in doglore! Here are some great
sayings featured: "Dogs are us, only innocent" (Cynthia Heimel); "All
knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained
in a dog" (Franz Kafka). Wonderful! Thanks, Chinakwe, for opening a
door.
-- Obododimma.
On 8/27/16, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
> My column in today's Daily Trust:
>
> *By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.*
>
> *Twitter:@farooqkperogi <https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi>*
>
>
> Buhari's administration is shaping up to be perhaps the most intolerant and
> petulant civilian administration in Nigeria. But it isn't the intolerance
> and petulance in and of themselves that are disquieting; it is the crying
> incompetence of this government's handling of dissent, which often ends up
> popularizing and lionizing nonentities.
>
>
> It started with Indigenous People of Biafra's Nnamdi Kanu. He was spewing
> his rib-tickling inanities on the fringes of the Internet and on a barely
> known radio station. Then, suddenly, when he started attacking President
> Buhari, Nigerian authorities moved in swiftly to contain him. They
> announced that they had successfully jammed his radio station, but came
> back a few days later to refute an alleged libelous falsehood the station
> made against Buhari!
>
> <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BmrYdhQIrYg/V8EOoQVjoOI/AAAAAAAAFEc/riK6a_7l7QAzhnTdAmJdIHERcGDfcWmfwCLcB/s1600/Joe%2BChinakwenamesdogafter%2BBuhari.jpg>
>
>
> Of course, news of the "jamming" of the radio and the press release
> refuting what the station reportedly said against Buhari (after it was
> supposed to have been jammed!) caused the station—and the ideology it
> espouses—to make national and international headlines. And there was
> an enormous
> spike in the number of searches for "Radio Biafra" and "Nnamdi Kanu" on
> Google
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/07/why-buhari-should-leave-radio-biafra.html>
> and
> other search engines.
>
>
> This, combined with Buhari's unambiguous antipathy toward the southeast,
> has sparked a resurgence of Biafran and neo-Biafran movements and periodic
> sanguinary communal upheavals. This was completely avoidable. If the
> government had ignored (or quietly diluted) Kanu and his Radio Biafra and
> demonstrated even token large-heartedness toward the southeast (and the
> deep south) in the immediate aftermath of Buhari's epochal electoral
> triumph in spite of opposition from the region, we wouldn't know of Kanu
> and IPOB. But Nigerian authorities couldn't stomach an insult at Buhari.
>
>
> Now another man by the name of Joe Fortemose Chinakwe has become an
> international celebrity. He has been arrested, detained, imprisoned, and
> charged to court just because he named his dog Buhari. This is the height
> of petty intolerance.
>
>
> Worse bile was directed at previous civilian presidents in the country.
> Tafawa Balewa, Shagari, Obasanjo, Yar'adua, and Jonathan were often at the
> receiving end of so much thoroughgoing hate, but the world didn't know
> about this because no one was arrested and imprisoned. (Comedian Ali Baba
> said he named one of his dogs "Obasanjo" during Obasanjo's administration
> and publicized it. In northern Nigeria, Jonathan and Attahiru Jega were
> called some of the vilest names I have ever heard—and in songs, too.)
> Public office is not for huffy crybabies.
>
> <https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wIY2saC5Et8/V8EOyQTdnDI/AAAAAAAAFEg/n8GZ_JKhT4YkNIci2ZuWDgFGQ3lYCsFTwCLcB/s1600/Goodluck%2BJonathan%2BInsult.jpg>
>
>
> <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DK_Mhrrb8p4/V8EO26eqhvI/AAAAAAAAFEk/ClqyQDHXZjsKAzBYv_Hf7xPLCHP1DwQaACLcB/s1600/Goodluck%2BJonathan%2BInsults%2B2.jpg>
>
>
> I have read many Muslim commenters point out that giving a dog a Muslim
> name was offensive in and of itself. I agree. The problem is that the name
> wasn't given to the dog to spite Muslims; it was given to make a political
> statement. If Buhari's name was Smith Punapuna, the dog would be named
> precisely that.
>
>
> But Buhari isn't even a Muslim name in the strict sense of the term. As I
> pointed in previous articles
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2016/01/q-and-on-grammar-usage-and-naming.html>,
> the name Bukhari (which we render as Buhari in Nigeria because many
> Nigerian languages don't have the guttural consonant that the phoneme "kh"
> represents), is derived from Bukhara, which is the name of a town in what
> is now Uzbekistan in the former USSR.
>
>
> The person who popularized the name is a 9th-century author of hadith
> collections known as Abū 'Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismā'īl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn
> al-Mughīrah ibn Bardizbah al-Ju'fī al-Bukhārī.
>
>
> In Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi, "i" is added to the name of a town to
> indicate descent from the town. So "Bukhari" simply means someone from (the
> town of) Bukhara, what Hausa speakers would call "Dan Buhara." It's like
> someone taking offense because someone named his dog Dan Kano, Dan Daura,
> Dan Hadejia, etc., which, though names of towns, are borne by some
> northerners as last names (without the "dan").
>
>
> But that's not even the most important point. How many people will the
> Buhari administration arrest for getting under the president's skin? In
> other words, how many people will this administration make undeservedly
> popular because of its intolerance and incompetence? Many frustrated people
> who feel they have nothing to live for in light of the present economic
> crunch in the country are going to name their dogs after Buhari. Watch out.
> It's now the surest way to cheap popularity, and the intolerance and
> incompetence of this government will ensure that they get all the
> attention, and possibly financial benefits, they crave.
>
>
> But it isn't only after Buhari that dogs will be named; dogs will also be
> named after key ministers of the government.
>
>
> As I am writing this column, I read that a woman by the name of Ada Ogbonna
> has named her dog after the comically loudmouthed Lai Mohammed. "Meet my
> dog, Lai Mohammed," she wrote on Facebook. "I named it after someone I
> admired."
>
> <https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ltAJempF4FA/V8EPNz9vktI/AAAAAAAAFEo/wVSdj_VHRYIUqDKnHzkbS0D5nMWmnnkqQCLcB/s1600/Woman%2Bnames%2Bdog%2BLai%2BMohammed.jpg>
>
>
> There will be several such publicity baits. A competent government with
> some clue won't swallow such easy baits. This is all part of democracy. I
> live in America where the president of the country is called all sorts of
> dreadful names without consequences. For instance, many racists named
> their dogs Obama, but Obama disarmed them by naming his dog Bo, which is
> short for Barack Obama.
>
>
> We can't pretend to be practicing democracy and clamp down on people for
> merely saying hurtful things that get on our frail nerves.
>
>
> This is particularly telling coming from a government that is caught
> flatfooted in almost everything, a government that daily inflicts misery on
> its poor citizens while its power structure feeds fat on the misery of the
> poor. It's troubling when a government that took six months to appoint a
> predictable cast of characters as ministers wastes no time to arrest a
> person for naming his dog Buhari. It is concerning when a government that
> is mute in the face of the horrendous mass murder of hundreds of Shiites in
> Zaria arrests inconsequential people because they got under the skin of the
> president.
>
>
> Maybe Buhari is not even aware that someone has been imprisoned because he
> named his dog after him. Maybe. But people who are close to and love the
> president should tell him that the emerging pettiness and intolerance of
> his administration are becoming intolerably embarrassing.
>
>
> You can't be paying over-sized attention to minor, inconsequential
> irritants while the country burns under your watch.
>
>
> *Related Articles:*
>
> *Why Buhari Should Leave Radio Biafra Alone
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/07/why-buhari-should-leave-radio-biafra.html>*
>
> *After the Euphoria, What President-Elect Buhari Needs to Know
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/04/after-euphoria-what-president-elect.html>*
>
>
> Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Journalism & Emerging Media
> School of Communication & Media
> Social Science Building
> Room 5092 MD 2207
> 402 Bartow Avenue
> Kennesaw State University
> Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
> Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
> Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com>
> Twitter: @farooqkperog <https://twitter.com/#%21/farooqkperogi>
> Author of *Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English
> in a Global World
> <http://www.amazon.com/Glocal-English-Changing-Linguistics-Semiotics/dp/1433129264/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436569864&sr=1-1>*
>
> "The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either
> proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
>
> --
> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
> To subscribe to this group, send an email to
> USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
> Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
--
--
B.A.,First Class Honours (English & Literary Studies);
M.A., Ph.D. (English Language);
M.Sc. (Legal, Criminological & Security Psychology);
Professor of Cultural Semiotics & Stylistics,
Department of English,
University of Ibadan.
Fellow,
Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies,
University of Ibadan.
COORDINATES:
Phone (Mobile):
+234 8033331330;
+234 9033333555;
+234 8022208008;
+234 8073270008.
Skype: obododimma.oha
Twitter: @mmanwu
Personal Blog: http://udude.wordpress.com/
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
analyst given to rigour, I went clawing and digging and sniffing, and,
bow-wow, I came upon Jim Dratfield's book, Dogography, which features
interesting illustrations and quotes in doglore! Here are some great
sayings featured: "Dogs are us, only innocent" (Cynthia Heimel); "All
knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained
in a dog" (Franz Kafka). Wonderful! Thanks, Chinakwe, for opening a
door.
-- Obododimma.
On 8/27/16, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
> My column in today's Daily Trust:
>
> *By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.*
>
> *Twitter:@farooqkperogi <https://twitter.com/farooqkperogi>*
>
>
> Buhari's administration is shaping up to be perhaps the most intolerant and
> petulant civilian administration in Nigeria. But it isn't the intolerance
> and petulance in and of themselves that are disquieting; it is the crying
> incompetence of this government's handling of dissent, which often ends up
> popularizing and lionizing nonentities.
>
>
> It started with Indigenous People of Biafra's Nnamdi Kanu. He was spewing
> his rib-tickling inanities on the fringes of the Internet and on a barely
> known radio station. Then, suddenly, when he started attacking President
> Buhari, Nigerian authorities moved in swiftly to contain him. They
> announced that they had successfully jammed his radio station, but came
> back a few days later to refute an alleged libelous falsehood the station
> made against Buhari!
>
> <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BmrYdhQIrYg/V8EOoQVjoOI/AAAAAAAAFEc/riK6a_7l7QAzhnTdAmJdIHERcGDfcWmfwCLcB/s1600/Joe%2BChinakwenamesdogafter%2BBuhari.jpg>
>
>
> Of course, news of the "jamming" of the radio and the press release
> refuting what the station reportedly said against Buhari (after it was
> supposed to have been jammed!) caused the station—and the ideology it
> espouses—to make national and international headlines. And there was
> an enormous
> spike in the number of searches for "Radio Biafra" and "Nnamdi Kanu" on
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/07/why-buhari-should-leave-radio-biafra.html>
> and
> other search engines.
>
>
> This, combined with Buhari's unambiguous antipathy toward the southeast,
> has sparked a resurgence of Biafran and neo-Biafran movements and periodic
> sanguinary communal upheavals. This was completely avoidable. If the
> government had ignored (or quietly diluted) Kanu and his Radio Biafra and
> demonstrated even token large-heartedness toward the southeast (and the
> deep south) in the immediate aftermath of Buhari's epochal electoral
> triumph in spite of opposition from the region, we wouldn't know of Kanu
> and IPOB. But Nigerian authorities couldn't stomach an insult at Buhari.
>
>
> Now another man by the name of Joe Fortemose Chinakwe has become an
> international celebrity. He has been arrested, detained, imprisoned, and
> charged to court just because he named his dog Buhari. This is the height
> of petty intolerance.
>
>
> Worse bile was directed at previous civilian presidents in the country.
> Tafawa Balewa, Shagari, Obasanjo, Yar'adua, and Jonathan were often at the
> receiving end of so much thoroughgoing hate, but the world didn't know
> about this because no one was arrested and imprisoned. (Comedian Ali Baba
> said he named one of his dogs "Obasanjo" during Obasanjo's administration
> and publicized it. In northern Nigeria, Jonathan and Attahiru Jega were
> called some of the vilest names I have ever heard—and in songs, too.)
> Public office is not for huffy crybabies.
>
> <https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wIY2saC5Et8/V8EOyQTdnDI/AAAAAAAAFEg/n8GZ_JKhT4YkNIci2ZuWDgFGQ3lYCsFTwCLcB/s1600/Goodluck%2BJonathan%2BInsult.jpg>
>
>
> <https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DK_Mhrrb8p4/V8EO26eqhvI/AAAAAAAAFEk/ClqyQDHXZjsKAzBYv_Hf7xPLCHP1DwQaACLcB/s1600/Goodluck%2BJonathan%2BInsults%2B2.jpg>
>
>
> I have read many Muslim commenters point out that giving a dog a Muslim
> name was offensive in and of itself. I agree. The problem is that the name
> wasn't given to the dog to spite Muslims; it was given to make a political
> statement. If Buhari's name was Smith Punapuna, the dog would be named
> precisely that.
>
>
> But Buhari isn't even a Muslim name in the strict sense of the term. As I
> pointed in previous articles
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2016/01/q-and-on-grammar-usage-and-naming.html>,
> the name Bukhari (which we render as Buhari in Nigeria because many
> Nigerian languages don't have the guttural consonant that the phoneme "kh"
> represents), is derived from Bukhara, which is the name of a town in what
> is now Uzbekistan in the former USSR.
>
>
> The person who popularized the name is a 9th-century author of hadith
> collections known as Abū 'Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismā'īl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn
> al-Mughīrah ibn Bardizbah al-Ju'fī al-Bukhārī.
>
>
> In Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi, "i" is added to the name of a town to
> indicate descent from the town. So "Bukhari" simply means someone from (the
> town of) Bukhara, what Hausa speakers would call "Dan Buhara." It's like
> someone taking offense because someone named his dog Dan Kano, Dan Daura,
> Dan Hadejia, etc., which, though names of towns, are borne by some
> northerners as last names (without the "dan").
>
>
> But that's not even the most important point. How many people will the
> Buhari administration arrest for getting under the president's skin? In
> other words, how many people will this administration make undeservedly
> popular because of its intolerance and incompetence? Many frustrated people
> who feel they have nothing to live for in light of the present economic
> crunch in the country are going to name their dogs after Buhari. Watch out.
> It's now the surest way to cheap popularity, and the intolerance and
> incompetence of this government will ensure that they get all the
> attention, and possibly financial benefits, they crave.
>
>
> But it isn't only after Buhari that dogs will be named; dogs will also be
> named after key ministers of the government.
>
>
> As I am writing this column, I read that a woman by the name of Ada Ogbonna
> has named her dog after the comically loudmouthed Lai Mohammed. "Meet my
> dog, Lai Mohammed," she wrote on Facebook. "I named it after someone I
> admired."
>
> <https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ltAJempF4FA/V8EPNz9vktI/AAAAAAAAFEo/wVSdj_VHRYIUqDKnHzkbS0D5nMWmnnkqQCLcB/s1600/Woman%2Bnames%2Bdog%2BLai%2BMohammed.jpg>
>
>
> There will be several such publicity baits. A competent government with
> some clue won't swallow such easy baits. This is all part of democracy. I
> live in America where the president of the country is called all sorts of
> dreadful names without consequences. For instance, many racists named
> their dogs Obama, but Obama disarmed them by naming his dog Bo, which is
> short for Barack Obama.
>
>
> We can't pretend to be practicing democracy and clamp down on people for
> merely saying hurtful things that get on our frail nerves.
>
>
> This is particularly telling coming from a government that is caught
> flatfooted in almost everything, a government that daily inflicts misery on
> its poor citizens while its power structure feeds fat on the misery of the
> poor. It's troubling when a government that took six months to appoint a
> predictable cast of characters as ministers wastes no time to arrest a
> person for naming his dog Buhari. It is concerning when a government that
> is mute in the face of the horrendous mass murder of hundreds of Shiites in
> Zaria arrests inconsequential people because they got under the skin of the
> president.
>
>
> Maybe Buhari is not even aware that someone has been imprisoned because he
> named his dog after him. Maybe. But people who are close to and love the
> president should tell him that the emerging pettiness and intolerance of
> his administration are becoming intolerably embarrassing.
>
>
> You can't be paying over-sized attention to minor, inconsequential
> irritants while the country burns under your watch.
>
>
> *Related Articles:*
>
> *Why Buhari Should Leave Radio Biafra Alone
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/07/why-buhari-should-leave-radio-biafra.html>*
>
> *After the Euphoria, What President-Elect Buhari Needs to Know
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2015/04/after-euphoria-what-president-elect.html>*
>
>
> Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Journalism & Emerging Media
> School of Communication & Media
> Social Science Building
> Room 5092 MD 2207
> 402 Bartow Avenue
> Kennesaw State University
> Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
> Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
> Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
> <http://www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com>
> Twitter: @farooqkperog <https://twitter.com/#%21/farooqkperogi>
> Author of *Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English
> in a Global World
> <http://www.amazon.com/Glocal-English-Changing-Linguistics-Semiotics/dp/1433129264/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436569864&sr=1-1>*
>
> "The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either
> proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
>
> --
> Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
> To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
> To subscribe to this group, send an email to
> USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
> Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
--
--
B.A.,First Class Honours (English & Literary Studies);
M.A., Ph.D. (English Language);
M.Sc. (Legal, Criminological & Security Psychology);
Professor of Cultural Semiotics & Stylistics,
Department of English,
University of Ibadan.
Fellow,
Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies,
University of Ibadan.
COORDINATES:
Phone (Mobile):
+234 8033331330;
+234 9033333555;
+234 8022208008;
+234 8073270008.
Skype: obododimma.oha
Twitter: @mmanwu
Personal Blog: http://udude.wordpress.com/
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.