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Femi Kusa’s
Perverse Dance on Ibru’s Grave
By Farooq A. Kperogi Newsdiaryonline
Sat Dec 3,2011
The late Alex Ibru
The NationEditor-in-Chief
Femi Kusa’s thoughtless and unkind tribute to the late
Guardian publisher Alex Ibru outraged my sensibilities in more
ways than one. It’s a poorly written, unbearably narcissistic,
petty, vindictive, and cowardly piece. Kusa was clearly not in
the right frame of mind when he wrote it. This is evident from
the essay's crying lack of internal coherence, its embarrassing
structural deformities, its avoidably ugly grammatical errors,
and its general vacuity.
How could someone who is inviting us to see him as the reason—or
at least one of the reasons— for the distinctive style and
editorial success of the Guardian not know enough to know that
there is no such word as "confusionist" in the English language
(except as an alternative spelling of Confucianist, i.e., a
follower of Confucius), or that the expression "he called off"
should have been "he hung up," or that "inseperable" is properly
spelled "inseparable," or that "sleepless" is not spelled "sleepness,"
etc.? (Has this man's computer's spellcheck been disabled?) I
have noted several other mortifying solecisms that I don't
expect from my undergraduate students. And he is supposed to be
one of Nigeria's journalistic "icons"!
But let's even ignore his inexcusable grammatical incompetence
for now, although he earns a living correcting other people’s
grammar. Kusa comes across as a coarse, mean-spirited, juvenile,
and egocentric swellhead who is inebriated with an exaggerated
sense of his importance and who has a fragile ego that needs
constant rejuvenation through scorn-worthy self-congratulation.
Somebody died, his family and loved ones
are still in a state of emotional turmoil, and all that this
narcissist can do is to exploit this tragic situation to
construct an image of himself as the apotheosis of moral
uprightness, as Nigerian journalism's nonpareil personification
of morality, and as the patron-saint of "principles" who is
unblemished by the faintest sprinkle of ethical dirt. And he
does all this at the expense of a dead person, nay dead people
(because he also savagely maligned the late Andy Akporugo), who
can't defend themselves.
Let me be clear: I am NOT defending the late Ibru. I don't know
enough about him or how he ran the Guardian to refute or confirm
what Kusa wrote about him. But having
recently lost a wife and having taught obituary writing and
journalism ethics for years, I DO know that it's distasteful and
insensitive to the survivors of the dead to so carelessly
traduce their departed kin just days after his passing. Of
course, clearly evil people who brought death and misery to
large swaths of people are exempt from this consideration. Ibru,
with all his foibles, hardly fits that description.
I also do not want to trammel Kusa's right
to free expression. My whole point is that his piece is
intolerably indecent and beneath the dignity of a person of his
accomplishments for at least three reasons.
First, the occasion of a person's death is
hardly a fitting and proper moment to draw unflattering
character sketches of the person as a cold, ruthless,
"unfeeling," "scheming," [Kusa's words] vainglorious, and
soulless hedonist. This is not necessarily because of the person
(after all the dead can't be injured in a material sense, a
reason the courts have ruled that a dead person can't be libeled)
but because the survivors of the departed who are at the early
stages of the grieving process deserve some consideration.
Showing sensitivity to the sensibilities of survivors of the
dead, at least in the first few days or weeks of a death, is a
basic virtue in journalistic writing.
We like to say in Nigeria that it's
"un-African" to speak ill of the dead. But there is nothing
uniquely African about that precept; it's a universal human
precept. As I
once wrote here, it's one of the supreme ironies of our
humanity that it is tragedies and traumas, more than successes
and prosperity, that usually bring out the depth of the humanity
in us. Perhaps it is because these tragedies remind us all of
our own frailty, our own vulnerability, and own mortality. Well,
Kusa has bucked this enduring human predisposition to radiate
warmth and tenderness, however transitory, in other people's
moments of distress.
Second, why did Kusa wait till Ibru's death
to write what he wrote about him? I have no facts to impeach the
credibility of his character portrait of Ibru, but there is
something eerily sinister about the choice of occasion to do
this. It shows neither valor nor "principles," which Kusa is
persuading us to believe he is an embodiment of.
Third, there is nothing that is, in fact,
particularly revealing or informative in Kusa's piece. It is
more about Kusa than it is about Ibru's death and life. He
merely highlighted the weaknesses of Ibru's life to validate
himself. The summary of the piece is basically this:
I was told Ibru died. Too bad. But he
actually doesn't deserve to be mourned. He deserved his fate. He
was a devious, avaricious, nepotistic, niggardly, and
cold-blooded capitalist pig who was, in addition, given to
sybaritic lavishness and opportunism. I—and others—actually made
the Guardian for which he became famous. [Never mind that Kusa
has not been able to replicate his “genius” in the defunct Comet
and in the Nation]. He wanted to use me to further his baleful
boardroom politics, but being the principled, upright, and
unblemished person that I am, I resisted—to his astonishment. I
finally left his company because I couldn't stand his
staggeringly pestiferous intrigues any longer. I have never
looked back. Look, this dead man had no redeeming qualities.
Well, I hope his wife somehow finds comfort and learns from her
husband’s terrible life and failings.
This may seem like a grotesque caricature
of what Kusa wrote, but go read the piece both on the lines AND
between the lines. It’s a viciously violent animadversion
against a dead person that could wait—that is, if it must be
written.
My concern, as it should be obvious by now,
isn't about the essay's facticity. It's about its inopportune
timing, its rank insensitivity, its downright cowardice, its
smug, perverse self-flattery during other people’s moment of
personal tragedy. I don't know what kind of journalism Kusa
practiced and still practices. But he certainly hasn’t given a
good account of his journalistic judgment. That’s such a crying
shame!
Dr. Kperogi can be contacted at
farooqkperogi@gmail.com. He blogs at
www.farooqkperogi.com
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Journalism & Citizen
Media
Department of Communication
Kennesaw State University
1000 Chastain Road, MD 2207
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-969
Personal website:
www.farooqkperogi.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/farooqkperogi
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/#!/farooqkperogi
Th
This is the document referred to in the Witness
Statement on Oath of Clifford O. Kokogho as
“Exhibit
COK.2”
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