By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.
6-10-2025.
A few weeks ago, Faruk Kperogi, a Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at US’s Kennesaw State University’s School of Communication and Media, CLAIMED to be the world’s chairman of the ECONOMISERS. I believe that the distinguished professor spoke for TOO fast, and for himself to boot. Yours sincerely is contesting for that office.
WITH all sense of SERIOUSNESS, I dare say that the professor can hardly beat ME when it comes to being an economiser, for many reasons. Him and I, had worked together with a common media organisation in Abuja before he left for the US some twenty plus years ago.
EARLY in 2024, I wrote an article with the tittle, “Remembering Mrs. Zainab Kperogi”, to commemorate no particular occasion, but just to say a posthumous ‘thank you’.
IN the write up, I said, among other things, that, “The recall was certainly not meant to remind her then husband, Professor Faruk Kperogi and her daughter, the (then) little (but now a grown up woman in her teens) daughter, Miss Hauwa, fondly known and addressed as ‘Sinani’, her parents and others close to her, of their lost loved one. I am particularly concerned about the two people known to me, Professor Faruk Kperogi and Miss Hauwa (Sinani).
“The two of them are living in the US. It is likely that they may also remember me, no matter how partial it may be. The late Mrs. Kperogi was a line editor in charge of the opinion pages, and I was her counterpart on the political desk, in the same media organisation in Abuja.”
BY the way, I am NOT in the ring to contest his professorship, far from it. When it comes to educational qualification, he is MILES ahead of me. My Lilliputian educational achievement is nowhere near his GARGANTUAN and INTIMIDATING academic achievements. While he writes his satires (he does all his writings in that fashion) with the panache and depth of an academic, which he is (a professor of journalism and emerging media for that matter), I, on my part, however, write PEDESTRIANLY.
THAT settled, my INTIMIDATING credentials on the subject of ECONOMISERS, can hardly be matched by his PUNY ones, which the Professor wrote about in his ‘Notes From Atlanta’ weekly column.
I am reminded of that article, weeks after it was written, by my present state of penury, which forced me to revive my old habit of chewing everything in a chicken, including the chewable bones, sucking the marrow of cooked un chewable bones of big animals, and leaving NOTHING remaining out of my birth soap, to name some of my ‘irritating’ economising habits.
IT had been my wont, before reviving the habit, to “chew the chicken bone” for the marrow with which the Nigerian variety is blessed with. It is certainly blessed with a delicious marrow, which its ‘European’ counterpart lacks.
I use the big washing Soap (not detergent), rather than the small birth one. Apart from being cheaper, the washing soap is even softer (my excuse and, at times, explanation, for using it instead of a proper birth soap) on the skin. This long grammar translates to one being nothing but an economiser, pure and simple.
SUCKING marrow out of the bones of big animals is another of my old-long habit. No amount of reprimand, when I was a child, nor looks of disapproval from hers indoor, could dissuade me from the habit.
AND old habits, they say, die hard. So it has been so with me that the last thing I would do is to throw away un chewed chicken bones, remnants of birth soap or succulent cooked bone marrow of big animals.
OVER to the public court, to adjudicate who is the ‘World’s Chairman Of Economisers’, between Professor Kperogi and yours sincerely.
MEANWHILE, I have, UNFORTUNATELY, been proven RIGHT by our DARKNESS providers that the electricity transmission line that serves my street, has been PROGRAMMED to FALL. The line has ‘FALLEN’, for the 24th WEEK in a ROW.
THE street has been without electricity for two days, and only God, and the almighty staff of KEDCO, who supervise the area, can tell when the ELECTRICITY supply will make its EPILEPTIC return to the street.
IT is epileptic because the electricity hardly remains for two hours before it goes off, and comes back after about the same period, only to go off again. And the circle will continue until the next ‘FALLING of LINE’, which is SURE to occur the following week.
THE Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscience almighty God, Says in Chapter 93 (Ash-Sharh), Verses 9 and 10, “FA INNA MA’AL YUSRI YUSRAN, and “INNA MA’AL USRI YUSRAN”, and the Hausa person says ‘Bayan Wuya, Sai Dadi’, and the English people say, ‘Every Disappointment Is A Blessing In Disguise’. So it may be just that, with our protracted electricity problem.
May God bring a FINAL end to this WAHALA. Not one, not two, not three or four, but 24 ‘FALLING OF THE LINE’ in a ROW. This is NOT a COINCIDENCE, but a CALCULATED attempt to EXTORT us, at this time of DELIBERATE economic MISCALCULATION.
Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.
