http://www.sundaytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11423:phrank-shaibu-a-shameless-serial-plagiarist-of-my-grammar-column&catid=13:the-arts&Itemid=136


Phrank Shaibu: A shameless serial plagiarist of my grammar column
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Written by Farooq A. Kperogi Ph.d Sunday, 23 September 2012 05:00


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I made a startling discovery two weeks ago about a certain Phrank Shaibu(a former Special Adviser on Public Communication and Strategy to former Kogi State governor Ibrahim Idris and who, according to his Facebook profile, is “currently an Adviser to the FCT Minister” and a “Consultant to Delta Governor on Public Communication and Strategy”) who has been willfully and barefacedly plagiarizing my grammar column for months on end on Facebook, Channels TV, and Radio Kogi.

Phrank Shaibu created a closed, invitation-only, 1,000-plus-member Facebook group called “Mind Your Grammar” where he impresses impressionable and unsuspecting young people by posting my grammar column week in week out and passing it off as his. During my brief membership of the group (I will tell you how that happened shortly), I discovered that he copied entire passages—sometimes whole articles—word for word from my grammar column and pasted on the front page of the group. He got lavish praises from members of the group, some of whom addressed him as a “professor of English.” I have been reliably told that his periodic “Mind Your Grammar” programs on Channels TV and on Radio Kogi also habitually plagiarize my column.

So how did I discover this brazenly criminal rape of my intellectual property by a nitwitted charlatan who, going by his written and oral communication skills, has no capacity to even string together a sentence in English that isn’t a rib-tickling travesty of the language? (Phrank reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s epigram about how “everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”)

Well, it started like this: Several months ago, someone “inboxed” me a grammar question onFacebook.I gave him a quick answer and promised to expand on it in a couple of days. But he came back the following day seeking more clarification. I obliged him.

Then something bizarre happened. My questioner started to argue with me using the exact words of an article I’d written years back. Of course, I recognized my style and diction in “his” argument. So I wrote: “Are you for real? You’re plagiarizing my previous article to argue with me? I thought you were a serious person. I regret ever responding to your queries.”

It turned out, however, that he was a member of Phrank Shuaibu’s fraudulent “Mind Your Grammar” Facebook group. He’d asked Phrank the same question, and Phrank lived up to his name and “pranked” him by lifting passages from my previous article to answer his question and to dispute the accuracy of the response I’d given him.

The questioner gave me the link to the Facebook group from where he excerpted the response. I followed the link and sent a request to be a member of the group. This was several months ago. My request was never granted. Of course, no thief who has illegally seized a house would knowingly and willingly grant entry to the legitimate owner of the house; that could signal the end of his criminal exploits.

However, by a quirk of circumstance, on September 13, I got an email notification from Facebook that said “Abdul Mahmud approved your request to join the group MIND YOUR GRAMMAR.” It turned out that Phrank Shaibu appointed a Comrade Abdul Mahmud as an administrator of his duplicitous group without his consent. Comrade Mahmud is a lawyer, human rights activist, former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), and former University of Jos student whom Phrank Shaibu knew because he is also an alumnus of the University of Jos.

Comrade Mahmud and I have never met physically, but we have many mutual friends and have interacted on Facebook a number of times. He said when he saw my request pending on the group’s page, he decided to approve it.

Once I became a member of the group, I voraciously read the postings on the group’s page and found that EVERY SINGLE contribution that PhrankShaibu made to the group was plagiarized from my grammar column. His responses to questions from group members were lifted from my articles, sometimes even when the responses were irrelevant to the questions asked. And he was praised to high heavens by his admirers, most of whom were young girls.

Since it was Mahmud who approved my membership to the group, I first sent him a message asking if he was aware of the serial theft of my intellectual property by a despicably nescientmounte bank who goes by the name Phrank Shaibu. He assured me that he had no association with the group other than that he had just been made an administrator of the group without his consent. So I sent a message to Phrank Shaibu warning him to cease and desist from his intellectual theft of my grammar column or risk being sued. He ignored my message.

Then I posted on the front page of the group that Phrank Shaibu is a nakedly transparent fraudster whose entire contributions to the group were bald-faced thefts from my Sunday Trust grammar column. There was a whiff of incredulity in a few of the comments that followed my post. “Are you real?” one young girl commented. “Seriously?” another one wrote.

The next thing Phrank did was to kick me out of the group. He also blocked me on Facebook, although we were never Facebook friends in the first place. I had no earthly clue that a vile, contemptible, Janus-faced, disreputably scheming character by the quirky name of Phrank Shaibu existed until September 13.

I brought this issue to the attention of my over 4,000 friends on Facebook and got over a hundred comments and over 70 “likes.” Similarly,Comrade Mahmud, whom Phrank Shuaibu unfriended and blocked on Facebook because he called his attention to my complaints, posted this on his wall:

“If you’re my Facebook friend and PHRANK SHAIBU is our mutual friend, please rethink the friendship. PHRANK SHAIBU is a serial plagiarist, a master crook. Phrank Shaibu, as I gathered a few hours ago, is an Igala chap from Kogi State and a former Media Campaigner for the failed Kogi State governorship aspirant, [Jibrin Isah]Echocho.

“Phrank Shaibu is accused of lifting the works of Professor Farooq Kperogi and posting same inside a closed group, ‘Mind Your Grammar’, that he (Shaibu) made me its administrator of without my knowledge and permission. Phrank Shaibu has refused to respond to the charges and has now gone ahead to unfriend me, blocked the limited access I had to the Facebook group when Professor Farooq found his way in…. There is a very serious issue of intellectual theft here… on Facebook, our place of communal meetings. Stop Phrank Shaibu in his tracks. Please share!!!!!!”

My status update and Mahmud’s wall post must have conspired to scare the pants off the crook because he shut down the “Mind Your Grammar” group shortly after. But if he shut it down because he wanted to destroy my evidence, he miscalculated. I took snap shots of the plagiarized materials before coming out in the open. I intend to use this evidence to sue him.

Phrank called me a week ago and admitted to his plagiarism, apologized profusely (I recorded all his phone conversations with me, which I will tender in court), promised to pay me compensatory damages, and to issue a public apology for his infractions. But he shamelessly reneged on all his promises. Instead, he kept playing childish pranks on me. The man, certainly, is not contrite.

But the bigger worry in all of this is that this wretched, dishonest, compulsively mendacious character was a media adviser to a state governor, and is currently the media adviser to a serving minister and a serving governor! I learned from his Facebook pictures that he also once won an award as “Media Spokesman of the Year 2009” and that, in fact, the Kogi State government took out newspaper pages to advertise messages of “congratulations to a worthy son”!

What kind of society puts people like that in positions of responsibility? Worse, what kind of society celebrates slimy little liars like this?

I’ve consulted with my lawyers and will sue the butt off this audaciously atrocious intellectual thief. I will also sue Channels TV and Radio Kogi for providing him the platforms to plagiarize my intellectual property. This plague of intentional plagiarism in Nigeria has to stop!

wow

Wow indeed. The problem is that intellectual property is not always taken seriously on social networks. I once asked a guy whe he choose not to cite the author of an article he posted on a group wall on Facebook and he responded by raining abuses on me.

Phrank Shaibu and Delta State Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan

ON FAROOQ KPEROGI'S ASPERSIONS ON Phrank Shaibu

In less than four hours, l have received over five hundred mails & phone calls on Farooq Kperogi's unkind comments on me. Well wishers, friends, professional colleagues, political associates & family members have joined in expressing concern & surprise. Consequently, l wish to use this opportunity to thank them for their kind words of encouragement. ln line with the advise of many people that contacted me, l would have opted to ignore Farooq because they seem to know and understand his character but l have considered it expedient to state that as much as l agree that at such a time & under the strange circumstance which l have been thrust into by Farooq's unguided remarks, silence is the best form of eloquence. However, from the contents of Farooq's  unbridled insults and half-truths, my silence may be misconstrued as truth. Already, l have consulted many knowledgeable persons on the issue of the purported plagarism and their views show a sharp contrast with the wild assumptions of 'Prof' Farooq. Any logical mind would easily appreciate that from the contents of Farooq's unbridled insults, it is obvious that his grudge against me is not on the issue of alleged plagarism.  l have also discussed with my lawyers and their position is that l should not waste tons of newsprint in creating unnecessary relevance for Farooq  given that it is most appropriate to meet him in court in line with his expressed desire to sue. For the avoidance of the doubt, l am Phrank Shaibu and l do not represent the person Farooq tried to describe. Therefore, l will continue to  resist the natural urge to join issues with 'Prof' Farook now. Furthermore, as much as l acknowledge Farooq's antics to use me to draw readers to his column & blog, however, l consider his write up a distraction as well as a weak attempt  to divert my focused attention from my various important commitments & purposeful engagements that advance humanity. For emphasis. most of the remarks by Farooq about me are shocking and nothing but  figments of his skewed imagination. l hope that time and reason will reveal the real motive of Farooq Kperogi on Phrank Shaibu and perhaps expose all those behind the scene on this devious, obliquitous, guileful and sly agenda.

I take consolation in this well researched piece written by Silas Sakhos Ejiofoh  on the intellectual thief called Kperogi! :http://africanheraldexpress.com/blog7/2012/06/20/envious-farooq-kperogi-plagiarising-from-atlanta-georgia/

I refuse to be provoked!


Phrank SHAIBU

See who is accusing one of Plagiarism!



- written by Silas Sakhos Ejiofoh -

A lot of people, by their dynamism and accomplishments, make somebody cry and live in anguish. They are the source of somebody’s agony. These people are most likely to belong to the Igbo race or are from the southern part of Nigeria. When Philip Emeagwali stepped up to receive his Gordon Bell Prize for an achievement in computer technology, somebody turned away in anger. Urgent help may have been needed to prevent one attention-seeking Farooq Kperogi, who claims to be a professor, from breaking down. But he found consolation in his refusal to accept the man’s genius by inventing a lie that ran faster on the internet than Emeagwali’s work created sensations back then. The falsehood grew big and was almost believed until the truth came and wiped off the lies. In his article entitled ‘Intellectual 419: Philip Emeagwali and Gabriel Oyibo Compared’ Kperogi tries to show that Prof. Gabriel Oyibo of the GAGUT Theorem fame fishes in the same fraudulent waters as Emeagwali. Away from their science world, Emeagwali is Igbo and Oyibo is Igalla. It is common knowledge that some Fulanis spend a lifetime beating around about Igbos; for obvious reasons. The Igbo man passes for what some people secretly crave. This rolls over into envy and then to the mass murders of Igbos that have been taking place in northern Nigeria and by Fulanis. This is why, because the Kperogis can’t claim ownership of people like Emeagwali or Oyibo, they take up positions in the media to take down these traditional enemies.

It is undoubtedly the reason why Kperogi wants to dispute scientific achievements on the pages of newspapers. He had taken his fight further afield to castigate the entire Igbo race. This is where one can locate his mind set. Unknown to Igbos, this person battled them in his master’s degree thesis entitled “A ‘tribe’ migrates crime to cyber space: Nigerian Igbos in 419 e-mail scams.” Count the number of years that have passed since Kperogi came out with that work and then consider the fact that he hasn’t relented, even though he has been ignored by the people he’s been waging war against. But, let it be known that 419 is a leftover of the scheming of, I hate to say it, Hausa/Fulani people, Kperogi’s people. It is the imitation of their game while they were in charge of Nigeria’s affairs that we now have, which is why most of the names involved are Hausa/Fulani names. It’s not as if they’re back pbenchers in the act. Besides, the roots of people caught in drug peddling, for instance, may elude us if the perpetrators bear foreign names. Kperogi is to be found in the attack on the Igbo lady Dr. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke with the article ‘Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke’ Fake Doctorate and Professorship.’Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke’s Fake Doctorate and Professorship He would wake up and think of nothing to write than to pick holes in the grammar of journalists and politicians in Nigeria. It’s clear he’s suffering, but his most visible nightmare is Reuben Abati, a former Guardian Nigeria columnist and now the spokesman of Pres. Goodluck Jonathan.

This man Kperogi had thought that he was getting closer to becoming the chief press secretary of his fellow Fulani Mohammadu Buhari, had Buhari won the last presidential election. Then, he would have conveniently become the minister of education and then a head of state. Only if he knew that that very order of Fulani hold on Nigeria had since been loosened. What is going on in his mind is eight years of torture. Who knows? His exploits might land him in the Daily Trust chief editor’s seat.

His envy-riddled articles in Daily Trust attract praises from his northern brothers, who think that they have someone speaking for them. There’s nothing goading him on than his inner nature. He looks through his window after waking up from sleep to read that Reuben Abati is still in charge in Abuja. It’s not as if the overrated Reuben Abati is too good, but if Abati’s lost shoes were picked up by Kperogi, they wouldn’t fit Kperogi’s fake legs. We know Kperogi’s attempt to be like Abati is a joke, the columns in the Fulani-owned Daily Trust, notwithstanding. That will only happen if Daily Trust changes its name and Guardian swaps readers with Daily Trust.

Kperogi is somebody who was created by Kperogi’s falsehood. He has an academic record built on plagiarism. How can you engage in the exercise of criticism and at the same time steal somebody’s words? The way Kperogi understands authorship is to steal another person’s words. How can you hold onto stolen property and apply it in more than two articles of yours? This is what you have here, in his most recent attack on Abati and in support of his fellow Fulani, Buhari. He writes, “an expression whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of the words that make it up. …” The words belong to somebody else. It appears in the same form “an expression whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of the words that make it up” in somebody else’s write up. See: http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/idiom.htm

The educational level in Nigeria has indeed changed for the worst, as revealed in Kperogi’s writing. It is with pain that I discovered that Kperogi could open to some websites and take people’s words and publish them as his. He is hooked onto it that he hasn’t perhaps the capacity to use his own words. He serves his readers the same words that he got from elsewhere. Who will commend him for not using even a single sentence of his in an entire article in which he is supposed to be mocking Nigerians for their abuse of the English language? In this brief sample of Kperogi’s writing, I will serve readers the sources and websites from where he dipped his hands to take constructions that do not belong to him, then show how the same words appear in Kperogi’s lines. It will be a waste of time to cover the entire article, so we look at the first half of his famous piece ‘Top 10 Words Nigerians Commonly Misspell’ http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/farooq-a-kperogi/top-10-words-nigerians-commonly-misspell.html. We begin with Dana Attocknie.

Dana Attocknie: since English is notoriously non-phonetic http://www.mid-americabigfoot.com/index.php/the-news/56-written-by-dana-attocknie-native-american-times-

Kperogi: Since English is a notoriously aphonetic language

Robert Bruns: As such, there is a vast gulf between books orthography http://www.worldburnsclub.com/begin/robert_burns.htm

Kperogi: That is, there is often a vast gulf between its

Free Online Dictionary: (i.e., its method of representing sounds by written or printed symbols http://www.thefreedictionary.com/punctuation

Kperogi: (a method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols

The Spelling Society: and George Bernard Shaw remarked bitterly that a word like “ghoti” could just as easily be pronounced as “fish”: gh as in tough, o as in women, and ti as in nation: http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/dyslexia/reports.php

Kperogi: George Bernard Shaw, one of England’s most imaginative writers, who once humorously said that the word “ghoti” could just as well be pronounced “fish”/ if you followed some of English’s quirky spelling conventions: ‘gh’ as in “tough,” ‘o’ as in “women” and “ti” as in “nation.”

Listserve: follows our previous popular list of Top 10 Common English Errors http://listverse.com/2008/09/11/another-10-common-english-errors/

Kperogi: what follows is a list of common spelling errors in Nigerian written English

Lady S.: Why are native English speakers so bad at spelling their own language? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080808104048AAFvsok

Kperogi: it needs to be pointed out that native speakers of the English language are just as awful with spellings

Allan Bell: This fact is further proof of the sociolinguistic axiom http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/bell1984.pdf

Kperogi: an axiom of sociolinguistic structure

Original: that there are no native writers of any language, since writing is a deliberate, learned activity unlike speech effortlesslyhttp://langs.eserver.org/linell/chapter02.html

Kperogi: writing can sometimes be deliberately used for mirroring certain speech.

Ken Barrett: which can be–and often is—acquired http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/5/4/250.full.pdf

Kperogi: which can be and often are more

Answerbag: What is most commonly misspelled word in the English http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/547990 a fact ironically attested to by the fact that even the word “misspell” is itself one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language

Kperogi: But English has got to be the most misspelled language in the world

Ken Smith: the 10 most commonly most mispellt words, which include “argurment” for “argument”: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7546975.stm

Kperogi: Other commonly misspelled words in the English-speaking (or should say English-writing) world are “truely” (instead of “truly”), “arguement” (instead of “argument”)/

Carolin Tagg’s PhD work: text messaging is a largely unexplored and highly distinctive language” http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/253/1/Tagg09PhD.pdf

Kperogi: With the advent of textese (i.e., the distinctive language and spelling conventions of cellphone text messages)

After stealing Ken Smith’s material and not acknowledging him, Kperogi comes to say “It was this realization that persuaded a university lecturer by the name of Ken Smith who teaches in Britain’s Bucks New University to suggest that we should begin to accept frequently misspelled words as legitimate variants. For starters, he says, we should admit the following frequent misspellings into the pantheon of English spelling variants: “ignor,” [ignore] “occured,” [occurred] “thier,” [their] “truely,”[truly] “speach,” [speech] “twelth” [twelfth], “mispelt,”[misspelt], and “varient” [variant].

Original: lain is an orthographical anarchist: http://iainhall./2008/0

Kperogi: But it’s easy to see that Smith’s suggestion is a recipe for orthographic anarchy

Original: Dr. Weil made sure to replace the Pantheons with his own Variant forces http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Pantheon

Kperogi: should be rewarded with admission into the pantheon of variants?

This is how Farooq Kperogi has been deceiving his own people from far away Atlanta Georgia. Nigeria, we hail thee. Will anybody conclude that because Lamido Sanusi and Farooq Kperogi are engaged in plagiarism that all literate Fulanis should go for plagiarism tests? The answer is no, of course.

Sakhos Silas Ejiofoh (irokoafrika@yahoo.com) writes from Wiesbaden, Hessen Germany

Phrank, did you truly shut down the mind your grammar group and why? Mikel Obi closed his twitter account after racist taunts.

Mind Your Grammar group was never shut down!