Kperogi Clarifies Misreported Family Ties Between Lt. A.M. Yerima and Retired General

Journalist and academic Farooq Kperogi has corrected widespread online claims suggesting that Nigerian Army officer Lt. A.M. Yerima is the son of retired Major General M.M. Yerima, describing the narrative as a product of misinformation amplified by artificial intelligence tools.

Kperogi said he revised his previous assumptions after receiving “convincing evidence” from someone familiar with the young officer, who explained that Lt. Yerima does not come from an elite military background.

In an update shared on Friday, Kperogi noted that several platforms — including Google’s Gemini chatbot — had repeated the claim because both men originate from Yobe State.

“A social media contact familiar with Lt. A.M. Yerima reached out to me… to say that the young man is not, as I had suggested, the scion of an upper-crust military family. His evidence was convincing,” he said.

Kperogi added that he personally sought clarification from a retired general who knows Major General M.M. Yerima well.

“He said they aren’t even related,” he wrote.

According to information Kperogi gathered from state contacts, Major General Yerima hails from Bade Local Government Area, the same area as former Senate President Ahmed Lawan. Lt. Yerima, however, is from Gujba Local Government Area, which is also the home LGA of Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni.

Kperogi further disclosed that the young officer was born in Port Harcourt to a businessman father. This, he said, explained the context behind Nyesom Wike’s earlier remark that Yerima was in primary school when he “finished school.”

Wike earned his law degree from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology in 1997, a period Kperogi said coincided with Yerima’s early schooling in Port Harcourt. It remains unclear when the family later moved to Kaduna.

Reflecting on the controversy, Kperogi emphasised the broader problem of misinformation in the digital space.

“The larger informational lesson for me in all this is that AI chatbots are only as reliable as the information humans circulate,” he wrote, adding that many people assumed a father–son relationship based solely on a shared surname.

He said Google’s AI model had “merely recycled the deluge of inaccurate social-media claims affirming this nonexistent relationship.”