Lt. A.M. Yerima Not Related to Maj.-Gen. M.M. Yerima — Fresh Facts Emerge
Fresh clarifications have emerged regarding the background of Lt. A.M. Yerima, the young Nigerian Army officer who has recently been at the centre of intense public debate. Contrary to widespread assumptions and multiple online claims, including those circulated by AI platforms, Lt. Yerima is not the son of retired Major General M.M. Yerima.
The clarification was issued by columnist and media scholar Farooq Kperogi, who revealed that new information provided by individuals familiar with the officer showed that earlier claims about his lineage were inaccurate.
Kperogi explained that although AI search engines and social media accounts widely repeated the claim primarily because the two men share the same surname and originate from Yobe State, credible sources have now debunked it.
According to him, a retired general who personally knows Maj.-Gen. M.M. Yerima confirmed that the senior officer has no familial relationship with the young lieutenant.
Further details reveal that the two officers are from different parts of Yobe State. Maj.-Gen. M.M. Yerima hails from Bade Local Government Area, the same as former Senate President Ahmed Lawan, while Lt. A.M. Yerima is from Gujba Local Government Area, the hometown of Governor Mai Mala Buni.
In addition, Lt. Yerima was born in Port Harcourt to a businessman father, a detail that dispels earlier assumptions about his upbringing. This fact also gives new context to former Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike’s comment that Yerima was “in primary school when he finished school.” Records suggest Yerima was indeed a primary school pupil in Port Harcourt around 1997, the year Wike graduated from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology.
It remains unclear when the Yerima family later relocated to Kaduna.
Kperogi said the episode underscores a critical point about the reliability of digital information, particularly from AI-powered systems. He noted that chatbots like Google’s Gemini merely reproduced the widespread but inaccurate claims circulating online, demonstrating that such tools are only as truthful as the data they are fed.
Read full statement below:
Lt. A.M. Yerima is NOT the Son of Gen. M.M. Yerima
By Farooq Kperogi
A social media contact familiar with Lt. A.M. Yerima reached out to me after my last update to say that the young man is not, as I had suggested, the scion of an upper-crust military family. His evidence was convincing.
Yet many claims, including those circulated by popular AI chatbots such as Google’s Gemini, assert that he is the son of retired Major General M.M. Yerima. The claims initially seemed plausible because both men hail from Yobe State.
This morning, however, I asked a retired general who knows Major General M.M. Yerima intimately whether Lt. A.M. Yerima was indeed his son. He said they aren’t even related.
I learned again from a contact close to the Yobe State governor that Major General M.M. Yerima is from Bade Local Government Area, the same as former Senate President Ahmed Lawan.
A.M. Yerima, on the other hand, is from Gujba Local Government Area, where the current state governor, Mai Mala Buni, is from.
Interestingly, A.M. Yerima was born in Port Harcourt to a businessman father, my initial contact told me. When Wike remarked that A.M. Yerima was in primary school when he “finished school,” he didn’t realize that the young man had actually been in the same geographic space as he was.
When Wike graduated from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology in 1997 with a Bachelor of Laws degree, Yerima was five years old, likely attending primary school in Port Harcourt. It’s not clear when Yerima’s family relocated to Kaduna.
The larger informational lesson for me in all this is that AI chatbots are only as reliable as the information humans circulate.
Many people insist that A.M. Yerima is the son of retired Major General M.M. Yerima simply because of the superficial similarity in their surnames. Google’s AI merely recycled the deluge of inaccurate social-media claims affirming this nonexistent relationship.
