Admin

By Abdurraman Muhammad

Following the sustained operations against the bandits in Kaduna State, in another success for the security forces, over 50 bandits have been neutralized during a combined ground and air assault in the Saulawa-Farin Ruwa axis of Birnin Gwari LGA.

In a press release on security updates signed by the Commissioner, Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs of Kaduna State, Samuel Aruwan who narrated how the operation was successful stated that, “the Command of the Joint Operations, a Nigerian Air Force helicopter gunship provided close air support to ground troops advancing from the Dogon Dawa-Damari-Saulawa axis.”

“Following extensive scans, bandits were spotted on five motorcycles, about 4km east of Saulawa, waiting to ambush the ground forces. They were engaged vigorously by the helicopter gunship, and were wiped out.”

Mr. Aruwan added that, “After armed bandits on about 50 motorcycles were sighted fleeing towards Farin Ruwa, and were struck effectively by the gunship. Fleeing remnants were mopped up by ground forces.”

“A second helicopter gunship joined the operations, and many more fleeing bandits were neutralized by precise strikes. Assessment revealed that more than 50 bandits were neutralized during the joint operation.”

On his part, Governor Nasir El-Rufai expressed his satisfaction at the operational feedback, and congratulated the ground troops and gunship crews on the rout. He urged them to sustain the momentum and bring even more bandits to their bitter end.

By Adamu Usman Garko

By Uzair Adam Imam

By Uzair Adam Imam

The former governor of Kano State, Engr. Rabu Musa Kwankwaso, has described the rumour of his arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as false and baseless, contrary to media reports.

This was contained in a statement signed by the Coordinator of Kwankwaso Media Center, Malam Sunusi Bature Dawakin Tofa.

The former governor, according to the statement, has described the petition as politically motivated.

The statement reads in part: “The rumour of my arrest is false and baseless. As a law-abiding and respected citizen, I personally visited the commission on Saturday in order to clear my name and exactly that’s what happened.

By Barrister Nura Sunusi

For some misguided individuals and those who consume everything online hook, line and sinker, David Hundeyin’s ‘Cornflakes for Jihad: The Origin of Boko Haram Story’, which he and his cohorts call ‘investigation’, would have been left to die a natural death like many before it. However, if allowed unchallenged, lies may be sold as truth, and the world will be blind. And those who know will not allow this. Besides, Hundeyin’s story is packed with journalistic chicanery of epic proportion.

Hundeyin’s sole aim was to push the lies he concocted down the throat of his readers/audiences. This is my concern. It is for this, I believe, such intellectual dishonesty has to be stamped out completely.

One cannot give what they do not have. Before I go far, Hundeyin deserves some quick bath; then let me stripe him naked first.

An Annang Christian ‘journalist’ from Akwa Ibom State in the South-South, Hundeyin is utterly ignorant of the vast northern region and its intentional predicates: background, history, language, culture, religion, etc. At this point, it is instructive to note that Hundeyin is not a lone walker in the use of this pure sophistry. There are some people in our midst toeing this path.

Izala, particularly Alhaji Shahru, Sheikh Yakubu Musa, Isa Pantami and other personalities belonging to the religious body, have been a target of a sustained campaign of calumny for its ability to bestride the earthly and heavenly with such ease. Of particular is a Nigerian ‘historian’, mind the quotation marks, who teaches at an American University.

This confused dude like Hundeyin has been at the forefront of this campaign for some time. Had he been allowed, he would have formed an empire, which modus operandi is to silence and blackmail the most peaceful, 40-year-old registered religious organization in Nigeria. About two years ago, perhaps long before that, the said ‘historian’ raised a finger in this corridor, and some intelligently educated youths called his bluff. He left mentally wounded.

I have learnt that Hundeyin’s hit-and-run piece has struck the ‘historian’, who has been mum all this while like a spent horse, as an energizer.

My perception of this saga is this: since those folks had test-flied this campaign severally and woefully failed, now Hundeyin is hired to try his luck and dead is his attempt on arrival.

That notwithstanding, to set the record straight, Hundeyin‘s piece deserves some response, which I give below, stitching facts and figures. Then let us take it one at a time.

Nomenclature of terrorism

First, the blurry line demarcating what terrorism is and what it is not, who is a terrorist and who is not is, is one of the factors breathing life into liars like David Hundeyin.

Although I intend to restrict this piece to Alhaji Shahru Haruna’s side of the argument, I will touch on some of the issues Hundeyin raised in his article to unravel the intricacies involved.

Hundeyin is overzealously blind in the sense that every passing picture of Islam or a Muslim forms in his mind a mental image of what he calls terrorism or terrorist. No wonder! Nigeria is full of academically certified but ignorant people. We will see this in the subsequent paragraphs.

Nigeria is not an opponent of GSPC

GSPC stands for “Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat” (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat). According to Wikipedia, GSPC was an armed Islamic group UNTIL 2004!

The group had only one opponent, which was not Nigeria, but Algeria. Therefore, how did Alhaji Shahru Haruna or Sheikh Yakubu Musa become the GSPC’s agents?

Politics of origin

The moment he tried to conjecture up a triangular of Izala, terrorism, which he barely understands, and finance, Hundeyin shot himself in the foot. His is a weak argument full of lacunas, fabricated evidence, and disjointed analogies. Is there anything hatred cannot drive one to do?

From Sheikh Abubakar Gumi to Alhaji Shahru Haruna, Sheikh Yakubu Musa to Isa Aliyu Pantami, the current minister of Communications and digital economy and others, Hundeyin has failed to come up with even a single irrefutable proof linking any of them with terrorism. Instead, his submission heavily relied on hearsay, including social media posts.

First, Izala’s deeply established manifestoes/objectives to non-politically strive and promote the pure teaching of Islam and proselytizing, which is acknowledged even by non-Muslims in the West, is for anyone to see.

Second, Izala’s leading figure, Sheihk Abubakar Gumi, the Grand Khadi of the Northern region of Nigeria between 1962 and 1967, was a champion of democracy. He encouraged Islamic and Western educations; and associated with upright political figures like Aminu Kano, Sa’adu Zungur and Sardauna of Sokoto.

Moreover, Izala is a progressive organization. It has established schools, libraries, hospitals, Islamic centres, and satellite TV stations, and now Assalam Global University in Jigawa is in the pipeline. Unlike its nemesis, its members participate in political activities, and they vote and are voted for into political offices. In addition, they are into academia and civil service.

In contrast, Boko Haram, which is the opposite, is an insurgent group engaged in continued rebellion against the constituted authority. The insurgent group ideology is rooted in a gross misinterpretation of Sunni and Salafi Islam, and it primarily attracts poorly educated and overzealous youths that lack even basic Islamic knowledge.

Where is the link?

Consequently, that in 2011 bombs went up at St. Theresa Catholic Church, Madalla, a fringe of Abuja and Gadaka in Damaturu; and during the trial of one Kabiru Sokoto, a ‘masked’ witness testified that an Islamist group in Algeria provided funding and support worth N40,000,000 ($250,000 at the time) to carry out the attacks, is not enough reason to inculpate either Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, Shahru Haruna, Yakubu Musa or other Izala personalities, is it?

Let’s try this formula to see if it works this way: on October 1, 2010, bombs went off, killing 15 people during Nigeria’s fiftieth anniversary. An ex-MEND leader, Henry Okah and one Nwabueze were convicted of terrorism.

If Kabiru Sokoto or attacks by Boko Haram insurgents were to be linked to Izala and Alhaji Shahru for a simple reason that Izala is an Islamic organization and Shahru is a Muslim and a member, as Hundeyin would have us believe, who sponsored Henry Okah and his accomplice?  Hundeyin, who is also an overzealous Christian and a southerner?

From the inception of Boko Haram to date, Izala, as against other violent religious movements, has never been on the same wavelength with any insurgent group.

Facts speak for themselves, they say. Had Izala clerics been complicit in the activities of the insurgents, Boko Haram leadership would never have called for the heads of Pantami, Sheikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam or Sheikh Muhammad Auwal Adam Albaniy Zaria.

It seems those who planted the piece have not briefed Hundeyin of the fate of the two fiercest critics of Boko Haram in the Izala cycle: Albaniy Zaria and Ja’afar. Boko Haram murdered both in an attempt to silence the persistent voice that had been voicing the irreligiosity of Boko Haram and insurgency of any type.

One does not need to strain himself. Videos showing Izala Ulama in a heated debate with the Boko Haram founder, Muhammad Yusuf, are on YouTube. An example is that of Sheikh Pantami.

Journalist or religious bigot

Nigeria’s media space is saturated with ethnic and religious bigots, and David Hundeyin happens to be one of them.

He quickly cited that ‘the scholar(s) states that Muslims should never accept a non-Muslim as ruler, which can be interpreted as a call for insurrection against a Christian Nigerian President’. However, he could not tell his readers how pastors ascended the pulpit of churches and made similar calls, which can also be interpreted as another call for insurrection against a Muslim Nigerian President as we see today?

Ideology of Finance

Who deceives who? If there is anything Hundeyin succeeded in linking Alhaji Shahru Haruna to is his tie with Izala and his being an owner of legitimate businesses – nothing more.

Citing CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele’s argument that BDC operators sell dollars to some people ‘to go and buy arms and ammunitions to come back to hurt us’ is no clear-cut evidence to implicate Alhaji Haruna.

A call to CBN

It is high time for CBN to furnish the public with the reason for its instruction to banks to block bank accounts of some entities such as Zahraddeen Shahru Haruna’s (Alhaji Shahru Haruna’s son).

I believe that the failure of the apex bank to provide the information is one of the chief reasons behind Hundeyin’s evil pen attempt to link the Zaharaddin’s account blockage to terrorism.

Shahru’s media trial

Shahru Haruna’s media trial began sometime in 2004. And to understand this better, I will refer the reader to a defunct Weekly Trust newspaper front cover story in 2004 titled ‘Detention Without Trial’.

The paper narrated a sympathetic story of how Alhaji Shahru Haruna was arrested and detained by DSS without trial for six consecutive months.

However, the interesting part of the story is how the secret police discharged him unconditionally. Since then, there has been no re-arrest by the DSS or any other relevant security agency. What does that imply?

My conclusive argument is that Hundeyin of Akwa Ibom’s piece is yet another failed smear campaign against Alhaji Shahru Haruna, Sheikh Yakubu Musa, Izala and some of its personalities. It is another mischief that has its sponsors.

Barrister Nura Sunusi writes from Kano. He can be reached via nurasunusi6@gmail.com.

By Abdelghaffar Abdelmalik Amoka

The presence of ETF and later TETFund became more visible after the suspension of the 2009 ASUU strike in October 2009, thanks to the ASUU strike. You enter the campus of some universities, especially the state government-owned universities and it appears as if TETFund is the only funder of the infrastructures in the universities. No wonder Professor Mahmood Yakubu’s NEEDS Assessment committee referred to them as “TETFund universities”.

The intervention from TETFund did not end on infrastructures and other physical projects but also on training. Quite a number of University academic staff obtained their PhD abroad, thanks to the TETFund Academic Staff Training and Development Intervention and ASUU. That ASUU’s achievement has increased the number of quality PhDs across the departments in our universities. About 6 colleagues in my department are beneficiaries of the TETFund PhD grant.

It did not stop at that. TETFund has also established research grants. The TETFund Institutional Based Research (IBR) grant for basic research and the TETFund National Research Fund for developmental research.

When TETFund announced the call for the 2016 National Research Fund (NRF) grant proposal submission, I got it forwarded to me by several people that knew I was passionately looking for research grants to set up my lab since my return from Europe to ABU in September 2015. I was excited with the call for proposals and I prepared my proposal and submitted it with others. It was well coordinated by the university, thanks to the efforts of Prof. Husseina Makun and the Directorate of Academic Planning and Monitoring of my university.

Not long after then, there was a change in the leadership of the agency and I never get to hear anything about that submission to date. My guess was that the usual Nigerian factor may have played a role and you possibly need to know somebody that knows another body that knows someone that can help facilitate it.

The call for the submission of a “concept note” for the 2019 NRF grant after your return did not excite me. I was informed by several people but I ignored it. I was like this is a repeat of what I called the “2016 call for grant proposal scam”. But few days to the expiration of the call, I decided to make a submission, after all the application doesn’t cost anything. It will only cost my time and effort. I was actually not expecting a response like it happened in 2016, but a few weeks later, you “shocked” me as I received an email requesting to submit the full proposal. I did, and a few weeks later I got an invitation to Abuja to defend the proposal. In January 2020, the grant award letter was issued.

That was the first very transparent exercise I have participated in in Nigeria in recent times. No personal contact. All correspondence was through email and you don’t have to wet anybody’s palm. Unbelievable! That exercise gave me a renewed hope that with responsible leadership, we can make every unit work as it should and the sum will make Nigeria work. Sir, you renewed my hope that Nigeria is going to work and we can regain the lost glory in academia.

TETFund is making a lot of impact in public universities even though some universities may not get the true value of the allocated funds due to several reasons including the possible manipulation of the procurement process. TETFund is also doing a lot to build research capacity in our universities and over the last 10 years, the number of quality PhDs has increased. But my worry is that these researchers may end up being more frustrated if they get back without the necessary research facilities and incentives to give back to the system.

The TETFund PhD training scheme is a train-the-trainers program but there seems to be no preparation to utilize the knowledge acquired by these scholars on their return. We seem to be just training without any provision for their return. The scholars were sent for training as researchers but returned to meet little or no improvement on research facilities. So, how do we intend to utilize these well-trained scholars that have returned?

Their research work seems not to be well coordinated, unlike the NRF grants. They are mostly not towards the critical needs of the country. Some of the scholars who have got no idea of what to work on may sometimes end up using our fund to implement the supervisor’s idea. The idea may not be something that is of very importance to our country. Going abroad for quality research in that state-of-the-art laboratory but on research that does not tend towards our national need and without adequate provision for their return will make them more frustrated on their return.

Quite a number of PhDs in our universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics trained over the last 10 years are TETFund Scholars. Thanks to the overseas training scheme. The question then is; What is the strategic plan for the scheme? How long is the scheme meant to last? When is it going to end? What are the exit plans?

A lesson from other countries.

During my PhD, I met a number of Malaysians doing PhD at the University of Southampton. One of those Malaysians was on 3 months research visit to the lab I did my PhD. They were all on a Malaysian government scholarship. They have all returned to their respective universities in Malaysia with well-established laboratories and access to funds for research. Most of the funds for PhD training are in Malaysian universities.

Malaysia now earn foreign exchange from international students, especially Nigeria students. These my colleagues and contemporaries in the UK universities are among the researchers/Lecturers training my Nigerian university colleagues that have gone to Malaysia to study. What is the difference between us and them? They return to a functional lab but we returned to an empty space and we are struggling to build a lab. Our situations are different because their training and return were well planned out. What are the plans for our trained colleagues?

It is possibly time to re-channel the funds for overseas scholarships to funded PhDs in our universities.

South Africa has National Research Foundation (NRF) that gives grants for research PhD training in South African universities. NRF is so well established that they are collaborating with DAAD in Germany for a funded PhD in South Africa. There is also the TWAS-NRF funded PhD but in South African university. We can take a lesson from that

The Research Council of Norway usually contributes 50% of research project funds while the other 50% is from industrial partners, but the condition on the government 50% is to train a PhD or postdoc in Norwegian university. Norwegian universities are tuition-free like Nigerian universities. The grant covers living costs, travel, conference attendance anywhere in the world, etc.

There is the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), that provides UK universities with grants – awarded through a competitive process – to cover the fees and living costs of postgraduate students. Each place a university offers as a result of this funding is called a studentship. Application for the studentship is done through the university you want to study.

These countries would not have being able to comfortably execute research and training without capacity building. We surely need capacity building scheme and TETFund and PTDF have done great in that respect. But the scheme should have a well-defined timeline. At the expiration of the timeline, the overseas scholarship should be converted to full national scholarships for the trained scholars to train PhDs in funded laboratories in our universities. Forex is already becoming a big challenge. The funds are then domicile here rather than shipping the fund out.

TETFund may need to produce a database of their scholars in the various tertiary institutions in Nigeria and even the ones that have refused to return to the country. There should also be a database for successfully completed TETFund NRF projects and their Principal Investigators. The TETFund Academic staff training and development intervention can then be converted to Nigeria’s university-based training. Scholars are only sent abroad for subjects that we lack expertise in Nigeria.

So what do we do?

We can adopt the German model. To get a DAAD-funded PhD training in Germany, you must first get a supervisor in a German university that is willing to work with you. With the consent of the supervisor, you can then apply and the application is endorsed by the supervisor.

In our case, the prospective TETFund PhD scholar will first get a supervisor from TETFund recognized researchers/Professors. Application is then made through the university and endorsed by the prospective supervisor. If the scholarship grant is like 20 million naira, for example, up to 10 million naira can be mandated for laboratory equipment, the rest will be used for living expenses for the scholar, International conference participation, purchase of consumables, etc.

You can imagine the value Dr. Mansurah Abdulazeez will add to the existing facilities for Cancer research in their Biotech lab in BUK if they are awarded the 20 million naira by TETFund to train 1 TETFund scholar each year for the next 10 years. That will be another investment of about 200 million naira in our university that would have being taking out.

Just a little effort and we got the Materials Physics Research lab. Imagine getting 10 TETfund scholars to train over the next 10 years in high voltage materials engineering and 50% (about 100 million naira) of the PhD grant is approved for research facilities. Unlike the PhD done abroad, the facilities procured during the PhD will remain in the Nigerian university for others to use after the PhD. Just imagine how the lab will be in the next few years.

I was at the Biotech lab at IAR, ABU Zaria last year, I saw the IAEA-funded research facilities, and I was like wow! Just imagine the steady growth of the lab, research output, and visibility if Prof Husseina Makun for example, gets the funded PhD scholars to work with instead of taking the money to universities abroad. We have quite a number of serious-minded researchers among senior colleagues across our university and a large number of bright and exposed early career researchers.

We have trained enough PhDs abroad over the last 15 years through PTDF, TETFund, NITDA, etc that are back and capable. Some of them are not doing badly even with all the challenges as they have been able to publish quality papers in indexed journals. I want to believe that we can give quality training to PhD scholars in Nigeria.

We have several challenges in Nigeria that the universities can develop solutions for. But personally funded PhDs cannot give that quality PhD research to achieve that. I advertised 2 research topics on my Facebook page recently and I got responses from prospective research students. But the question they were asking was; is it funded? Some of the people that responded are students that received their MSc abroad.

A timeline should be rolled out on when to end the overseas scholarships and focus on using the fund meant for that to further develop the research capacity of our universities to make them attractive to foreign students. It is time to keep the money at home to develop our research and development capacity and use PhD programs to find solutions to our numerous problems.

Abdelghaffar Abdelmalik Amoka

At the conclusion of the Independence Youth Talk on the theme “Fathering the Orphaned Arewa Towards Nigeria’s Development”, a communiqué was issued, which contains the following resolutions:
1. That Northern Nigeria is urged to live up to its responsibility by mobilizing and harnessing the precious resources at its proposal, which include internally generated revenue and foreign exchange earnings to provide physical and social infrastructure, education for about 9 million out of school children, etc.

2. That Northern Nigeria should be directly involved in the development of agriculture through a mechanized system of farming, industrialization and import substitution programmes so as to discourage its over reliance on oil, which forms the fulcrum of the national economy, as well as importation.

3. Northern Nigeria should take its constitutional responsibilities to ensure maximum security for citizens and their properties through the legitimate use of the instruments of law enforcement against insurgency, banditry and kidnapping, which bedevil the region.

4. Northern Nigeria is urged to take a leading role through social engineering and the implementation of viable economic policies to ensure an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.

5. The Almajiri system of education, which has raised a number of issues to the governments of Northern Nigeria must be reformed instead of being banned.

6. It is resolved that a special conference should be convened in the North on its economy and security so as to address the challenges of Neo-liberal democracy and the crises of development in the region.

Name and Signature of Chairman, Society for Arewa Development and the convener, Independence Youth Talk.
Sahabi Sufiyan

…………………………

By Hussaina Sufyan Ahmad

Reports of sporadic gunshots and explosions behind 777 Housing Estate at the outskirts of Maiduguri metropolis, the Borno State capital, late Saturday night have gone viral.

The incident was said to have started at about 10:15pm. The residents of Pompomari, 778 and 1000 housing estates confirmed the heavy blasts and gunshots as they were put on alert to be safe and secured for any eventuality.

According to Vanguard news, Nigeria Airforce helicopters hovered after deployed to the vicinity in order to repel the attack suspected to have been masterminded by terrorists group of ISWAP.

By Muhammad Sabiu