International

Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has, again, on Wednesday banned the popular video-sharing platform TikTok for the “continuous presence of inappropriate content on the platform and its failure to take such content down”.

Pakistan banned the platform for the same reason the first time in October 2020. However, TikTok assured the authorities that it would take measures to censor the contents deemed inappropriate. Days later, the ban was lifted.

Pakistan, an Islamic Republic and seen as conservative by many, blocked the app for the second and third time based on complaints from its citizens and under its Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016. This current ban is reportedly the fourth. However, India blocked the app for reportedly political-cum-diplomatic reasons.

In Nigeria, a social commentator, Muhammad Ubale Kiru, recently criticised the app for promoting “immorality” among northern Nigerian youth. A post he wrote on Facebook went viral in the region’s cyberspace. In reaction to Kiru’s post, several people called on the Nigerian government to ban the Chinese-origin app.

By Abdullahi G. Usman

Despite the criticism against Nigerians in different parts of the world, Nigerians have continued to prove their intelligence wherever they find themselves. Academically speaking, Nigerians in the diaspora always emerge among the best graduating students in various fields of study.

Ismail Aliyu Adnan, a beneficiary of the Kano state scholarship scheme, with his emergence as the best graduating student at the Near East University Faculty of Medicine, Cyprus, has made Nigeria proud. He is proof of the intellectual capability of Nigerians.

Ismail Aliyu Adnan, an indigene of Gwale LGA, Kano State, has set an unprecedented record at the faculty. He became the first person from Kano state and the second person from Nigeria to have emerged as the best graduating student, topping both the national and international students.

Ismail said that without Allah, family and friends who supported him throughout his journey, achieving this success would have been impossible.

Ismail’s academic success demonstrates that Nigerians in the diaspora are out for excellence. He has not only made his family and Kano state government proud, but he has also represented Nigeria to the rest of the world as home to hardworking individuals.

Ismail’s friends recollect that he had exceptional abilities as a student at the Kano State College of Art, Science, & Remedial studies (CAS) and at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he always emerges among the best students.  

In his valedictory speech, he thanked Allah for guiding him through the challenging and exhausting journey, his professors, family, and friends for the support, and the Kano State government for the scholarship he was given to pursue his dream profession. He finished his speech by urging all his colleagues to leave a legacy wherever they find themselves, especially through positively impacting the lives of others.

Abdullahi G Usman is a PhD student at Near East University, Cyprus. He can be reached via abdullahigusman@gmail.com.

By Muhammad Sabiu

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has announced that the sermon for this year’s Hajj would be broadcast in 10 languages, including Hausa, one of the major languages in the West African region.

This was contained in a short social media update on a popular English page, Haramain Sharifain, which releases important information courtesy of the Two Holy Mosques in KSA.

The other languages are English, Malay, Urdu, Persian, French, Mandarin, Turkish, Russian, and Bengali.

This was not a new move as part of the effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 and minimise the number of pilgrims. Like the previous year, the chairman of the General Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque, Sheikh Dr Abdul Rahman bin Abdulaziz Al Sudais, indicates that the decision was to do the same this year.

The inclusion of the Hausa language on the list may be connected with the increasing number of language speakers. In Ethnologue’s 2018 report, Hausa is the 11th most spoken language in the world. Therefore, this and the fact that most Hausa people are Muslims could be why Saudi authorities chose to include it on the list for the sermon to reach a broader audience.

South African problem is the exact replica of black man’s disease. It is the reason why black Africa will never develop. Look at North Africa; Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, they have infrastructure, mostly at par with Europe, some are even better than most European countries. They are not blacks. The Arabs, even with their deadly problems, are far ahead of blacks in terms of development. There is no black African success story as far as nation building is concerned. Some people mention Rwanda as a success story. I don’t know their standard of success. To me a country with no rail system, which has only seven 7 tiny airports, running an agrarian economy and presided by dictator, is not a success story. South Africa was built by the Whites. Zimbabwe had a wonderful headway until Mugabe chased away the whites and handed over the economy to blacks. But look at UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They are developed peaceful societies with law and order per excellence.

The 79 years Jacob Zuma of South Africa was sentenced to prison to spend 15 months for refusing a constitutional court order to give evidence, at an inquiry investigating a high-level corruption during his nine years in office. Zuma is facing trial for corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering. What followed was total disgrace to Africa and black race. South African blacks and Zuma’s Zulu tribe went into violent protest in major cities of Natal, Durban, Johannesburg and other major provinces. They broke shops and looted the contents and set buildings ablaze. In the melee that followed, at least 79 people died with figures still counting.

Who, but African blacks, will go into riots to protest imprisonment of a corrupt leader on account of ethnicity only! The South Africans are not rioting because Zuma is innocent. They just don’t want him to be jailed no matter his crimes. Zuma defied court order. In any civilized society, defying court is tantamount to sleeping in prison. But see South Africa, arguably the most developed country in Africa, having the best infrastructure, best schools, functioning economy and a member of G-20, disgracing Africa, Africans and all blacks.

What kind of country do South Africans want if a leader can wreck the treasury and be above the law? Even with our myriads of problems I don’t see Nigerians behaving this way. Obasanjo was a former leader imprisoned for offences he did not commit but no one razed any shop or burnt down cities. Leaders will always have supporters but when they commit crimes, we should not give them ethnic refuge and fight their own battles. We should allow them to stew in the pot they arranged for themselves. That is the only way they will do the right thing in offices. As long as we allow them to commit crimes and run to ethnic and religious cleavages for protection, we will never develop as a country.

Alhaji Aliyu Nuhu

Is a social analyst based in Abuja

The Crescent for the month of Dhul Hijjah 1442 was not seen today, this year’s Hajj will be on the 19th July, 2021, while the Eid Al Adha will be on the 20th of July, 2021.

According to a BBC report, it was a group of 28 foreign mercenaries, including retired Colombian soldiers, who assassinated Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse earlier this week, police say.

After a gun battle in the capital Port-au-Prince, 17 were detained, some at the house they were using, others after entering Taiwan’s diplomatic compound. Police killed three suspects, and eight are still being sought. Bloodied and bruised, arrested suspects were shown to the media on Thursday, along with a slew of seized weapons.

It is still unclear who organised the attack and with what motive.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the attack took place when gunmen broke into the president’s home in Port-au-Prince, shooting him dead and wounding his wife. According to authorities, Mr Moïse, 53, was found lying on his back with 12 bullet wounds and a gouged eye.

Martine Moïse, 47, was seriously wounded and is in a stable condition after being flown to Florida for treatment. Police said the hit squad included mainly Colombians, along with two Haitian-Americans. Found in the suspects’ possession were firearms, sets of US dollar bills, the president’s personal chequebook and the server that held surveillance camera footage from his home, Le Nouvelliste newspaper reported. Taiwan confirmed that 11 of the suspects were arrested after breaking into a courtyard at its compound.

Angry civilians had joined the search for the gunmen and helped police track down some who were hiding in bushes. The crowd set fire to three of the suspects’ cars and destroyed evidence.” We Haitians are appalled; we do not accept it,” one man told the AFP news agency. “We are ready to help because we need to know who is behind this, their names, their background so that justice can do its job.”

By Salisu Yusuf

Almost 20 years since the September 11 attacks in the U.S. and the subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, the last Friday’s swift vacation of Bagram Airbase by the U.S forces, the situation in Afghanistan gets worst. The country is becoming more divided; social strife grows, and citizens become more disenchanted. Hostilities between the Hazara Shia minority and mainly Pashtun Sunni majority increases. All over the country, people feel less secure in groups and individually as each one is afraid that the rival militia may attack them. The hitherto communal Afghanistan is fast turning individualistic, especially as a result of Talibans’ follies, misrule, the failure of the sectarian/tribal leadership, the role of Ulama and by the Russian occupation in the 70’s and ’80s, as well as the U.S’s so-called war on terror.

I have never seen a religious sect that clings to power and unorthodoxly turns to folly like the Taliban. They have crossed religious, ethical lines. They ask their members to attack hospitals, with women under labour, children receiving natal care, and other defenceless people receiving treatment. In one instance in 2020, they struck a maternity hospital belonging to the international organisation Medicines Sans Frontiers in Kabul. They gruesomely murdered 24 victims, including impoverished women, children, and babies. A week-old baby was among the dead; another two-week-old baby survived though his mother could not. There has not been a worse unnatural disaster!

Moreover, coordinated, reciprocal attacks by both Sunni and Shia militants are on the rise. I have not seen thoughtless sects like the two groups in Afghanistan/Pakistan axis, where each group asks its members to attack the other while performing obligatory prayers in mosques! And when such attacks are carried out, while the victims’ relatives nurse them and mourn other fatalities, the attackers get euphoric as they believe that they have fulfilled a religious duty. Outrageously they think that should if they die in the process, they would directly go to paradise – as if it belongs to their fathers!

 In addition to such senseless attacks, the Taliban has stepped up on a campaign against girl-child education. As a result, hundreds of innocent girls have been killed on their way to schools because, to them, girls’ education is a deviation from the norm. 

In one such horrendous attack, the vocal Malala Yusafzai is lost to the West. The girl was 11 when she’s shot in the head on her way to school. The girl’s crime was pleading to the Taliban to let girls pursue their educational careers. As the saying goes, the rest is history. Malala is now an Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics. 

Malala is lost to the West with her two young brothers. Pakistanis could only watch her on T.V. addressing the U.N. Assembly, celebrating her birthday, or receiving Nobel Prizes. If she had not been shot, she would have been in Pakistan, and a practising Muslim, whose talent might have been used in teaching and aspiring young girls. Girls like Malala could have been used to heal the growing social division between Sunni and Shia; alas, she’s lost to Europe.

More painful is the list of Nadia Nadim. A more intelligent and talented girl who’s also lost to the West. Nadia’s father was also killed by the Taliban when she’s a child. Under a false identity, the girl fled Afghanistan on a truck at just 11 years. She’s currently living in Denmark, studying reconstructive surgery. Nadia, like Malala, is lost to the West. Her colossal talent would have been more beneficial to Afghanistan because she’s a prospective scientist. Nadia speaks 11 languages. She also plays football for the Danish National Team, scores 200 goals, making her a celebrity.

If Nadia’s father lived, she would have been left to pursue her career, would have been in Afghanistan practising Islam. She could have been a medical doctor, possibly assisting thousands of Afghan women in need of medical care. But, alas, she’s lost to football, playing a celebrity role, her beauty being explored, etc. 

The above are a few lessons to Nigerian youth who sympathise with terrorist groups like Boko Haram. Such groups are in for regression rather than progression.

While the so-called Doha Peace Conference between the Afghan government and Taliban is in progress, the country is hotly on the brink of another civil war. The Taliban is advancing towards Kabul, inciting more antagonism while the country suffers from brain drain; indeed, it’s Talibans’ folly, but Western gains.

Salisu Yusuf teaches at the Department of English, Federal College of Education, Katsina. He can be reached via salisuyusuf111@gmail.com.

A group of unidentified individuals attacked the private residence of Haitian President Jovenel Moise overnight and shot him dead, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement early on Wednesday.

Since 2020, gun violence surges across U.S. cities. President Joe Biden describes the shooting surge as an “endemic” and promises to do everything within his power to end it.

As Newsweek reports, the Fourth of July weekend was the most violent in the United States so far this year. According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which compiled data from cities across the country, “233 people were killed in the U.S. and hundreds more injured — from 5 p.m. Friday through Monday”.

The GVA data adds that the organisation is still gathering more information, indicating that the casualties figure can be much higher.

Mass shootings have a long history in the U.S. The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is, as they call themselves, “America’s longest-standing civil rights organisation”.

The powerful organisation advocates for people’s rights to own firearms, making it easier to procure guns in the United States. President Biden and his Democrat party are expected to challenge the NRA, which the Republicans largely back.

Record temperatures in British Columbia, Canada, and US cities, including Oregon, have resulted in the death of hundreds of people. The temperature reached up to 49.6°C (121.3F) on Sunday in parts of Canada, breaking a decades-old record.

The Oregon State Police said the state medical examiner’s office had received reports of 63 deaths. However, the heat is expected to subside by the weekend in most US cities.

The death toll is more devastating in Canada. According to a CNN report, at least 486 sudden deaths have been reported across the western coast of Canada near the US border.

“The 486 deaths currently entered represent a 195% increase over the approximately 165 deaths that would normally occur in the province over a five-day period,” British Columbia Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe said in a statement.

Experts warn against associating this directly to the climate change the world witnesses. Others say the two are connected like lung cancer is to smoking. They added that other parts of the world, too, see unpredictable weather conditions.

So far this year, northern Nigeria has recorded a low rainfall. As most farmers depend on the rain in the region, they expressed concern over the situation. Nigeria may face a food shortage as a result.