The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Kano State, has issued a press release applauding the security agencies for the quick and perfect response to the murder of a five-year-old Hanifa by her primary school teacher. In the statement, the opposition party also warned and cautioned the state government over what it alleged as “extorting” the private school owners over the sad incident. According to them, the good ones among the private school owners should not be punished or penalised based on the evil wrongdoings of others.

The full release:

“The Kano state chaper of Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has applauded the efforts of security agencies for their swift response in investigating, arresting and arraigning the kidnapper and killer of Kano school girl Hanifa Abubakar.

The party wishes to acknowledge the successful operation that led to the arrest of the suspected culprit Abdulmalik Tanko and his cohorts through strategic intelligence gathering and tactical security operation.

As members of the opposition in Kano, we wish to join other well meaning Nigerians to also commend the prompt prosecution/ arraignment of the suspects before a senior magistrate court in the state to pursue justice on late Halifa without any delay.

On reforming the private education, the PDP therefore advised Kano State government under the leadership of Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to follow the necessary due process in accordance with law establishing Kano state Private School Board which regulates the activities of all non public schools in the state.

“We learnt that Governor Ganduje has withdrawn the operating licence of all private schools in the state, with all sense of humility and patriotism, we will like to caution the state government not to use this opportunity to extort money from the proprietors of private schools in the state”

The party noted that there have been a standard operating procedure provided by the law establishing the private school board developed by the previous administration of Sen. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso.

Despite the importance of reforming the private education sub-sector which has been long overdue, the Kano state government should not see it as a window of opportunity for extortion of money from the hands of the schools proprietors.

The party is hereby extending its heartfelt condolence to the family of late Hanifa and the good people of Kano on the unfortunate incidence that have put people in deep sorrow and sympathy.

Signed

Shehu Wada Sagagi
PDP Chairman
Kano State Chapter

By Uzair Adam Imam 

Kano State Deputy Governor, Dr Nasir Yusuf Gawuna, has revealed that the State Agro Pastoral Development Project (KSADP) in the year 2021 achieved 123.43% of its disbursement projection.

A release signed Monday by the Chief Press Secretary to the Deputy Governor of Kano State, Hassan Musa Fagge, disclosed.

The release added that the Deputy Governor who is also the Commissioner of Agriculture stated this on  Monday while chairing the State Steering Committee of the project meeting at the Government House, Kano.

He said: “There is no any agricultural project in the state that has attained this level. This feat of progress is the highest achieved by any Live and Livelihood Fund Project (LLF) funded by the Islamic Development Bank (ISDB) in Africa.

“In my recent discussion with the ISDB Vice President and report reaching me from LLF, KSADP is the fastest project in fact the progress made by it has gingered the Bank to support Kano State with various interventions such as Structure Agro Processing Zones, National Program for Food Security and Bilingual Project.

He further said:  “The project will be tasked in the year 2022 with the delivery of project outputs to the intended beneficiaries,” adding that 2021 did not call for many oversights supervisory visits by the steering committee being a year for planning, designs, capacity building and strengthening of stock route committee members.

“2022 is going to add value to what the project has started and will be full of physical activities as the previous year has been for planning and consultancies,” he said.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has fixed the date for registering for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

According to Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s spokesperson, the registration starts on February 12 and lasts until March 19, 2022.

The examination board made this known through its weekly bulletin, released on Monday, January 24.

By Ismail Hashim Abubakar

Although the articulation of the presidential ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu (if actually this his real name) is seizing the attention of the public these days, Tinubu’s psyche might have likely become fraught with political confusion since 2020 when Mamman Daura gave the popular BBC interview on competence as the chief criterion for Buhari’s succession, rather than regional or ethnic consideration. 

This time around, the greed of  Bola Ahmed Tinubu seems even to surpass that of Atiku Abubakar. The man is using every channel to realise his (of course, legitimate) ambition while at the same time subjecting himself to more public shame. The man has become too wild in his bid to realise his dream of emerging as President, and there is a strong indication that he can go to any length to achieve his goal.

However, Tinubu is in a very disadvantageous position occasioned by the mixture of his ethno-religious and geographical inclination. The man is a Muslim, no one doubts, but of course, a very nominal Muslim who favours ethnic proclivities more than religious brotherhood and solidarity.

Based on clear historical evidence, to Tinubu, a Yoruba Christian is far better than a Muslim of any linguistic extraction. However, his hatred for the Hausa is beyond any human quantification. The series of brutal massacres of northern Muslims by government-backed OPC in the Southwest, especially Lagos when Tinubu was governor, still evokes gory memories in the minds of many Muslims, and this will play well as Nigeria approaches the general election in 2023.

Nevertheless, the shaky religious credentials of Tinubu, besides the status of his wife as Christian and his Christian handlers, do not at all make him a Christian or outside the fold of Islam. If that is the case, if, for example, he is nominated to contest for President, CAN and Nigerian Christians will never accept him as their representative, lest it means his running mate can be a Muslim.

Moreover, for most Muslims, especially in the North, Tinubu does not have enough moral credentials to be nominated as a Muslim candidate with any (northern) Christian candidate. Many northerners, in fact, will prefer a Christian from the South and a strong Muslim from the North to be paired to contest for the big office rather than Tinubu.

Tinubu’s visit to Kano a few days ago and his meeting with important and influential clerics in the city would not likely be sufficient to make his ambition sellable. Likewise, the many (courteous) praises showered on him by some Muslim scholars during the visit will not help him either.

So far, this is the dilemma that Tinubu has found himself in. My biggest fear, which I pray situations will not lead to that, is if all the above peculiarities tend to remain the huge stumbling block in the way of Tinubu to the Villa, and he may be left with no option but one: to publicly proclaim to accept Christianity. This decision will then mark his burial in the cemetery of Nigerian politics.

Ismail Hashim Abubakar wrote from Rabat and can be reached via ismailiiit18@gmail.com.

By Faruk Abdulkadir Waziri 

It’s been more than three weeks already since the new year, but here you are, not a bit less of all the marks of your earlier self you so much speak of erasing come 2022. Not less in dealings, sense of direction or reasoning. Nothing less—just the same old you. A pragmatic reflection of familiar personality affiliated to same ideas and thoughts, perspective and perception, manners, impressions and approach. Even after the resolution to embark upon the path of behavioural restructuring, almost everything about your temperament remains astoundingly unchanged. But why? Simply because your profound intents to embody traits of positive transformation are pivoted to joints of weak willpower, impotent and lackadaisical physical effort required for their realisation. Regardless of the intense desire to achieve attitudinal reform, without the unwavering resolve to commission the process, it is like aiming for a bird without an arrow in the bow.

When you set a date to have a particular job done, the time will always arrive, but as for the task, you must work to accomplish it. Otherwise, it continues being a plan hanging in the balance, awaiting a ‘perhaps next time’ implementation that may never be actualised. This is also what happens with resolutions. You either remain steadfast to your decisions or afford the miserable luxury of resolving to the same pledge again and again. That will, every time, make yourself appear a constant disappointment to the prospect of personal betterment.

The thing about resolution is that it begs for your stern pluck, patience, perseverance and spunky endurance. It entails detachment from acclimated habits while simultaneously espousing new, unfamiliar ones. Speaking of which, how difficult is extricating from acquainted routines and wonts, and does fostering new ones get any easier? One might ask. The answer is no. In an article for the National Institutes of Health, Dr Russell Poldrack, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, states that your brain can release a pleasure-seeking chemical called dopamine for both good and bad habits. This craving encourages a person to perform the same habit to gain desirable results. “In a sense,” he states, “parts of our brains are working against us when we try to overcome bad habits.” This is how hard it is to break an old(bad) habit.

It is quite alright to say that breaking free from old habits banks on your tenacity to remain focused and consistent towards changing them. However, do not underestimate the little steps you take because, as opined by Mark Twain, “A habit cannot be tossed out of the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.” Eli Saphart also states, “Habits die hard; that’s why we must kill them slowly.” “The habit that takes years to build do not take a day to change.” Susan Powter, just like the two aforementioned esteemed personalities, outlined this when emphasising the importance of patience in liberating from accustomed traits.

Do not hesitate or delay. You are not late to take the path of changing into a better person. Instead, make a resolution today and stand firmly by it. As a famous proverb goes, “Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.”.

Faruk Abdulkadir Waziri can be contacted via farukakwaziri019@gmail.com.

By Hussaina Sufyan Ahmed

The Kano State Government has revoked the license of all private schools in the state.

Kano state’s Commissioner for Education, Honorable Sanusi Kiru Sa’id, stated this at a press conference held on Monday, January 24, 2022.

This news came up as a follow-up after the brutal murder of a five-year-old school pupil, Hanifa Abubakar, by her teacher and school proprietor, Abdulmalik Tanko.

The state government also announced the arraignment of Mr Tanko before a magistrate court in the state. The accused and two others are remanded in the correctional facility pending the next hearing.

On the suspension of the operational permits for private schools, Hon. Kiru said the government would set up a designated team for guidance on the next line of action.

By Salisu Uba Kofar-Wambai  

Functional education is the key to solving most of the joblessness and unemployment predicament Nigerians face today. Therefore, the philosophy of education matters a lot. Moreover, the kind of philosophy under which a particular curriculum operates determines the quality of graduates a particular system of education breeds.  

The idealism philosophy, which Nigeria’s education system subscribes to, contributes grossly to the condition of our graduates. They frequently end up chasing shadows, seeking jobs when in reality, there’s none. This is because the idealism philosophy emphasizes and dwells so much on book knowledge. The students are made to jampack and cram all the knowledge and ideas in their heads, but practising the knowledge is ultimately zero.

In other words, the idealism philosophy thrives in theoretical aspects. And this British model has since been abandoned by many countries of the world, as it has no successful ends and doesn’t suit 21st-century challenges.  

However, more innovative countries like China, Germany, and Japan that adopt a pragmatic philosophy of education in their curriculum are getting it right regarding employment issues. Most of their graduates are fully equipped with the specific skills required to handle jobs effectively and efficiently. Moreover, even before graduation, their students are already into temporary employment. 

The functional education practised in such countries has made their graduates vibrant job-providers instead of perpetual job-seekers we see here in Nigeria.  

It is a mammoth challenge for our education policy formulators to do the needful. They should help us migrate from idealism to pragmatism as a system. Students will then have practical skills or functional education that will enable them to establish their businesses based on their acquired skills, not just memorizing books and blowing grammar all over.

When a mechanical engineering professor could not repair a simple technical fault on his car until he refers it to a local technician, you know there’s a massive challenge with such a system of education.

I think these entrepreneurial studies and industrial training introduced by our institutions of learning are equally astute and sagacious towards achieving the desired goal. But they’re not close to where we’re aiming at. So, we must change the philosophy in its entirety first to have enough roadmap on the ground.   

The sooner we migrate, the better for us.

Salisu Kofar-Wambai wrote from Kano. He can be reached via salisunews@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Mubarak Tanimu

It’s 2022. The twilight of Buhari’s administration is here, and the political permutations that will produce his successor are about to come bare. “Change” was the mantra in 2014. The Giwa barrack attack in March by Boko Haram, the Kibaku school girls abduction in April, the capture of Gwoza in August, the occupation of Bama in September and the ransacking of Baga in December by the terrorist group together with the over ten thousand lives lost during the year made 2014 an unforgettable year.

Goodluck Jonathan carried so many political accruals that outweighed his political assets, giving him an unfavourable political balance sheet that led to his well-anticipated defeat at the polls in 2015, becoming the first-ever one-term president in Nigeria. It’s an unusual political crash that the former presidential spokesman, Segun Adeniyi, calls ‘Against The Run of Play’.

Jonathan’s political misfortune didn’t start in 2014. He promised Nigerians a breath of fresh air after winning the 2011 elections. His major decision after the victory was fuel subsidy removal. He sent the then CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and the then Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to beg and convince Nigerians to accept subsidy removal.

The first nail on the political coffin of Jonathan was hit on January 1, 2012, with the announcement of fuel subsidy removal, which birthed a national outrage and mass protest known today in our history books as Occupy Nigeria. After that, Boko haram insurgency, the slump of oil prices in the global market, and the PDP crisis he poorly managed sent him to an early political abyss.

Whilst all these were happening, one man positioned himself suitably and leveraged on every misstep of the President, often described as clueless. The man is Muhammadu Buhari. When the commoner was not happy, as late political siege J.S Tarka would say, Buhari offered himself as the hope, the happiness and the long-awaited missing piece of the jigsaw. Buhari moulded all Nigeria’s problems into just one thing that he kept saying repeatedly; ‘corruption, corruption, corruption’. He then placed himself as the one and only man with an incorruptible toga in the political arena that could solve Nigerian security challenges and economic turmoil.

He became president in 2015, Nigeria’s economic crisis soared, and like the sunshine, insecurity moved from east to west in the North. But unlike 2014, in 2022, no one is leveraging Buhari’s ineptitude. Though to be fair to Buhari, with Nigeria’s over-reliance on oil for export revenue and foreign consumer goods, an economic crisis will always be inevitable in the situation of a fall in the global prices of oil.

The polity in Nigeria still looks primordial. No one is ready for issue-based conversation. Even the pundits often put in more sentiment than logic in their analysis. The reaction of Buhari’s detractors shortly after Tinubu’s declaration to run for the presidency in 2023 says it all. They want him to surrender a platform he built with his sweat over some decades of enduring and surviving political persecution under Abacha, Obasanjo and Jonathan.

One doesn’t need to be a seer or bookmaker to predict that Nigerians will face Tinubu and Atiku’s choices in 2023. This could be a run that will not dig and damage the image of Buhari. Atiku may keep things ethical as he did in 2019, whilst Tinubu will primarily defend the Buhari administration throughout the campaign and make promises of improvements.

In 2014, there was an exodus from the ruling party to the opposition. Governors Kwankwaso of Kano, Wammako of Sokoto, Amaechi of Rivers, Ahmed of Kwara and Nyako of Adamawa all defected to the APC and other party chieftains like Atiku, Saraki and Baraje. The defection made the ruling party’s defeat imminent even before the elections.

On the contrary, the ruling party is taking governors to its fold this time. Governors Umuahi of Ebonyi, Matawalle of Zamfara and Ayade of Crossriver defected to the ruling APC last year. While the long-awaited APC national convention can make or mar the party’s fortune in the next general elections, the current atmosphere spells gloom for the opposition again come 2023.

Going by the non-negotiability of Nigeria’s unity as enshrined in the constitution and the unwritten political arrangement of political parties in Nigeria, the next president should be ethnically and culturally Igbo. Still, the ethnic group can only claim that stake in the PDP, a party they supported wholeheartedly since 1999. They rejected the APC, and I don’t think the party will pamper the same region with a presidential ticket in 2023. I am harbouring a feeling that an Igbo presidency is all Nigeria needs to turn its fortune around as a country. It will bring integration and a sense of belonging for all, which may translate into socioeconomic success. But that’s a conversation for another day.

Ahmad Mubarak Tanimu wrote via ahmadmubarak.tanimu243@gmail.com.

By Usama Abdullahi

If there’s anything I have learnt from Super Eagles’ sad loss in this year’s AFCON is the absurdity associated with it. Of course, it’s unfortunate Nigeria lost to Tunisia in the round of 16 yesterday. But, as a patriotic citizen, what do you do? Of course, you express your grief about that and hope for the better next time. Period!

Contrary to this, several unpatriotic citizens who are also lacking in maturity attribute the team’s misfortune to Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari. I thought they were joking, but it turned out that they meant what they said. Before the commencement of the match, Buhari had a virtual call with the team in which he encouraged them. 

But as the match ended in favour of Tunisia, the media was full of aggressive and disparaging remarks about the call and the President. Some foolishly described the President’s call as a disastrous one, which, however, ‘led’ to the painful yet unexpected exit of the Nigerian Super Eagles from the AFCON.

However, this didn’t surprise me because, before the match kickoff, some simpletons had already predicted and discounted the team’s failure out of obviously immutable dislike for the President’s encouraging call. We are a society easily driven by silliness. 

If you buy into the nutty notion that the President’s call was the reason for the team’s woeful undoing, then you’re no different from the person living with psychosis. This mental illness makes you behave abnormally and believe things that aren’t true. 

Let’s stop this nonsense, accept the defeat smilingly, congratulate our lads for their previous victories, and encourage them to do better ahead of the Qatar World Cup playoff match.

Usama Abdullahi wrote from Abuja, Nigeria. He can be reached at usamagayyi@gmail.com.

By Ibrahiym El-Caleel

I am writing this emotional article with a heavy heart. Thousands of Nigerians are grieving a heart-wrenching pedicide that occurred in Kano State.

Hanifa Abubakar, 5, went missing on 3rd December 2021 while returning home from school. Her pictures flooded social media with a dear request that she be helped located. However, several weeks later, it turned out that she was actually kidnapped, and 6 million naira was demanded as ransom. Hanifa’s parents struggled to raise the ransom and deliver it to the kidnapper.

At the point of collecting the ransom on 20th January 2022, a 37-year old Abdulmalik Mohammed Tanko was arrested. Abdulmalik confessed that he was both Hanifa’s kidnapper and school proprietor. He further admitted that he had already killed Hanifa weeks ago with a rodent poison and buried her in a shallow grave in his school. He led security forces to the shallow grave, where the decomposed body of Hanifa was exhumed. She was beyond recognition as her body appeared to have been dismembered after the poisoning. She was afterwards given a befitting burial according to Islamic rites. Thousands of sympathizers are still mourning in extreme melancholy.

A few hours after Hanifa’s story was uncovered, a new case of pedicide was reported from Zaria. Shu’aibu Wa’alamu Ubandawaki, a Zaria-based businessman, reported that his 8-year old daughter, Asmau (alias Husna), has been killed by her abductors. He had also paid 3 million naira as ransom, but the kidnappers killed Husna anyway. Revelations later emerged that the kidnapper is their close neighbour.

Several months earlier, in May 2021, a 6-year old Mohammed Kabiru was kidnapped by his neighbour at Badarawa, in Kaduna State. This neighbour had received one million-naira ransom from Kabiru’s father but still proceeded to strangle the innocent boy. After detectives apprehended the kidnap gang, they admitted strangling the boy to death because one of the members of the criminal team feared that the boy recognized him.

Cases like this are too numerous to count. Even yesterday, the police in Kano interviewed a youth who said he had slaughtered a girl hawker after she recognized him.

Child abductors have lately developed the attitude of killing their innocent victims because they fear they might recognize them when freed. All that follows is a social media hashtag trend; a promise by the security forces to charge the suspects to court and then a brief silence before the next case arrives.

The homicide rate is skyrocketing in Northern Nigeria, and this is no thanks to our current system of governance. Since the transition of Nigeria to democracy in 1999, we see a judicial system that romances murderers with no fair regard to their victims. Despite democracy’s snail-speed judiciary to prosecute murderers, it frowns at executing them in the spirit of legal retribution.

This problem is not specific to Nigeria. It is a global curse. The governance system maintains a gentle approach to capital crimes by seeking to abolish the death penalty and public executions. Therefore, pressure groups like Amnesty International have sworn themselves as apologists of murderers. As a result, every nation is now reluctant in passing deserved death sentences, not to even talk of actually executing the death penalty. Only a handful of countries like China, Saudi, Iran and North Korea still practice public execution.

The UN-led democratic world of today considers public executions as a ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of punishment’. This is why everyone shies away from public executions. For potential murderers, this is quite a protective cover to go-ahead to kill whoever they want to kill! They have nothing to fear. Take anyone’s life if you wish, and the UN and Amnesty International will protect yours! Mahatma Gandhi ingloriously articulated that, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”. With this statement, Gandhi might have insensitively passed one of the greatest injustices upon the victims of human barbarism. An eye for an eye will rid the world of barbarians who have desires to pluck the eyes of their fellow humans. If we let barbarians keep their eyes, they will continue to pluck people’s eyes till the whole world becomes blind, and only barbarians will have eyes. At this time, they will have to start amputating people’s limbs since Mahatma Gandhi would decree, “a limb for a limb will make the whole world limbless”!

A life for a life is fair enough. This is what every fair legal system should maximally execute in the spirit of retribution. The only chance you have to keep your eye is when you don’t pluck anyone’s eyes. Similarly, the only chance you have to keep your life is when you don’t take anyone’s life.

Countries like the UAE, Bahrain and Bangladesh recently resumed public executions because they discovered that Gandhi’s, UN’s, and Amnesty International’s way is merely idealistic. After returning to power last year, the Taliban continued its public executions in Herat by hanging four bodies of kidnappers from cranes. They said it should serve as a lesson for other kidnappers. Nigeria is still massaging Evans, her revivalist billionaire kidnap kingpin. Yet we wonder why bandits in the forests are making a mockery of the Nigerian armed forces. Do we wonder why people like Abdulmalik are out there looking for the Hanifas they will kidnap for their financial welfare?

Nigeria’s constitution still maintains the death penalty for capital crimes like murder, mutiny, terrorism and treason. The courts are passing the judgements, but they are rarely executed. A Premium Times report in 2021 narrated that Nigeria’s correctional centres are housing 3,602 death-row inmates. Of course, these inmates will never be executed under this UN-subscribed Nigeria’s democracy. Some of them will naturally die in detention after living to a ripe octogenarian or nonagenarian age. Others will be pardoned by the state governors and the president at any time they so politically wish. The murderers will be re-integrated into society as if nothing had happened. Why shouldn’t they commit another murder? Why shouldn’t the next barbarian commit murder?

This ugly scenario is why some people take laws into their hands. They decide to avenge the murder of their loved ones so that they become the beneficiaries of this controversial protection of human life championed by the UN and Amnesty International. In some cases, security forces decide to be the courts themselves, thereby making extrajudicial killings of apprehended criminals. This is because they get tired of arresting the same criminals repeatedly for the same crimes.

Nigeria has decided not to make any changes to arrest this ugly situation. But, of course, there are good excuses like; even the United States has a snail-speed judiciary when it comes to executing death-row inmates. Out of its 2,474 death-row inmates, the US executed only 11 of them in 2021. All of them committed their capital crimes about thirty years ago. So, Nigeria would say, if this is in the US, what more of Nigeria?

Therefore, it is humane that we are boiling with rage over Hanifa and Husna’s deaths. Every sane individual would do the same. We are craving that the law legally executes their murderers. But we have to understand that the problem is systemic. We have to come together as both leaders and ordinary citizens to amend our ways. Our laws need to practically show to everyone that for every eye taken illegally, an eye will follow it legally. Murder begets state execution. This is the only practical way through which Nigeria can recover the depreciated value of human life in the eyes of barbarians.

Unless the death penalty and public executions resume for culpable homicides, potential murderers will continue to have a field day.

Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel wrote from Zaria, Kaduna State. He can be reached via caleel2009@gmail.com.