Nigeria

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari.

Adamu J. Garba, a tech-entrepreneur and former presidential aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has left the party.

Garba tweeted a video of himself removing the APC flag in his office on Wednesday, May 11.

He captioned the video, saying, “We joined APC for the sake of Nigerians, now that all is not looking straight. We believe only Allah is the Guarantor & Grantor of Authority. He never ever gives up on the betterment of humans. Trusting in Him, following His Guide, we bow out of APC in peace. The flag is down.”

Garba’s dramatic exit from the APC is coming a day after his withdrawal from the presidential race on the party’s platform.

Recall that Garba in a press release announcing his withdrawal, he told his supporters that it is the beginning of their political journey and that they should wait for further directives.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

Adamu J. Garba, a tech-entrepreneur and presidential aspirant on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform, has withdrawn from the presidential race.

In a press release on Twitter on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, Garba cited the monetisation of the political space as the reason for his withdrawal from the presidential race. He argued that the nomination form is recklessly high and amounts to the commercialisation of the political space.

“Our generation should not set an example as part of the people that supported the financialisation/commercialisation of our political space, especially the public office, considering the prohibitive cost of the nomination forms. The highest in the world.” He stated.

Garba also stated that the APC would not conduct a primary election despite the humongous amount of money for the party’s expression of interest and nomination form.

“We further discovered that even if we went ahead to obtain the form, the party has foreclosed the plan for primary election because of the presence of the request for a Letter of Voluntary Withdrawal on page 18 of the nomination form.” He wrote

Garba claimed he had raised the sum of eighty-three million from online donors. As to what will happen to the donation consequent of his withdrawal, he said donors would be refunded upon request.

According to Garba, the withdrawal from the presidential race is not the end of the journey, and his supporters, whom he thanked graciously in the press release, should patiently wait for further directives.

By Junaid Sharfadi 

For many a century, poetry has been used as a veritable tool to pass on religious, historical and social ideas in northern Nigeria. In Kano, for instance, scholars during my grandad’s generation – and beyond – were good at deploying Arabic and Hausa poetic means when forming an opinion.

Women and children too never missed an opportunity to ululate and chant poetic verses, laden with moral messages, when conveying a bride or on other occasions. The famous Charmandudu poem or the works of Sultan Bello, Aƙilu Aliyu, Nasir Kabara, Mudi Spikin, Asma’u Bint Fodio and Modibbo Kilo serve as an example.

Thus, Art and Culture enthusiasts and promoters like the late Abubakar Gimba or Professor Abdallah Uba Adamu would be delighted to see a literary fraternity sprouting from the fertile land of northern Nigeria, spreading its maturing branches across the country. 

Poetic Wednesday (PW) Initiatives started six years ago as an online platform for poets to engage, grow, entertain and convey impactful messages every Wednesday. From agriculture to artificial intelligence, climate change, peace, conflict, education, love etc. the group writes on diverse, important issues.

The founders, led by Salim Yunusa, have succeeded in unleashing the full potentials of the weekly participants by critiquing and publishing their beautiful and virgin poems that drown readers into poemgasms. Budding poets have since joined to unbutton their poetic minds on marginless screens. No boundaries or limitations, just pure chutzpah and truth that reveal the primordial yet sacred content of the heart.

It is imperative to state that Poetic Wednesdays’ remarkable online presence has been effectively utilized in organizing webinars, competitions and workshops to fuel the passion for literature among youth. Prof. Hussein Nasr was right when he emphasized the significance of poetry in shaping Persian, Arab and Chinese societies. Therefore, with literary groups like PW, this society is on the right side of history.

By Aliyu Barau, PhD

Farooq Kperogi is among the few Nigerians who elegantly sandwich scholarship, media and English language expertise. On the contrary, I am neither a language expert nor a political analyst. Here, I am just trying to figure out the naughtiness of Kperogi’s thinking machinery. How Kperogi thinks substantially determines his writings and opinions.

No doubt, Kperogi’s articles are a cynosure of the eyes of many Nigerians across political, cultural and social divides. Some of his Nigerian readers pluck his linguistically well-crafted and yet asymmetric views and dye them in the colours of their sentiments or ignorance. It is very normal to manipulate any text on this planet. Interestingly, it is not unusual for bohemians and intellectuals to dress and feast on controversies.

I see Kperogi as a sort of a roller coaster dripping joyful and sorrowful moments on public sentiments and obsessions. Indeed, considering Nigeria’s contested socio-political landscapes, Kperogi personifies Hankaka (a pied crow in Hausa) which they say, “whoever sees its black must see its white too.

I am indifferent to Kperogi’s criticisms of the powers that be. I don’t care about his tirades and vituperations directed at the political class who sold their moral rights at the markets of failures and misgovernance.

So, what’s my headache with Kperogi? Well, I am deeply touched by his overriding superficiality, unidirectional views, bigotry, extremism and spider mannerisms. To be fair to Kperogi, no elites in the social and political divides of this country are immune from his pen. Nevertheless, his seamless and borderless forays are in many instances unconscionable and peddling post-truth constructs. My labelling of Kperogi is based on my readings and analysis of his recent blog stuff:

• Presidents Who’ll Make Me Renounce Nigeria (https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/03/presidents-wholl-make-me-renounce.html)

• Osinbajo’s RCCGification Part of Plot for Theocratic State Capture (https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/04/osinbajos-rccgification-part-of-plot.html)

• 10 Reasons Osinbajo Will Ignite a Religious Civil War (https://www.farooqkperogi.com/2022/03/10-reasons-osinbajo-will-ignite.html)

As a transdisciplinary environmental researcher, I always prefer wider views, co-produced, and inclusive opinions. I am diametrically opposed to ‘single story’ constructions – as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie would say. My reading of the above articles has convinced me of Kperogi’s single story-driven narrowed conclusions on crucial and critical national issues. Before I explain my points, I have tried further analysis of Kperogi’s knowledge production mannerisms to see how that fits my labelling. For instance, I conducted a rapid assessment of his authorship of academic works on leading research archives namely Researchgate and Google Scholar. Both repositories reveal in him a professor with a very limited network and co-authorship. By implication, any scholar with limited networking and co-authorship will have little room for alternative views, tolerance and thorough analysis. This evidence convinces me as to why he writes less holistically and cares less to get into deep layers of issues.

Kperogi is a good reflection of the proverbial Dubarudu – a character in one of the Hausa riddles. Dubarudu owns a mirror in a town where no one owns any. He alone uses it and no one can use it including his wife. Nigeria is a mirror that we need to share to see our faces and appreciate our different outlooks.

My reading of the three blog articles produced by Kperogi leads me to carry out further analysis of how this versatile writer thinks. Scholars make use of Low-Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) to determine the thinking capacity of scholars and students. I always assume that the Nobel Prize winners and other high ranking scholars utilise HOTS. Without prejudice, blog articles produced by Kperogi appear to belong to low-order thinking skills.

Then, how is he seen as a low thinker at least in the three articles under consideration? The answer is discernible to all his readers who care. He uses interrogatives such as ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘which’, ‘how many’ and ‘who’ in driving his opinions in the three articles. We could see mentions of places, names of persons, the number of persons, places, when and where in his labelling of religious bigotry by VP Osinbajo. Healthy and informed minds would care only about the HOTS interrogatives such as ‘why’, ‘how’; ‘what evidence is there?’, ‘cause and consequences’ etc. Unfortunately, less informed and sentimental Nigerian readers can easily be misled by the lots of LOTS he always amplifies.

At this point, I am bringing out my real problems with this language scholar. I really find it very nauseating and irritating when he declared in his blog, on March 28, 2022, that he would renounce his Nigeria citizenship if any of the four individuals he listed in an article would become Nigeria’s next president.

The four Nigerians he condemned were Osinbajo, Tinubu, Bello and Wike. How on earth! What depth of hatred is this? What if God has decided one of them to be? To me, this is exotic bigotry, branded intolerance and egregious extremism. Where is his knowledge of the language of contestations, resistance and resilience that characterize the works of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Karl Marx? Maybe, I should remind him of the struggles of the Irish activists captured in Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s Language, Resistance and Revival. Such a Kperogian declaration amounts to cowardice, hopelessness and disillusion. How can I give up my citizenship on account of a tenured president that could be at the mercy of the judiciary, parliament, media and civil society? I never expected him to easily forget how spirited men and women stood against the caudillos (strongmen of Latin America) seen in Pinochet of Chile, Stroessner of Paraguay, Somoza in Nicaragua, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. I wish good luck to the listed four and to Kperogi, especially when one forsakes Nigeria for America where black lives matter. The people brutalized by the Nigerian junta yesterday are princes of the Aso Rock Villa of today. That is how time works.

No little thanks to Farooq for giving us a neologism -RCCGification through his April 14th 2022 blog opinion. I was distraught reading that as I saw in it that article tight shortness of sight and breath considering it is coming from a scholar. Saying that one church denomination will overrun Nigeria is a devilish statement. Even Satan might call that the last post-truth reality. Nevertheless, I find solace in Mehdi Hassan’s response to Anne-Marie Waters during Oxford Union Debate On Islam held at the Oxford University in the UK sometime in 2015.  Putting your article in the context of that debate and Mehdi’s response means Kperogi is a big fanatic and bigot. Why? Because RCCGification is the same thing as Islamisation.

Every time a Muslim rules Nigeria some Christian bigots use the thread of Islamisation to weave clothes of suspicion and division. So what’s the difference between the advocates of Islamisation and RCCGification? Is it not flipping sides of the same coin? I would be happier to have as a leader, a just Christian than an unjust Muslim. RCCGification of Islam, Catholicism, Protestants, and traditional religions are all mirages. RCCGification of Nigeria is a charade since this church has not even seen the intergenerational transition of itself let alone overrun others.

Let us be frank with ourselves, it has been a standing tradition of Nigerian political, religious and business leaders to bring close to them the people that they know. Hence, I am unruffled by any list of political appointees associated with the RCCGification agenda. I am always amused by fears of Islamisation and I always see weak and ignorant Christians as its drivers and authors.

When you insist on going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem as Muslims do in Mecca, you are just Islamising Nigerian Christianity. When you say let us block the Muslims or deny them their rights what is your name? Islamaphobe, unjust, conspirator or still a Christian? What I like most about religion is the sweet taste of spirituality. Those forwarding the RCCGification agenda are either mischief makers or ignorant of Nigeria’s social, historical and political institutions. 

When I saw the casket of Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu draped in Nigeria’s flag and carried by the Nigerian military officers, that is the day I realised that Nigeria is bigger than all its citizens. Nigeria overwhelms anybody with any hidden agenda. A critic must learn how not to be like a spider. Its knowledge of design is superb and its nest is outstandingly beautiful. However, the skinny guy builds its nest on the common pathways not minding trapping everybody.

Aliyu Barau, PhD, is an Associate Professor from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. He can be reached on Twitter via @aliyubarau.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Asefon Sunday Dayo, says the association will block all airport roads in the country, as a result of the government’s inability to end the lingering ASUU strike.

Asefon made this known in a press release on Facebook on Monday, May 9, 2022.

This is coming after the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU ) extended their ongoing strike to 12 weeks. ASUU has been on strike since February and cited negligence on the part of the government as the reason for the extension of the strike.

According to the NANS President, the extension of the strike is a total declaration of war by the Federal Government against the university students in Nigeria.

“Having exhausted all windows of constructive engagement with the government, I, on behalf of the national leadership of NANS, therefore, declare National Action from tomorrow 10th.

The National Actions is tagged “Operation Test Run”. Operation Test Run shall be held in all the 36 states of the Federation. Federal Roads across the 36 States shall be occupied for a minimum of 3hrs. The Operation shall be a precursor to a total shutdown that will be decided during our Senate meeting/pre-convention on Saturday 14th May 2022. Our decision from the pre-convention shall be binding. The action shall be total as the extension of the ASUU strike is a direct declaration of war by the Federal Government against university students in Nigeria.” He wrote.

He added that the association will subsequently block airport roads across the country and disrupt party primaries amongst other things.

“Our proposal to our congress on the 14th shall be total blockage of the airport roads across the country and total disruption of political party primaries, blockage of the national assembly until they are committed to passing legislation banning public office holders from sending their children to university [sic] abroad.” He stated.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The families of the abducted Abuja-Kaduna train victims threatened that the train service must not resume unless all the abducted passengers are rescued.

Speaking through their spokesperson, Dr Abdulfatai Jimoh, the victims’ families said adequate security measures must be put in place to guarantee the safety of prospective passengers.

The Daily Reality reported how bandits attacked the Kaduna-Abuja train, killed eight persons, and abducted many passengers last month.

The bandits in a video threatened to kill all the victims if the federal government refused to negotiate with them.

However, reports disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed the NRC to set up a situation room for the coordination of the rescue mission for the passengers.

But the families lamented that “Still, one week after this presidential directive was issued, the NRC has never contacted the relatives of the kidnapped victims nor established any situation room.

“This display of gross incompetence and insensitivity should lead to appropriate punishment,” they said.

By Uzair Adam Imam

A well-known social media activist and lawyer, Abdu Bulama Bukarti, lambasted the Buhari administration over the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike.

This came as ASUU extended its ongoing strike by three months due to the government’s poor handling of the issue. Also, Bukarti’s remarks surprised some as he had been publicly criticising ASUU on its resolve to strike.

ASUU President, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, had announced Sunday at the end of the Union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, which was held in Abuja, that the strike had been extended by three months.

Bukarti, known for his stern opposition against frequent strikes by ASUU, said that Nigeria has failed to mitigate the menacing issue of strike by ASUU because it does not affect them (the elite) or their beloved children.

In a Facebook post, Bukarti lamented that the government “never hesitate to move on putting the strike by the Airline operators to an end because it has [a] direct effect on them and their children. But since [the] ASUU strike has no direct or indirect effect on them and their children, they failed to solve the problem.”

The Daily Reality reported that ASUU suspended its nine-month-long strike in 2020 after reaching an agreement with the Federal Government. Still, a year after, the government is yet to fulfil its promises to the union.

The ASUU strike has been described as one of the most lingering issues paralysing Nigerian universities, leading to the delay in students’ graduation, deterioration of the educational system and promulgation of serious social vices across the country.

Not only that, many people argue that the strike has destroyed the future of many promising youths, including both university students and their lecturers.

By Ibrahim Tukur

Communication barrier is one of the major problems holding many deaf people back. Living in an inclusive world—a world that comprises people with differences, one has to know the others better to get along together. We can only achieve that through communication. Unfortunately, however, many people have immensely misunderstood due to the communication barrier. Some see people with hearing impairment as stupid, insane, mad, etcetera.

Communication barrier has brought various challenges that not exclusively affect the personal achievement of the deaf but also their educational, spiritual and economic development.

Due to this barrier, many deaf experience loneliness, depression and isolation at home because they have no one to communicate with as most of the family members don’t know how to communicate with them. In the same vein, their parents often neglect them and find it challenging to communicate with them in their day-to-day interactions and operations. Thus, this makes many deaf children, if not all, grow up morally deficient.

In many tertiary institutions, deaf students face many academic challenges that interfere with their studies. Although all tertiary institutions are inclusive, they are not offering special services like Sign Language interpreters. Consequently, those students often sit in the class watching their lecturers lecturing verbally and their coursemates with no hearing loss drinking from their knowledge flow.

Deaf people face immense challenges when it comes to employment. Many organisations and companies find it difficult to employ deaf people due to this barrier, as good communication is one of the essential requirements in entrepreneurship. This is why many deaf people have automatically been disqualified during job interviews despite meeting all the requirements.

Again, because of this barrier, deaf people are denied from getting jobs as doctors, engineers, journalists, lecturers, lawyers, accountants, etcetera. Many deaf who have studied others fields are forced to become classroom teachers as if teaching is the only profession for the deaf.

Although the current administration has enacted a law that prohibits discrimination against people with disability, thanks to their bid for inclusion, they failed to trench the underlying causes of the discrimination. 

To nip the deaf-based discrimination in the bud, Sign Language should be introduced as a core curriculum in all schools since the communication barrier is its underlying cause.

Sign Language specialists should be employed in all schools and tertiary institutions to teach Sign Language so that everybody will learn to communicate with the deaf and get to know them better.

Teaching Sign Language in schools nationwide will improve this communication gap and end the disparagement, discrimination, and stigmatisation they experience. It will equally create a comfortable environment for the deaf folks to live in this Inclusive world.

Ibrahim Tukur is a 400 level student of Bayero University, Kano. He can be reached via inventorngw@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

Nigeria’s Green Chamber, the House of Representatives, has called for an emergency session scheduled to hold on Monday. 

The clerk of the House, Yahaya Danzaria, in a statement on Saturday, April 6, 2022, announced that the emergency session would hold on Monday. However, the clerk did not state any specific reason for the emergency but said in the terse notice that critical issues of national importance would be discussed. 

“This is to inform all Hon. Members, staff, media and the general public that the House hereby recalls all Hon. Members for an emergency plenary session against Monday, 9th May, 2022, at 2:00 pm. It is particularly intended to discuss critical issues of national importance. The House regrets any inconvenience this short notice would have caused,” The notice reads.

It is unusual for the House to sit for plenary on Mondays. Usually, they sit on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

However, the House members have been reportedly neglecting plenary sessions. It is believed that the incoming political parties’ primaries are the reason.

By Aliyu Nuhu

It has been revealed that the Federal Government of Nigeria is reaching an agreement to release Boko Haram commanders and give them hefty amount of money for the release of the Kaduna train victims the terrorists abducted, according to some media reports.

The major reason a nation should not negotiate with terrorists is very simple, sensible and straightforward.

When a government rewards terror for perpetrating evil by giving the terror what it wants, it is reasonable to expect that they will, like others before them, continue their horrendous acts of violence, knowing that there may well be a prize for them afterwards.

Releasing people who have blood in their hands and giving them millions of dollars in return for release of some captives may bring a temporary relief to the nation and happiness to their families. However, always know that more families are put on the line to suffer the same agony in the future. The nation will enjoy reprieve only temporarily as terror has no rule of engagement. There will be more train attacks in the future, mark my words.

One area used effectively to defeat terror is denying it funding from all sources so that it will be unable to fund its heinous operations by paying salaries, hiring more fighters and getting fresh supply of weapons. Nigerian government has unwittingly been doing the opposite, by freeing Boko Haram commanders and giving them money to carry on with their acts of terror against hapless Nigerians. And this is the same government that is creating a law to make ransom payment a criminal offense.

The government knows where the captives are kept. Like what governor Nasir El-Rufai said, the place should be raided and rescue the victims. There may be some casualties but that is more acceptable than rewarding terrorists with what they want. The government will be releasing dangerous people to the society knowing that they will never repent. There are many ways to rescue the victims safely without much casualties. The government can gas the area. If it doesn’t know the technology, it should consult experts.

Another alternative is violent crackdown on them. History is replete with many examples. Nigeria has relative peace in the Northeast today not because it bought peace but because it carried arms and crushed Boko Haram. Patience and intelligence gathering will always produce results. Terror without money and fresh recruits crumble and die.

Nigeria is neither patient nor tactical enough in its approach. If it cannot do the job, it should invite mercenaries.

Aliyu Nubu is a public commentator. He writes from Abuja, Nigeria.