The Learner

Mamdani and El Sayed: When Excellence Speaks Louder Than Prejudice By Muhsin Ibrahim If you are that good at your job, your detractors will struggle a lot to pull you down or turn people against you. Mr Zohran Mamdani and Dr Abdul El-Sayed are two excellent examples. They share the same faith: Islam. Mamdani was born in 1991 in Uganda to Indian parents, and El-Sayed was born in 1984 in the US to Egyptian parents. Beyond the duo's faith and immigrant background, they are too good to be easily criticised. Hence, their opponents have struggled to persuade voters to reject them. El-Sayed and his wife are both medical doctors. She practices; he does not. However, he holds a DPhil (i.e. PhD) from Oxford. He also has a very clean record in Michigan's public sector.  In 2007, Bill Clinton praised El-Sayed during a commencement speech at the latter's university. It's quite prophetic that he would later contest and win an election, becoming the first Muslim senator in US history....

  On the Assassination of Sheikh Yahaya Masussuka By Muhsin Ibrahim The tragic trail of political and religious violence in Northern Nigeria has claimed yet another prominent life. It began in 2007 with the gruesome assassinations of Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmud Adam, who was shot dead in Kano while leading dawn prayers, and Sheikh Umar Hamza Dan-Maishiyya in Sokoto. Seven years later, in 2014, Sheikh Muhammad Auwal Albani Zaria was murdered in Kaduna State. Today, in 2026, the targeted killing of Sheikh Yahaya Masussuka by unknown gunmen in Katsina marks a deeply disturbing escalation. In every instance, an influential voice has been violently silenced, leaving a nation burdened with unanswered questions and followers in deep grief and confusion. This recurring pattern represents a severe threat to public safety and social cohesion across Northern Nigeria. Jubilating over the violent end of an ideological rival is dangerous shortsightedness; no cleric, regardless of popularit...

  Atiku May Lose in 2027, but He Has Already (Re)Gained Something By Muhsin Ibrahim Frankly speaking, Atiku Abubakar is unlikely to win the 2027 presidential election for some of the reasons I outlined in a previous write-up. But the loss may not sting him as much as before. Why? If you missed it, I said Nigeria's opposition remains fragmented. The ruling party, APC, has more than 30 state governors, plus Ademola Adeleke (Osun State) of the Accord Party, who will ensure President Bola Tinubu wins their states. Ethno-religious sentiments will also likely favour Tinubu in two ways. First, most Christians will, again, vote for Peter Obi. Some Muslims will also vote for Tinubu for a similar reason — the Muslim-Muslim mantra is not dead! Both developments disfavour Atiku. Again, millions of Nigerians, especially in rural areas, are poor and less informed. In other words, millions are vulnerable to manipulation during elections. Thus, their ballots are for the highest bidder. W...

  Hausa Zallah Zealots Fight the Wrong Battle By Muhsin Ibrahim The interview with Professor Tijjani Naniya on Arise News that I shared on Facebook yesterday continues to generate more (wild) reactions. At the time of posting this, about 1000 comments had been made. This is far more than my previous posts or, generally, above-average social media posts. Of those comments, many are expletives. I deleted a few, but I chose to leave almost all the subsequent ones, including those containing abuse and insults. Why? I want people, especially the thoughtful among us, to see who the faces behind the Hausa Zallah agitation are and what many of them represent. Those comments contradict several core Hausa socio-cultural ideologies codified by scholars such as Kirk-Green (1974), Alhassan et al. (1982), and Adamu (2001). I wonder where those so-called Hausa Zallah folks got them. If they were genuinely "Hausa Zalla", they should demonstrate the cherished Hausa values. Equally, go see ho...

  By Muhsin Ibrahim The uproar over Sultan Abdurrazak’s Film House in Dorayi is astonishing, though, on reflection, perhaps not entirely surprising. There are several film houses in Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Gombe, and elsewhere. The films we watch and discuss, and sometimes quietly enjoy, are shot in those very houses. Why is this one different? Why is this one being rejected? This is not, after all, the first time such a proposal has met with hostility. When the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari proposed building a dedicated Film Village to serve as a production hub for the Nigerian film industry, the reaction in many Northern circles was swift and dismissive. Critics saw it as a government-sponsored gateway to moral corruption, a physical infrastructure for an industry they would rather see disappear. The Film Village never materialised, at least not in the form envisioned, and the opposition it generated revealed something important: many people’s problem is not w...

By Muhsin Ibrahim Inna lillaahi wa innaa ilaihi raaji’un! There is a particular cruelty in the timing of some deaths, a cruelty that refuses to be explained away. Muslim Abdurrazak Ibrahim, 31, died on a Friday. Every Friday without fail, he would send a Jumu’at Mubarak message, a small ritual of love and faith that connected him to family and friends across the distance between a soldier’s post and the world back home. On this Friday, he sent nothing. He could not. He had already gone. Muslim was the firstborn son of Abdurrazak, who named him after his uncle — a tribute to my older brother, Muslim. Abdurrazak, a retired soldier, had fought in battles inside and outside Nigeria and had returned home carrying the weight of friends lost in the trenches of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond. His children, Muslim and his brother Bilal, would both join the Nigerian Army. The week of his death was, without either of us knowing it, a week of farewells. On Wednesday, my busiest day, Muslim aske...