The Learner

  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...

The Scholar Who Shaped My Journey: A Tribute to Abdalla Uba Adamu By Muhsin Ibrahim Growing up surrounded by books at home, I aspired to be a writer. In 1999, as an adjunct teacher at a local Islamic school, I received my first-ever salary, which I spent on books. Many experienced writers advise that you must be a reader to become a writer. So, I read as much as I could, especially back then, to realise my dream. At some point in 2005, Freedom Radio, Kano, invited Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu for an interview. As a versatile academic, he spoke at length on various topics, including their Yahoo! group and the KanoOnline forum. I became very interested in both. That was the year I finished secondary school, and I was eager to improve my English to pursue my writing dreams while also preparing for higher education. I wanted to contact Prof. Abdalla via email, which I noted when he mentioned it on the radio programme, but I was unsure whether he would reply. When I finally gathered the courage...

Dear Donald Trump, we are not apes By Muhsin Ibrahim We could not sleep one night in 2008. Instead, we sat in front of the TV, watching and praying for ‘our’ favourite candidate to coast to power and be declared the winner of the election. We wanted to witness history, not of any relative winning any election in Nigeria, but of Barack Obama winning the United States presidential election. Of course, we witnessed the history of the first non-white man becoming the president of the most powerful country in the world. We were delighted. We thought that, henceforth, black people would be more respected globally. Henceforth, our race would not be associated with backwardness. Henceforth, we would have more opportunities not only in the US but far beyond. We also thought President Obama would do more for Africa (where his father came from) and for Muslims (his father’s ‘relatives’), especially in the Middle East. Again, his association with towering academics, such as Edward Said and Rashid ...