The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 As a special gesture to mark Nigeria ’s Independence Day, I wrote an article  on October 1st, 2014, extolling the country . It was a rare piece, for I and many others have written several other articles decrying the decay in the country’s polity, insecurity, falling standard of education, depreciation of the naira, and various other unmentionable issues. Nonetheless, I painted Nigeria as great (as it is supposed to be), and, somewhat, ‘denigrated’ my host country, India, by comparing it.  I now kind of believe I was wrong, as a friend pointed it out to me at the time. I think he’s even more right than he thought he was. Last Sunday, March 22nd, President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan commissioned a 2.5b naira flyover popularly called “Gadar Lado”, meaning Lado’s flyover, in Kano state. Bashir Garba Lado is the senator representing the state’s central senatorial zone. He was credited with spearheading the project. Nevertheless, ju...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 Without digging deeper into the history lane in Nigerian politics, many people know that last-minute relinquishment, nay betrayal, by swayers in a political journey often results in the success or failure of a particular candidate. For instance, the Kano people saw that in 1999, when a comparatively more popular Engr. Magaji Abdullahi lost the governorship election to Engr. Rabiu Kwankwaso. There was a similar scenario in 2011 during the presidential election. General Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) entered into an ill-advised alliance with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) at  the eleventh hour . It didn’t work as feared. ACN and its southwestern supporters dumped CPC and the party’s candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, too, for President Goodluck Jonathan (and his party, the PDP). Yesterday, a well-informed Yoruba friend of mine posted on Facebook that an experienced friend of his feared that opposition might yet again give i...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 It’s a familiar saying that common sense is not so common. Many people regard this saying as silly, or worse. However, evidently enough, many events around the world are corroborating it today. Common sense is indeed getting scarcer by the tick of a clock. Humans’ faculty is becoming faulty and faultier. Bad is considered good, and good is considered harmful. Right as wrong, wrong as right. Demarcation line between almost anything hitherto thought as positive and/or negative is being thinned, blurred and shall soon vanish. A weird law was given a nod in South Korea in the past week.  Adultery is now legalised , and soon thereafter,  condom makers’ shares surge.   Fornication has since been permissible in many countries, though, provided the persons involved have reached puberty, and there’s no compulsion. Wonder; this new, lewd law was virtually nothing sensational, even on social media, as other, perhaps more pressing, news...