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Showing posts from March, 2015

(45): Feeble Politics on Flyover ("Gadar Lado") in Kano

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Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 As a special gesture to mark Nigeria ’s Independence Day, I wrote an article  in which I extolled the country on October  1 st,  2014. 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 supposed to be), and, somewhat, ‘denigrated’ my host country, India by comparing them. I now kind of believe I was wrong as a friend pointed it out to me then. I think he’s even more right than he thought he was. Last Sunday, the 22 nd of March, 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 as the one who spearheaded the project. Never

(44): March 28th Elections: Fears, Pessimism and Prayers

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

(43): The Death of Common Sense

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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 today, lots of happenings around the world are corroborating it. Common sense is indeed getting scarce and scarcer by the tick of a clock. Humans’ faculty is becoming faulty and faultier. Bad is considered good and good as bad. Right as wrong, wrong as right. Demarcation line between almost anything hitherto thought as positive and/or negative is being thinning, blurring and shall soon vanish. A weirdest law was given a nod in South Korea in the past week. Adultery is now legalized , and soon thereafter, condom maker's 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 the social media as other, perhaps more pressing, news ec