The Learner

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 ...

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 giv...