The Learner

By Muhsin Ibrahim If Engr. Abba K. Yusuf wins this weekend's election, which I hope he does, he gets much work to do in Kano State. However, that is not the focus of this brief article. Instead, I want to write about the other critical work he needs to do: reorienting the Kwankwasiyya stalwarts. As I said the other day, our politics is fraught with immorality, thuggery, you name it. Believe it or not (and I know many among my friends will not), Kwankwasiyya followers are infamous for using rude language against their opponents. I have been insulted for 'criticising' Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the founder and grand leader of the movement. No one has ever insulted me more than some of these folks. They spare no one! Engr. Abba Kabir Yusuf Thus, Engr. Abba should initiate programs to sanitise his followers. The work is enormous, and it will take much effort. However, something needs to be done to reorient the promising followers of this auspicious political movement. It worries ...

Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com Kano is the commercial nerve centre of northern Nigeria, a region now known for its illiteracy and poverty with millions of children roaming its streets in search of food. The rate of ethno-religious conflict rises side-by-side with kidnappings along highways. Boko Haram also still attacks rural areas of Borno and Yobe states. The ills bedevilling this one-time prosperous part of the country are too many to discuss in a quick, brief and, perhaps, poorly organised article like this one. Nigerian political leaders do not make things any better for the populace. Corruption remains their frailty. Generally, though, bribery and corruption have been firmly instituted in the country. They have eaten deep into our everyday life. An Al-Jazeera English journalist interviewing the then-presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari in 2014 said that Nigeria and corruption were synonymous. Disturbing as this sounds, it is a truth. Mr Buhari unseated a sitti...

Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 This is a Herculean job. I have read and listened to several political commentators saying that Donald Trump’s triumph is a logic-defying, demystifying puzzle and a record breaking event in the political history of not only the US but the world in general. For those not very familiar with this character, Trump is a bigot, racist, protectionist, misogynist, an Islamaphobic, and, above all, a very ignorant billionaire businessman. That is why, perhaps, almost all pre-election opinion polls indicated that his opponent, Hillary Clinton would win the election, but he did. A particular disgruntled analyst, Tom Freeman, has gone to the extreme in his quest for meaning of Trump’s victory. He wrote an article that contains only a word all through: F**k . The writer couldn’t be more descriptive and rational, for this is just it. Yet, curses, yells, despair, etc. cannot change the reality that Trump is the president-elect of the world’s super power, the might...

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...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 I wrote an article  about a year or so ago on the sweeping spate of dirty politics taking the centre stage of my state Kano , Nigeria . It solely focused on the two leading archrivals, the present governor of the state, Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and his predecessor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau. Their politicking forays into the daily lives of Kano people. Often, loyalty or otherwise to one of them defines our identity. No matter how hard one tries to reconcile the two, he or she is bound to fail. They are practically seen as totally the opposite of the other like fire and water; loving both is believed to be incompatible. Whatever, I stand to defy this fallacy. It’s my humble belief that both did something for the state; both deserve some respect; both are humans, not demons; and neither performed to a T. A few days ago, a very good, elder friend of mine awkwardly described my behaviour of what he calls ‘proving people wrong’ as chil...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 The political atmosphere of Nigeria, or particularly of my state, Kano, is by each tick of a second getting more tensed and intense. Although I presently reside outside the shore of the state, one cannot help but see and hear this and that on air and online. I am not a politician, nor into the politics; I had though been a very passive partisan, but even that was a long time ago. I am thankful to Allah that I have successfully quit, and wish to reserve any serious public commentary. Nonetheless, for being things as they are, I couldn’t resist the temptation to break my earlier ‘promise’ not to comment. I believe my motive was well-generated. For, we need relative sanity in the polity, peace in our state and mutual respect among the populace, which are all that the current state of affairs sets out to disperse and replace with impurity, impudicity and perfidy. The incumbent governor of Kano state, Engr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso and his predece...