The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 The elections were over. The winners (and losers, too) are known, and Nigerians await their inaugurations on May 29 th . However, the repercussions of the elections are far from over. Igbos, whose undaunted, though paranoid, doubt of Hausa-Fulani leadership forbade them to vote for Gen. Buhari, are still being brazenly abused, esp. on cyberspace. And they respond most crudely by calling their attackers with unprintable names. This is but one case out of many that are raping Nigeria along ethnic lines. It’s sadder that the indigene-settler dichotomy still exists even within our constitution; mobility freedom of citizens is seldom crippled by arrests of northerners in the south; and the so-called quarter system truncates chances of getting a job. I don’t forget the far more horrible, countless ethno-religious crises in many cities and villages like Jos, Zankuwa, etc, that claimed the lives of thousands. It tears me up inside. I am often left...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 I read and heard that no fewer than 100 souls were lost and dozens of others injured in celebrations over General Buhari’s victory in the 28 th March Nigerian presidential election. How sad and unfortunate! While telling my wife that people were euphoric to that extent, she inadvertently said to me that when we returned to Nigeria in the middle of the year, there would be no more electricity outages, no more Boko Haram terror attacks, and no more unpleasantness. That unrealistic wish left me transfixed, for I have heard and read many others expressing the same or similar expectations, as, to them, the ‘Messiah’ has attained power. So much has been written about the election and the manner in which President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat. I have, however, yet to see any piece on that hankering of the 15 million plus electorates, most of whom are masses, who voted for Buhari. People yearn for Change—the slogan of his party, APC—in the...

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...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 A lot happened last week. Least of all, my one-terabyte external hard disk fell down and was crushed; Ugh! From Nigeria, two major interviews by President Jonathan and his number one contender, Gen. Buhari, and the fierce fight between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military in Gombe state got the media’s attention. That’s how the media works: to report what’s happening and should do that irrespective of who is the victor or the vanquished. This is just an example; Nigerian media is far below the standards of professionalism, objectivity, or any desired standard. All too often, Muslims are associated with terrorism. This is not news, not any longer since the 9/11 attacks. Before the attacks, many Muslim countries were in relative peace: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. Now the story is markedly a contrasting, a la scaring one. Daily, hundreds of Muslims are killed in those countries and others like Nigeria, Somalia, Myanmar, etc. And the ...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 The much-awaited Valentine Day election, fondly called FeBuhari 14th by supporters of APC presidential candidate General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB), was finally postponed yesterday, although many observers had long predicted it. President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) has been feared by many to be, directly or indirectly, behind the dreaded Boko Haram (BH) insurgency. This undoubtedly sounds implausible, but no one can refute the allegation hands down. Can you? What’s your verified fact? There’s none. The (In)dependent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was apparently forced to postpone the elections to March 28 and April 11. Two main reasons could be deduced, and both are for pure, however mischievous, political gains by the ruining, nay, ruling party, PDP. First, taking the above hunch that President Jonathan has a hand in the spread of the insurgency, this postponement is a clear vindication that he wants to elongate his tenure for onl...