Boy

[Chetuya Chinagolum @Chetuyachinago]

At this stage in our historical awakening, we as Africans must immediately stop referring to the 1994 Rwandan genocide as merely an "ancient tribal war."

First of all, this narrative is historically inaccurate and criminally misleading.
The Hutus and Tutsis are not two different ethnic tribes: they belong to the exact same cultural group, speak the exact same language, inhabit the exact same geographic regions, practice the exact same spiritual religions, observe the exact same traditions, and have historically intermarried for centuries.

The historical distinction between a Hutu and a Tutsi was strictly a matter of economic class, perfectly analogous to the difference between a wealthy, cattle-owning Alhaji and a landless agricultural worker in Northern Nigeria. "Tutsi" was originally nothing more than a social title assigned to those who owned herds of cattle, held land rights, and controlled the local means of production, while "Hutu" simply referred to agrarian farmers, subsistence cultivators, and manual laborers. This class distinction was fluid rather than permanent: a wealthy Hutu who accumulated significant cattle and land through social mobility automatically underwent the cultural process of Kwihutura and became a Tutsi, while an impoverished Tutsi who lost his livestock and wealth tumbled down the social ladder to become a Hutu.

Even with these fluid class distinctions, Hutus and Tutsis lived harmoniously, coexisted peacefully, and continuously intermarried across generations.

But when German and subsequently Belgian imperialists invaded Rwanda, their colonial minds could not comprehend how a sophisticated Black African civilization could construct such an organized, highly structured, and centralized kingdom. To explain away this African achievement, they introduced the pseudoscientific "Hamitic Hypothesis."
They brainwashed the Tutsi elites into believing they were not purely Black Africans, but rather superior Cushitic descendants of Europe with lighter skin, refined features, and natural intelligence, while characterizing the Hutus as typical "Bantu Africans" who were allegedly shorter, darker, less intelligent, and suited only for backbreaking manual labor. The Belgian colonizers did not merely preach this racist theory: they constructed their entire colonial administration around it.

In 1933, the Belgians issued mandatory ethnic identity cards, permanently freezing what was once a fluid economic class into rigid, unchangeable racial categories. This myth was systematically taught in Catholic mission schools, where generations of Tutsi children were brainwashed into believing they were natural-born aristocrats destined to govern, while Hutu children were conditioned to believe they were born to be exploited laborers. Naturally, this divide-and-rule strategy perfectly served the extraction interests of the European masters, as Hutus performed unpaid forced labor in the coffee fields while Tutsis served as intermediate colonial overseers, ensuring that raw agricultural wealth flowed seamlessly to Western metropoles.

The fundamental problem for the colonizers, however, arose when the educated Tutsi elite, utilizing their Western education, began developing anti-colonial consciousness, organizing political parties, and fiercely demanding immediate national independence. Deeply threatened by this nationalist defiance, the Belgian colonial administration and the Catholic Church executed a sudden, cynical, and hypocritical geopolitical pivot. They completely abandoned the Tutsi monarchy and shifted their total support to the Hutu majority. Overnight, the colonial narrative was inverted: instead of being praised as "superior civilizers," Tutsis were suddenly re-framed as alien "foreign invaders" and feudal parasites who had brutally oppressed the "indigenous" Hutus for centuries. During the 1959 to 1962 transition to independence, Belgian military officers actively assisted Hutu political elites in seizing power, orchestrating widespread political violence, burning Tutsi villages, and driving hundreds of thousands of Tutsis into permanent exile.

For nearly 30 years, these Tutsi refugees languished in border camps across Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, and Zaire (now the DRC). In the early 1980s, young Tutsi refugees who grew up in Ugandan camps, most notably Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, joined the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebel movement led by Yoweri Museveni. They gained extensive, high-level combat experience, intelligence training, and tactical mastery while helping Museveni overthrow the Ugandan government and capture power in 1986. Leveraging these formidable military skills, these seasoned exile fighters formed their own revolutionary movement in 1987: the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In October 1990, the RPF launched a highly organized, full-scale military invasion into northern Rwanda from Uganda to demand their non-negotiable right of return, political representation, and an end to state-sponsored discrimination.

At this critical juncture, while Belgium had originally planted the seeds of division, French imperialism moved aggressively into the center of the picture. The French government, under François Mitterrand, viewed the English-speaking, Uganda-backed RPF as a dangerous "Anglo-Saxon" geopolitical conspiracy designed to strip France of its neocolonial sphere of influence in Francophone.
French officials viewed Juvénal Habyarimana's dictatorial Hutu regime as a vital, submissive client state that had to be defended at all costs. To this end, the French-backed government in Kigali launched a massive, state-directed propaganda campaign, labeling the invading RPF not as freedom fighters coming to end Western imperialism, but as alien invaders, while branding all Tutsis living inside Rwanda as a treacherous "fifth column" and a security threat that had to be eliminated.

But state propaganda alone was not enough to execute a mass slaughter. French military officers, intelligence advisers, and specialized troops directly armed, equipped, and trained the notorious Interahamwe death-squad militias. Between 1990 and 1994, the French government poured millions of dollars in military aid, heavy artillery, intelligence telemetry, and endless shipments of ammunition into the Rwandan military, actively enabling the regime to organize, prepare, and execute the 1994 genocide while attempting to stall the advancing RPF.

So, it was absolutely never an "ancient tribal war." That dishonest, racist narrative was deliberately constructed by European powers and American diplomats as a cynical geopolitical weapon to evade international law.
Under Article 1 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all signatory nations (including the US, France, Great Britain, and Belgium) are strictly, legally obligated to intervene, deploy troops, and spend resources to stop a genocide the moment it is officially recognized as such. If Western powers had officially acknowledged the 1994 slaughter as a state-organized, French-backed genocide, they would have been legally compelled to intervene, risk their own soldiers' lives, and expose their own complicity. To escape this binding legal obligation, Western governments, the US State Department, and the United Nations executed a masterclass in bureaucratic gaslighting. The US State Department explicitly instructed its diplomats, press secretaries, and spokespeople in 1994 to avoid using the word "genocide" on the record, demanding they use sanitized phrases like "acts of genocide," "ethnic clashes," or "widespread civil violence." Western media outlets simultaneously framed the systematic, state-executed slaughter of over 800,000 human beings as an "uncontrollable explosion of primitive, tribal hatreds" or a chaotic, senseless African civil war.

In mid-July 1994, the French-backed Hutu regime was decisively defeated, and the capital city of Kigali was captured by Paul Kagame's disciplined RPF forces. Upon taking power, the new RPF government immediately, permanently abolished the colonial ethnic identity cards and outlawed all public categorization by "Hutu," "Tutsi," or "Twa." Under strict new laws, weaponizing ethnic divisionism or publicly framing political, economic, or social issues around tribal identities was made strictly illegal. Under the visionary and institutionalized leadership of Paul Kagame, Rwanda completely rebuilt its shattered infrastructure, eradicated administrative corruption, revolutionized public healthcare, modernized its cities, and transformed itself into one of Africa's fastest-growing economies, cleanest societies, and safest, most technologically sovereign nations.

[Imago Dei @eldivine]

Downloaded this. It's not often that an excellent book like this is available for FREE. Please grab this one!

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004) spends so much time building Maggie’s boxing story that you start settling into the rhythm of a classic underdog film. Then the entire purpose of that story changes, and suddenly every earlier scene hits differently.

[SizZzle. 😎🇳🇬 @n6oflife6]

Shouts outs to @DavidHundeyin and @Big_Mck for opening the eyes of Nigerians. At first many people didn’t understand what they were telling us via their new FBI/ CIA topics. But yesterday when I saw Nigerians research and Evaluate those 2 Foreigners who Gifted Peller money as possible CIA agents And even going as far as Producing their past Jobs and Military history. Na that time I know say Their message done dey enter People head Small Small. Keep it up Guys.. The Ministry no easy but somebody gotta do it. Shalom. 🤔🫢😎

[Douglas Kendyson @KendysonD]

Hi @jidesanwoolu, @hanneymusawa

I'm deeply disappointed in your @lirs_govng team hounding Selar in the name of claiming creator royalty taxes. I turn 30 in Oct and I've spent the last 10 years building Selar, so this is what the youth mean by policies being created to crush growing businesses. We are the pioneering and largest creator company in Nigeria (Africa actually), and instead of being supported by the government, the LIRS team is keen on trying to scapegoat us to set a precident.

Beyond the huge numbers seen in the headlines, we are still a young company just trying to make our mark for the creator economy in a country where we've never been supported once, we're literally a bootstrapped company. In 2025 alone, we've fulfilled our tax obligation in almost 9 figures and we've never missed out on any of our tax obligation over the years. You can check the records.

We are a software company, we make our ecommerce software available to our thousands of creators in not just Nigeria but 13 other African countries and for that, we earn a small commission of 4%, most of which goes to our payment provider. This is the same business as shopify, teachable, e.t.c There is no reason LIRS is hounding us for a backdated 5% royalty fee on all sales when we've clearly explained our line of business to them and shared everything to prove we are not a royalty based business.

What they're asking us to do is raise our pricing to extort these funds from our creators which is odd considering our creators still pay taxes on their income. No creator company in the world charges as high as even 5%.

Also, less payment gateway charges we get 1-3% max, so where do we pay backdated 5% fees from?

The government would have to decide if it wants the Nigerian creative economy to grow or not.

This conversation is important to me because we pioneered this industry of monetizing digital products online in Nigeria and today we host over 400k creators selling using our platform.

This is an opportunity for the government to show it's committment to making Nigeria work for young Nigerians especially in the creator economy.

Time and money we should be spending investing into our business and it's growth for the GDP of this nation is being spent in long back and forth.

We can't catch up with the west if this is what we're facing at home. Above everything else, disputes like this are distracting from the real work.

If anything, for all our CSR contributions to the education system in the country with our Smart Hustle Anti fraud initiative and our other efforts, we should be getting tax rebates, but we're not even asking for anything but to be left alone to build our business.

Thank you.

[Film Updates @FilmUpdates]

First trailer for Bassam Tariq’s ‘YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER’ starring Mahershala Ali, Tramell Tillman, Abubakr Ali, Tiffany Boone and Giancarlo Esposito.

It follows a devoutly religious hitman who struggles to balance work, faith and fatherhood.

In theaters October 9.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

First trailer for the ‘Rick & Morty’ spinoff ‘PRESIDENT CURTIS’.

Releasing July 26 on Adult Swim.

[Kemi @iksly2]

This is what a Boolean search is: https://t.co/hSWaQPN058

[blue @bluewmist]

every time you replace “this is hard” with “what’s the first step?” you shift brain activity from your amygdala (fear) to your prefrontal cortex (problem-solving).
that’s neuroplasticity in real time.

[Vincent The Therapist @mrhighfoster]

Let me explain what this means so that you understand better.
.
Sometimes tiny cells in our stomach get very stubborn and turn into bad guys called cancer. They grow way too fast and don't listen to the body's rules.
.
But you see, these smart scientists in Korea didn't want to fight them with big scary bombs and bazookas like old medicines do. Instead they sat the cells on a wooden bench and said "Look here you stubborn cells, why don't you just remember who you really are and be good again?
.
So they made a pretend computer twin of our belly cells. Just like a magic video game version. (something like that sha) so they played around in the game to find the three bossy switches that were making the cells stay stubborn.
.
.
Those three bossy switches have funny names. They are MYB, HDAC2, and FOXA2.
Fantastic 3 lool
.
The scientists turned those three mean switches Off. Poof.
And just like that guess what? The stubborn cancer cells were like "Ohhh… I remember now!
.
Then they calmed down, grew up properly, and turned back into nice, normal belly helper cells. No more bad growing.

They then tried this in Mice, and the poor mice got better. The bad lumps got smaller because the cells stopped being the bullies they were.

It's like telling your barking Dog at home to shusss and calm down. And it actually calms down.
.
.

This isn't ready for humans yet, as it's still developing. But it's going to help out someday. And well, a lot of people are gonna be wayyyy happier.
.
.
.

Kudos to the scientists once again and I'm super happy about this development and the positive impact it's going to have on affected people 💪🏾💪🏾
.

✍️ Vincent The Therapist

[Moe @Mochievous]

If you want to know the exact visa requirements needed for a place based on where you are flying from and what passport you hold, check here.

Save this website because it is the official tool check-in officers use when deciding if to board you or not.

https://t.co/bVdWVFi7PU

[Bark @barkmeta]

realizing we ran out of conspiracy theories because they all came true

[Fintech is Easy @fintechiseasy]

Shout out to Moniepoint for providing the kind of granular economic and financial data we have desperately needed.

See more at https://t.co/fvhp1kj1He

[K.O.O @Dominus_Kelvin]

https://t.co/tP0dviA9jM

[Favour is locked in. @FavourYusuf1]

Nice writeup.

Me I just have 2 questions.

1. Are there more fraudsters in Nigeria today than they were in 2004?

2. If a brand has extremely shitty customer service, is it not normal to tell everyone you know to NOT use them?

3. If they ACTUALLY valued us as a market, have you ever seen them try to interact with the supposed market?

Have you ever seen ANY form of interaction in this market, whether it’s with ecommerce brands, or any other type of customer?

PayPal was not the only payment processor that blocked us.

Till today, you can’t create really a stripe account as a Nigerian, but nobody is boycotting them.

You know why?

Because if you email them, they’d actually reply to your emails and talk to you like a human being.

Good luck getting an explanation from PayPal.

The point is not what they did. It’s HOW they did it.

[Extrastiv @Extrastiv]

https://t.co/xjMICX90qo

[Akin Olaoye @akintollgate]

Based on feedback from the tech bros, here are alternatives to @PayPal

Cleva
Raenest (Geegpay)
Grey
Payoneer
Paystack
Wise
Flutterwave
Lemfi
World Remit
Vban

[Technical Ben @TechnicalBben]

Nigerian fintechs made it possible for me to own a Wells Fargo account while living in Nigeria. They made it happen.

They’ve increased the number of Nigerians earning in dollars. They host events that teach and empower people. They give monthly rewards even when you don’t get paid or land a client. Their charges are minimal.

Remote workers, be very careful with PayPal. When issues come up, your money gets stuck. PayPal tells you to wait. Paga tells you it’s PayPal’s issue. You wait endlessly and get no real response.

Meanwhile, Nigerian fintechs are doing the work. Fast replies. Real support. Problems actually get fixed.

Stay safe.

Support local brands!!!!

At the end do what works for you.

[OurFaveOnlineDoc 🇬🇧 🇳🇬 @OurFavOnlineDoc]

While millions of Nigerians languish in abject penury, a Nigerian politician launches new house.

A man in politics all his life as far as 1978. An ex chairman of PDP’s NWC, ex rivers PDP chairman and also ex deputy national chairman of PDP.

What a life.

[MrBanks💰 @Mrbankstips]

PayPal locked Nigerians out of the global digital economy for 21 years. No receiving payments. No withdrawals. Just ‘send-only’ status while our freelancers and businesses struggled. Now that we’ve built a billion dollar fintech ecosystem without them, they want back in. The audacity.