Adamu Tilde

I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.

Publius Terentius Afer.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Jazakallah bi khair, Dr. @AskMichaelTaiwo.

[Michael Taiwo @AskMichaelTaiwo]

I am grateful for the investment we make in the lives of very bright but indigent students.

Kids who never stood a chance now at Ivy Leagues.

Thank you to our donors.

Your gift is rewriting the narrative that folks from developing countries can't compete at the very top.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@el_bonga Ameen

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

Repeated claims like this show how little Nigerians know about their own country. There is enough scholarship on these issues to not make broad and widely debunked claims like this.

First: The claim that the almajiri system functions as a conveyor belt to terrorism and banditry is contested by the most rigorous scholarly work on the subject and there is the work of Dr. Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman @dj_kere whose doctoral research "The Men They Become": Northern Nigeria's Former Almajirai: Analysing Representational Discourses of Identity, Knowledge and Education (2018), involved years of fieldwork and direct engagement with former almajirai. Assuming I read her work correctly, she found that the mainstream representation of the system (which has been repeated in the tweet below) is only "one possible set of articulations and that alternative meanings exist." Other research she has done found no operational extension of say Boko Haram in almajiri Qur'anic schools, and that almajiris themselves "vehemently rejected any moves to join Boko Haram activities." @dj_kere has also argued that the almajiri system's deterioration, is a product of colonial disruption and post-colonial governance failure, not an inherent feature of Qur'anic education itself.

Even in the case of Boko Haram, where the almajiri connection is most often asserted, the evidence does not support a direct causal line. We have the work of @HannahHoechner for example. She has argued in this piece here (https://t.co/XuohhpnSfN) about this. In the article she mentions that "correlation is not proof of causation: That almajirai joined does not automatically mean that almajirci made them join." There is also the 2017 paper, "The Almajiri System and Insurgency in Northern Nigeria: A Reconstruction of the Existing Narratives for Policy Direction," where research shows that "the Almajiri system in itself does not radicalize the Almajirai cohort," but that decades of bad governance have produced a large, alienated, and economically destitute youth cohort who become targets for recruitment — a crucial distinction between vulnerability and causation.

Meanwhile, Boko Haram's founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was not himself a product of the street almajiri system: according to Hussain Zakaria (for example in the US Institute of Peace report "Why Do Youth Join Boko Haram?", 2014), Yusuf had the equivalent of a graduate-level education, having studied theology at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, where he absorbed Salafi-jihadist ideology from transnational networks — not from classical Qur'anic schooling.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the conflation of Fulani banditry with the almajiri system is especially unsupported. There is ample research here. For example, in "The Other Insurgency: Northwest Nigeria's Worsening Bandit Crisis" (published in Security and Defence Quarterly 2021), the research establishes that that northwest banditry is driven by land-use conflict, Fulani pastoralist "grievances" (quotes mine- you can call it something else), climate-driven competition over grazing routes, and governance collapse — not by Qur'anic schooling of any kind.

Added to that, the Fulani ethnic militia phenomenon has its own distinct social base. If you read the War on the Rocks analysis by @jh_barnett and Murtala Rufai, they have noted that "the majority of bandits have shown little interest in adopting" jihadist ideology, with alleged cooperation between bandits and jihadists being "less meaningful than many observers assume." You can read that analysis here: https://t.co/YM22c3fPhn

As for Boko Haram's actual membership profile, the documentary record points in the opposite direction from the almajiri narrative. Again I urge people to read the USIP report "Why Do Youth Join Boko Haram?" of 2014 which documents that as early as 2004, "students, especially in tertiary institutions in Borno and Yobe states, withdrew from school, tore up their certificates, and joined the group." This account is corroborated by Human Rights Watch in "They Set the Classrooms on Fire": Attacks on Education in Northeast Nigeria (2016), which records testimony of a local imam urging believers to destroy their educational documents, with university graduates complying publicly. @HannahHoechner's own work confirms that "some members of the group used to be university graduates who tore their university certificates at the beginning of the Boko Haram propaganda" — a fact that fundamentally complicates any simple narrative linking Islamic street education to the rise of the insurgency.

Please people, read, read, read. Especially at a time like this when people are angry and making broad claims.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@HarounMuhammed Ma Sha Allah.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

One step at a time...

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Allah Ya bada nasara.

[Channels Television @channelstv]

President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, has unveiled plans to expand into steel production, electricity generation, and port development as part of a broader ambition to accelerate industrialisation across Africa.

https://t.co/NzASRW4IvQ

[Gimba Kakanda @gimbakakanda]

A Distant War, a Nearby Fire

Even as a country overwhelmed by a domestic security crisis, I think it is delusional to police those who see the connection between conflicts in the Middle East and what we experience here. They have every reason to be wary. It is not only because faith-based allegiances at home can be mobilised in sympathy with parties to those conflicts, with one bloc instinctively reading events through an Iranian lens and another through an Israeli one. It is also because every distant war arrives here as a local argument, repackaged for ideological recruitment and grievance.

The dominant framing of what is happening in the Middle East can be exploited by those nursing ambitions of religious war, and it can accelerate arms proliferation in an already volatile world. We have seen this film before. The collapse of Libya did not remain a Libyan tragedy; it became a regional armoury, with weapons and fighters dispersing across fragile borders, feeding insurgencies and organised violence in the Sahel, and strengthening the ecosystem in which groups like Boko Haram thrive. When great powers trade blows, as they are doing in the Middle East now, the shrapnel travels without visas.

This is even more so because Nigeria, too, is on the menu of great-power politics. Our size, strategic location, resources, and diplomatic weight make us attractive terrain for proxy games and influence operations. Nothing is easier to weaponise than identity. The cynical inflation of “Christian genocide” claims, circulated as political ammunition rather than as a call to justice, is one of the most combustible tools in that arsenal: it is designed to harden camps, delegitimise the state, and set communities against one another until the country feels ungovernable.

The point is that we do not live in isolation, and we are not immune to the ripple effects of a world sliding into confrontation. If sense does not take charge of those with thumbs on nuclear buttons, the warning shots will keep echoing in places like ours, where the ground is already dry for a fire we do not have the capacity to stop.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Hello @MobilePunch,

How do you do?

Warmest regards.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

It don tey!

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Ustaz @gimbakakanda I no dey bill you very well fa. Get ready for ambush when next I am in town. 😂

[Gimba Kakanda @gimbakakanda]

No easing on the clock.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@gimbakakanda Ustaz @gimbakakanda I no dey bill you very well fa. Get ready for ambush when next I am in town. 😂

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

BismilLah. 😊

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@MA_Iliasu @MobiChristophe6 It is complicated. Upbringing shapes a lot of things including what people consider as the most appropriate margin one should get. Otherwise, whatever they wrote is true.

[Michael Taiwo @AskMichaelTaiwo]

My Speech at the 25th Year Reunion of Offa Grammar School Class of 2000.

La Mango Restaurant, Ikeja, Lagos on November 29, 2025

Dear brothers and sisters, good evening.

I am genuinely grateful to be here today. It has been a quarter of a century since I saw many of you. I am thankful for the opportunity to reunite. I have been asked to speak on Nation Building and to do this, allow me to open with the words of Confucius:

The illustrious ancients, when they wished to make clear and to propagate the highest virtues in the world, put their states in proper order. Before putting their states in proper order, they regulated their families. Before regulating their families, they cultivated their own selves. Before cultivating their own selves, they perfected their souls. Before perfecting their souls, they tried to be sincere in their thoughts. Before trying to be sincere in their thoughts, they extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such investigation of knowledge lay in the investigation of things, and in seeing them as they really were. When things were thus investigated, knowledge became complete. When knowledge was complete, their thoughts became sincere. When their thoughts were sincere, their souls became perfect. When their souls were perfect, their own selves became cultivated. When their selves were cultivated, their families became regulated. When their families were regulated, their states came to be put into proper order. When their states were in proper order, then the whole world became peaceful and happy.

In this short but profound text, he teaches that the road to a just and peaceful nation begins with the individual.

Before a state can be properly ordered, the family must be regulated. Before the family can be regulated, the individual must be cultivated. Before the individual can be cultivated, the heart must be made sincere. And sincerity begins with honest thought, grounded in true knowledge.

That ancient ladder - from knowledge to thought, to character, to family, to nation - captures the central message I want to share tonight: nation building starts with me. With you. With each of us.

We look around Nigeria today and we see failure in leadership, failures in institutions, and failures in systems. It is easy, very easy, to blame government officials, politicians, and people in authority.

But the uncomfortable truth is this:
We have corrupt leaders because we are a corrupt people. We tolerate what we should reject. We excuse what we should confront. We accept what we should challenge.

In quality management, we are taught three simple rules:
Do not accept defect.
Do not create defect.
Do not pass defect along.

If we applied these three principles to citizenship, Nigeria would be a different nation entirely. Imagine a society where no one accepts wrong, no one creates wrong, and no one inflicts wrong on another. Imagine a society where personal integrity is non-negotiable. That is what Confucius meant. That is what nation building demands.

Because the truth is this: every time we cut corners, pay a bribe, inflate an invoice, cheat the system, or even look away when wrongdoing happens, we contribute - quietly but powerfully - to the decay of our own country.

We talk about bad leaders. But as political scientists often say, nations rarely rise above the moral standard of their citizens. In other words, we get the leaders we deserve.

Let me remind you of our final year at OGS when Suraj was omitted when the list of prefects were announced, despite clearly being one of the best students around. This omission reflected a policy of selecting only science students for leadership roles. At barely seventeen, Suraj refused to accept this wrong. The next day he returned to school with a ten‑page rebuttal, pasted it on the notice board, and challenged the authorities. It sparked a conversation that would not be silenced. Inspired by him, I later led a protest demanding that our WAEC fees be refunded after we heard on the radio that the state was returning the money but our school had taken no action. Over the following years the policy changed; non‑science students began to hold leadership positions — an assistant head girl in 2001, an assistant senior prefect in 2002, and a head girl in the 2003/2004 set. One person’s refusal to tolerate injustice made a lasting difference.

We gather tonight as people who have been blessed with education, opportunities, networks, and a measure of influence. Twenty-five years ago, we sat in the same classrooms dreaming of a better future. Today, we are no longer dreamers - we are the adults in the room. We are the ones responsible for shaping the future our children will inherit.

So the question is no longer, “What is wrong with Nigeria?”

The question is, “What is wrong with me? What am I contributing? And what can I fix?”

Nation building is not a speech. It is not an election cycle. It is not about whichever administration is in power.

Nation building is a personal discipline.
A daily decision.
A moral commitment.
It is stopping at traffic lights even when nobody is watching.
It is refusing to pay bribes even when it inconveniences you.
It is choosing honesty in business even when fraud seems easier.
It is treating people with dignity even when you have power over them.
It is raising children who know integrity not as theory, but as lifestyle.

Because as Confucius reminds us:
If we regulate ourselves, our families will be strong.
If families are strong, communities will be stable.
If communities are stable, the nation will thrive.

The next 25 years of our lives will be even more influential than the past 25. We must not waste them.

Let us commit tonight to becoming the kind of citizens Nigeria needs - citizens who are disciplined, principled, courageous, and uncompromising in the face of wrongdoing.

Let us commit to nation building as a personal responsibility.

Let us leave this reunion determined that when history records the story of Nigeria, it will say: “They handed over a better country than the one they met.”

And if anyone asks how we did it, we can point back to Confucius and say….We started by fixing ourselves.

Thank you, and God bless you all. God bless our families. And God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Topic: Entrepreneurship in a challenging economy: Mindset, Strategy and Discipline.

Be our guest!

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@el_bonga Big man. Your boys are loyal.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@idrisayobello @OAUniversity Ameen.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@MA_Iliasu Lol. Yarinta dadi. Zaka chanza amsa nan da shekara uku. In the meantime, mai tambaya ya rike budurwar shi da kyau. Ya riqe ta hannu biyu biyu.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

Whoever tells you that he or she understands how Nigeria works is a liar.

[TheCable @thecableng]

Senate moves to cut $2bn rice import bill, establish national rice council

The senate has begun moves to cut Nigeria’s $2 billion rice import bill by establishing a national rice council to boost local production and strengthen food self-sufficiency.

A bill sponsored by Adamu Aliero, senator representing Kebbi central, aims to establish the Rice Development Council of Nigeria to coordinate research, regulate production standards, support farmers, and promote innovation across the rice value chain.

Speaking at a public hearing on the bill alongside the Cassava Inclusion and Flour Production Bill and the National Food Reserve Agency Bill, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, represented by Mohammed Monguno, senate chief whip, said the measures align with President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda for agricultural and economic transformation.

“The Rice Development Council of Nigeria Bill represents our economic firepower, poised to create millions of jobs, reduce foreign exchange spending on importation, and make Nigeria Africa’s rice powerhouse,” Akpabio said.

[Adamu Tilde @Adamtilde]

@el_bonga Quitting paid job.