Abubakar Xadeeq

YOLO 😎 😎 😎

[Name cannot be blank @hackSultan]

There’s actually a country that can do this. North Korea.

[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.

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

It is easier to be (rightly) outraged by poorer Nigerians begging for money from terrorists and kidnappers online, than it is to be outraged by nicely dressed middle class Nigerians, professionals, journalists, writers, and others who routinely take money from politicians who have open and verifiable records of being rapists, murderers, and thieves whose corruption directly leads to more deaths than any bandit could manage to kill. At least these poor(er) people online are just beggars. The well dressed ones don’t just take the money of murderous politicians who terrorise millions, they also actively whitewash and sell them as fit for public office.

Like I wrote in an article here a while ago, a Nigerian will tweet about how much of a disgrace and eyesore Nigerians begging at the airport and on the streets is, while on their way to do executive begging in offices and homes. In the end, the only real crime in Nigeria is poverty. Whatever crime you choose to do, just try to have money and success and you will be fine. Because if you are poor even the people you try to be good to will spit on you because you represent everything they hate and fear — that peculiarly dehumanising Nigerian poverty.

[K.O.O @Dominus_Kelvin]

Books are time-travel devices.

[Big Cuz @imohumoren]

In the future cars will run on water. At BankPHB we are already thinking of it

[Big Cuz @imohumoren]

As a form of entertainment, football is superior to films and TV shows

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@MUBARAQ_ABUU I pray she get better soon,bro

[Kreative Doctor ⚕️ @the_grafixmedic]

Is there a difference between men and women? Yes, a vas deferens.

[jesse alordiah 44DB @jessealordiah]

unlike the liverpool match yesterday which was played in Onikan Stadium

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@mustysznn Hwfa wetin dey sup,drop update for boys,ur last tweets been brazy

[¡ DocturDot! @WOWGR8ForReal]

Blonde is white people light skinned

[MIDΞ (❖,❖) @theProcessXCII]

someone made 55-min video and didn’t fall sick.
tired of seeing “how much I made from something” without showing people how to.

It’s sick imo. It’s okay to gatekeep your edge whatsoever, just don’t come here and bait people into begging you to show them the way.

And to you, anon. Search for things, everything you need is on the internet.

[Artchick 🔥👠 @digitalartchick]

@bryan_johnson This is the kind of tweet that gets read aloud in a court room months after they find someone in a freezer

[Big Cuz @imohumoren]

Avoid going on a family trip to Egypt

[Dr Ola Brown @NaijaFlyingDr]

@oviosu Almost every Naija Twitter trend eventually traces back to macroeconomics, incentives, behavioural economics, institutions, game theory, and how people respond to scarcity and opportunity.

The surface topics change every week, but the underlying mechanics stay the same.

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@Dj_Abba The herb probably

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@MUBARAQ_ABUU Hbd gee

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@ElGremes Yobe,but shekau is actually the most famous person from your state

[Abubakar Xadeeq @AXadeeq]

@mustysznn 😂😂he is from yobe not borno

[MA @MUBARAQ_ABUU]

@AskMichaelTaiwo Had an academic mentor before writing UTME