abubakar

denial embodied

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

.@elonmusk says that no one can name a person who died from his aid cuts. In fact, I've met the kids who are dying, and I've talked to the families who lost children. In my columns, I've cited many, many names of people who have died because of Musk's aid cuts. A few examples:
*Yamah Freeman was a 23-year-old woman who died in childbirth because Musk cut funding for the diesel for ambulances in her part of Liberia. She couldn't get to a hospital and died as people were carrying her there. I talked to her parents and sister in their village.
*Gbessey Kiadu, age 1, died of malaria because of his cuts to malaria medication in Liberia. I talked to his mom in her village.
*Ibrahim Koroma, an infant, died of AIDS in Sierra Leone after he interrupted HIV supplies. I talked to health workers who cared for him.
*Achol Deng was an 8-year-old girl with HIV in South Sudan who died when Musk cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines. I talked to the healthcare workers.
I could go on and on. In almost every village you go to in South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone or other countries I reported in, you find people dying because of aid cuts. I challenge Musk: Come with me on a reporting trip, and we'll talk to these moms and dads, and you'll see the dying children themselves. I think if you see the kids whose lives are at stake, maybe you'll change your mind.

[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.

[abubakar @Calipha33]

I recommend you visit this link: https://t.co/bTaUQ3cPZ4

[Ifẹ́ anyị n’achọ @SwagOnPoint_0]

You can’t run forever. Eventually, either you or your grandkids will have to head home. White nationalism is a growing reality in the West that people are flocking to. It’s only a matter of time before these nations transition into white supremacist fascism.

[abubakar @Calipha33]

"What's good for all of us, is good for each of us."

[Iran Embassy in Thailand ☫ @IranInThailand]

A wise man once said, "Open the strait or I will covfefe".
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Antifa_Ultras @ultras_antifaa]

#BoycottWorldCup2026

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad @Ahmadinejad1956]

@fredzannarbor @Kaepernick7 @CoachJim4UM With a hard work ethic Inshallah the U of M will return to its glory days.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

58,000 Americans died in Vietnam.

Over 3,000,000 Vietnamese died.

And for fifty years, American culture has centered the grief of the 58,000 while treating the 3,000,000 as a backdrop.

As scenery. As context. As "the Vietnam War experience."

They built a wall in Washington with American names on it.

A beautiful wall. A solemn wall.

Good. Mourn your dead.

But understand what that wall does not say.

It does not say why they died.

It does not say what they were doing there.

It does not say what was done in their name to the people whose country it actually was.

It does not mention My Lai, where American soldiers massacred an entire village, old men, women, children, babies, and the officer who ordered it served three years of house arrest before being pardoned.

Three years. House arrest. Pardoned.

For five hundred people murdered in a ditch.

It does not mention the 2.7 million acres of Vietnamese forest doused in Agent Orange, a chemical weapon disguised as herbicide, that is still deforming Vietnamese children today.

Not in 1970. Not in 1985. Today.

Children born in 2020 with bodies twisted by a war their grandparents fought.

And the chemical companies that made it are still in business.

Still profitable.

Still un-prosecuted.

And yet they send us human rights reports.

They grade our democracy.

They warn us about our behavior.

The audacity is so enormous it becomes almost impressive.

Almost.

[Salz @salmabanks_]

Abuja, let’s stand up for our public spaces.
Let’s stand for something.

Tell a friend! Let’s meet at Jabi Park tomorrow at 8am prompt.

[gst @wearegst]

Jabi Lake isn’t a luxury asset to be traded off, it’s one of the few public spaces Abuja has left. Selling it off is a direct attack on community, the environment, and everyday people.

[Salz @salmabanks_]

Abuja, wake up!!

Jabi park has been split in half. Someone claims half of the park is now “private” property. Whoever sold the land in FCDA needs to lose their job.

Jabi park today, millennium park tomorrow!
We all need to go to the park and prevent them from building.

[Dr Ruby (she/her) jaboukies everything @PaperWhispers]

The kids were not white.

[Antifa_Ultras @ultras_antifaa]

#BoycottWorldCup2026

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Dear UN Member States,

As I prepare to deliver my 8th report to the UN, I reiterate: Israel poses a threat to international peace and security.

I have documented its most egregious crimes. Now the obligation to act, and stop it, sparing innocent lives, rests with you.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The funniest thing happening in the world right now is the way the western political/media class is asking us to be shocked and outraged that Iran would attack US allies who are actively collaborating toward its destruction in an unprovoked war of aggression. It's hilarious.

Think about how dehumanized the Muslim world would have to be in your perception in order for that kind of thinking to make sense. You'd have to see them as so unlike yourself that it would astonish and baffle you for them to be retaliating against unprovoked aggressions like any normal human being. Your view would essentially have to be, "Why are those Iranians hitting us back? Don't they know their role is to be killed, and our role is to do the killing? They've got the natural order of things completely backward!"

Iran is fighting for its very existence as a state. Obviously it's going to respond aggressively toward everyone who's helping to destroy it. It's a symptom of a profoundly sick and twisted civilization that this would seem abnormal or surprising to anyone.

[Basil @basilabia]

Officially in the race! https://t.co/tf4UAhNp3C

[abubakar @Calipha33]

@drgad1900 @DropSiteNews https://t.co/ZJbAyme942

[Basil @basilabia]

“Africa must reinvent itself through rigor, competence, and responsibility.”

[abubakar @Calipha33]

"He that complaineth of injury from his Sovereign, complaineth of that whereof he is the author himselfe; and therefore ought not to accuse any man but himselfe"