Alhassan Usman

[Alice Evans @_alice_evans]

Using GPS-linked wearable cameras and randomised street audits across 900 kilometres of roads in Greater Mumbai, taking 4000 street images of 23,000 visible individuals,

They find that women only account for 16% of visible people in Mumbai and 15% in Navi Mumbai.

BRILLIANTLY CLEVER PAPER! 👏

Now do Jaipur and Patna!

[Abdool Moh. @abdool_moh]

Bandits kidnapped a medical doctor. They tied him up, set up fire, grabbed his hand and put it inside the burning fire. Everyday, they burn a portion of his hand while he watched & screamed of severe pain. They kept burning the hand daily until they reached his shoulder. They then collected 15 million naira ransom and still killed him. These are the animals government wants to forgive & reward with free houses.

[MufiNishi/Mufiedah @mufmufmuf]

This one took my picture without consent and put a totally wrong narrative. Fyi, I WAS PAID TO WEAR THE KIMONO WITH HIJAB. The kimono shop wanted to attract more Middle East customers.

[Khoa Vu @KhoaVuUmn]

Econ seminar audience waiting for the speaker to finish the first slide:

[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.

[ALUTHEDON @Mbakaza4L]

DO NOT TURN A BLIND EYE TO THIS. HOLY SHIT.

[Karan @karankendre]

CEO waking up to a $500M Claude API bill

[Gabriel 🌩️ @Countcristo44]

Female israeli soldiers train by hurling grenades over a wall into Gaza.
They'll do this kind of shit and then cry about antisemitism.

[George Galloway @georgegalloway]

May God grant them Paradise and their murderers the Hell-fires

[The Saviour @TheSaviour]

🚨🇮🇱🇵🇸BREAKING: Israel carries out a MASSACRE in Gaza just hours before Eid al-Adha.

[Parody Jeff @Parodyjeffx]

Israeli soldiers raided a
Palestinian family's home in the West Bank while the people inside were literally on TikTok live.

Children screaming.Pure terror.

Soldiers laughing and shoving people around inside their own home.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

The Israeli strike on a tent in Khan Younis today severed the foot of a one-month-old infant. The infant’s mother and a 6-year-old girl were also killed in the same attack.

🎥 Filmed by Ibrahim Muhareb. https://t.co/Ro9BnvTMiy

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!

[Heidi Matthews @Heidi__Matthews]

Flotilla participants are arriving at Istanbul airport. This is what Israel military and prison personnel did to them.

[Shaun King @shaunking]

Stop telling me that the problem is Netanyahu.

Israelis gathered together to watch bombs destroy entire towns in Lebanon on a big screen together.

Israeli society is deeply sick and dangerous.

[Dan Bello @BelloGaladanchi]

We renovated a primary school in northern Nigeria

[Study in Japan for Africa @StudyJPN_africa]

🇯🇵 Applying for the MEXT Scholarship?
Read the guidelines first — then join our online session!

✅ Selection process
✅ Common mistakes
✅ Application tips
📅 11 May
🕚 SAST 11:00 | EAT 12:00
💻 Zoom
📌 First 100 participants
Can’t join live? Recording later on YouTube 😊

[Aboo Hafsah @AbuHafsah1]

2 Israeli soldiers KILLED.

400 Lebanese DIE.

🙄

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Both headlines from today.

[George Galloway @georgegalloway]

Can you imagine your girl like this? Try. It’s important.