Mahmud Sada Imam

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

Nigerian journalism is in the gutter. This is a story that should be investigated by journalists themselves and they are discussing it as if they are reporting gossip and reading out tweets. Journalism is not peddling gossip and discussing it like they are The View.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

One of the all-time most repulsive NYT headlines:

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@HausaAesthetic Hausa is a civilization that welcomes all and assimilates all. That's what those Hausa zalla zealots miss, trying to reduce it to a tribal identity.

[Kehinde Oluwafemi Funsho @ejire001media]

This is how we check World Cup fixtures when there was no access to internet, gone are those days at Ojota, like it’s was so interesting, they will sell to us then unfolded in other to make it easy to access, we will fold it and begin to write score after each match.
Childhood 🙌🏼

[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.

[محمد الكنوي @El_Kanawi9]

My Hausa waƙa (poem) inspired by Somali Gabays titled:

Necklace of Tibesti

It follows a Hausa merchant who had his trade caravan attacked in the tibesti mountains by robbers on his way back from Tripoli among the items stolen was a necklace of his dead wife.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@isitbyforcee It's idiots like these that would tell you Hausa is a dialect of Arabic because it's arabized with so many Arabic words in the language.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@elnathan_john I hope to read it in Granta😂

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@isitbyforcee @Kisokeii Stop engaging these fools. I can't believe the sheer stupidity of some of them. Their agenda is simple - cause disaffection between Hausa and Fulani, so that they will wrest power from the so-called Hausa-Fulani hegemony.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@isitbyforcee The Sultan was publicly humiliated a few years back by the current Sokoto governor who clipped his wings, limiting his powers to appoint district heads. Yet this fool is giving him powers of Sulaiman The Magnificent 😂

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@almuube I don't understand what he meant by posting those photos. Are they part of the distortion and erasure? Was he expecting to have a picture of Bagauda?

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@Bardeyarima Dabba

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@almuube These fools remind me of idiots like Tommy Robinson in England who'd get upset by a Pakistani association. It's minorities that need associations not majorities whose culture set the tone of the society. Hausa is swallowing Arewa yet these fools want to play victims.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@kamodibbo Kidahumai ne. Majority ƴan middle belt wahala ne intent on causing division. Toh ta Allah ba tasu ba. Sun makaro

[M.A. Usman ⛽🌳💚😷 @MAUIngagiH]

Hausa Architecture

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@intaa_0 Confusion galore. But I don't think there was a time when Nigerians aren't hooked up on conspiracy theories. It's practically our national past time. 😔

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@jikanMasani This divisiveness will not succeed. We can see its corrosive influence in India. But it won't succeed here because of Islam. What's ironic is that, these Hausa activists are actually hurting Hausa by erecting a barrier of exclusion around it. Hausa grew because of assimilation

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@Jajjage @jikanMasani The term was invented by the British because of their racist obsession with lineage. They can't call the fodiyawa Fulani because they're Hausa in all but lineage. But here people identify by their state - Bakatsine, Bakano... That's the all encompassing identity not even Hausa.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@niggergerian I thought as much. Abubakar Imam's ancestors were from Borno who settled in Nupe land. While Abubakar Imam was raised in a Hausa speaking household. He's Hausa by culture as was Korau and Sardauna. Hausa is a culture that's changing and absorbing and wouldn't stop.

[Mahmud Sada Imam @Msada52]

@Jajjage @jikanMasani I didn't use mongrel negatively. I meant it in the best possible way. Take it as Hausa is a melting point of identities who melted to become what we now call Hausa. Dan Masani in Katsina is of Borno descent. Dan Marna is of Arabic descent but they're Katsinawa as Dikko.