INDIMI: LET MODESTY BE OUR GUIDE - Maiwada Dammallam

INDIMI: LET MODESTY BE OUR GUIDE - Maiwada Dammallam

Indimi was inconsiderate by being overtly extravagant in his ostentatious display of love to the daughter of President Buhari. I expect him (as a son to be) to be mindful of the image of his soon to be father. I expect him to protect or at least preserve the image of simplicity and modesty associated with President Buhari especially at this period when the President is saddled with the onerous task of nursing a raped economy amidst real and phantom wails of hunger.

Sure, the groom could easily lessen the burden of the President by being modest even if he could afford Harrods and its staff. He could even make it better by deploying the millions spent for the 'lefe' on numerous IDPs that constitute some of the greatest worries of President Buhari. Coming from Borno, there's no better time for the groom to the express his gratitude to Almighty Allah for HIS favours which insulated him from the pains of unplanned destitution and looming hopelessness as is the average narrative in Borno and the North East.

I don't know what contributions Indimi might have made but, whatever, N40m is quite a huge sum that could change the story of many disrupted families and restore smile back into their lives. Indimi wasted a good opportunity to show solidarity to his people by just being modest. Of course, Borno is notorious when it comes to issues of ostentatious display of wealth during marriages, but then, it's not a divine law that could not be adjusted to accommodate inconvenient situations as we have in the North East.

Assuredly, President Buhari will never sanction such an outrageous display of insensitivity especially at a time when he's battling to restore sanity and confidence into a traumatised system. For all I believe, the exotic vehicles loaded with the 30 LV boxes must have caught him unaware as it did many Nigerians. It's not the tradition to alert the bride's family about what to expect as 'lefe' hence, I won't blame him for supporting this extravagance. Actually I doubt if such crass insensitivity would impress the President especially given the fact that his daughter doesn't really need laces or whatever was loaded inside the LV boxes.

In my opinion, scholarships to kids who lost their parents to BH insurgency or blocks of classrooms in villages being rebuilt in Borno State could have earned a special place for the groom in the mind of the President beside the huge reward Indimi would reap in the hereafter.

NIGERIA'S 'DECLINE' TO EXELLENT PRIVATE SCHOOLS - Maiwada Dammallam

NIGERIA'S 'DECLINE' TO EXCELLENT PRIVATE SCHOOLS - Maiwada Dammallam

"Nigerian public varsities graduates cannot compete with my secondary school students" - Atiku Abubakar

Nothing could be more believable than former VP, Atiku Abubakar's statement above. It's a truism that's as hurtful as falsity. Abubakar's ABTI-AMERICA UNIVERSITY is among the best not only in Nigeria but on this part of the globe. It's our local version of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore or Columbia University, New York both made exclusively out of reach for the less privileged.

Yes, AAU is simply 'the best education money can buy' in Nigeria. Congratulations to VP Atiku Abubakar for his success to add such value to the upper class Nigerians. Let's pray someday the less privileged could enjoy the benefits.

However, where Abubakar's success ends, there starts Nigeria's sad, pitiable and repulsive story of avoidable failure. Truly, a graduate of Abubakar's secondary school is by far ahead of a Nigerian public university graduated student; those caught within the period when universities were degrading while private universities were doing wonderfully well while being managed by the same set of managers on different terms though.

The truism here is that: public universities used to be just as good (or even better) than any private university of today as could be proven by the intellectual, commercial, political, social, and academic finesse of the founders of today's private educational 'wonder centers'. By their uncanny ability to hold Nigeria to ransom for best part of the century, one need not to be convinced about the quality of the system that produced them which they replaced with something exclusively for the high and mighty.

My generation couldn't be luckier than the generation of proprietors of today's private universities yet, even in my preparatory years, a primary school certificate could pin to the ground university degree of today. Something that always flash into my mind each time I came across a situation depicting decline of education in Nigeria was a personal incident. I was in primary 3 in LEA Unguwar Rimi, Kaduna, then a very beautiful educational environment which is now sandwiched in the noisiest part of U/Rimi.

A new class mistress was brought to my class. As was traditional, she went round assessing the class. When she reached me, she asked me to spell 'hymn' which I did correctly. I think she chose me for 'hymn' seeing I was Muslim and couldn't have learned 'hymn' by accident but by learning which would give her a fair assessment of the class. 'Hymn' is one of those words that a non Christian could never know without being taught. Nobody could know 'hymn' without knowing what it means. I still can visualize her expression when she patted my head and said "well-done".

That was the story of education before Nigeria lost it to 'pocket-instincts'. By the way, (in-between this article) I just called my 'English-Graduate' niece and asked her to spell 'hymn' which she failed unabashedly. The lesson: If our rested system of education could inculcate even knowledge of seeming irrelevant (as 'hymn' is to a Muslim kid) at such an early stage, only God knows what was relevant knowledge was installed in brains of students of my generation. Perhaps, that's the reason 'private school' was alien to my generation and couldn't have make any sense back then whatsoever.

The big question facing Nigerians is whether to laugh or cry faced with the inconvenience of a lone option of watching private schools structured to serve the needs of only the nouveau riche soaring high while institutions catering for the needs of he larger majority are barely able to roll out 'half-done' graduates that would be so ill-equipped hence, would remain a liability to themselves and the society. Is it not absurd that Nigeria has since graduated from unemployed to unemployable graduates despite the acumen and dexterity of an ungrateful generation who exploits our sad situations rather than nurse it back to health.

It says a lot about our carelessness to details that within the leadership triangle of OBJ, IBB and Atiku exist the best 3 private educational institutions in Nigeria when it's provable that public educational institutions suffered the most under their collective supervision. And these are the same people whose hefty bills are still being picked by the government in the name of pension when teachers and university lectures who exhausted the best part of the muscles and brain fuel keeping public institutions afloat by 'patch-work' daily are being denied incentives for their sacrifices.

Why shouldn't private secondary students beat public university graduates under these terms? The atmosphere is conducive for that. It is neither magic nor business dexterity that tilted the result in favour of the private institutions. It's simply business logic - create a need and fulfill it. Public institutions have been raped, bastardized and hopelessly trapped in a vicious cycle of deprivation and neglect by successive regimes. Th end result, over stretched facilities, depressed teachers and lecturers. Is it any wonder we are harvesting graduates that only pass through educational institutions without educational institutions passing through them?

Solution:

Let's go back to the drawing board and start afresh to catch up with the best of the privileged. We have a duty to give back what we were given in kind - that which made most of us what we are free of charge.

THEY WILL STRIP JONATHAN NAKED FOR FREE ANY OTHER DAY - Maiwada Dammallam

THEY WILL STRIP JONATHAN NAKED FOR FREE ANY OTHER DAY - Maiwada Dammallam

Street urchins and spiders have one thing in common. Spiders are happy to eat other spiders and so does street urchins. You can't raise both in big groups for commercial purposes. Perhaps, that may explain just a handful of street urchins rather than a reasonable crowd that could reflect the budget for the sponsored show of solidarity for former President Jonathan by the sacked and fully deactivated former lords of Sokoto politics.

Had a good laugh watching the tattered kids praying for the return of the 'deadly Jonah' in the ancient city where he went to console the sultanate on the death of one of its illustrious sons, former Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki. That in itself is a display of the level of intellect of the organisers of the 'Jonathan-is-still-relevant' charade in the Sultanate. They were so miserly to afford a decent crowd despite the billions of blood money they are holding tight to like a second life.

Nothing could be more entertaining than watching a fool trying to exhaust his natural share of foolishness by 'wasting' trying to fool the smart - especially those taught to be smart by difficult experiences. A mixture of black coffee and red palm oil on a hot morning would make more sense than Sokoto people praying for the return of Jonathan at least, to those still in full possession of their minds - those not psychologically disorganised by Jonathan-induced bombs and IEDs.

The 'Nigerian' fact is, with a fraction of the N4bn 'prayer vote' allocated to a seasoned Sokoto 'political Alfa', those urchins would wholeheartedly and enthusiastically campaign for Jonathan to be turbaned the Sultan of Sokoto. By the way, where were these 'Jonathan come back' urchins that a colossal sum of N4bn was needed to pray for smooth sail of the Jonathan ship in the sultanate in those days? All the more reason why there should be refund. Or is it not yet c

lear that we were scammed? That's by the way.

In reality, not even kids on the streets of Otuake would pray for a replay of the disaster that was Jonathan's administration; not after the expose about what Nigeria really went through in the hands of Jonathan and his carefully selected gang of sugar-ant looters. What do they want him back for, the bombs or the gory sight of severed limps and shattered torsos in churches and mosques on Fridays and Sundays?

An inebriated man submerged in a mixed ocean of expired 'Kain-kain and Ogogoro' laced with powdered 'ganja' would have better sense than wish for the return of those horrific days. Jonathan was a disaster worse than tsunami! Actually the story is more about those who believe the stunt and seem ready to invest their dreams and build future political ambitions in it than those who, out of pressing gut demands, carried placards to fulfil their part of diabolic bargain.

The same urchins that were paid to carry the 'Jonathan come back' placards would gladly strip Jonathan naked and parade him round the streets of Sokoto with a rope around his waist for free moments after the expiration of their contract. Oh yes! It was wholly and completely a PAID relevance and shame on the people who chose to play politics with the gut instincts of the shortchanged kids. May Allah turn the table and put their kids on the other side to have a taste of praying for the return of a deadly, thieving and ineffective class of leadership for no better reason than to assuage an immediate gut demand.

For those with the stability to still think straight despite the trauma of our immediate past, this calls for immediate and appropriate response to the serious theft of our commonwealth by a handful few. Proceeds from the mind boggling collective heist perpetrated against Nigeria by members of the Jonathan administration would continue to be used to destabilise this administration for these thieves to have a clean break from their misdeeds. Only to those who move around with their brains in their pockets should this fail to make sense.

No one should be fooled. The Sokoto crowd is a creation of our immediate past as designed and moulded by the ineffective and disastrous PDP. Not in this lifetime would any Nigerian pray for have Joanthan back even as a news item.

PMB/DASUKI: NO BASIS FOR REVENGE - Maiwada Dammallam

PMB/DASUKI: NO BASIS FOR REVENGE - Maiwada Dammallam

"As I said in my inaugural speech, I bear no ill will against anyone on past events. Nobody should fear anything from me. We are not after anyone. People should only fear the consequences of their actions" - President Buhari

Against calls in the social media for President Buhari to forgive and allow former NSA, Sambo Dasuki to attend the funeral of his father who died yesterday evening, I find it imperative to explain a thing or two in regard to the imaginary feud between President Buhari and Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd)

For what I know about the military and its traditions especially in regard to hierarchy and orders, Sambo Dasuki lacked the capacity to allow or deny PMB the privilege of being allowed to witness the funeral of his mother when she died while he was under detention. For people to start thinking President Buhari will take his pound of flesh from Sambo Dasuki based on hallucinatory assumptions, to say the least it's weird and the clearest proof of lack of grasp of common basics of democracy.

President Buhari was the boss of Dasuki's boss. For God sake Dasuki was just an ADC to President Babangida - a glorified servant. PMB will not stoop so low to blame a mere ADC for his travails when he knew there was a powerful and 'maradonic' President bent on destroying him politically, physically and psychologically. Who was Dasuki back then to have such powers with the Abachas, the Dogonyaros and other hyper-ambitious hawks bent on destroying President Buhari to consolidate their grip on the political structure of Nigeria.

Debating whether President Buhari should or should not allow the release of Dasuki to attend the funeral of his late father is something being done without recourse to the concept of justice, democracy and leadership. How many Nigerians are languishing in various prisons and holding cells and, out of them how many were ever given preferential treatment by the President for Dasuki to be extended same courtesy?

The President's oath of office demand he deals with Nigerians equally without fear or favour, ill-will or affection. If, by any chance, some of the pundits wish to have the President exercise the powers of his office and extend the courtesy of using 'prerogative of mercy' for this sad occasion, they should know that the courtesy is exclusively reserved for convicted prisoners not suspects under the custody of courts. And it should be noted that the distinction between judiciary and executive is glaringly clear under democracy for anybody to assume President Buhari could just cross over, deactivate a court order and direct a special favour for somebody.

By the way, President Buhari's incarceration by the Babangida junta and Dasuki's detention by this administration are two different things entirely without a fleck of similarity. Whereas President Buhari was detained by the military against the laws of the land, Dasuki's detention was sanctioned by a court of competent jurisdiction. Using his office to countermand a valid decision of a competent court of law would send a very bad signal to Nigerians especially at this point when all hands are on deck to purge the judiciary and update its moral and professional settings.

In any case, Dasuki was not detained at the whim and caprice of President Buhari otherwise, rtd Cols. Abdulmumin Aminu, Umar Dangiwa, Lawan Gwadabe would all be languishing in jail with him. Yet, not a single one of them is facing any harassment from this administration. Dasuki is in prison for his role in misusing a colossal sum of $2.8bn for purchase of arms to curtail the menace of insurgency when he served as NSA. His case is neither personal nor targeted. It's purely a case between the State and Dasuki and it shouldn't be given any other definition.

May Allah in HIS infinite mercy forgive the sins of former Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki and reward his good deeds with jannatil firdaus.