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Opinion

Surajo Mahe Alkali: A rare gem in non formal education sector

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By Yusha’u Hamza 

 

 

For nearly 35 years, Surajo Mahe Alkali has dedicated his life to the advancement of the non-formal education sector in Kano state. His sojourn through the ranks of this important education sector, is nothing short of remarkable, capsuling the very essence of commitment, expertise and advocacy in the affairs of things. Kano, a pioneering state in mass education, has greatly benefited from his wealth of experience and full-hearted dedication. As he bids farewell to the sector, his absence will be profoundly felt.

Mahe’s career has been synonymous with his makeover. From his early days in the sector, he has been a driving force behind major reforms that have shaped the policies in recent times and era of non-formal education in the State.

His deep understanding of the non-formal education system in kano state, coupled with his relentless pursuit of progress, has positioned him as an invaluable asset. Not just an administrator but also an activist, he has championed the cause of non-formal education on multiple platforms, making sure that its significance is far heard, recognized and its rights defended.

Kano holds the distinction of being the first state in Nigeria to establish an agency for mass education, a feat that could not have been achieved without the contributions of visionaries like Surajo Mahe. His advocacy for increased investment, policy reforms and inclusivity in non-formal education has left an indelible mark. His role in the sector has not only encouraged countless individuals through literacy programs and vocational training but has also strengthened the overall educational framework in the state and even beyond.

However, his recent movement within the sector has left many concerned. With only a few months left before he officially retires, this sudden transition is seen as a significant loss, particularly at a time when his expertise is mostly and dearest needed. His departure is not just a shift in personnel; it marks the end of an era that has seen significant pursuit in non-formal education.

As Mahe prepares to step away, his legacy remains intact. His contributions will continue to inspire creativity in policymaking and reforms as well as a shift in stakeholder’s activism in the non-formal education sector. While his move is a sad development, his impact will undoubtedly endure a space for future reforms and advancements in the non-formal education sector. His advocacies and commitment will be dearly missed, not only by the sector but by the entire education community in Kano state and country by extension.

 

Hamza, is Director Planning, Research and Statistics at Kano State Ministry of Education. 

Opinion

Best Online Shopping in Nigeria: Your Ultimate Guide to Convenient Shopping

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If you’ve ever wondered where to experience the best online shopping in Nigeria, you’re not alone. The shift toward digital buying has transformed how Nigerians shop — from fashion and electronics to home appliances and groceries. One of the fastest-rising names leading this change is Nujora.ng, a trusted platform designed to make shopping easier, faster, and more rewarding for both buyers and local sellers.

 

 

Why Online Shopping Is Booming in Nigeria

Nigerians are increasingly turning to online shopping for convenience, better prices, and access to products that aren’t always available in local markets. The ease of browsing and comparing prices from your phone has made e-commerce part of everyday life.

With platforms like Nujora.ng, buyers can enjoy smooth transactions, quick delivery, and reliable customer support — all while supporting homegrown businesses.

 

 

Why Nujora.ng Is Your Go-To Online Marketplace

When it comes to the best online shopping experience in Nigeria, Nujora offers more than just a place to buy and sell. It’s a growing community marketplace built around trust, affordability, and local connection.

Here’s why shoppers love Nujora:

🛍️ Wide Range of Products: From fashion to electronics, beauty, and home essentials.

🚚 Fast Delivery: Items are delivered quickly from nearby vendors.

🤝 Trusted Sellers: Verified local sellers ensure genuine products.

💰 Affordable Deals: Competitive pricing with no hidden costs.

🌍 Support Local: Every purchase helps small Nigerian businesses grow.

Calling All Local Sellers – Join Nujora Today!

Are you a business owner, vendor, or artisan looking to grow your sales?

Nujora.ng is your opportunity to take your business online without the stress of building a website. Our mission is to empower local entrepreneurs to reach thousands of new customers easily.

Here’s what sellers get when they join:

A user-friendly dashboard to upload and manage products.

Direct access to nearby buyers.

Marketing and visibility support from Nujora’s team.

Secure transactions and fast payouts.

Join Nujora today — the future of online selling is local, and Nujora is here to make it happen.

Visit www.nujora.ng to start selling now.

Final Thoughts

The best online shopping in Nigeria isn’t just about convenience — it’s about connection. With Nujora.ng, buyers get quality and speed, while sellers gain exposure and growth. Together, we’re building a smarter, more inclusive marketplace that keeps commerce local and digital.

Start your journey today at www.nujora.ng — discover amazing deals, support local sellers, and experience Nigeria’s most convenient way to shop online.

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Opinion

𝐊𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐨’𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚𝐥

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Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Ph.D

 

During my time as the financial secretary of NNPP in Kano state and other political engagements, I saw clearly how many of the so-called fake Kwankwasiyya loyalists behaved. They always came with sweet promises, showing deep respect for Kwankwaso’s leadership and pretending to be his strongest disciples. They claimed they would defend the party’s ideology even with their lives. But the moment they got what they wanted, whether it was an election victory, recognition, or political favour, they slowly pulled away. Their loyalty was never to the Kwankwasiyya movement, but only to their own ambitions. Personally, I never regarded their loyalty, never praised them, and never wasted my time writing about them.

 

What surprised me most was Kwankwaso’s ability to take all of this without holding any grudges. Time and again, he welcomed them back whenever they were politically stranded. Instead of shutting them out, he gave them another chance, teaching us that leadership is not about revenge but about building bridges, even with those who once betrayed you. Many of us in the party leadership found it hard to understand this level of patience, but over time, I came to see it as part of what makes him a rare politician in Nigeria.

 

This same cycle has repeated itself in every election season. Politicians who abandoned kwankwasiyya the most critical times would always return in desperation, and Kwankwaso would open the doors again. For him, the bigger picture has always been the growth of the movement and the empowerment of the masses, not the small politics of exclusion. But from my own experience, I have seen both the strength and weakness of this approach. The strength is Kwankwaso’s unmatched generosity and forgiveness, but the weakness is the opportunism of those who treat leadership as a shortcut to power. In 2024, some of them worked tirelessly with all kinds of deceit just to secure tickets for their boys as local government chairmen, but thankfully Madugu Kwankwaso was firm and did not fall into their trap.

 

Now the time has come for our leader, Senator Kwankwaso, to reflect on his political generosity and take the right stand. It is better to lose an election with true loyalists than to win with those sabbatical politicians who only come for their selfish gains. Nobody can deny that they contributed to NNPP’s growth in Kano, but the truth is that the sacrifices Kwankwaso made for them are far greater than what they have done for him or the movement. Before their defection to NNPP in 2022, there were committed people already vying for those positions, but they were pleaded to step down and hand over the tickets for free. You cannot build a political movement with people who carry two faces. In politics, you are either here or there; there is no middle ground. Kwankwasiyya is not only about winning elections, it is also about discipline and sacrifice. We won clearly in 2019 before the election was declared inconclusive, and we still won in 2023 despite the odds. If Almighty Allah has destined our victory in 2027, no betrayal can stop it, no matter who leaves Kwankwasiyya.

 

– Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Ph.D

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Opinion

A reply to Dan’uwa Rano’s from makafi to awakai: the display of blind plotics and political idolatry 

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Ibrahim Bello-Kano           

I’ve read Danuwa Rano’s post as a trained and professional critic of prose works, both fictional and non-fictional (the kind of writing in which the writer and the narrator are the same person, and in which there is a direct mode of address to the purported reader of the writing, the text). Thus, my response to this post, shared on this platform, is three-fold. 

1. The writer, Danuwa Rano, is a well-known member or sympathiser of the APC in Kano and a supporter of an aspiring APC candidate for the position of the Gov. of Kano State, despite his critical yet digressive comment on the Gov of Jigawa, Namadi, Abubakar Rimi, and Aminu Kano, to cite just those three. In my academic field, we train our students in the literary criticism of non-fictional texts to look for the writer’s MOTIVE for writing. Usually, in this kind of writing, the writer does not reveal his motive (which is usually hidden) for writing directly but takes detours, digressions, and other textual strategies of establishing some nuggets of “authenticity”. Just a ploy to deceive the unsuspecting or the gullible reeader, to say the least. If and where the writer is well known, we also seek to read his previous works, including his podcasts, interviews, or open attitudinal-ideological stance in relation to public discourse.

2. We also probe the text for its linguistic “unsaids” or “non-saids”, namely its TONE and the perspectival presentation of events and people (we call this reading or interpretive strategy “symptomatic reading”). It’s interesting that the writer himself reveals that his text was inspired by a previous one critical of Kwankwaso and the Kwankwasiyya movement, written by Auwal Anwar.

3. After a thinly veiled ideological bad faith on the part of Danuwa Rano, he delves into a moralistic discourse, namely that God/Allah has created human beings with dignity and with self-worth, higher than those of the animals such as “goats”; and much more integrative than the blind (“makafi”). But Danuwa Rano is clearly not very educated in how language, in this case Hausa and English, work. In language, in Hausa, we call or regard someone that is a maestro, a highly gifted person, in any vocation or an endeavor, as, or by describing him as “shege” or “maye” in or about something that we admire or value (masterly). Why is that? Language has both DENOTATION and CONNOTATION. In any Hausa dictionary, the denotation of “Shege” would be “bastard” (illegitimate within the marriage-kinship and cultural system). But when used in the context of connotation, “Shege” describes someone with admirable skills, in appreciation of his or her skills, mastery, and distinguished capacities. Alas, this is what Danuwa Rano has missed. So, in every linguistic comminity, symbolism, figuration, and emblematic descriptions are never far away from the symbolic sphere of experience. Here’s another example from the English language. Expressions such as “evil genius” and the Latinate “maestro” exist because symbolisation or figural descriptions are creative, a way of coming into the undecidable space of appreciation and appropriation, including the anxiety about what we denote in the cultural-linguistic game, and in our unconscious.

4. Rather bizarrely and crudely, perhaps even maliciously, Danuwa Rano fails to see, blinded by his ideological moralism, that whenever the Kwankwasiyya people call themselves “makafi” and “awaki” they are, in fact, ENGAGING IN the SYMBOLIC PARODY of their opponents, that is, those who criticise them for being resolute and committed political agents in a certain way. To borrow a metaphor from Michel Foucault, it is the Kwankwasiyya people’s way of “self-presentation” in the political and democratic arena. Indeed, it was the same process at work when the British Workers called themselves “Chartists” (based on their Charter of Demands). But we know that a group of human beings cannot be a List or a Charter. Rather, in language, any group can identify with a colour (“Red” for communists and Marxists; Green for Muslims; or with emblems (the Crescent Moon, The Cross, or the Hammer and Sickle, or just an Effigy; a country’s or a state’s “coat of arms”). Should we assume, then, that the Kwankwasiyya followers are physically, intellectually, or ideologically blind? But if they were, they would not work for someone, Senator Kwankwaso (RMK), that they couldn’t have literally “seen”.

5. Danuwa Rano is such a poor writer, such a poorly educated person on how language and symbolisation actually work, that he mistook a figural statement as intransitively real and factual. What a pity! In fact, I am tempted here to cite the famous argument of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, that language as such is only a doxa (opinion) rather than (a) truth (episteme). In this view, language is a kind of rhetoric and thus inherently rhetorical. For example, in the Hausa “Kirari” system, any one can call themselves a lion, a mouse, an elephant, or even a fox, or even, indeed, a “merciless killer”, one who does not and would not spare his enemies. I recall, in my youth, my father admiringly calling my mother “uwar garke” (“the mother of the herd”, his herd) but does that mean she was a cow, the female head of a herd of cows? Certainly not!

6. It is a mark of Danuwa Rano’s ideological project that he mistakes linguistic and symbolic parody for the literal thing. Hence, his weak, unconvincing, and flat moralistic attacks on RMK and the Kwankwasiyya people. The latter are saying that they are deeply committed to their political projects, that they are not the typical political opportunists, fortune chasers, and the “fair weather people” that one finds in the Kano APC. In addition, the Kwankwasiyya “Makafi” are also saying that they see clearly where their principled allegiance lies.

7. If Danuwa Rano were a careful, perceptive thinker or writer of political innuendo, he would have seen something prevalent in the history of Kano since the 18th century, namely the tradition of following religious, sectoral leaders, as seen in the mass of committed followers in Kano of the Tariqa, the Shia, and the Izala, to mention just those three. It’s hard not to find a Kano man or woman that is not openly oriented to those three groups.

8. It is, without a doubt, the same temperament that one still finds in the secular political sphere in Kano. Expecting otherwise in the political sphere of the community is either short-sighted or willful blindness or sheer ignorance, all all three. Or, one might ignore all this in furtherance of his un-stated ideological-political agenda.

9. Let me reiterate a point that I have always argued in public: Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is, without a doubt, a veritable political leader for many reasons. There is not one politician in Kano today who has the deep and wide charisma as to draw a huge crowd of enthusiastic supporters, with the charm and grace that can score, or in fact has scored, over one million votes in Kano State in the elections. His party’s candidate for Governor scored well over a million votes in the 2023 elections. Even Tinubu lost in Lagos in the 2023 elections (only scored anout 600, 000 votes). For that reason and many others (RMK’s cosmic patience, personal Promesean and Sysipusian endurance, his political sagacity and capacity for brilliant and moving political oratory— the “Ma-a-ha chant”), he is the target of disgruntled enemies, the object of deep malice but that is obscured or hidden as “objective analysis”.

10. But hate him or love him, despite Kwankwasiyya movement or not, one must accept that RMK is simply the modern expression of the new politics that is gripping the imagination of young people and that of perceptive, politically committed intellectuals, those who know what is at stake in the political future of Kano State and Nigeria as a whole.

11. Imagine a political leader, the one whose previously opportunistic followers had deserted when he left office, the man who stayed out of power and elective office for eight years, the man who founded a political party within eight months to the national elections, and yet him and his party swept the board, won virtually all the elective offices, including the Govenorship. I daresay such a man, RMK, is naturally the target of malice, envy, and bruised political egos. Danuwa Rano’s virtuperations on RMK and the Kwankwasiyya movement is one more example of crudely malicious, badly conceived, poorly written attacks on modern Kano’s most successful person and his movement.

Ibrahim Bello-Kano.

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