Posts

South Africans stripped our sisters naked: Tinubu, Obi, Atiku wring their fingers

By Faruk Ahmed A video is circulating on the internet. You may have seen it. Two women – Nigerians, our sisters – are stripped naked on a major thoroughfare in South Africa. They are beaten, bloodied, repeatedly kicked in the stomach and in their genitals. The violence is recorded on camera by a laughing mob. Cars and motorcycles whiz by. No security officer stops. No siren approaches. This happened in broad daylight. This is not the first time Nigerians are being attacked in South Africa. In 2008, 2015, and 2019, waves of xenophobic violence swept through the country. Nigerians were among the hardest hit. Now, in 2026, it is happening again. At least two Nigerians are dead – one beaten to death by South African military personnel, another found dead in the Pretoria Central Mortuary after an “interaction” with metro police. And what has our government done? Summoned South Africa’s Acting High Commissioner. Scheduled a bilateral meeting. Issued a statement of condemnation. Demanded auto...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to survive CAC: A comedy of errors and six rejections

By Faruk Ahmed If you ever want to test your patience, your sanity, and your faith in humanity, try registering an NGO in Nigeria. Not a business name – that’s a different nightmare. No, I mean an Incorporated Trustees – the kind that lets you do charity, advocacy, and community work. We did it. Took six months and six rejections. But we finally got our name approved. Here is what we learned – the hard way – so you don’t have to..   Lesson 1: Lawyers are expensive, but AI is deceptive If you have the budget, hire a lawyer. If you are like us – a group with a shoestring budget – you do it yourself. We turned to AI. It wrote a beautiful constitution. Aims and objectives that would make any philanthropist weep. But CAC rejected it. Twice. Why? Because AI does not know that “advocacy” and “campaigns” are red flags for the Corporate Affairs Commission. It does not know that “civic mobilisation” sounds like a protest group. It does not know that hashtags belong on Twitter, not in legal d...
Post a Comment
Read more

Almajirci: How to stop the detonation of Nigeria’s next time bomb

By Faruk Ahmed On March 16, 2026, a suicide bomber detonated in Maiduguri’s Post Office area. The blast killed dozens. Among the dead were four young boys – Almajirai – who had gone out to beg for their daily meal. Their teacher, Ibrahim Goni, wept on Trust TV:  “I have seven of them. They all went out that day. Three returned home. Four didn't. We found their bodies in the teaching hospital. I wasn't myself for days.” He had mentored those children for years. They lived in his household. He fed them, taught them the Qur’an, and sent them to the streets with plastic bowls. That day, they walked into hell. This is not just a story of poverty. It is a story of  radicalisation waiting to happen .   The bloody roots The connection between the Almajiri system and violent extremism is not accidental. It is historical. Muhammad Marwa , known as  Maitatsine , was a preacher who raged against radios, watches, bicycles, and the Nigerian state. He attracted a fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Airtel, MTN smoke lives out of Nigerians

By Faruk Ahmed You can imagine how you would feel if your nose and mouth were shut forcefully with a pillow by an attacker. Your soul would feel like it was departing—from your legs, to your stomach, through your neck, out of your head, and up to heaven. This is exactly what telecommunications companies like Airtel and MTN are doing to Nigerians. Slowly. Systematically. With impunity.   The collapse Starting from Sunday, March 15, 2026, my Airtel line began to stutter. It would connect intermittently—a message here, a notification there—then fade into silence. I assumed it was a temporary glitch. By Monday, it was gone completely. No WhatsApp. No email. No access to the websites I rely on for work. By Wednesday, March 18, it became clear that this was not a glitch. It was a collapse. I borrowed my wife's MTN line to get back online. It worked—but not perfectly. Calls dropped. Data fluctuated. I tried to port my Airtel line back to MTN. The local operator told me I would have to vis...
Post a Comment
Read more

How almajirci could become the next banditry

By Faruk Ahmed On December 24, 2016, I climbed into an Audi 4x4 at Kwanar Dawaki motor park in Kano. The driver was a soldier returning from the Sambisa battleground. The seats were cushy. Music blared. Cool air hit my face. I thought I was riding to heaven. I was heading to my hometown, Jattu in Edo State, for a cousin's wedding. The park was chaotic with Christmas travellers, and fares had skyrocketed. Then this soldier appeared, heading to Akwa Ibom, offering rideshare. He would pass close to my destination. I did my due diligence, paid, and hopped in. There were already four passengers. I became the fifth. Three days later, I was still on the road. The car broke down constantly. We spent hours fixing it. The soldier could barely drive. Somewhere past Abuja, I took the wheel and drove us most of the way to Akwa Ibom. (How I ended up in Akwa Ibom instead of Edo is a story for another day.) But the worst nightmare came somewhere past Lokoja. Night had fallen. We approached a check...
Post a Comment
Read more

The bowl, the fear, and the future we keep ignoring

By Faruk Ahmed   Aisha Salihi saw a photograph that shattered her. A young boy sat on a dusty street. In his hands, an injury festered—raw, infected, neglected. In his lap, a plastic bowl. The universal symbol of Almajiri existence. A plea for alms. For food. For survival. She learned why he was injured. He had been sent to beg. When he returned without enough, he was beaten. "This picture,"  Aisha wrote,  "will haunt me forever." It should haunt us all.   The twisted tradition The Almajiri system began with noble intentions. Children leaving home to seek Quranic knowledge. Parents entrusting them to Malams. A tradition of scholarship and discipline stretching back centuries. The very name comes from  Al-Muhajirun —those who left Mecca with the Prophet (peace be upon him) in search of knowledge and faith. But somewhere along the line, the tradition broke. "It is a name that speaks of a noble, ancient tradition,"  Aisha writes.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Nation Builders Initiative (TNBI): Core identity documents

Our Origin The Nation Builders Initiative was born from the embers of the # FixNaijaTop3 Movement —a citizen-led outcry for accountability in Nigeria's most critical sectors. We evolved because we realised that pointing out what is broken is only the first step. The essential work is in  building the builders : equipping citizens, especially the youth, with the civic consciousness, practical skills, and moral clarity to reconstruct their nation from the ground up. Our Vision A Nigeria where every citizen is an empowered nation builder—conscious of their rights, equipped with practical skills, and committed to the common good; a nation that can feed itself, secure itself, and offer every child a future of dignity and potential. Our Mission To cultivate a generation of informed, skilled, and responsible citizens through grassroots civic education, community empowerment programs, and the promotion of accountable leadership, thereby transforming passive observers into ac...
Post a Comment
Read more