Creating the name "Boko Haram" and other half-truths in the news

After the skirmishes in Bauchi town by the followers of Muhammad Yusuf's sect, their was suddenly a new term created by the International media; "Boko Haram". It's a Hausa statement which literally means "western education is a sin". Not quite sure but I think the name was created by the Hausa service of the BBC. As far as I know Muhammad Yusuf's sect never gave itself a name. They claim that they are the true sunni muslims and any non-member of their sect an infidel. This I know because we once asked a member "Don't you consider us to be muslims ?" his reply was "I don't". This is also shown in their action like not praying in any mosque that is not their sect's.
So because they do not have a name, the people of Maiduguri who are also sunni muslims call them the Yusufiyyah sect, after their leader's name Muhammad Yusuf. I was surprised when every International news agency that reported the incidence kept calling them "the Boko Haram sect" instead of the "Yusufiyyah sect". Later after Muhammad Yusuf was killed and calm restored in Maiduguri, I saw something that really surprised me on france24 tv. On the news bar at the bottom of the screen I saw a news item that reads "NIGERIA: Gun battle follows death of sect's leader". That is what you call a blatant lie. I have moved around Maiduguri on that very day (Thursday 30th July) and their was no gun battle anywhere in the town. A friend later told me that there were similar stories by other international news outlets. Before that, Radio France claimed that there was a lot of mayhem in the Bulumkuttu and Ngomari airport areas of Maiduguri while in reality nothing was going on at that time in those areas. Now I have learnt one important thing, never trust the International media.

"Boko Haram" A view from within Maiduguri

I think it is very important we set the record straight before it gets written in the history books in it's current twisted form. During the "boko haram" sectarian violence that took place in Maiduguri from Sunday 26th July 2009 to Wednesday 29th July 2009, the people of Maiduguri have been shocked not only by the violence but by the type of views expressed by people far away from the violence. One of such views was expressed on Bala Muhammad's column in the back cover of weekly trust of 1st August 2009. I was particularly attracted to the claim of a member of a certain discussion group that Muhammad Yusuf and his followers never terrorized the people of Maiduguri and that they simply go about their business without interfering with other people's businesses. That person also claimed to be a resident of Maiduguri since 2004.
The first claim is not true. Muhammad Yusuf and his followers have indeed been progressively terrorizing people in Maiduguri. Some of their acts of terrorism are given in the list below.
The claim that he has been in Maiduguri since 2004, I cannot disprove but I have been a resident of Maiduguri since I was born. And that's a little bit under three decades ago. I believe I know Maiduguri much more than he does.

1- Muhammad Yusuf and his followers have for a very long time declared all muslims that do not belong to their sect as infidels, particularly if you are working for the government.

2- They have broken many homes by making their followers chose either their families or the sect.

3- Muhammad Yusuf and his followers have drawn up a list of Islamic clerics to assassinate. This drama has been going on in Maiduguri for months before they finally started the war. In my neighbourhood, student's of a certain cleric who happen to be on the "Kill List" have to organize vigils to protect their mentor from Muhammad Yusuf's followers. Tell me that is not terrorism.

4- After starting the war and taking control of their section of the town the sect members started forcing commercial motorcyclist to submit their helmets and uniforms to be immediately destroyed. And if you are riding a "SAS" branded motorcycle that was distributed by the state governor Ali Sherrif, they take it away and burn it immediately. Tell me that is not terrorism.

5- Everybody knows about the kidnapping of young female students of Islamiyyah schools from across Northern Nigeria to be taken to Maiduguri for their so called Jihad. Tell me that is not terrorism.

While discussing the events on 2nd August 2009 with some mechanics at their workshop, one of them angrily said "How come nobody cares about what we think". It's really annoying when somebody living comfortably in Abuja, Kano or Kaduna starts comparing Muhammad Yusuf's sect with the Niger-delta militants (MEND). MEND never ask youth to chose between MEND and their families or draw up an assassination list of respected clerics or kidnap young girls from their parents in the name of freedom fight. In fact MEND is an armed agitation group not a religious sect. You can give MEND amnesty and hope to meet their demands but you cannot give a religious sect amnesty and hope they discard their beliefs.

One more thing, the people in Maiduguri do not really care that Muhammad Yusuf was killed extra-judicially by the security forces. Guess what ?, in this particular situation we trusted the "Jungle Justice" much more than we trusted the Judiciary. Don't blame us, we've seen what war is like and can't afford to take any chances.

James Watson

Remember Dr James Watson who claims that Africans are inherently backward and that they can't be as good as the rest of humanity ? I wasn't really surprised when I heard that because many non-Africans believe the same. The surprising thing however is how some Nigerians actually believe and try to defend that statement. This tells how much damage the Americans/Europeans have done and are still doing to our minds. Reasonable people never took Watson seriously because there are facts in our daily lives that tells you that the average African person is gifted.
For example, almost everybody in my locality speak more than one language. While I speak three languages, some of my siblings speak six and a lot of people I know speak four languages. You can find a few that speak seven to ten languages.
How many languages can Watson speak ? Maybe he only sees the world as it is expressed in English.

Mono:The Monkey Doesn't Bite Anymore

I was told that Mono literally means monkey in Spanish. It is also the name of an the open source implementation of the CLI and associated technologies popularly known as Microsoft .NET. The Mono project was started by Miguel De Icaza who still leads the effort. Mono allows you to run programs written for the Microsoft .NET platform on Linux and Mac OSX. But the project has a good number of enemies in the open source world, I prefer to call them the anti-Mono people. Most of them think that it is dangerous to include an implementation of a technology originating from Microsoft into Linux distributions. They think Mono is a trap set by Microsoft to later on capture Mono infected Linux distributions through patent litigations. I must confess that I am partial on this issue and have taken a side a long time ago. I am for Mono and I believe I have outgrown my "Geek adolescence" in which bashing Microsoft is a virtue. Mono is no more a threat than other technologies that are part of many linux distributions e.g ntfs-3g, samba e.t.c. I now believe in creating good technology whenever possible. Some of us Mono supporters argue that the anti-Mono crowd should develop a better alternative to Mono instead of making a lot of noise. Well, there is no need for that now, big bad Microsoft will be applying the Community Promise patent licensing to both C# and the CLI. This was announced by Peter Galli and I quote him

"The Promise applies to developers, distributors, and users of Covered Implementations without regard to the development model that created the implementations, the type of copyright licenses under which it is distributed, or the associated business model. Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL"

So if you still think Mono is dangerous on Linux, you really need some new arguments.

Yahoo Boys And Western Hypocrisy

Everybody agrees that Internet fraudsters or yahoo boys as they are called in Nigeria are doing the most damage to Nigeria's image abroad. I'm also among those who agree but regrettably without any statistics to back our argument. Fortunately real statistics is proving us all wrong. According to Farooq Kperogi's column "Notes From Atlanta" in Weekly Trust of 4/7/2009, if statistics are anything to go by, then Internet scam should be termed "American Scam" and not "Nigerian Scam". Figures from the Internet Crimes Complaint Center shows that 76% to 87% of all Internet crimes reported from 2001 to 2008 were committed by Americans.
In 2008 only 7.8% of such fraud was committed by Nigerians while America and UK has 66.1% and 10.1% respectively.

As a whole scam e-mails which Nigerians are known for, constitutes less than 3% of overall on-line crimes. This has decreased from 15.5% in 2001 to less than 3% in 2008. So why is the western media making so much noise about "Nigerian Scam" and keeping shut about the "Massive American On-line Crime" ?
I agree with Farooq that Nigerians especially those in the west have not help matters also. They always try to emphasize the bad image of Nigeria maybe to justify their self exile in the west. I think our journalists are also doing a lot of damage. It seems they concentrate on reporting mainly the corruption cases in Nigeria. I'm not saying there is no corruption, but can't they find somethings positive to report in a country of 140 million people, At least to maintain a balance ?.

Imagine the insult most of us were subjected to by having our on-line transactions stopped (especially by American companies) simply because we reside in Nigeria. Maybe the Nigerian Minister Of Information is not crazy after all, we need to re-brand Nigeria.

African News More Independent Than America's ?

Ethan Zuckerman when asked about his thoughts on the impact of blogging in Africa gave the following reply

"I don’t think blogging in Africa has had the same huge effect as it has in say North America yet. The reason for this is that in North America, blogging has largly been a response to the lack of good independent news sources. In Africa I believe this is less of an issue as there is less corporate ownership of news media."

The full interview is here

The Last Frontier

I find the act of referring to Africa as the "last frontier" by the western media really hypocritical. Forgive my ignorance if I don't understand what that means. But anybody with a decent knowledge of history knows that the west owes its development to the exploitation of African material and human resources (slavery). The phrase "last frontier" makes it sound as if the west came in contact with Africa only a few years ago. It will be more appropriate if some details are added to that statement making it more specific. An example I saw somewhere was "Africa, the last infotech frontier". Now that's not bad. But one that I find quite repulsive is the title of a certain book that goes "The Last Frontier: The White Man's War for Civilisation in Africa". Now I've not read that book but the title is certainly an insult to African civilizations.