Flashback: Nigeria - Sultan of Sokoto condemns Boko Haram crackdown

CC™ Editor's Flashback

The sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual leader of Nigeria's Muslims, has condemned the military crackdown against the Islamist Boko Haram sect.

"We cannot solve violence with violence," Mohamed Sa'ad Abubakar told a meeting of religious leaders.

The Boko Haram, based in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, says it is fighting for Islamic rule.

It has been behind recent assassinations of prominent figures and a wave of bombings.

Two years ago, Nigeria's security forces brutally suppressed an uprising by the sect, destroying its compound in Maiduguri - the capital of Borno state - and then capturing and killing its leader Mohammed Yusuf.

Instead of disappearing, the group, which opposes Western education and is fighting for Islamic rule, re-emerged last September and vowed to avenge its leader's death.

Last month, it said it had carried out an attack on the headquarters of the Nigerian police in Abuja, which killed at least six people.

But the response of the security forces has led to criticism from rights group and the governor of Borno state.

Correspondents say many residents of Maiduguri are now more scared of the army than they are of Boko Haram.

"That problem can never be solved by drafting soldiers into cities where there is [a] problem - and in the process innocent lives were lost," said the sultan, who once served as military officer.

It is the first time the sultan has spoken about the Boko Haram insurgency.

Muslim clerics who have criticised the sect have been among those targeted for assassination in drive-by shootings over the past year.

The sultan also said the five policemen who have just gone on trial this month for the killing of Mr Yusuf should not be given bail.

Boko Haram's official name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad".

But residents of Maiduguri, where it was formed in 2002, dubbed it Boko Haram. 

Loosely translated from the local Hausa language, this means Western education is forbidden.

Boko Haram sees such education as corrupting Muslims.

Nigeria - Africa's most populous nation - is split between the predominately Muslim north and largely Christian south.

Editor’s Commentary - This piece was published on July 29, 2011 and another Southerner, Goodluck Jonathan was President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Sultan Mohamed Sa'ad Abubakar has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In the piece in question from 2011, he (Sultan Abubakar), the leader of Nigeria’s Northern Muslims, vehemently opposed the military crackdown on the terrorists at the time, particularly because it was being led by a Southern Chief of Army Staff, a South-Easterner (Retired Lieutenant general Azubuike Ihejirika) to be precise, and it was also yielding results in terms of decimating the insurgents in a devastating way. 

Sultan Abubakar, Nasir El-Rufai and ex-president, Muhammadu Buhari are religious and ethnic Fulani irredentists, who secretly and overtly (as El-Rufai did as Kaduna State Governor) subscribe to the tenets of Fulani supremacy and dominance by any means necessary. The hypocrisy of the Sultan of Sokoto is not debatable and he lacks (and will always lack) credibility when it comes to the twin issue of ethno-religious intolerance in Nigeria, as it relates to the ethnic cleansing in the Middle-Belt and other parts of Nigeria by the Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram.

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Sound advice from Mark Cuban on the best investment you can make.

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BY MARCEL SCHWANTES

When it comes to building a successful career, few principles are as powerful—or overlooked—as the habit of self-improvement. Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and investor, credits much of his success to one simple but profound idea: Invest in yourself.

“Some of the best investments I ever made were investing in myself, first and foremost. When you’re first starting—you may or may not have a job, you don’t have any money, you’re [uncertain] about your career. What I learned early on is that if I put in the effort, I can learn almost anything.

It may take me a long time, but by putting in the effort, I taught myself technology. I taught myself to program. It was time-consuming—painfully so—but that investment in myself has paid dividends for the rest of my life.

The fact that I recognized that learning was truly a skill, and that by continuing to learn to this day, I’m able to compete, keep up, and get ahead of most people—because the reality is, most people don’t put in the time to keep up and learn. And that’s always given me a competitive advantage.”

Here are five practical reasons why investing in yourself as a leader is one of the smartest moves you can make to succeed in business:

1. You become your own competitive advantage.

In business, when you invest in learning—whether it’s public speaking, data analysis, AI, leadership, or emotional intelligence—you equip yourself with tools others may lack. Over time, to Cuban’s point, that edge compounds.

2. You build confidence and clarity. 

When you sharpen your abilities, you don’t just get smarter—you feel more capable. That confidence shows up in meetings, negotiations, and tough decisions. It also helps you stay clear on your goals, set boundaries, and lead your people with conviction.

3. Your team mirrors your growth. 

As a leader, your mindset sets the tone for the entire company. When you prioritize your own growth, you model what continuous improvement looks like. That inspires your team to do the same—and over time, it creates a culture of learning and accountability.

4. It sharpens your decision making.

The higher up you go, the fewer people are willing to challenge your thinking. Investing in coaching, training, reading, or peer networks gives you fresh perspectives and helps you make better, faster, and more strategic decisions—especially under pressure.

5. It protects you from burnout and blind spots. 

Leading a company is high-stakes and emotionally demanding. Investing in your mental, emotional, and physical well-being isn’t indulgent—it’s essential. When you’re self-aware and grounded, you’re less reactive and more resilient, which makes you a more effective leader for others.

In the end, your business can only grow as fast and as far as you do. Investing in yourself isn’t optional—it’s foundational. As Mark Cuban said, the effort you put into learning and evolving pays dividends for life. It’s the one investment no market crash or competitor can take away.

SOURCE - INC.COM

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Editorial Flashback: It's an e-mail scam, not a "Nigerian scam"....

Editor-in-Chief

Imagine my surprise when I turned to the consumer page of the Attorney General of the State of Washington to find that a whole people, in this case citizens of Nigeria, had been painted with a wide brush (see former website content below in italics). Regarding the latter, I am talking about the much talked about e-mail scams or advance fee fraud, many believe originated from that West African nation.

"E-mail Scams - Advance fee and counterfeit check/Nigerian scams: If you suffered a financial loss you can file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov"

To better understand this issue, it will be prudent to give a brief overview of the most populous country on the African continent, a nation that has disbursed so much good to much of humanity, with some bad mixed in (show me a perfect country or people).

Nigeria gained its independence from Britain on October 1st, 1960. Since then, the country has experienced a civil war (that lasted for three years 1967-1970 and killed 1 million of its citizens) while also enjoying a long spell of economic prosperity and boom from the 70s to the late-80s (much from oil and other natural resources she has been blessed with).

Lately, beginning in the 1990s, the country's infrastructure, image and over-all national reputation has taking a beating, mainly as a result of defective leadership laced with unbecoming greed and avarice.

The general climate of corruption (not quite different from what you would find in most countries but quite overt in Nigeria) has led to an expected societal breakdown, where law, order and common decency became an exception and not the norm.

For all of its struggles with corruption and the systematic destruction of its storied institutions and culture, much of this by its own military, with the acquiescence of the West (the latter mostly concerned with taking its resources by any means), the country has re-set itself back on course, with democratic elections in 1999 and has never looked back since.

The descent into "white collar crime" with the e-mail scams and other forms of criminal activity (by a very marginal minority) does NOT define the nature and character of Nigerians (over 200 million people), with many Nigerians contributing as physicians, scientists, technology experts and business executives in much of the world, particularly Africa, Europe and the United States (with a well established immigrant population in the Puget Sound as well).

While the e-mail/advance fee scam has generally been portrayed as a "Nigerian Scam", recent investigations by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) (working in conjunction with the FBI and Interpol) have shown that most of these crimes (e-mail/advance fee scams) have actually been committed by citizens of other West African countries, namely Ghana, the Sierra Leone and Liberia (due to the wars and extreme poverty in the latter two).

The interesting spin to the preceding information is that America's next door neighbor, Canada, has become a notorious breeding ground as well for a large proportion of these e-mail and other transactional scams. Witness the Canadian "lottery winner" e-mails as well as the offer to send you a "cashiers check" when you try to sell your car on Craigslist.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), a body recently set up by Nigeria's democratically elected government, has also been very aggressive in pursuing the perpetrators of ALL financial crimes, within the Nigerian state.

While it is true that the Nigerian government "needs to do more" to ensure that this menace is curtailed (at least within its borders), one can say that the US government also needs to do more, by advising its citizens not to reply to e-mail solicitations to receive money from "relatives", they never had in Nigeria or anywhere else in the first place.

The advance fee fraud and e-mail scam developed a life of its own by the default of enablement. The greed and avarice in the United States (particularly on Wall Street) is there for all to see, but I am yet to see any Attorney General websites or newspapers refer to those as "American scam" or even worse still, label the scam on Wall Street with an ethnic delineation.

I am grateful to the deputy Chief-of-Staff of the Washington AG at the time for heeding my call and that of other well-meaning and hardworking Nigerians to remove the "Nigerian" label on this disgraceful activity.

One would hope that the likes of Sean Robinson (Staff Writer at the Tacoma News Tribune) might also learn something and understand that much like the criminals on Wall Street and those on the corners of the worst neighborhoods of Tacoma and indeed America who murder (serial killers et al), rape, pillage, molest and commit countless heinous crimes, are not branded with an American or other ethnic-American brush, it would be fool-hardy to do the same to others.

Flashback: Neo-Colonialism as the golden shackle: IMF declares 40% of African countries buried in debt..... Rich continent, poor masses

CC™ Global News

The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, says 40 per cent of African countries are in debt distress. 

She described Africa as a continent of opportunities and one with many troubles, noting that the focus was to help countries have sound macro-economic policies, improve the investment climate and show it to the rest of the world.

"Africa is a continent of opportunities and what we are looking for is for this opportunity to be harnessed to the maximum. It is also a continent with many troubles; so, we have to be mindful of these risks especially security risks," she said.

Commenting on the debt levels of countries, the newly appointed IMF MD said, "Are we worried about debt levels in Africa? Yes, because 40 per cent of the countries have gone into debt distress levels.

"In some cases, we are concerned about that but in other cases, we see that investment is going to pay off over time.

"Take the case of Kenya, we advise Kenya to be more cautious in building debt but we have seen good macroeconomic policy in Kenya.

"In cases where debt is dangerous like Zambia, we do say you need to get a handle on your debt. In Ethiopia, we say you need to renegotiate some of your debts because it is non-concessional for things that should be on a concessional basis.

"One has to remember that debt on its own is not bad. It is bad when it goes with the wrong things and when it goes with the speed that the economy cannot handle."

Georgieva said countries that were experiencing higher growth rate had done so by borrowing for investments that could generate growth and eliminating red tape for local and foreign investors.

She said the IMF would hold a 'concentrated' meeting with African leaders in December to discuss debt sustainability.

Source: The Cable

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