This is how confirmation bias works. A young man makes a few outrageous comments among other things. He attracts an audience and many thousands of trolls. No one takes him as their leader and there are many more with more followers who are genuine fans. Someone starts a rumour...
...that this young man is the chief influencer of Arewa Twitter and this rumour going viral makes many many more thousands flock to his handle to artificially prop him up as what they believe him to be. The young man starts getting noticed by a few people with money and power...
...The young man wisely uses this newfound recognition to raise funds for charitable projects. He gets more popular and promotes his apparel to make a living. He still lives modestly while most of his friends also do so, just trying to get by and have a bit of fun...
...The young men attract other young people who also want to network and meet up, and help each other with work and business prospects. They have no real power over APC heavyweights but a few elders in Kd quietly agree with their proclaimed disappointment with Buhari...
...When a Twitter issue becomes a trend and this young man has something hard hitting to say, trolls come out of the woodwork and look at his followers, believing he has great power and influence, so boost his follower numbers even more, and come on his comments blasting...
...Buhari and criticizing the North, actually believing this has any real impact on how the country operates or that it hurts Buhari in any way. Confirmation bias makes trolls blind to the criticisms any northerner makes about Buhari and quick to cherry pick any tweet...
...that appears to prove their belief that northern youth are all "hausa-fulani" or "herdsmen" lying in wait to attack certain southern or Christian tribes. This young man becomes their focus, ignoring all other northerners. More trolls know this young man than actual northerners
...Wjile the majority of Arewa youth are not on Twitter but Instagram and snapchat, and the majority of Arewa bigwigs and elders are on Facebook, Twitter trolls glorified this young man as the king of the North with the most powerful and representative voice - something that...
...does nothing more than facilitate his brand identity and help to sell his apparel. If anything, bigoted and distorted trolls have helped his business tremendously but done nothing to solve the country's underlying issues.
Among the issues that bigots don't comprehend is that Arewa is a giant melting pit of tribes, classes and opinions. We have feminists and patriarchists, educated and uneducated, business people and civil servants, and dozens of tribes that cherish their own identity and do NOT..
*pot
...ever wish to be known as another tribe. Even the fulani resent being lumped together with the tribe whose language is dominant. Within the North, farmer-herder clashes have been going on for centuries, irrespective of tribe and religion...
...But trolls and those who have something to gain from stereotypes would have this diversity and nuances of situations erased. Only one tribe is the North and only one young man's voice counts... Yet they think they stand for women's equality. When will a female northerner's...
...voice or a minority tribesperson's voice ever be said to "represent" the North. Even Fakhriyyah's, Elnathan's, Gimba's and Aisha Yesufu's northern identities are erased from them by bigots who only see what they already are prejudiced to see...
...The notion that Arewa youth have one opinion is also false. Where in the world do youth ever have only one opinion, or even static opinions? Even the trolls' favourite Arewa handle has changed his opinions. Opinions are fluid but the desire for justice is universal...
...Some of us handle young people not with cyberbullying as trolls are fond of doing bit with tact and gentleness, reason and discourse, as we know that young people's views are amenable. Even those who believe falsely that Arewa youth do not support protestors based on.....
...the young man's statements failed to comprehend how his own views evolved...
...This was a young man who organised his own EndSARS protest. He spoke out strongly in favour of EndSARS much to the shock of his own trolls who have now conveniently forgotten that...
...The young man's views changed after the national movement was hijacked by violent events and voices largely from the SW and some elders up here promoted the notion that EndSARS was just a cover to use innocent youth for clout, money and anarchy; that it wasn't a genuine...
...movement against police brutality. Who are the initiators of the #Lekkilies hashtag? Not this young man or any northerner for that matter. Young people simply read the arguments and select the ones they feel have the greatest evidence. But no one can tell me that northern...
...youth are in general happy with Buhari or happy with anyone's life being lost, whether by the army, the police or by bandits, kidnappers and terrorists. This is pure fiction contrived to divide and rule further. If Northern youth lash out against some southern personalities..
...it is because day after day they are called illiterates and aboki and then on top of that told that aboki is not offensive, again erasing their own views as invalid. This is a superiority complex that is as unacceptable as it is for the Hausa man to feel superior to an Igbo...
...or a Yoruba, and as unacceptable as it is for a Muslim Northerner to call a Northern Christian "arne" or any other slanderous term. We are raised into bigotry but we have a choice whether to maintain it. We are born into the normalisation of corruption and the notion that...
...the political class must never be challenged to be accountable and serve us, or else we will disappear the way Dadiyata disappeared and our parents will weep over us. Northern youth live with this fear but we can choose to let fear rule us or stand up for justice...
...the way our forefathers stood for independence from the mighty British empire. If tribes with less firepower than Brittania could overcome them via dialogue, alliances & resistance, then surely we too can overcome our own oppressors. It won't be by trolling or mocking though.
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