Essays In Persuasion

MA Iliasu . Gone are becoming the days when hearing the name "Kano" puts on the mind the booming market society where harmony is a norm and both the commodious and experiential social vanity mature so much that the natives don't bother involuntary travelling, the captivation of which trigger envy from, and the pull of which never set free the desire of, other native inhabitants. Those existential foundations that have been holding the society together and helping the sustainability of the people and their culture fluctuates over time, and often, in different forms. One day it's politics shaking the peace, another it's economics threatening the welfare and in other days it's culture and geography experimenting on moral decadence and environmental pollution. However, none among the interdependent factors has proven irrecoverable over the 54 years old history of the state. Meanwhile, despite those subtle and blunt recoveries, the momentarily cancerous social dile...

MA Iliasu. No sooner than two hours into the Eid that my head began to think about the possible economic behaviors that can be milked out of the Eid protocols, their implications and moral validity. Not that during the Holy month I couldn't think about it. Only that the Eid allowed me a chance to clearly remember the year when we observed our prayers in a heavily monitored Covid-19 protocols. And the fact that I can remember the event means I remember when one of my close acquaintances speculated about using the then standard procedure  of having to use a facemask, as an opportunity to get a heavenly reward, by donating it's large quantities to the major mosques and dominant streets of Kano. Which doubtlessly was a kindly-intentioned gesture that would save large population of economic agents some chunk of money. As a matter of fact, I don't know if he did. And as a brother, I wish he did, for surely he would do with more good deeds. But as an economist, I am speculating th...

MA Iliasu Learning the way of the world is one of the most important goals of reading. And within that context, books that follow the theme of fantasy are hardly topical, unless the reader possesses very high applicable intelligence. Likewise profound non-fiction themes like autobiographies, historical analysis or even historical fiction, for all the divergent information they equip the reader with, are not as easy to decipher without context as the fictional themes that cover drama, politics, crime, romance and other genres that accentuate with the normal topical fluctuations. Therefore it's only natural that most readers find books that depict people and society in their absolute cultural form more relatable, and hence, more appealing. Because they subtly, sometimes bluntly, define them. It's absolutely not a coincidence that when Jenni Calder aimed to write about Hero and his role in the society, she included fictional characters who were at forefront of influencing popular ...

MA Iliasu. One would have to wonder how huge the work rate of economic theory must be to astonishingly liberate existential debates on the possibility or otherwise, the undertones and the future of currency digitalization - which has been the major talking phenomenon since the slump in 2008. Nevertheless, a free flow of theoretical opinions and treatise prescriptions by established economists, prophecies of doom and suggestions in persuasion by ecosystem commentators is only expected when the phenomenon is a determining factor on the future of money and the role of government. Cryptocurrency as the so-called apolitical and decentralized digital currency is an economic phenomenon like any other, unlike what many people think, and therefore has a meaningful context inside the economic theory. On it's own merits, it's warranted to say that the economic relevance of the phenomenon takes the courtesy of massaging the idea of the monetary economists who hold immense reservations upon...

MA Iliasu. In October 2006, I and my fellow pupil, Sameer, were driven to the Day Science College to participate in a teenage contest. We were both ten years old. With Sameer been the best of the duo. When we touched the ground, an army of pupil were already parading the front yard in their fancy school  uniforms. In Kano state, the mandatory code for public schools was all-white combination of shirt, trouser and cap. While private schools had their distinctive codes. And none was familiar to us. A sad development occurred when at the very experience of sitting along, Sameer lost it. It was evident, he got intimidated by the kids who were already gisting about how they intend to boss it. He whispered in my ear that we stood no chance in the contest, which I disagreed, but his index finger was already shaking. The judges, having witnessed the large number of the candidates decided to organise a quick test to trim out the least-prepared among us, just so that the contest will be for ...

Name: Outliers; The Story of Success Author: Malcolm Gladwell Genre: Non-fiction Year of publishing: 2008 Reviewer: MA Iliasu When the review of a book arrives thirteen years after it was published, the sluggishness of the reader has to be wondered. Nevertheless, the captivity of profound pieces of literature like Gladwell's Outliers warrants any extended discussion, far beyond the scrutiny of timing and elongation. Like Yuval Harari with his brief histories, Gladwell unlocks the book by introducing the reader into "The story of success" with a brilliant analogy base on the ground-breaking discovery of Stewart Wolf, what he calls "Roseto Mystery”. The analogy pondered upon how Mr. Wolf proved the strong correlation between social companionship and resistance to heart attack among a group of Italian immigrants in America, called Rosetans. The work, as has been recognized, presents the field of medicine with a distinguished approach towards the understanding of health....

MA Iliasu. The Shelby family were of gothic macabre who took advantage of flawed social institutions that were denigrated by corruption and greed to impose their mob will upon the smokey city of Birmingham. Weak policing institutions notwithstanding. How a group of people could disagree with the rules of polite society and get away with it call for a far bigger reason than anything covered by social tolerance and society's tendency to retain the alternative to morality. The Shelbys' barbarous definition of justice is what I percieve as a psychological trigger which enable people to maintain the social courtesy they grant them, in the absence of which they would have fallen victim of collective revolt. And that psychological trigger, is in my opinion, the most relevant thematic ingredient the producers could lend a television series that exposed a great deal of information about the most critical point in the history of mob enterprise across the last century. A very long time af...