I am to speak for a few minutes on reflections on the President Muhammad Buhari administration, the journey so far. And I think that what the Zanua retreat offers is an opportunity to reflect on some of the issues that made a difference in our administration. And what I intend to do is to spend time not listing our many achievements. There is a detailed monograph that is titled The Achievements of the Buhari administration, which I'm sure we all have in our parks, which does this excellently. And I wanted to show a copy of that, but I'm sure we all have it. So I'd rather focus on four of what I think are the fundamental ways in which policies and programs have contributed to Nigeria's transformational journey. And to point to three challenges that I believe must be confronted, and then perhaps end with the recommendation. I begin with the development of infrastructure, and especially the creativity which we have brought to infrastructure financing. Clearly there is no administration to date that has invested anywhere close to our investment in infrastructure, from roads, rail, to power, and broadband infrastructure. The financing menu which we adopted include the road infrastructure development and refurbishment investment tax credit policy. This has incentivized the construction of almost 1,500 kilometers of critical roads in the economic corridors. Under the scheme, the Dengote group has substantially completed the reconstruction of the 34 kilometer Apapa, Oro and Shoki, or Jota Expressway in Lagos, and the 43 kilometer of Bajano, Kaba Road. Similarly, the Nigeria LNG Limited is on track to complete the 38 kilometer Bodo Bonny Bridge and roads project by the end of 2023. And recently, the president gave approval to MTN to construct a 202 billion Enugu Onisha Road. The second on the menu is the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund, PIDF, which is managed by our Sovereign Wealth Authority, where we have leveraged more than a billion dollars in financing to facilitate the accelerated completion of the second Niger Bridge, the Lagos Ibadno Expressway, and the Abuja Kano Road. The third is the Cook Funds. The fourth is the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria, or InfraCoas, we call it, established in 2021, with a seat capital of one trillion Naira from the Central Bank of Nigeria, our Sovereign Wealth Authority, and the Africa Finance Corporation. So all of these are the innovative ways by which we've been able to fund infrastructure outside of budget. The power sector is an area where there has been game-changing progress. But the situation is rather like building a skyscraper. The foundation is several floors into the ground and no one sees the work while the critical component of the building is being done. And this is where we are in the power sector. A lot of foundational stuff is going on. First is the improvement in generating capacity today. More than 4,000 megawatts of additional power-generating assets will be completed under the life of this administration. These include the Zungeru Hydro, Kashambila Hydro, the Afam-3 Fast Power, the Kudenda Kaduna Power Plant, or Pi Phase II Gas Power Plant, and then the Dangote Refinery Power Plant, and many others. Recently, KPMG concluded a study showing that while the figure of 4,000 megawatts is the average used daily on the grid, electricity delivered by our electricity industry, which includes grid, captive power, and embedded power, is in excess of 8,000 megawatts daily, not 4,000 megawatts, and also that installed capacity is in excess of 18,000 megawatts and not 13,000 megawatts. Much of the improvement to the 8,000 megawatts that we are talking about has occurred under our administration, and they include one of the 28 grid power plants with installed capacity of about 13,000 megawatts and operational daily capacity of around 5,000 megawatts. These include our power plants in Egbeen, Ueli, Gerigu, Kainji, and others. Then there's the 266 captive power plants with installed capacities of about 4,000 megawatts and daily operational capacities of about 2,500 megawatts. These include the Dangote Semen capacities in Obajano, Ibeche. That's 400 megawatts of power, and LNG's 240 megawatts of power on the Bonilla Island Power Plant. These are never captured in the statistics, but are part of the stock of our Nigerian electricity supply industry. In the future, many of these plants will integrate into the grid. In fact, some of them supply power to the communities where they are already. Then there is the 16 embedded power plants with about 549 megawatts of installed capacity and 190 megawatts of daily operational capacity. So there is a whole range of generating capacity. Most of them that are not currently under the grid, they are captive or embedded depending on which ones they are. But all of them contribute to our generating capacity and power supply on a regular basis. Our renewable energy program has attained great momentum. The Solar Power Niger, which is a program introduced by the Economic Sustainability Plan, will help us to achieve 5 million solar connections impacting over 12 million Nigerians. The Ministry of Power is also driving an additional 49 billion in off-grid funding through the Solar Power Niger loans via the Central Bank of Nigeria. There are also ongoing projects under the Solar Power Niger. The NDPHC is doing 7 billion in solar projects. NNPC is doing 22 billion in solar projects and NSI is doing 10 billion. Infra-credits is doing another 10 billion, and this is NIRAM. An important component of our power program is the national mass metering program. And I think that it's important to bear in mind that this program is one that has helped greatly in advancing the fortunes of our electricity industry. It is financed by the CBN. One million meters have been installed so far, and there is now a structure to meter and additional six million households and also to provide a way of sustainably eliminating the metering gap. One of the major complaints of our discourse and major complaints of the electricity industry is that there isn't adequate metering. And so many times, discourse have to give estimated billings. And this, of course, is a tremendous irritation to consumers. But now, with the metering program, we're heading for at least six million by the end of this administration. 41-meter factories are now functional in Nigeria, and they've created 10,000 jobs as part of the metering program. So going forward in the electricity industry, and of course there's so much that is going on there, but going forward, it is proposed that the TCN be separated into two entities under the direct oversight of the Ministry of Power. And the two constraint parts would be the transmission company of Nigeria to serve as a transmission service provider responsible for the provision of infrastructure for transporting electric energy across the whole of Nigeria. And then the independent system operator to provide systems operations, which mainly is about management of power, dispatch, and grid security. And then the market operator function, which is market settlement administration. So this arrangement will create independence between the TCN as a regulator and participant, and certainly will improve the confidence of market participants. The second game-changing achievement in our administration, in my view, is digital economy. First is the rapid expansion of broadband access. In August 2019, the broadband coverage was 33.7%, and today it is 44.65%, representing close to 13 million new broadband users. There were 13,823 4G-based stations, and we now have 36,751, representing a 165% increase. The percentage 4G coverage across the country has increased from 23% to 77.52%. The expansion has been greatly helped by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy directly engaging the states on the right-of-way policy, with a view to persuading them to reduce the rates charged for lane fiber optic cables to as low as 140 nir per meter. Many states have complied, and some states have even completely removed the charges. But what I believe will become the biggest contribution of the digital economy to the Nigerian economic growth is the deployment of 5G technology. We now have presidential approval for the 5G policy. In terms of density, 4G allows connections to about 1 million devices within 500 square kilometers, while 5G will allow the same number of devices in just one square kilometer. There's also, of course, the very fast data rates of the 5G are more efficient energy usage. Of course, the cost of data has also crashed from 1,200 per GB in 2019 to about 360 nir today, making it easier for Nigerians to connect to the Internet. Now, the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has embarked on the National Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone 2, which is called NICTIB-2 for short, to connect 20 states with fiber optics that had not been connected under NICTIB-1. We've also made tremendous progress with expanding the digital identity database. From less than 40 million people who had national identification numbers in 2020, we now have 90,000 to 90 million, beg your pardon, 268,742 NIN records, as at the end of September 2022. So digital identity is profoundly important for the entire economy, because first it assures democratized access to basic services like health, education, banking, and enables the inclusion of millions in the digital economy. Another key strand of Nigeria's digital journey is the stellar performance of our FinTech companies, the growth of which was supported very actively by the central bank in terms of granting new categories of licenses and providing clear regulatory guidelines for payment service providers. And this has led to an explosion in participation with the value of digital transactions in Nigeria rising to 286 trillion Naira, that is 690 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. In the midst of two recessions since 2015, Nigeria now has six unicorns. These are digital companies valued at over $1 billion each. One of them is in fact valued at $3 billion, bigger than most Nigerian banks. This includes the companies Flutterwave, OPE, and Della, InterSwitch, Jumea, Pigivest, and Paystack. Many of these companies were founded or co-founded by Nigerians. When they founded them, most of them were under 30 years old. The third game-changing achievement, in my view, are the ease of doing business reforms, PERBEC. And I think PERBEC has since 2016 implemented 160 reforms. PERBEC is our Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council. These include the digitization of company registration, tax payment, and the visa on arrival process. All of these are digitized processes. Of course, there are hitches here and there, and we're not going to go into all of that detail. Then there are legislative reforms with a very active collaboration of the National Assembly. We're able to pass the secure transactions in movable assets Act of 2017 and the Credit Reporting Act of 2017 as well. These two acts enable MSMEs to enjoy financial inclusion and facilitate access to credit by legalizing the use of movable assets as collateral. In the past, of course, movable assets were not used effectively as collateral. So no one would want to accept your car as collateral. No one would want to accept any movable asset. But now under this law, movable assets are used and can be used as collateral. And these laws have improved transparency and enhanced risk management in credit transactions. To date, over $700 billion worth of assets have been listed on our National Collateral Registry. And this is important because now we have a register of collateral. So if you've used your movable asset as collateral, it is listed somewhere. And you can check that on the website. You can be sure that a person does not use a car twice or thrice for collateral because there is now an established register. Also, there's the new Companies Analyzed Matters Act which contains extensive business facilitation provisions and we have the omnibus bill which is still before the National Assembly, which is to codify executive order 001 on transparency and efficiency. Then we have justice sector reforms along the business lines as well. The establishment of small claims courts for settlement of commercial disputes that are under $5 million naira. Lagos State was the first to establish this in 2018 with the collaboration of Pebeck. And since 2018, they have looked over at 4,000 different cases. And these have been heard in 19 courts across the state. And this, of course, has reduced cost and time of commercial litigation for many MSMEs. Kano Ogung, Edo, Ekiti, Nassarawa, Jigawa have also started their own operations by Elsa, Kaduna, and Sokoto and the FCT on the verge of launching their own small claims courts in the very, very near future. Between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria moved up 39 places in the World Bank Dream Business Rankings and was twice named as one of the top 10 most improved economies in the world. The fourth game changing achievement of our government is a social investment program. And the president dwells considerably on this. This is an important ideological and policy statement of our party and our government. We took the view from the very inception of the government that countries, a country, especially where there are large numbers of poor people, must provide a well thought out social safety net for the poorest and the most vulnerable. And there must be interventions for the young unemployed. So this led to the deployment of the largest social investment program in sub-Saharan Africa with a budgetary provision of 500 billion Naira and at the time that was close to $2 billion. Since 2016, we've included that almost 500 billion Naira in every one of our budgets and now is closer, I believe, to one trillion Naira. It includes conditional cash transfers to over 2 million of the poorest benefiting from a bimonthly stipend of 10,000 Naira. The National Social Register now contains 46 million persons in over 11 million poor and vulnerable households from across the Federation. We have a school-feeding program for public primary schools, now feeding close to 10 million schoolchildren across the country. We have an award-winning micro-credit scheme for informal traders under the government enterprises and empowerment program. So the likes of trader money, farmer money, market money, et cetera. Then we have interventions for young unemployed, the young and employed population, the MPAR program. We began with employment of our 500,000 young people and now we have presidential approval for a million to be employed under the scheme. So aside from the obvious benefits to millions, the program also is an opportunity to build local digital capacity and expand the financial inclusion base for millions. For the G program, for example, we give the management to the Bank of Industry who builds the platform that eventually serviced over 4 million beneficiaries, disbursing and handling repayment of credit for this number of people. Today, the Bank of Industry's growth platform is Africa's largest infrastructure for interventions to MSMEs. The growth platform's command center now has 22,000 agents living across all local government areas in Nigeria, equipped with proprietary mobile technologies. They receive mandates to capture and digitize businesses that are eligible for its growing suite of programs. The MPAR program also led to the building of a robust digital platform for recruiting, for paying and engaging beneficiaries. The largest of its kind in Africa. The homegrown school feeding has shown multiple returns on investment. It has raised enrollment in schools by as high as 40%, significantly improving nutrition and health outcomes for children in public schools, improving revenues for farmers who service the scheme and jobs for aggregators, cooks, and others in the value chain. One key lesson that our experience has shown is that it is quite possible to run large-scale programs for the benefit of ordinary Nigerians in a fair and transparent manner. Using technology reduces the problems of human agency and discretion. Running such large programs fairly goes a long way in encouraging ordinary Nigerians to believe and trust in the government that they have voted into power. Permit me to mention three challenges that we must confront going forward. The first is the synergy between fiscal and monetary policy. Wherever that synergy fails, it leads to unnecessary drawbacks in our economic performance and planning. What imports are eligible for foreign exchange must agree with the fiscal ambitions for manufacturing and industry. Whatever we agree as fiscal and monetary policy of both sides must agree on what should be eligible and what should not be eligible. It cannot be the province of monetary policy alone. Neither should it be the province of fiscal policy alone. The second is our exchange rate management and this continues to be an issue. The exchange rates of the Naira to convertible currencies continues to face significant downward pressures because demand substantially outstrips supply and that's just the reality. On one hand, we have tried demand management and rationing which has not really worked because fixing the price while the parallel market reveals a massive arbitrage merely creates the opportunity for massive rents. It will also compound the backlog of remittances for foreign businesses who want to repatriate their earnings. The discussion that we now must have and going forward is how to manage the situation by finding a mechanism for increasing supply and moderating demand which will be transparent and will boost confidence. I think that a more market-driven approach will be best. Some price discovery within the context of a managed float is certainly what is required. Some efforts at controlled price discovery that had been made in the past and the CBN has a history of several of these efforts. They include the foreign exchange market FEM, the interbank foreign exchange market IFEM and then various iterations of the Dutch auction system, whole Dutch auction system, retail Dutch auction system. All of these were price discovery mechanisms which I believe can still be applied. While they may not be perfect, there as if at least the rules were clear and there was relative stability. When people know how they can access foreign exchange competitively, this will boost confidence and inward flows will increase. My third issue is that we must focus on value, addition and productivity in our economy. This happily is well articulated in our medium-term economic plan 2021 to 2025. We must in doing so losing the generalized restrictions on trade. Blanket import restrictions are a dampener on economic activity because a lot of items that might be needed in manufacturing might be affected with a consequent negative impact on value addition in the economy. Importation itself is not the problem. It is what you import and what you do with importation. It is value added that matters and this is how in my view jobs and wealth are created. Many countries who manufacture are actually huge importers and they import far more than Nigeria. Let's take for example, government manufacturing in Bangladesh, the world's leading government manufacturer. The world's leading government manufacturer does not produce most of the cotton it uses. As a matter of fact, it grows only 2% of its annual cotton requirement. In 2019, Bangladesh imported 11.8 billion dollars worth of textiles and apparels while it exported 37.94 billion US dollars worth of garments in the same year. So it's clear that there's nothing wrong with importation if you're going to add value and you're going to export and I think that we should focus on doing that. Finally, a valuable lesson that we must draw from our efforts over the life of this administration is that coherence and coordination are essential for effective policy implementation. It's important for government policies to be coherent otherwise different parts of government could end up adopting diametrically opposed policies and I think that one of the very important issues one of the very important steps that Mr. President has taken is the establishment of the delivery unit in the presidency. This I think is effective and greatly helps in ensuring coherence and coordination of policy. I believe we've done well with regard to using planning as a form of promoting coherence in policy making and implementation and this is reflected by the adoption of the economic recovery and growth plan, the economic sustainability plan in response to COVID-19 and then of course the national development plan 2021 to 2025 and the ongoing work on the Nigeria agenda 2050. I think that what the broad consultative process that is involved in drawing up these plans does is that it helps to improve understanding of government intentions and direction even by public servants but certainly also by the private sector and the general populace. Planning also means that there is a process by which incompatible policies are realigned and repositioned. Closely related to coherence is coordination. It's important to coordinate the implementation of government policy very closely. Apart from the benefits of several viewpoints being taken into account the coordination of economic activity enables key economic managers to know how to help their colleagues to achieve common objectives. The truth of course is that working in silos or going it alone can often have very harmful effects on policy implementation. Very closely tied to coordination is strong public sector capacity and I think it's pleasing to note that the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has been proceeding at pace with the Federal Civil Service Strategy and implementation plan. I think that one of the very important steps Mr. President which you took in 2016 and I believe I would not be accused of being self-serving here because we have only a few months to go. As you constituted the economic management team under the Office of the Vice President and I think that that was a very administratively sound and wise decision indeed because constitutionally the Office of the Vice President is chair of the National Economic Council, chair of the National Planning Commission and also chair of the National Council on Privatization which of course is the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Because of the strong economic position that the Office of the Vice President has been placed constitutionally makes perfect sense for the Office of the Vice President to be the coordinator, the interim ministerial coordinator of the economic management team and I believe that your Excellency acted very wisely and rightly indeed and I commend this to future administrations and to the incoming President and Vice President. I'd like to thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you.


Hello to everyone, here is another Questions of the Month video, this time the one where I will deal with the questions that were asked by our YouTube channel community in June 2013. And again I will present everything using the active board behind me, whose content can be downloaded from the e-lecture library on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Here is the first problem taken from the phonetics video basic segments of speech. How about the other vowels? Because here we only have the primary and secondary vowels. Well, this first question, as far as I understand it, relates to a more elaborate treatment of vowels. Well, I thought to have given that. In the first of our two videos, basic segments of speech vowels one, I hope to have outlined and demonstrated the system of cardinal vowels. And in a second e-lecture, basic segment of speech vowels two, I expanded this approach by including the central vowels as well as types of vowels such as diphthongs, nasalized vowels and so on. And I also related some language specific vowels, for example from French or German to the system of cardinal vowels. Well, and if you want more language specific information about vowels, you have to consult my phonology e-lectures about the sound system of RP, North American English, German and so on. So I think to have solved that problem. Here is the next one. It concerns the video, the evolution of language. When I created this e-lecture, which in the meantime has had several thousand views, I could not imagine that this was would result in a vivid debate. I do not want to take up the debate here. The debate about human evolution versus human creation. All I want to say here is that we would like to maintain as professional and academic as possible and therefore ask you to avoid inappropriate language. So as I said in another questions of the month video, inappropriate and disrespectful comments may be ignored and in some extreme cases we have to delete them. The next question concerns the status of received pronunciation. Is it a social dialect or not? To answer this question, let us take some time and say something about the term dialect in general. A dialect is defined as a variety of a language that differs from the standard in terms of phonology, grammar and lexis. So these aspects are different. According to this definition, for example, Geordie, the variety spoken in the area around Newcastle in England, can be defined as a dialect of English and the same applies to Southern States American English, which would then be a dialect of North American English. If we now focus on the phonology of a variety, received pronunciation is the phonological standard of the English spoken in England. And again, we can define phonological variants of it. For example, Estuary English. Estuary English mainly differs from received pronunciation in terms of phonology. Hence it can be defined as a phonological dialect or if you prefer an alternative, slightly outdated term as an accent of received pronunciation. Thus far we have defined the varieties of a language purely on the basis of linguistic parameters. But what about other parameters? For example, we can define dialects on the basis of the region where they are used and look at some linguistic variables such as the use of particular alophones of particular phonemes, the choice of specific words or phrases and associate them with particular regions. According to such a regional variation, we get a continuum where RP, received pronunciation over here would be classified as a variety without any region, whereas SCAUSE, the variety spoken around Liverpool, Geordie, the Newcastle variety or Estuary English, the variety of the southeast of England, would be regional dialects. Another parameter is the social one. This time, the variety or social dialect is associated with parameters such as social prestige or acceptance and according to this parameter, RP is the dialect with the highest degree of acceptance. If we now combine the regional and the social parameter and relate them to the situation in England, we can see that upper class phonological dialects exhibit no regional variation and that working class varieties display a good deal of regional variation. So received pronunciation is at the same time the standard phonological dialect of the English spoken in England and the variety with the highest social prestige. So it is, if you wish, a social dialect. Regionally, however, it is neutral. There is no particular region that can be associated with received pronunciation. Well, that was an e-lecture in its own right, wasn't it? Perhaps I'd better take up this topic again in a separate e-lecture. Anyway, my complex answer may now help to solve the next problem relatively quickly. It concerns the status of Canadian English. Is it a dialect of English or not? Well, if we now take the parameters we've just discussed, we can clearly say it is a regional dialect confined to Canada and it is socially neutral. Phonologically it can be defined as a dialect of North American English marked mainly by these features. The low back merger, for example, which merges the vowels in collar and collar to something like collar, Canadian raising, which raises the diphthong in words such as house to house and the Canadian shift, which lengthens and backends the short a in maniac to maniac. And of course there are some minor features. So much for the linguistic problems. Let us now turn to some general questions and problems. You know, there was a competition in Germany to get financial support for the development of a MOOC, a massive open online course. We took part with our proposal, teaching English as a foreign language, part one, pronunciation. And the support we received by our YouTube subscribers and viewers has been overwhelmingly positive. Several thousand clicks on the proposal video and a high degree of acceptance. But despite this international acceptance and your fantastic support, our proposal was not selected by the jury. So we decided to offer our massive open online courses via our platform, the Virtue Linguistics Campus, henceforth, which leads me to the next general question. When are you going to offer the MOOC, phonetics, phonology and transcription again? Well, from now on, we will turn most of our Virtue Linguistics Campus courses into massive open online courses and will thus create a permanent offer. We will start with the MOOC Linguistics 101 fundamentals, which is basically an overview of language and linguistics. Then we have our MOOC Linguistics 102 Speech Science, which is essentially an introduction to phonetics. And our third of this series, Linguistics 103, the nature of meaning, a MOOC about semantics and pragmatics. Further massive open online courses, for example on morphology and syntax, will follow soon. And by the way, registration for these three MOOCs has just started. Just check the registration office on the Virtue Linguistics Campus and take part. And in all these massive open online courses, you can get certificates. The standard certificate is the so-called statement of participation issued by the Virtue Linguistics Campus for regular and active participation. But there is a second option. If you want it, you have to invest more work and a very small amount of money. If this is the option of your choice, you will receive a qualified statement of accomplishment by Marburg University in conjunction with our Virtue Linguistics Campus. This certificate will include the precise grade. It will list the workload involved and it will contain a complete list of all the tasks you have successfully submitted. In order to be given such a certificate, we want you to participate regularly and we want you to do the worksheets, one for each eLearning unit and we want you to achieve an overall score of 60% of more. Well it's all up to you. Just join us in our massive open online courses. The next problem concerns our eLectures in general. Several community members wish that we produce further eLectures on specific topics of their choice. For example, some of you want an eLecture on Procedure or this user YC1180K wants an eLecture on syllabic consonants, X bar syntax is another one and someone wants an eLecture on collocation and idioms or here take this one Semantic Primes is a topic of Warbechmann's choice. Well first I feel honoured that you like our current eLectures and that you want me to do more. In fact I will. I will not rest until I feel that we have a sufficient amount of eLectures and screencasts to support the fields of linguistics and web technology for linguistics in a sufficient manner. So topics such as these and here are further topics, historical linguistics, stratificational grammar, other non-Chomskian grammars, philosophy of language and so on and so forth. So these will soon be available as eLectures. For all I can say, stay tuned and wait for your favourite topic to be turned into an eLecture soon. By the way, on the virtual linguistics campus many of these topics already exist as virtual sessions in a multimedia format. Just book the global access and you have access to all of them. Well and here is another bid for literature references this time in social linguistics. But as I mentioned in previous Questions of the Month videos our policy is quite straightforward. We do not list literature references in a video. You would have to pause, you would have to identify the references and then you would have to copy them and eventually get them. But on the virtual linguistics campus literature references are given in three ways. On the one hand we have specific references in the virtual sessions, then we have class related references via the bibliography link of a class and eventually we have the VLC library. Unlike in a video where once recorded the references are permanent on the virtual linguistics campus we can easily update the references when necessary. So become a member of the VLC and you have the references you need. Alright I hope to have solved some of your problems at least for some of you and for another month.  You see these wonderful images in here. I'm overwhelmed with comments like these which are especially motivating. I listed some of them here, perfect, awesome, amazing job. He just happened to be a scholar with the right pedigree for this task. And eventually in Spanish, excelente presentación gracias por subirla y compartirla, did I get the Spanish one right? Probably not, but anyway perhaps you could deliver comments in English exclusively so that everyone can read and understand them. One of the best comments is this one, a remark to which we can all subscribe, can't we? Linguistics is fun, okay, that's it for now. So see you again in the next Questions of the Month video or in any of our e-lectures. I will continue trying hard to produce top class linguistic videos and you are the ones who motivate me to do so. Thanks for your support.


All praise belongs to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the Lord of the worlds, the one and only true God, the most compassionate, the merciful. There's nothing like him whatsoever, yet he is all hearing and all seeing. And peace and blessings be upon our Master Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the final Messenger of God, the Seal of the Prophets, the Commander of the Righteous, the Leader of the Messengers, and the Beloved of the Lord of the Worlds. Alhamdulillah, we've entered into the last 10 nights of the blessed month of Ramadan. These are some of the holiest nights of the year. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Qur'an, after taking an oath. And there's some difference of opinion amongst the Mufasireen as to what these nights, 10 nights, refer to. Some of the exigents say that they refer to the first 10 nights of the month of Muharram, others say the first 10 nights of Dhul-Hijjah, and yet others say the last 10 nights of Ramadan. Of course, this was when the Qur'an was first revealed to our Master Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, The month of Ramadan is that wherein the Qur'an was sent down as guidance to mankind, as clear proofs of guidance and the criterion. Let him among you who was present fast during this month. So first and foremost, we notice from this ayah that the month of Ramadan is primarily associated with the Qur'an, then fasting. Fasting during Ramadan was prescribed during the Medinan period. The Qur'an is really at the heart of this month. What is the Qur'an? Al-Huda wal-Furqan, the guidance and criterion. That is to say, it is the basis by which we judge other religions, other traditions, other philosophies, other theologies, other worldviews, etc. It distinguishes truth from falsehood and the lawful from the prohibited. Our mother, Asaidat-u-Aisha, radiallahu ta'ala anha, she said, The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would exert himself during the last 10 nights like no other time. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would seclude himself in the masjid and Jibril alaihi sallam would visit him. And of course, Jibril alaihi sallam was the archangel who would bring the revelation to him. Say whoever is an enemy to Jibril alaihi sallam for indeed he reveals it. i.e. the Qur'an upon your heart by the permission of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And when Jibril alaihi sallam would visit the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam in the masjid, they would recite the Qur'an to each other. This is called al-Mu'aradah, which linguistically means a mutual presentation. This was an annual review of the Qur'an. This was an annual review of the Qur'an during each Ramadan, and this was reported by several Sahaba. And in his final Ramadan, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam reviewed the Qur'an twice with Jibril alaihi sallam. So during the Prophet's time, there was widespread memorization of the Qur'an, an annual view of the Qur'an, inscribable recordings of the Qur'an. The entire Qur'an was written down by command of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam in his lifetime. The preservation of the Qur'an is without question. Indeed, we sent down the reminder, and indeed we are its guardians. So to our young people and older people, don't fall into an anti-Muslim rabbit hole on the internet or on YouTube where the Qur'an is being attacked. Most of these anti-Muslim channels take it from me. I give you sincere advice. I've been dealing with these people for decades.  They want us to chase these red herrings and thus cause us to doubt the strength of our overall established narrative. Sometimes Muslim scholars have to listen to this garbage in order to formulate refutations if they feel that it's necessary. But the average lay Muslim should not even click on these videos. Just ignore the algorithm. Imam al-Ghazali, he said that just listening to a zindiq or a mubtadir, listening to a heretic or an innovator is a breach of the right, a breach of the haqq of the ear. It is impermissible for your ear to hear such things, let alone listening to some vile kafir or mustahzi, some mocker who hates Islam because the truth of Islam destroys his own false theology or the ethical positions of Islam denounce his own degenerate lifestyle. This is really at the root of their hatred. Many Christian apologists and polemicists who attack the Qur'an, much of their vitriol is due to the fact that they recognize they recognize the truth of our narrative when it comes to the Qur'an. So they're filled with envy and frustration because their narrative has been utterly deconstructed by secular academics and historians. This is called the guilt complex. They accuse our narrative of falsehood and attack our scripture because they know that their own narrative in scripture is in utter shambles. How do we know this? We read the Qur'an. The ayaat of the Qur'an are so perfect or so succinct. It's all in the Qur'an. What does Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala say? They long to make you disbelievers after you have believed through envy, through hasad on their own account after the truth has become manifest to them. Forgive and pardon until Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala brings his command. Indeed Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is over everything powerful and then Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala says essentially get to work and establish the prayer and pay the charity and whatever good you send before you for your souls you'll find it with Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. Indeed Allah is concerning what you do all seen and they say none will enter paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian. These are their vain delusions. Say bring your proof if you are truthful. No, who so ever submits to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala and is a doer of good. His reward is with his Lord and no fear shall come upon them. Neither shall they grieve. And the Jews say the Christians follow nothing true. Yet they are both readers of the Bible. Like this speak those who don't know anything. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala will judge between them on the day of resurrection concerning what they differed about. Sadaqa Allah. This is perfect. Subhan Allah. The Jews say that God is absolutely one. The Christians say that he's three and one. There's a trinity. The Jews say that God is not a man. The Christians say God became a man who died for our sins. The Jews say that repentance is all you need to be right with God again. The Christians say reconciliation is through blood sacrifice and vicarious atonement. The Jews say that every single commandment of the Old Testament is still binding. The Christians say the vast majority of the commandments are abrogated. And they're both reading the same exact book. Look at the chaos. Not only this, the Quran says in modern textual criticism has confirmed that the Bible, old and new testaments, have suffered a degree of textual and exegetical corruption. There's no doubt about this. I can give you example, heaped upon example, but this is not the occasion. But this is the state of their text. Because of a guilt complex, they attack the Quran.  And it's not all of them. We're speaking in general terms, but here's the point. The Quran that we read and recite today with its ahruf and various teraat is the very same Quran that was recited by the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. There is no doubt in this. It is impossible to fabricate the Quran. It has always been impossible. Just as it is impossible today, it was impossible at any point in the past. The reason is because the Quran was and continues to be a mass transmitted living tradition. It is a mass transmitted living tradition. It was constantly heard and recited and memorized every day since its inception. How do we know how to pray? The sunnah of the prayer was a mass transmitted, mass practiced living tradition. The practice of the prayer was imprinted upon the companions. So was the Quran's recitation. Secular historians basically agree the words of the Quran were first uttered by the historical Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, whether they believe he was a prophet or not. He is the quote unquote earthly source of the Quran. This is the general historical consensus and only radical historical revisionists and anti-Muslim ahlid kitab with huge chips on their shoulders, say otherwise. The Quran was written down, constantly recited and constantly memorized during the Prophet s life. You can't pray without the Quran. The Sahaba and Medina were praying five times a day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, around 650 the common era, less than 20 years after the passing of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The codex committee of Sayyidina Orthman, the radiallahu anhu, standardized the text based upon the dominant reading of the Prophet himself sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. This codex committee consisted entirely of eyewitnesses to the Prophet. They were all Sahaba, men who ate food with the Prophet, men who attended the Prophet's lectures, men who traveled with the Prophet, men who prayed behind the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The Uthmani codex, as well as its recitational tradition, were transmitted to the major Muslim metropolitan areas. Each major city received a codex, a Mus'af, a Naqari who was a Sahabi and the Hafidh. Medina, Mecca, Basra, Kufa, Damascus, at least all received a codex, and a Naqari who was a Sahabi and the Hafidh. These Qur'an taught the people of those cities how to read the Qur'an. And we know the names of these Qur'an. An additional manuscript was kept also in the state archives in Medina. This is called the Imam manuscript. This is Sayyidina Orthman's personal manuscript, radiallahu anhu. The city of Kufa received a codex. It's Qari with Abdulrahman al-Sulameen, radiallahu anhu. When we pray Juma in a few minutes, you're going to hear the Qara'ah of Hafs ibn Sulaiman. This is the Qara'ah of 95% of the Muslim Ummah. If you look in the back of a Hafs Mus'af, you will find an Isna, a chain of transmission. It will read the Rewire of Hafs ibn Sulaiman, from Asim ibn Abi Najud, from Abdulrahman al-Sulameen. This is the Qari who brought the codex in the Kufa from Medina, from Ali ibn Abi Talib, radiallahu anhu, and Zaid ibn Thabit, radiallahu anhu, and Ubay ibn Ka'ab, radiallahu anhu. Three imminent, imminent Sahaba from the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, from Jibril alaihi wa sallam, from Al-Khalaq, subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is our chain of transmission. What other religious texts has something like this? The answer is none. I've studied them, not the Vedas, not the Dhammapada, not the Daud-e-Ching, not the Torah, nor the New Testament. The Isna is the secret of Islam. The other 5% of the Muslim Ummah, they recite the Quran according to Ibn Amr al-Shami, and Abu Amr al-Basri, and Nafi al-Madani. And there are sound asani for these recitational traditions as well. But here's the point that people miss. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he recited many of the verses of the Quran in various ways. This was a function of the seven Ahruf which were all revealed to him by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The Ahruf are seven recitational variations. Over 30 Sahaba reported the Quran was revealed ala sada'ati ahruf, upon seven variations. The Quran is multi-formic. It is a multi-formic text. It is a polyvalent text. That is to say, it displays multiple levels of meaning. We need to know these things and not allow these chayateen to deceive us. For example, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is Maliki yawmidin and Maliki yawmidin. He is the owner of the Day of Judgment and the King of the Day of Judgment. This variation and recitation is intentional. They were both revealed to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam to enrich our understanding of our Lord subhanahu wa ta'ala. This harf is called nominal variation. Another example, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, wa a'ritu lakum anoint or wipe your heads and wash your feet for wudu.  This harf is called inflectional variation. You see, generally we wash our feet in wudu, but there are circumstances where we can wipe our feet. When do we do that? We look to the sunnah. This is a beautiful aspect of the Quran. A third example, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, This harf is called dialectical variation. You see, the Arab was the first standard bearer of the religion and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala facilitated things for the Arab and revealed certain words and phrases in different Arab dialects. This is the wisdom behind it. It's great wisdom. When the Qur'an from the Sahaba arrived in these Amsar, these major Muslim cities, they taught the people how to incorporate these akhruf into the russum, into the continental skeletons of the codices. And over time, certain recitations became prominent due to the prominence of their reciters. And these became the canonical qiraat, like Hafs and Warsh and Ibn-u-Amar and Yaqub and Abu Jafar, etc. There are 10 of them in Qur'an masters like Qari-u-Amar. May Allah preserve him. He knows all 10 of them. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam, he had over 100,000 companions. Ibn Asakir in his tarikh al-Dimash, he mentions that Abu Darlgha, radiallahu anhu, a companion had over 1600 students in Sham. One of them was Ibn-u-Amar, the Qari of Sham who rose to prominence. One companion had 1600 students teaching 1600 students how to recite the Qur'an. Now imagine how many total students from the Tabi'een there were from all of the Sahaba who transmitted the Qur'an. Even if only 10% of the Sahaba were transmitting the Qur'an, that's 10,000 Sahaba. And if each one just had 50 students, that's half a million students in the second generation. In reality, the numbers are in the millions. This is called mass transmission. This is called tawatur. The earliest extant manuscripts of the Qur'an are dated before 656 of the common era. Decades ago, before these manuscripts were widely accepted or discovered by Western scholarship, there was a controversial opinion held by a man named John Wandsbro, professor at SOAS in London, the teacher of Prone and Cook. He said that the Qur'an was actually written in the 8th century in Iraq by a committee of various authors from the Abbasid court. He basically admitted that a single unlettered man living in the Hejaz in the 7th century could not have possibly written the Qur'an. He could not have known these things. But now we have confirmed Qur'an manuscripts from the 7th century written in Hijazi text type. The Birmingham manuscript can be dated to the Meccan period of the Prophet's life. So now, some of these radical revisionists, they have vacillated to the other extreme. So now they're saying that the Birmingham manuscript was written before the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam. First the Qur'an was written after the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam. Now it's written before the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam. Such obstinacy. Now the truth is in the middle. The Qur'an was written at the time of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi sallam. And of course, this has always been the general historical consensus. There's nothing wrong with our narrative. There are no holes in our narrative. Sometimes even very learned people, they say things they regret later. Maybe he was having a bad day, going through some sort of crisis. But rest assured, take it from me, I teach Uluma al Qur'an. There are no holes in our narrative. But don't take it from me. Do your own research. There's nothing about the Qur'an that a Western scholar at Harvard or Yale can say to a traditional Alim that will throw this Alim through a loop and confound him and cause him to have some sort of existential crisis. No, nothing. We have unparalleled, robust scholarship. We have Al-Burhan fi Uluma al Qur'an. By Imam Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi. We have a masterpiece, Al-Itqan fi Uluma al Qur'an. By Imam Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti. We have Al-Tasheel fi Uluma al-Quran fi Uluma al-Tanzeel. By Ibn Jaze' al-Kalbi. We have Kitab al-Masahif. By Ibn Abu Dawood. We have two books called Kitab al-Qiraat. By Ibn Mujahid al-Shams al-Din al-Jazari. Now another reason why these revisionists claim that the Qur'an had multiple authors is because the Bible, without a doubt, had multiple authors. And I'm not just talking about like Isaiah or Jeremiah or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Literary critics have definitively demonstrated that the five books that are traditionally attributed to Musa al-Salam alone, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, these five books were actually written by at least four authors living in different lands, in different centuries. This is a general consensus of biblical historians. Just by way of comparison, Isa al-Salam, Jesus peace be upon him, he saw none of the four Gospels that claim to preserve his words. This is a huge difference when compared to the Qur'an. Whether anyone believes that the Gospels were inspired Scripture or not, Jesus never saw any of them. This is just a fact. The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam, he knew what al-Fatiha was. He knew what al-Baqarah was. He knew what Ayatul Kursi was. He knew what Surah Yasin was. But if we took a time machine back to Nazareth, Palestine, in the year 30 of the common era, and asked Isa al-Salam to recite Matthew chapter 23 or John 316 or 1st Corinthians chapter 15, he would not know what we were talking about. So when it comes to the words attributed to Isa al-Salam after his departure, we must be discerning and critical. Some of his actual words are most likely there, but some are clearly not. The oldest complete New Testament manuscripts are dated 350 years. After Isa al-Salam, the oldest complete Torah is dated 1500 years. After Musa al-Salam, the oldest complete manuscripts of the Qur'an are dated a couple of decades after the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam. The Uthmani Codex, which was codified by eyewitnesses to the Prophet. This is a big difference. And here's another thing. I'll end with this, inshallah. There's something called stylometric analysis. Stylometric analysis. This is a sophisticated analysis of a linguistic style where statistical methods are used to determine the author or authors of a text. This is really cutting edge stuff. Modern stylometric analysis found that the Qur'an and hadiths each had a single yet different author. There is one author of the Qur'an, and there is a different author speaking as the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam in the hadith. And these two authors do not match. Subhanallah. Of course they don't match. The words of the Qur'an are the very words chosen by Allah s.w. Allah chose the wording of the Qur'an. They were first spoken by the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi sallam. Yes, but they're not his words. The Prophet was the conduit through which Allah s.w. gave us his revelation. The literary style of the hadith are clearly distinct from the Qur'an. This is why many hadith were fabricated. The Prophet's style, although highly eloquent, can be convincingly imitated. But the Qur'an is sui generous. It is one of a kind in its style and eloquence. There is nothing like it. It is impossible to imitate. It is mu'ajiz. This means that the Qur'an has an internal incapacitating mechanism. So it's not that it's possible to imitate the Qur'an, yet Allah simply doesn't allow it. It is impossible to imitate the Qur'an. It is beyond human capacity. The Qur'an also has a deep compositional structure from the level of the individual all the way to Big Suar. The Qur'an displays parallelism and concentricism that is absolutely mind blowing. This is incredible. There have been some modern attempts to imitate the style and eloquence of the Qur'an by Arab speaking Christians. This is an open challenge.  We read and analyze some of them in class at the college. In the students tonight, we can't stop laughing when we read them. One time we laughed for an hour straight, just reading what they believed to be on equal power with the Qur'an. And this Qur'an is not such as can be invented despite of Allah. But it is a confirmation of that which went before it, an exposition of that which is decreed for mankind. There is no doubt from the Lord of the worlds. Or do they say he invented it? Say bring a surah like unto it and call for help on all you can besides Allah if you are truthful. So the Qur'an is impossible to imitate and or fabricate due to its mass transmission as well as its unique literary style. And hadith are different than the Qur'an. Most hadith are not mass transmitted. And as I said, the literary style of the hadith are clearly distinct from the Qur'an. Modern cutting edge stylometric analysis confirms this. Therefore our ulama developed a highly robust system by which to authenticate hadith. We don't just accept anything willy-nilly. Our traditional ulama developed something called al-usul-i-naqtid hadith. The principles of hadith criticism or the principles of hadith authentication. This is a deep intellectual study. There's much more to say, but I'm out of time and my voice is gone. So jisaka la khairan.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we are going to discuss the following question and the question says that, find the domain of the following functions. First, f of x is equal to 6th root of minus 9x plus 33 the whole. Second, f of x is equal to cube root of 3x plus 5 the whole. Let us start with the solution of the given question. In the first part of the question, we are given a function f of x is equal to 6th root of minus 9x plus 33 the whole. We have to find the domain of this function. To find the domain of this function, in the first step we determine its index and readyCant. So here index will be equal to 6 which is even and readyCant will be equal to minus of 9x plus 33 since index is an even number. So we must restrict the domain to make readyCant that is the expression inside the root greater than equal to 0. So we set minus 9x plus 33 greater than or equal to 0. Then in the next step, we shall solve this inequality. Now subtracting 33 from both sides we get minus 9x plus 33 minus 33 is greater than equal to 0 minus 33. Which implies that minus 9x is greater than equal to minus 33. Now dividing both sides by minus 9 we get x is less than equal to 33 upon 9. We should note that the inequality reverses when we divide by a negative quantity which further implies that x is less than equal to 11 upon 3. Then in the last step we shall write the answer in interval or set notation. So we have obtained x is less than equal to 11 upon 3. So in set notation domain of the function f of x will be equal to set of all x such that x is less than equal to 11 upon 3 where x belongs to the set of real numbers. And in interval notation domain of the function f of x will be equal to semi open interval from minus infinity to 11 upon 3. Now this is the required answer to the first part of the question. Now we move on to the second part of the question. Here we need to find the domain of the function f of x is equal to cube root of 3x plus 5 the whole. Now here we see that index will be equal to 3 which is odd and redicant will be equal to 3x plus 5. Now we know that if index is an odd number then domain is set of all real numbers as here index is equal to 3 which is an odd number. So in set notation domain of the function f of x will be equal to the set of all x such that x belongs to the set of real numbers. And in interval notation domain of the function f of x will be equal to open interval from minus infinity to infinity. Now this is the required answer to the second part of the question. This completes our session. Hope you enjoyed this session.


Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MusicTeacher.com and in this video we're going to be using the Blackstar Amped 2 to dial in a basic metal tone.  This can be tweaked to your own preferences and we can also go between a British and an American style metal tone with a very simple EQ adjustment. We're primarily going to be focusing on more of a traditional or classic metal sound rather than a modern metal sound. So if you're a fan of 80s metal bands like Metallica or Iron Maiden or any of those kind of bands this will be a great starting point for you designing your own metal tone. All the tones you're hearing in the video are coming straight from the Amped 2 and running out of the cabrig output straight into my audio interface. The guitar I'm using is this Chapman guitars ML3 Pro X. For this video I'm exclusively going to be using the bridge humbucker because we don't really need any single coletones for metal. Okay so starting at the amplifier section I am using a 6L6 response for this because we want that slightly scooped mid range that's great for metal because a 6L6 response gives you a really tight low end and a really present high end but it slightly scoops the mids out. I'm using the classic voice here. The USA and UK voices have less gain on tap than the classic voice so I've gone for that one which as you can see here the gain is completely dimmed. I've got the bass and the treble set to around 130 to 2 o'clock and the mid I've got dialed back to about 10 o'clock. Now this is where we can go between a British and an American sound. So in the current state we've got pronounced lows and highs but not much mid so in that case we're going to get a bit more of a scooped metal sound so this will give you more of an American sound. So that's a great tone to start with if you're playing American style metal. If you want to make that into a more British sound you just push that mid control up to about 2 o'clock and now we're transformed to more of a new wave of British heavy metal sound. Once you've got your amp sound dialed in you can then add a little bit more gain and tightness to it by using the drive section. So I'm using the overdrive selection here on the three position toggle switch. You notice I've got the drive set to zero the level all the way up and the tone I've got just over half where you can set the tone to taste but what this is going to do is it's not really going to add a ton of extra gain but it's going to hit the amplifier circuit that little bit harder and it just tightens it all up and brings it all together. Using an overdrive is a really common thing for high-gain players to do because it just impacts the amp slightly and it allows you to shape that tone a little bit more. You can hear the way that using an overdrive just tightens it up and it adds a little more presence to the sound as well. This is something you can tame with the tone control if you want that to be slightly darker but it's great for adding some pick attack to your rhythm playing. We can also combine the drive which is boosting the amp with a very very subtle chorus. So I've got the time and depth set very very low because you don't really want this to be very audible and I've got the mix set to somewhere around about 10 o'clock just for a slight blend.  Use that chorus very subtly because you don't want an audible chorusing effect you just want that slightly detuned thickened sound. If you want to thicken up your metal guitar solos you can use some delay. So I'm using the linear delay here which is the digital delay so it's very very clean repeats. I've got the time set to 10 o'clock but you can change that to taste obviously whatever the tempo of your own song is. Feedback I've got quite low because I don't want many repeats and the level is also very low. So repeat-wise there's very little going on here it's kind of just one really audible repeat and then one very faint repeat. So if I'm playing a lead line without delay sounds like this and if I add that delay in it's gonna thicken that line up and then if I want to go for the ultimate 80s lead cone and add that chorus back. Every tone you've heard I've also had the plate reverb on as well with quite a low time and the level at about 10 o'clock. Everything was typically recorded with plate reverb in the 80s that was a very go-to reverb type in most of the studios and when you're playing metal you don't want a ton of reverb but you can use it just to add a little bit of ambience to your sound. So there you go there are some tips on how to dial in a basic metal tone with the amps too. Let me know down below in the comments how you got on with these tips and if there are any other genres or even artists you'd like to see us make these kind of videos about using the amp too let us know down below in the comments as well. As I said earlier on in the video you can use this tone as a jumping off point for your own metal tones so set your amp to up this way and then tweak it until it's perfect for what you need. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more videos just like this and if you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please head over to musicteacher.com check out the music teacher database over there there's a huge network of teachers all around the country just waiting to help you guys out. Thank you so much for watching as always and I'll see you very soon.