The smartphone pandemic in Northern Nigeria: Amisplacement of priorities, by Saleh Farouq Gagarawa In recent years, Northern Nigeria has witnessed a rising trend that has silently morphed into a societal crisis: the smartphone pandemic. Across cities like Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Maiduguri, young people particularly females are investing staggering amounts of money in the latest smartphones. For many, the pursuit of flashy devices has become an obsession, with some spending hundreds of thousands of naira, and in extreme cases, millions, on a single phone. Alarmingly, this is happening in a region...