Mustapha completed his D.Phil on 'Peasant differentiation and politics in rural Kano' at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, in 1990. Research for this included fieldwork conducted at Rogo Village, a rural settlement near Kano. This case study examined the political consequences of rural inequalities in Kano, relating the problems of the agrarian sector to issues of urbanization, poor urban people, and urban petty commodity production.