There has been this frosty relationship between Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje and the swashbuckling former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. They have been accusing each other of one misgiving or the other, and have been squaring out at different fronts including the State House of Assembly and even the courts. Last Monday what many thought was a small matter snowballed into a big issue with the governor dethroning the emir and authorizing his banishment from Kano State to the remotest part of Nasarawa State. From the time of banishment to this point you are reading this discourse, the development has been among the frontline issues and rightly so. Kano Emirate is not just about chieftaincy matters; it is an institution, a fundamental one recognized by history and by the world. Again, the altercations between both parties and the way it finally turned out, in this case, the manner of dethronement raises issues that are consequential to the building of a great country.
So let me state before we go into the other issues that today’s discourse is not about the defense of the former emir. I have no tears for Sanusi because from my estimation he has not given me any deserving cause to cry for him. As the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, he thrived on unnecessary controversies; he looked like an officer on vendetta and I didn’t like that. It was during his time that someone like me knew our Central Bank Governor could embark on a spending spree under the guise of corporate social responsibility; his expenditure subheads were as ridiculous and very provocative as the act itself. As a banker who got to the pinnacle, he ought to have known that there is something called “calling;” some jobs are not for everybody. From what we can see and deduce, emirship was not his place. Sanusi is garrulous, he carries thoughts and likes to express them very strongly in public, he wants to be in the eyes of the public at all times, he desires to be seen as a social activist and he is a politician and for those who don’t know, he wasn’t mistreated for his comments and activism but for his political forays which would have seen the All Progressives Congress (APC) lose Kano and Ganduje out of power.
This is his main sin. He was a victim of a split personality. The truth is that Sanusi would not have gone far, not to talk of becoming an emir if former President Goodluck Jonathan were as strong willed as our incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari. As CBN governor he gave Jonathan an unkind cut and a bloody nose when in that president’s most vulnerable hour, a subordinate of the status of Sanusi came up with a wild allegation of over US$30 billion dollars missing from accruing oil revenue. It was a bad blow and if you ask me, very political. A sage said and I agree, you don’t have to kill in order to climb, because after you do, the same death being a spiritual force returns to wait for you at the bottom. Another friend told me few days ago that one lesson about life and for which people should be careful, is that what goes round comes around. For Sanusi the rain is falling, who knows?
So like I said this is not a cry for Sanusi; I must say this with emphasis. The issues on the matter throw up questions about Nigeria, one of it is about our resolve and seriousness to build an enduring country. Sanusi may have his mistakes just like all of us but no decent man who is conversant with democratic principles would subscribe to the manner in which he was removed. We all know the governor has been on the Sanusi matter for some time with no cogent reason. All he has told us is “he does not behave well”, yet he didn’t speak specifics. Later it became about emirate funds and not state government funds. In raising that allegation, the state governor was crying more than the kingmakers; this alone was enough to show the sinister intension surrounding the allegation. The matter was taken to the State House of Assembly and to a court, they are yet to give a conclusion when Emperor Ganduje and his men sat in the government house, became the accuser and the judge and passed a verdict which was to be implemented with immediate effect. This kind of scenario happens in a monarchy or tyrannical regimes, certainly not under a democracy.
Kano State government talks about insubordination in its statement after the extraordinary verdict and gives an example of it as the inability of the dethroned emir to attend meetings. Hmmm! Absence from meeting as excuse to hunt a first class traditional ruler, forcefully dethrone him from office, gathered the whole state security apparatchik to go to the palace and arrest him, separate him from his family, forcefully drag him out, hire two planes and against his will in the 21st century ferry him to unknown destination in the guise of banishing a leading traditional ruler. Somebody should tell me that am not living in a 21st century Nigeria, it is either we are living in the 9th century or a group of people are working very hard to reverse the hand of the clock, they want to take us back to the stone age.
One Kano official said it is their custom to banish a living but fallen traditional ruler. The question is when did that start, before or during the colonial times? Colonialists were no democrats, they came to conquer and by the way if what they did infringes on our dignity, we have a responsibility as rational men and women to change it and replace with what is appropriate. Dignity of man is it.
We are a country of contradictions; by now it should be clear to us whether we want to run a monarchy, tyrannical regime or a democracy. We say we are a republic but we allow the monarchical institution to remain. Nothing wrong with this except in our uncanny way of doing things we don’t sit down to think out issues. What should be the roles of traditional rulers, how do you pay them and how do you constitutionally protect them? We probate and reprobate, our laws say the rural people will chose their leader and another one says government will approve the choice and give staff of office and by so doing taking away the power of choice and control from the people and placing it in the hand one man whose judgment we can’t trust as in the case of Kano. Ganduje is not the first; many governors have taken to this path. It is a development we must stop and that is where the judiciary comes in. I heard a court had already ruled on this kind of matter even if, the court should again make a strong pronouncement on dethronement of traditional rulers and especially about their fundamental human rights. No one person should have a right to make another person an animal. Those holding Sanusi should release him with immediate effect.