Sanusi’s odyssey

When he came tumbling down last week, the path of former Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II of Kano away from royal pinnacle was no less turbulent than the path of his ascendance to that peak. He came down in a hail of controversy just as he had gone up in the heat of controversy.

Recall that just before he became emir in 2014, the ace economist and banker was controversially removed as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor by former Goodluck Jonathan administration, manifestly on account of his needling exposé about underpayment of some $20billion into the national treasury arising from fraud in government funding of fuel importation subsidies, illicit transfer of state oil assets into private hands and other losses associated with mismanagement at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over a 19-month period.

It was in its pushback that then Jonathan presidency incredibly accused him of “financial recklessness” and “far-reaching irregularities” in his stewardship at the apex bank since 2009. The administration suspended him few months ahead of constitutional expiration of his five-year tenure as CBN helmsman, and he was yet at judicial war with that government when he was chosen as Kano emir in June 2014.

Six years on, Sanusi has for some while been locked in existential battle with Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje for his royal throne. He lost out early last week with his dethronement and banishment by the Ganduje administration. For Sanusi’s deposition as the 14^th Kano emir, the state government alleged insubordination on his part and disrespect for lawful instructions by the governor. It expectedly had statutory provisions to cite as façade for the obvious act of personal vindictiveness, namely Section 13 of the Kano State Emirate law 2019. But the animosity between the two personages had been in public domain and for long threatened to overboil. Only there were celebrated truce mediations by eminent Nigerians, which we now know beyond doubt fell utterly flat.

Resulting from the estrangement between Governor Ganduje and Sanusi II, there were frantic sub-plots of efforts to diminish the royal. Among these were the governor’s fracturing of the historical Kano emirate into five, just so to whittle Sanusi’s sphere of authority; the state anti-graft agency’s insistence on probing the former emir for alleged N3.4billion fraud despite being restrained from doing so by a court of law; and only penultimate week, the state house of assembly’s institution of a probe linked to purported public petitions accusing the former emir of ‘unethical conducts that contradicted the culture and tradition of Kano people’ – whatever that means! Assembly members were yet squared up in fisticuffs as they processed what to do with the purported petitions early last week when the Kano State Executive Council met and summarily resolved to remove and banish the emir.

As top banker and later as royal father, Sanusi wore his mind on his sleeves and is reputed for strong convictions with brutal candour. It, however, seems the case it wasn’t just the Kano governor he crossed with those convictions but the whole northern establishment. In his passionate candour, the former emir tore into historical beliefs and practices that were considered sacred articles of northern heritage. Recently, he spoke against the patronage and merit-blind convention of quota system. He berated the northern leadership elite for poor human development indices relative to other geopolitical regions of the country – among them, pervasive indifference to low level interest in education, about 87 percent of the Nigerian poor being in the North, prevalent child marriage and female gender oppression, and the phenomenon of out-of-school street children known as the almajiri who he wanted rehabilitated.

Even if there had been some doubt, it is glaring now that the exploits of Sanusi II neither sat well with the northern elite nor fitted cultural designs of northern royalty. And this was to the extent that when he was booted off the throne early last week by Governor Ganduje, there was not a voice raised by the northern establishment in his support. One exception perhaps is Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai – and that, obviously out of personal friendship and like-mindedness with the dethroned emir. Remember it was at el-Rufai’s 60^th birthday celebration that the royal had unleashed one of his strongest takedowns of the northern narrative. Within 48 hours of Sanusi’s dethronement, the Kaduna governor saddled him with two political appointments: one as deputy chair of the board of Kaduna State Investment Promotion Authority and another as chancellor of the Kaduna State University.

‘The exploits of Sanusi II neither sat well with the northern elite nor fitted cultural designs of northern royalty’

But el-Rufai is a lone and feeble striker against a full squad of bullish defenders. Even if Sanusi II was disposed to immediately get cracking on those new assignments, he was effectively incapacitated because he had been banished and placed on abusive lockdown of house arrest – not in Kaduna State where he was keenly sought after, but in a remote community of Nasarawa State where the people neither really wanted him nor knew what to do with him having been foisted on them.

President Muhammadu Buhari has publicly washed his hands off the Sanusi saga, but he could say it to the birds. There is no doubt, of course, that it isn’t within his statutory remit to order dethronement of an emir, and that he “does not have a history of intervening in the affairs of any state in the country unless the issue at hand is of national consequence.” But you do not as a state governor kick out an emir of Sanusi’s caliber without getting firm buy-in of the country’s leader. And why not in this case, anyway? President Buhari is a full-blooded product and beneficiary of the very regimen that Sanusi had been tearing at. Besides, both Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule and new Kano Emir Aminu Ado Bayero have gone calling on the president at Aso Villa for debriefing following Sanusi’s dethronement and banishment.

Sanusi II is one of the North’s – indeed Nigeria’s – brightest stars, added to his privileged background that saw him passing through among the best educational institutions available anywhere. As such, he must have been fully in the know what comes with the territory of his royal activism. That perhaps informed his equanimity when he described his removal from the Kano throne as destined by Allah and a thing of pride that he ended up as his grandfather, 11^th Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi I, who was deposed by First Republic Northern Region Premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello. “We have accepted whatever Allah decides. We have agreed. We appreciate (God). We are happy and we know it is what is best for us,” the junior Sanusi added in a four-minute video that was made public after his banishment.

Under the existing framework of law, it is battle fishing to challenge the power of Ganduje to dethrone the monarch. But the forced domiciliation of Sanusi at a location not of his choice, and denial of his freedom of movement and voluntary associations, among other liberties, is a vicious overreach. Sanusi has himself resorted to the judiciary on this particular score, and he secured some reprieve last Friday with the court ordering his immediate release. Now that he is free, he is likely to settle for unconventional locations – including relocating abroad – for his future base. The damage he has potential to do to his detractors, foot lose, is only better imagined. Still, no matter where President Buhari stood on the deposition, he has a window of opportunity to arbitrate and thereby redeem his own image, besides saving Nigeria the negative image posed before the world by the abuse of the former emir’s rights.

One last thing: it is highly doubtful that the vocal royal will be permanently silenced by his deposition. But even if he is, his voice is a genie already out of the bottle. It will haunt the Nigerian nationhood until the values he preached take root.