Guardian Nigeria
After maintaining a stoic silence since his dethronement and banishment in March 2020, with a subsumed equanimity that belies the dust and chaos his return to the throne had raised, the 14th and now 16th Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, in a first since the intervening period, spoke to TOPE TEMPLER OLAIYA on what transpired, his journey through the trials and the long wait to triumph.
What are those practical lessons that you learnt, while away from the throne that you will like to bring to bear now that you have been reinstated as Emir, to move the Emirate to the next level?
Well, as you know life is always a continuous process of learning and relearning. And for me, I had always believed as they say that we should not waste a crisis, and my own crisis presented an opportunity for me to do something else.
In the last four years I have not been idle, I just completed writing a PhD thesis in University of London, a week before I was returned to Kano. I will be going back next month to defend my thesis, because I will be graduating in September. Let us just take that as an example, the PhD thesis I wrote was on the codification of Islamic Family Law as an instrument of social reform. This was one of my major projects as you know, as an Emir, trying to codify Islamic law to deal with a number of issues around child marriage, around domestic violence, around child spacing and basically women and children’s rights. And because I did a PhD on the subject matter, some of the things I learnt basically made me rethink some of the premises upon which we are passing that law and if I am to reconstitute the committee, I will have different areas of emphasis and I have different understanding of some of the issues now.
So, I will give an example; we always talk about child marriage as a problem and we think that the solution is to have a law that says that every girl must reach the age of 18 before she gets married, but the reality is that the solution is in what the governor just did in Kano, declaring a state of emergency on education. You have to be at the schools, you have to provide them with what they are going to do. We did a research and we find out that within Kano city and environs, we don’t have child marriage, because there are schools all over. Parents can send their children to school, they can go to secondary school, and they have teachers. If you go to the villages and there are no schools and a girl is 11 or 16 years, the father marries her off. It is not religion, it is not culture, it is just a failure of the state to provide development. So, many of the things that we have taken as either religious misunderstanding or culture are actually issues of governance and development and the failure of the state.
We want to have minimum age like the Arab states, fine, but do we register birth? If we don’t start registering everybody, how do we know the age of the child, how do we enforce that in a court of law. These are just some of the examples.
Part of my work was that I gathered data from nine Sharia courts from the three Senatorial District in Kano and asked, what are the major marital problems faced by women in Kano? We started from the premise of what is a global discourse on the problem because every society has its own issues. Do you know what we discovered? More than 40 per cent of all the cases in court have to do with men not providing maintenance for the families, it is poverty. Men are not proving food, or accommodations, or they have divorced the women are not taking care of the children.
So, many of these socio cultural problems have their roots in economics and therefore, this whole issue of providing an education especially for the women, and providing them an opportunity to earn a living, is the solution.
So, when we write the law, we must bear in mind these things. Now, some of the things I have seen in the speech of the governor, from Saturday are the kind of things that other states had said in the past because my thesis also did a comparative analysis with Morocco. What did they do in Morocco? They built the schools, they invested in school transportation just like we are now talking about school transportation. The girls would be moved from villages to the nearest schools. They also invested in school feeding and they equally provided financial support to the poorest families who are ready to send their sons and daughters to school. So, they don’t need them to earn a living to send their kids to school. If a parent is below certain poverty line, and he allow his daughter to go to school, the government will still have to give him some money, so that he does not have to marry his daughter off. He doesn’t also have to get her to trade, she goes to school, and the parents get some compensation for sending her to school.
Now, that allows the girls to get education and earn a living at the end. For me, the PhD was a major eye opener and like I said earlier, I am not the kind of person that just sit in one place and say okay now that I am not Emir, let me sit until I become something else, no, I do something with my time and I have moved on.
For me, I knew I was on transition, I was a governor of Central Bank. I was told to move and I moved, people have jobs and they resign, former this or that is nothing. I moved on but now, God decreed that I must come back, it is a new transition. But I have improved myself, when I finish my PhD hopefully, I will approach Bayero University to grant me opportunity to once in a while go and give academic lectures, and postgraduate seminars on Islamic law, I would not have the time to give a full course or to mark. But all this research and data that I had gathered, in Kano need to be shared with the younger generation.
The second thing is that we need to realize that we are in a very difficult place as a country because of many years of economic mismanagement and you all know that for the past 10 years I had been talking about it.
People are talking about NNPC and all revenues and the dollars but look, how long have I been talking about this? 2011, 2012, 2013, this was exactly what we were trying to avoid. I was listening to the debate about subsidy, and I remembered that I said, people don’t know what an economic crisis is until they get into one and that is what we are in now. Crimes on the surge, food becomes unaffordable, peoples’ income get wiped out, wages can no longer get the people anywhere. This is why the management of the economy is crucial. What can I do? I give advice to the government as much as I could, on how to manage resources, and also see to the best of my ability how to get the private sector to come in to build the economy because government alone cannot do everything.
It is fantastic for the 30 per cent budget on education, we also need private sector to come in, we need to build infrastructure, even in the educational sector. Kano has produced two richest Nigerians, may be two richest Africans, we need to start to seriously talk to those people to come and invest in education and skills in Kano. So, part of my job as Emir is to call these citizens of Kano and other well-meaning Nigerians to see how they can come in and address these problems. For me a transition is a transition, I have never been haunted by an office. Not being in Kano has never stopped me from continuing to do service because at the end of the day that is what matters not the title.
How are you going to galvanise and collaborate with other traditional rulers across the federation to build the nation despite the mismanagement of our diversity?
I am very grateful to God that the traditional institutions in Nigeria have a very rich representation of people with experience from diverse background. I know that many people outside just look at us as some relics of the past culture. But look at it, Sultan of Sokoto was a General, the Shehu of Borno was a Permanent Secretary, the Etsu Nupe was a General, Emir of Zuru was a General, Emir of Zazzau was an Ambassador, I was governor of Central Bank, Emir of Fika, DSS, Oba of Lagos, AIG of Police, Oba of Benin Ambassador, Obi of Onitsha, a banker. The reality is that whichever way you look, security or academia, we have that wealth. That also goes into the quality of advice that we offer. So for us, we see ourselves as partners to the government on how to give the best advice based on our experience and how to manage things.
I will give you an example from my experience in Kano the last time, the previous government wanted to borrow $1.8 billion from China to build 75 kilometers of rail and the forex then was N197 to a dollar, and as a trained economist and former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), I could see the growth in money supply and I was sure that the naira was not going to remain in that artificial level of N200 for a long time. And part of my job was to advise the government, look this amount of money you want to borrow if the naira depreciates to N500 to the dollar, this money will become N1 trillion.
Your internally generated revenue is not up to N20 billion, you will need about N100 billion per annum just to service the debt.
It is not sustainable, if you go down this part, you are going to leave Kano with an unsustainable burden for the next 30, to 40 years.
This was the advice I gave quietly, three, four, five times, and the government refused to listen. Some people told me then that my job was to advice, and I had advised, so if they did not do it I should just keep quiet. For me, I could not sit in all conscience and allow that to happen because the government will go and for the next 40 years our children and grandchildren would suffer for it. Today, if that loan had been taken, this present government would not be able to even pay salaries. All their money would be going to service debt and look at the exchange rate today, N1500 for a dollar, that means that the money would have become N3 trillion to build 75 kilometers of rail. In the end, I took the nuclear option of going public to stop it and that was how I almost lost my throne. But for me, if I had remained on the throne by keeping quiet and for the next 40 years, government could not provide employment, education, healthcare, infrastructure and the likes, it would have thrown Kano into a crisis, so it was not worth it.
I think that part of the challenges that we have is this whole issue of where do we draw the line. We have to give advice, sometimes on minor issues, and even when the government turn deaf ears and we are not happy we can ignore. But there are fundamental existential issues that we must have the courage as the conscience of the people to do because we are the one who will be here, the government are there for just four or eight years, while some of may live long enough like our predecessors, fifty years. So, we have to think about the lives of these children. I think that when governors understand that we are partners and we advise them base of our experience and they respect it, we will generally get along very well.
We don’t have a constitutional role, but so long as the people loves us and respect us. I mean, you come out here everyday and you see hundreds of people coming to pay homage. I don’t give them money, I don’t give contracts, I don’t give employment and I cannot jail anybody, so what are they coming for, just love. What do I owe them, I did not create them but God placed me in this position, gave me honour, the least I can do for them is to speak up for them.
Or you have an election and the people vote, we tell politicians, government office is not a human right, nobody has the human rights to be a president or governor or senator or councilor. The right is for the people to vote for who they want, it is the people who have the right. If you elect a governor and somebody takes it and gives to someone else, it is not the rights of the governor that was taken; it was the right of the people who voted. If they vote for X, give them X, if they make a mistake, after four years they will correct it themselves.
Why did you not challenge the law creating the additional Emirates in Kano in court?
I did not because of a number of reasons. I told you earlier that I don’t have the fundamental right to be Emir. I am one of hundreds of princes in Kano emirate, God chose me and if God says that I should leave, I will take it that God knows better than me why I had to leave. So, I would not even think about it. What happened was that I just got a letter from the state government that I was dethroned for insubordination. I had never been queried for insubordination, the detail for insubordination was not given and I was never given a chance to defend myself. It was just clear that both the state and federal government have just decided that it was time for me to go. So, let us even assume that the court said that I should come back, do you think that I was looking forward to work with that government? Would I have been happy as Emir in the last three years working with that government. You are under a governor, the law gives him the power to be on top. He has said that he does not like you, he has made it clear he does not want you. If I come, he would just make my life miserable. At the time there was one fake story after the other, one social media story after the other, insults and what have you, and in my position, I cannot respond. For me, I had a happier life in Lagos with my friends, publishing my books, doing my PhD, doing my United Nations (UN) work, doing my Tijaniyya work, than sitting here in a constant fight with the government.
Secondly, look at Gwandu Emirate, emir of Gwandu, Jokolo, he was removed under Obasanjo, how many years now, almost 20, the state high court said he was illegally removed and ordered his reinstatement.
There was an appeal, the appeal court arrived at the same conclusion. The case is now at the Supreme Court and the apex court is still adjudicating the matter. Do I have to endure for 20 years fighting through the judicial process to recover the throne.
I had been Emir for six years, to God be the glory. I had done what I did, at least the only reason I would have gone to court is if they had removed me on allegations that harmed my reputation because the only currency I have is my integrity. If they had accused me of say, fraud, I would have gone to court to clear my name. But they said insubordination, then the question was asked, what were the reason for insubordination? They said that I am invited to certain meetings and I don’t honour the invitations. So, I did not have to defend myself to any well-meaning Nigerian who read that story because if you are going to remove an emir and the only reason you have is that you invite him to some meetings and he didn’t honour it, nobody will take you seriously.
I had always felt that if it was God’s willing that I will come back to the throne, sure I will and finally it happened. I only went to court to challenge their attempt to keep me in exile and under house arrest, which violated my fundamental human rights. But I didn’t go to court to challenge the removal because I don’t have to, owing to the fact that it was self-evident from the face of it that this was just a political act, and that was why I didn’t challenge it.
What is your opinion on the current move to recapitalize Nigerian banks?
You know I had sat on the seat of CBN before now as the governor. When you are on that seat, you have a lot of information that other people don’t have. So, I will be a little reluctant to make a quick judgment on this subject matter because I don’t have the current data, which of course is at their disposal. The only thing I will advise is for us to always exercise caution. When you are recapitalising banks and you are raising that huge amount of capital, you need to be careful not to make the timeline too short because we had same experience under Governor Soludo, where in an attempt to meet N25 billion, we had a lot of other capital bubble, which later led to a banking sector crisis. Many of these banks are sitting on a lot of capital, especially those that have foreign exchange business, based on forex appreciation which they could use because at the end of the day the devaluation of currency has given them a lot of unrealized capital. So, there is a lot of capital sitting in the banks that they could use, imagine turning those dollars into naira and taking the profits and that goes into their capital. I think that there is conversation going on and I do talk to the governor but had not discussed this particular issue with him and with this government. I do have a direct conversation with the President, Vice President and the Finance Minister as well. I will rather not make public comment on these issues because my views and my advice I will give them privately.
The only reason I was making public comments during the last government was when I was invited to give economic lectures in which case I had to express my views or I felt that the advice was given and it was not listened to by authorities or that I felt that the path being taken was too dangerous for some of us and history will not forgive us. So, I would rather not make public comment on this, they are all my friends.
What are the aberrations in this democracy that you want the political elite to review in order for us to move forward?
I think we have a democracy, but it is a process that we keep making progress and reversals, again I will like to go back and forward, and my views are known. I think there are a number of fundamental structures that need to be addressed. I will give you an example; the cost of governance, the Constitution we have makes it impossible for us not to have a high cost of governance. You are a small county, you have a president, a vice president, the Constitution said that at least, you must have 37 Ministers. You have 109 senators, 360 members of House of Representatives, we have 36 states, each one with a governor and a deputy governor, commissioners, advisers, special assistants. Then we have 774 local government areas, each one with a chairman, councilors, secretary and vice chairman. Just take the cost of that, their salaries, their allowances, their staff and you will know that the bulk of revenue that comes to this country will be consumed by this.
To be honest, why do we need to have bicameral legislature, why do we need two houses in Abuja? Why not one? Why must we have a minister from every state? Even if we don’t need them, why? Why do we keep pandering to these things? There are also too much power at the centre, two much of the resources at the centre. The centre does not do primary education, primary healthcare, that is where the verse majority of Nigerians are, those resources come to the state who should then have that responsibility to do those things instead of everybody going to Abuja, what is happening in Abuja?
Take for example, what is happening in Kano today, chieftaincy matter is 100 per cent a state matter. What is the involvement of federal government in a chieftaincy matter? We have the rules and we must be able as Nigerians to abide by the rules that we have. Today, if you have an election and Sanusi Bature wins the election, and INEC declares Dan Barau as the winner, who should we be suing?, Da Barau and his party or INEC? We should start suing INEC, because INEC is the one that declares results, it is not Dan Barau’s fault that INEC declared him or rigged on his behalf even if he went and paid them. We should hold INEC responsible for their results.
What do we have, when we go and sue Dan Barau, INEC becomes his ally, because they now have to help him defend his victory. No we should start with the electoral body that did not apply its own rules and let INEC be defending itself in all these elections. So, there are certain simple things that we can do to improve democracy.
Talking about the crisis of the Kano Emirates now…
You see, this was something created, manufactured by the previous government. The people of Kano never asked to be divided. We are one people. Nobody asked for it. So what we are dealing with is a situation where somebody divided us, and actually when you create these things, some people get some privileges. They didn’t ask for it, but they’ve enjoyed it for four years. Now, when they lose it, it’s a problem. But the problem is not what has happened today. It is what happened four years ago. If it had not been done, we would not be in this situation today.
We are one family, we are one people. Somebody comes, divides us up. Even in this family, he takes one emirate, gives a part of the family. Now, when people enjoy it for four years and you take it away from them, it becomes a problem.
But the truth is, when you take the larger picture, this is a kingdom that has existed. If you go to the king list in Kano, the king list from Baguada starts in 999AD. We have a list of kings. From Baguada up to me in my first term, I was the 57th. If you add my cousin and myself, I’m 57th and 59th.
In that period, we’ve had the expansion of Arewa kingdon. The only time a part of Kano was taken out was when Jigawa State was created. Because Jigawa State put together Kazaure Emirate, Hadejia Emirate, Gumel Emirate, but those three combined were not big enough to make a viable state.
And the Hadejia and Gumel people wanted a state. So, part of Kano was carved out. And these are the two Emirates of Dutse and Ringim. We were all hurt. As a family, it’s like cutting off a part of you. At least Ringim is still with members of our family. That’s fine. It was necessary.
But what was left still remains what has been there for a thousand years. Now, if you come one day, just like the British partitioned Africa, and you see, people need to understand what the last government did, because people don’t understand what that law was and the kinds of damage it did to our history’s fabric.
You know the way the Europeans came and just drew lines on a piece of paper. People say Nigeria is a geographical expression.
You just take people, and local governments and push them to be under the Emirates you created just like that. You don’t create emirs for people. Somebody who for one thousand years has never been under you, somebody now decrees that this is your king, how?
Take Bichi for instance. Bichi as a town was run by a village head for centuries. It only became a district under the British. The first district head of Bichi was Abdullahi Bayero in the 1930s; my great-grandfather. Before him, it was a village head. There is something called Sirkin Bichi which is a village head. He’s the king of the town of Bichi.
Now that Sirkin Bichi, historically, reported to a district head in Dawakin Tofa, Maadakin Kano. Now you make a law and say, you have created an emir in Bichi, and Dawakin Tofa should report to Bichi?
You had families that waged the jihad, the Yolawa; the family of Madakin, the Jobawa, family of the Makama. These are kingmakers. You now take two of the four kingmaker families, Madakin and Makama, and you now say they should go and report to an emirate that you created in Bichi. Something that was run by a village head who was a district head. How? You make a law and say, these are the kingmakers in Kano.
We have had four traditional kingmakers in all our history. Because you like a particular individual, you just decide as a governor, that we now have five kingmakers. Out of nowhere, you create a kingmaker position for an individual.
You’re dealing with Kano. You’re not dealing with me. Am I making sense? It’s not about me as a person. It’s about our history, our culture. How does he become a kingmaker? The other four kingmakers, how did their families become kingmakers? When they went and waged the jihad, when they came and risked their lives, when they reached this agreement, those four choose the emir. We are not superior to them.
We’re all part of the jihad. And they agreed for peace. We don’t want to have three, four, five ruling houses. We’ll allow you to produce the emir, but we will decide who becomes the emir. These are the four.
This is the right they claimed for themselves for their contribution to the jihad. How does somebody now take you and say I’m creating a fifth kingmaker for your family. What right do you have to join those four?
I am making this point, so you understand that this is not about me versus somebody. This was an entire assault on a system. The Kano Emirate was not created by the Nigerian Constitution. The Emirate existed before Nigeria. The Kano Emirate existed before the Sokoto Jihad. Even Uthman Danfodio did not create Kano Emirate. All that happened was that some of his disciples waged a Jihad in Kano and conquered Kano. But Kano was in existence.
You will never find a law in the Nigerian Constitution. You never have a law that created the Kano Emirate.
So, how does a State House of Assembly get the Constitutional right to amend something that was not created by the Constitution, that does not even exist in the Constitution? But the law you will see is an Emirates Appointment and Deposition Law, which already presumes that there is an Emirate. It’s about how you appoint an Emir. You know? But there is no law creating the Emirate. So, and therefore when the former governor wanted to create these five Emirates, he could not find a law to amend. He started by amending Emirates Appointment and Deposition Law, which the court struck down. So, he had to de novo ex nihilo, out of nothing, create a law and create new Emirates that never existed dismantling over one thousand years of history.
This attack on our system, on our collective history was what we had to deal with it. And he says we cannot in the interest of preserving something with a history of four years abolish a history of one thousand plus years.
That is all that happened. It was not targeted at any individual. It was not targeted at any family, at any person. But of course, the people who were beneficiaries of this would be hurt. And we understand that. It is not their fault. But we cannot because we do not want to harm them or hurt them allow this to continue.
So, managing the situation is for all of us as citizens of Kano and as members of the royal family, is for all of us to look at the big picture and see that what has been done now has been done to restore the glory of our emirate and to protect our own history and custom. For me, even now that I am here only God knows how long I will be here. I can die tomorrow.
Another governor can come tomorrow and say that he has removed me, it doesn’t matter. But I am happy if he does not touch the Emirate. I am happy that I will not leave a history that it was during my time that this 1,000 years of history was destroyed.
So, I am grateful to this government, grateful to this Assembly that they have corrected that for me, that we have the Emirate restored to what it was and Insha’Allah when I die or when I leave, the person who inherits the throne will inherit what we had. It’s about the system, not about me or about any individual.
Your last words… what will you be remembered for?
You know, in the Quran, the Prophet Ibrahim had a prayer. He said (SPEAKS IN ARABIC) “and grant me an honorable mention among those who come after”. All I hope for and all I pray for is that when I leave this world, when people remember me, they will not be cursing me. They’ll be praising me, they’ll be praying for me. That is all. How that happens, I don’t know. But this is my prayer, that the people of Kano and the people of Nigeria will remember me and say, he was a good man, God, have mercy on him.
Because when you are in leadership, you will end up in one of two ways. You can leave leadership and everybody is cursing you, blaming you. God will never forgive that person. You’ve seen leaders that, even in their lifetime, they’ve left office. People have already said, God will not forgive you. It will not be good for you. I do not want that. So, how I want to be remembered is, I would like to leave this world and have the people that I leave behind remember me and pray for me for good.
