Northern
governors wade in as plot to depose Sanusi thickens
‘Sanusi
not afraid to give up throne’
Unless reason
is allowed to prevail, the days of Muhammadu Sanusi 11, as the 13th Fulani emir
of Kano, is numbered. As a prelude to his eventual sack, the Kano state
government has instituted a probe into the finances of the Kano emirate
council. The Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Agency (KSPCACA)
is handling the task.
According to the letter of summons signed by
the agency’s Director of Operations, Sulaiman Gusau, a Chief Superintendent of
Police (CSP), and written to the emir, the traditional ruler is to explain how
about N4 billion was allegedly misappropriated under his watch. The said money
was to have been left behind by late Alhaji Ado Bayero, his predecessor. The
probe is to cover the activities of the emirate since Sanusi took over as emir.
Those invited, which were described as “junior civil servants and senior
members of the Emirate”, would appear before the Commission on May 2, 2017.
Gusau on behalf of the Chairman of KSPCACA, Alhaji Muhyi Magaji, signed the
invitation letter.
But even before appearing before the probe
panel, Sanusi has since denied the allegation, saying that he had only spent a
little over N2billion since his installation. The probe, Saturday Sun learnt,
followed a petition written to the Commission alleging that the emir had
squandered over N4bn he met in the accounts of the emirate council.
Dismissing the allegations one by one, the
Council, through its spokesman, Alhaji Mahe Bashir Wali, said the figures were
inaccurate and wrong. Bashir Wali, a retired Deputy Inspector General of
Police, told journalists at the palace that the present Emir of Kano, Alhaji
Muhammad Sanusi 11 inherited only N1, 893, 378, 927.38, as against the sum of
N4 billion that was being peddled by his traducers.
His words: “Before the appointment of
His Highness, the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi 11, CON, the Kano Emirate
Council had the sum of N2, 875, 168, 431.17 under various banks as Fixed
Deposit Accounts, out of which N981, 784, 503.79 was withdrawn and used during
the late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero on 7/2/2014 for the payment of Ado
Bayero Royal City Project leaving a balance of N1, 893, 378, 927.38 with
various banks.”
Beyond the probe
Beyond the petition and the allegation
however, Saturday Sun gathered that the government had for
long been seeking means of getting at the emir, as he was seen as an “irritant”
following his consistent criticism of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led
government. And since the Kano governor, Dr. Umar Ganduje, is today seen as
Buhari’s man Friday, Buhari’s sympathisers had waited patiently for the
governor to move against the emir.
By the first week in April, the emir appeared
to have played into the government’s hand. The last straw that broke the
camel’s back which perhaps made him incur the wrath of the governor directly,
was his decision to deride publicly, the move by the governor to invest in a light
rail project. The project, which is worth $1.85 billion, was expected to be
executed through foreign loan acquisition from Chinese Development Bank, which
would finance 85 per cent of the contract sum.
The last straw
But Sanusi, while speaking at the Kaduna
Investment Forum, KADINVEST, early in the month described it as a misplacement
of priorities. “We have governors, they go to China and spend one month on a
tour and what do they come back with, MoU on debts.
“China will lend you $1.8bn to build light
rail. This light rail will be done by the rail workers from China. The trains
will come from China. The engines will come from China. The labour comes from
China. The driver is Chinese.
“At the end of the day, what do you benefit
from it? Your citizens will ride on a train and when you ride on a train, in
northern Nigeria, in a state like Kano or Katsina, where are you going to? You
are not going to an industrial estate to work. You are not going to school? You
are not going to the farm. You borrow money from China to invest in trains so
that your citizens can ride on them and go for weddings and naming ceremonies.”
Less than 24 hours after the emir’s outburst,
the governor’s supporters took to the social media, to lampoon Sanusi. And in
less than a week, allegations of being a profligate began making the rounds,
thus culminating in his probe.
Another monarch’s view
Speaking on the development last Wednesday, a
prominent northern monarch told Saturday Sun that Sanusi has
so far shown that he knows little or nothing about the Kano traditional
institution, adding that he took so many things for granted.
“I am not bothered about the allegation of
whether he spent money or not.
All I am interested in is peace within the Royal
family. And I personally made sure that happened. I visited him, and the
children of the late emir, Ado Bayero.
“Sanusi’s first misstep started when he was
made the Dan Majen Kano, that was when he started behaving like an
emir, when there was still a sitting emir. He is married to the late emir’s
daughter. Sanusi believed that Bayero betrayed his grandfather by accepting to
be emir, after the grandfather’s deposition. But Sanusi should know that he
only became the emir by chance. He would have been arrested on the day he was
made emir, shortly before the announcement. It was Asiwaju Bola Tinubu that
saved him.”
Reminded that former Kano governor, now
Senator, Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso, too wanted him as emir, the traditional ruler
thinks otherwise, saying “go and do your home work well. Are you aware that
Kwankwaso had issued three queries to him before he left office as governor? If
he indeed he wanted him, don’t you think he would have tolerated his
excesses? Tinubu actually made it possible.
“I am not in support of Tinubu’s exclusion
from this government, because if Tinubu and the South-West had not supported
Buhari, there was no way he would have been President. The truth is, Sanusi is
taking on the President because of Tinubu. And those in the corridors of power
know this fact.
“Again, I believe he should not have dethroned
the Ciroman Kano (late Bayero’s first son). Kano people loved Bayero so much.
Sanusi does not enjoy the kind of support Bayero enjoyed. So if he is removed
today, nobody will protest because his public engagements negate the revered
values and culture of Islam and the Kano people. He has displayed too much
exuberance. If he survives this, I pray, he does, he should watch it and watch
his back very well. He will be looking for trouble, if he tries to fight the
family of the late Bayero,” the northern monarch, warned.
Chances of survival
There is no doubt that the object of the
entire probe is the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi 11 and his throne. And
as time clicks toward the eventual commencement of the probe, nothing, so far,
has contradicted the fear that the plot is real.
Those who should know suspect that the whole
script is intended to achieve either of two possible goals, namely “to harass
him and thereby get him to speak less on government policies in the way he had
done, which is not possible, because the Emir is naturally a very blunt person
and is not the type that is going to be intimidated into silencing his views
for whatever reason.”
“The second likely target of the probe by the
Kano State Government Public Complaints and Anti Corruption Agency is to indict
him, which means that the Emir would have no moral choice but to vacate
the post or be encouraged to vacate it invariably”, a highly placed source in
Kano hinted.
Many observers told Saturday Sun that
should this be the case, the monarch has a 50 – 50 chance of surviving his
adversaries given that the power to remove him is vested in the
government of the day, which could easily be activated by the governor or even
his Local Government Chairman carrying out the instruction of the governor.
The source, however, expressed worry that
given the critical utterances of the Emir recently, he has lost a number of
friends that should have stepped in and stop the probe.
He remarked that by the nature of the people
of the North, many disputes of this nature had been resolved by the mere
intervention of influential individuals and groups pointing out however that,
“it does appear that many of those who would have made much impact on this
matter are not so keen.”
“For example, one personality whose behind-
the -curtain moves could have stopped the parties from going public, in my
opinion, is the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar111. He has
always successfully intervened in matters of this nature. But I doubt if he is
very keen to come along for the following reason; his Sanusi’s utterances in
recent times, the Sultan on several occasions had advised him to mellow down in
his attacks, but he had not given ear to his fatherly advice”
The source explained that, “another possible
institution that would have stopped the probe by the Kano State Government is
the Presidency. But as you know, apart from their brief romance when Buhari was
campaigning for elections and was leveraging on his attacks on the Jonathan
administration, the relationship between Emir Sanusi and the Buhari government
has not remained the
“Majority of the times, the target of the
utterances of the Emir of Kano is the policies of the Federal Government and
very painfully, he dismantles their very good policies before a local audience
that they consider very crucial.
“A third group that would have exerted
pressure on the Kano State Government on this issue is the Council of Ulama,
which is a very powerful group in the state. But look at it this way, some of
the social reforms that the Emir had been canvassing are in direct opposition
to the ways and manner the Ulamas want things to be. The monarch’s social
reforms agenda contradicts their very conservative position on this matter.”
Saturday Sun gathered
that many Northern governors, some of whom are presently in China with Governor
Ganduje for a Forum, are not on the side of the Kano Emir. Apart from a
few like Mallam Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State, some of them are pressing for
the probe.
“Informally, these governors influence
themselves a lot and if two or three of the very powerful ones pull their
weight together, they could stop the Kano State government from this probe. But
the question you would ask yourself is if they would. Don’t forget that many of
them are also victims of the reforms propagated by the Kano Emir. His strong
and very convincing arguments present some of them as failures in their
respective states.”
Northern governors intervene
Contrary to insinuations that the northern
governors are up in arms against the emir, Saturday Sun can
authoritatively reveal that the leadership of the Northern States Governors
Forum, NSGF, led by the Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima, is making frantic
efforts to resolve the impasse.
Sources close to both the embattled emir and
the NSGF secretariat told Saturday Sun that it would be in the
interest of the north and Kano in particular, to get the matter resolved
amicably, with one of the sources saying “Sanusi may have his excesses, but I
think Kano and the north should be proud of him. You don’t discard such a calibre
of an intellectual. How many traditional rulers can engage our Islamic clerics
on Islamic best practices? I think they should just caution him on some of his
public utterances especially, as they relate to government activities and
politics. Removing him will amount to throwing the baby away with the bath
water. Kano and the north will be the loser.”
In response to the news making the rounds that
northern governors were bent on getting the emir sacked, one of the governors
told Saturday Sun that “the story is not true. On the
contrary, we are working hard to resolve the issue.”
Sanusi and his idiosyncrasies
But for politics, there was certainly no way a
Musa Kwankwaso would have preferred a Sanusi, as an emir of Kano, at a time, he
(Kwankwaso) was in firm control of power and politics in the state. Sanusi left
United Bank for Africa, UBA, for First Bank Plc, because of the then Kano State
governor, over his refusal to apologise to him for disparaging him and his
government on the pages of newspaper. It all started in 2001, Sanusi in
his usual manner had criticised Kwankwaso’s handling of Kano state’s affairs.
The government responded through its Finance Commissioner then, Dr. Hafiz
Abubakar.
But in Sanusi’s response, he had taken both
the governor and the commissioner to the cleaners, describing the state’s
economy under Kwankwaso as one of “Ajinomoto” or “Kafi Zabo” economics.
He had among other things said: “The first
point in our discourse is the honourable commissioner’s insistence, in both the Daily
Trust and the BBC interviews, that the N719 million “Governor’s lodge”
being constructed in Abuja is an ‘investment’ for the people of Kano State. Dr.
Hafiz is surprised that being an economist, I am yet unable to see the value of
this “investment”. Consideration of this issue should reveal the extent of the
honourable Finance Commissioner’s grasp of elementary Economics.
“An investment, to be considered a wise one
(as opposed to a foolish one), must meet three criteria in both ‘common sense’
and Economics. First, it must be acquired in an efficient and cost-effective
manner ( i.e there must be value for money); second, it must be such as one can
reasonably expect an appreciation in its value over time; finally, the
investment plus the gain thereon should be reasonably projected to be
realizable.
“Let me give an example of such a project. The
Zamfara State Government is constructing on its own plot in Abuja a hotel at a
cost of N500 million. Although I have reservations on the project on grounds of
reflecting misplaced priorities, I nonetheless concede that it is a wise
investment, which meets all the above criteria. As a banker, I know from
information available to me on similar projects that N500 million is roughly
the cost of building and furnishing a good 3-star hotel with 60-80 rooms,
sporting and healthcare facilities and conference centre. If the hotel in
question meets these criteria we may conclude that it is being established at a
reasonable cost.”
Kwankwaso was so enraged that he threatened to
withdraw the state’s account from the UBA, if the bank does not ask Sanusi to
apologise. Sanusi’s employers asked him to apologise, but rather than
apologise, he threw in the towel. That was how he joined First Bank Plc.
The Ado Bayero factor
At the office of the Kano State Public
Complaints and Anti-Corruption Agency early in the week, several sources told Saturday
Sun that the current probe was a response to information made
available on the social media, which itself was a fall out of the internal crisis
within the palace.
While dismissing the insinuation that the Kano
State Governor, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje was directly behind the probe
following the monarch’s criticism of some government policies, a
very senior officer of the Commission told Saturday Sun that
investigation emanated from petitions generated by sympathizers of
the former Emir of Kano, the late Alhaji Ado Bayero.
“There is an allegation that there was a N4
billion in the account and there is a counter to that allegation that the new
Emir never inherited such an amount of money from his predecessor. As such,
there was a need to look at the merits of the claims and counter claims and
nothing more.
A number of the sympathizers of the old order, Saturday
Sun investigation shows, are hopeful that should there be a vacancy on
account of the probe, it would afford Kano people an opportunity to correct the
mistake of the past and fulfill the wish of their late Emir “to enthrone one of
his sons as his successor.”
Several sources who spoke to Saturday
Sun agreed that such ambition was no longer feasible the way they
imagined it while advising them to forget the past and look forward. “The
children of the late Emir no longer command the primary position and sympathy
they enjoyed soon after the demise of their father”, one of the sources added.
It was pointed out that “they are not close to
the present governor of the state, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje to win his
sympathy in this regard, including the fact the replacement of the former
President Jonathan by President Buhari means that they had lost the
influence of the centre, which they once enjoyed. They also forget that there
are a lot of people within the palace today who are equally qualified for the
throne and who, given any vacancy, stand a better chance than ever to emerge as
the choice.”
Uneasy calm
There is no doubt that with the development,
the ancient city of Kano is on the edge. There is a huge fear among the people
of the state who believe that another eruption is not what is needed in the
state for now.
Historians in the state are quick to recall
that the last time the Emir of Kano, the late Alhaji Ado Bayero was queried in
the 80s by the Abubakar Rimi administration, Kano State went up in flames.
Although these two historical periods may
differ, security sources are worried that the present probe of the finance of
the Kano Emirate Council would stretch the peace of the state.
“The present probe has the capacity to lead to
the suspension of the Emir, if he is indicted. And when that happens, then
there is no way we can predict what will happen next”, the security source
declared.
One of them added that “One huge mistake many
people are making is to conclude on the surface that Emir Muhammad Sanusi is
not popular simply because when he was crowned a few years back, he was not
seen as the preferred choice.
“Those who think like this may be wrong. Time
takes care of so many things. Our judgment is that the Emir of Kano has since
endeared himself to his immediate surroundings with his welfare programs to the
people around him at a time of huge poverty and hunger in the state. He has won
many ordinary people to his side.
“Too, his social reform programme is well
received, some of this has given voice to the voiceless majority in the region.
I tell you many of these people see in him as the best thing that has happened
to their lives.”
Another senior security source also told Saturday
Sun that “many people may not have noticed that the Kwankwassiyya camp
is largely in support of the Emir.” The group, he stated, represents almost
half of the politics of the state today and is largely populated by young
people who are prone to wild reactions.
“So, we are also looking at that angle too as
we try to analyze the security implications of the probe going out of
control. We are praying that the whole probe is not factored into the
Kwankwasiyya, Gandujjya trouble that has also divided the state”
Another reason for fear, according to the
security officer, is the cast of characters involved in the confrontation. He
noted that, “At the centre is an Emir, who is hugely connected, financially
independent and bold. If he chooses to fight back, there is no doubt that
he would be able to fight those fighting him. He is not the type that can be
easily humbled”
Already, there are indications that the
security arrangements in the state would be strengthened ahead of May 2nd when
those invited would appear before the Commission for questioning.
Mixed reactions
About a week before the probe became public,
the National President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Alhaji Abubakar
Mahmoud, SAN had urged the elite in the region to be open to debate on
issues that affect the people of Northern Nigeria.
Apparently throwing his weight behind the Kano
monarch over his recent utterances, the one- time Attorney General of Kano
State, cautioned the North against, “silencing views that are contrary to
existing wisdom.”
Speaking in the same vein, a former boss of
the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Arch Aminu Dabo urged the Emir to continue
to speak for the people of the region as there were many issues in the region
begging for attention.
In a recent interview, a former member of the
House of Representatives, Dr Junaidu Mohammed, however cautioned the Emir
against the habit of condemning certain people in order to get kudos from the
Lagos Press.
“That cannot continue indefinitely because if
he wants to insult his exalted position by coming down to play politics with
it, certain people are going to take him on and show him the road. For anytime
he makes some of these reckless statements, there should be a counter. And if
he brings disgust and a sense of negative attitude towards the institution of
traditional institution, so be it.
On his comment on the Kano light rail project,
Junaid said “Honestly, I don’t know much about the light rail project but I
believe that he has access to the governor of the state who incidentally is one
of the two people who made him the Emir, and could have gone to see the
governor and tell him his views about the rail project. He can also write the
government.”
Sanusi’s premonition
Sanusi had always wanted to become the emir of
Kano. He is the emir today. But early this month when the whole brouhaha about
his public appearances and criticism of government policies took a different
dimension, the former CBN governor, appears prepared to go, after all, he has
achieved his life time ambition.
This indication came about two weeks ago,
April 14, to be precise, when his daughter, Shahida Sanusi, who represented him
at the first annual Chibok Girls lecture in Abuja, told the audience that
Sanusi would gladly give up the throne if it stands in the way of truth.
“My father is not afraid of giving up his
throne if it stands in the way of speaking the truth. Those who think that my
father would keep quiet because he wants to hold on to his throne, I think they
don’t know my father.
“I know that he has always wanted to be the
emir of Kano but to him, if it comes between what is right, what his conscience
tells him and choosing the throne, he would happily give up the throne.
“My father has always been a part of one
controversy or the other and it’s normal for us. We are not scared anymore.
“And honestly, he has been a source of
inspiration and pride. He never fails to fight. He fights for progress,
liberty, justice and equality. Those who think they know my father should know
that he will never be silenced by blackmail and intimidation. He lost his
position once as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and I
remember his quote that you can suspend a man but you can never suspend the
truth. I know he does not mind being the most unpopular emir so long he speaks
the truth.”
Last line
However, following the intervention of
prominent Nigerians, especially leadership of the NSGF, Sanusi, Saturday
Sun authoritatively gathered, is already reconsidering his initial
hard line position on giving up the throne. This, it was further gathered was
responsible for his refusal to join issues with the state government since the
probe started.
“We would have granted you the interview. But
Seriki (Sanusi) has been advised not to stoke any further controversy over the
matter. So I am sorry. Efforts are being made to resolve the matter. Thank you
for your concern,” one of the emir’s relations, told Saturday Sun, when pressed
for an interview on the raging controversy.
From all indications, if the peace moves fail,
Sanusi will equal his late grandfather’s record, as a deposed emir. But unlike
his late grandfather, if Sanusi is eventually dethroned, he would certainly
bounce back to reckoning.
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