By Aminata Diamond Sillah
This week the world watched with consternation as the 14th Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness Mohamed Sanusi II was dethroned, banished and subsequently detained. Although his dethronement may have been in compliance with Part 3, Section 13(a-e) of the Kano State Emirate Law 2019, his detention was a clear violation of his fundamental rights of personal liberty and freedom of movement as guaranteed under Section 35 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
Mohamed Sanusi II, better known in banking and financial circles as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is a consummate economist and banker and is credited to have overhauled the banking sector in Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy. He served as Nigeria’s Central Bank governor from June 2009 to February 2014 after rising through the ranks of the Nigerian banking sector. During his time as Central Bank Governor, he led a daring reformation agenda that sanitized Nigeria’s financial industry by initiating extensive banking reforms that included promoting the quality of banks, establishing financial stability, enabling healthy financial sector evolution and ensuring that contributions of the financial sectors are reflected on the Nigerian economy.
His reforms led to the recapitalization of top tier banks. He instituted anti-corruption policies and clamped down heavily on chief executives whose actions were in direct contraventions of contemporary banking norms and practices. Some of them ended in jail. His robust reforms earned him both criticisms and praises at the local level and accolades at the global level as evident on his 2010 “Central Bank Governor of the Year for Africa” award by the reputable The Banker magazine, and his listing in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2011.
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was born in 1961, a year after Nigeria gained independence, to Aminu Sanusi, a career diplomat who served as Nigeria’s ambassador to Belgium, China and Canada and who later served as the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria. He is the grandson of Muhammadu Sanusi I, the 11th Emir of Kano who served from 1953 until 1963 when he was deposed by his cousin, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the respected Sadauna of Sokoto, the first and only Premier of Northern Nigeria and one of the founding fathers of Nigeria as we know it today.
Sanusi hails from northern Nigeria and belongs to the minority conservative elite and political class. The same political class that has fueled the northern region’s current state of developmental malaise. He was educated at the prestigious Kings College Lagos and the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria Kaduna. He has never been a stranger to the regional political power dynamics that create usual tensions at the national level between consummate professionals who refuse to play tone deaf to the yearnings of political leaders. This tension led to his suspension in 2014 as Central Bank Governor when, against the wishes of the politicians, he raised the issue of the alleged disappearance of US$ 20 billion oil revenues from the country's coffers.
After his stint at influencing change at the federal level, he decided to go back home to the emirate of Kano and serve his people. A dream which he says he has “nurtured all his life.” He was controversially selected to succeed his granduncle, the revered Emir of Kano Ado Bayero, after his sudden demise. Many believed that his appointment was a politically-motivated move to shield him from the persecution from the then government who believed the $20 billion scandal was one of the reasons that adversely affected the reelection bid of former President Goodluck Jonathan. His appointment was heavily protested as many expected the much popular son of the late Emir Ado Bayero would succeed him.
The attempts by Sanusi to raise thorny issues in the politics of the north and his usual restless pursuits of reforms led him to overlook royal protocols and draw attention to the ills of his society. In doing so, he was bound to step on toes. Sanusi, being the radical that he is, did not sit quietly while the conservative political elite exploited his people. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), nine out of the 10 poorest states in Nigeria are in Northern Nigeria. In the words of Kashim Shettima, current Senator and the former governor of Borno state, “Unemployment in the north is extremely high. Nigeria is a country of two nations, the South is much more stable and prosperous, the north on the other hand is in a poverty trap. In Nigeria, poverty wears a northern cap, if you are looking for a poor man, get somebody wearing a northern cap.”
While the southern region of Nigeria has made steady progress in providing Western education for its people, the north is still lagging far behind to the advantage of its political leaders. The region is mostly influenced by Islamic jihadists, and Islam as a religion in northern Nigeria has played a unique role in their political and development aspirations. The preeminence of Islamic education has continually stalled the overarching need for Western education in the region. The mostly overpopulated Islamic north has endeared itself to Islamic education, culture and the use of the Hausa language as a means for communication. The popularity and preference of the Almajiri system of Islamic education is well established in the north. It is a boys-only Islamic study program with millions of young boys going across state lines to gain access to this form of Islamic education with Hausa and Arabic being the only mode of instruction. It does not prepare them for the white collar job market, and most end up in the informal sector or mostly unemployed.
The Almajiri system is very limited in its scope and does not incorporate science, maths, the humanities etc. in its curriculum. Over time, it inadvertently became the readymade human resource pool for Boko Haram and Islamic extremists. The teachings of Islam largely determine the role of women and girls in northern Nigeria. The soaring numbers of illiterate girls who have no access to both Western and Islamic education are alarming. Child marriage is rampant, and access to contraceptives is very minimal and for someone unislamic.
As Emir, Sanusi embarked on a very daring campaign against the inherent antecedents in northern Nigeria that is consistently fueling poverty, underdevelopment and the current war waged by Boko Haram extremists. He called on his followers to resist Boko Haram, a move that led to the bombing in November 2014 of the Great Mosque of Kano, within his emirate, with over 150 casualties. In December 2014, Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekarau, accused Sanusi of anti-Islamic sentiments and threatened to kill him. Sanusi defiantly retorted that his safety could only be guaranteed by Allah and equated Shekarau’s extremist views and attacks as heretical and counterproductive to the promotion of Islam and the development of the northern region.
Sanusi dared to rattle the status quo and tried prompting his people to demand for performance from its political leaders and developmental policies. As a result he fell out with political conservatives in northern Nigeria who see him as a threat to their power mix, and according to some, his publicly raised concerns go contrary to the Sharia – or Islamic Law – which governs Muslims. Sanusi spoke in public about issues northern leaders have been palpably silent about. Issues such as the need for the proliferation of Western education in the north, creating access to education for girls, ending child marriage, building more schools instead of mosques, infrastructural development, population planning and the role of polygamy in promoting poverty in the region.
He ventured into uncharted waters. Amongst the issues he advocated against is the Almajiri system of education with publicly echoed sentiments that were unavoidably hurting the political class and to some extent his own people. A fall-out was imminent. The north is too conservative and close-knit for such deviance. He didn’t realize that he was gradually becoming an enemy of his same followership and the people he sought to protect. His convictions were conflicting with his Islamic beliefs. He lit a furnace which ultimately burned his ambition and escalated when he decided to transcend royal boundaries into the spheres of condemning government policies, breaking a tradition which in the eyes of conservatives is inexcusable. He refused to allow his reformation agenda to be tamed by royal protocol. He started criticizing the Kano state government’s policies and priorities. In retribution, his emirate council was placed under investigation for corruption in 2017. The investigations were only called off by the Kano state legislative following interventions by certain sections of the political class. The Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, then skillfully signed into law the creation of four new emirates in an unprecedented move that saw Sanusi’s traditional domain reduced to a meagre 10 local government area out of the 44 in the state. His actions were seen as gross insubordination to the state governor and his subsequent refusal to attend state functions, and official meetings put him on the warpath with the governor.
The Governor accused the Emir of breaching provisions of the Kano State Emirate Law 2019, and on the 9 March 2020, the long-drawn-out battle between the Emir and the Governor climaxed into the deposition and exile of the emir to the remote rural areas of the far-flung north-central state of Nassarawa. This prompted outrage from Sanusi’s lawyers, the general public and human rights organizations. As the debacle unfolds, we await to see how the government of a democratic order will protect the human rights of one of its respected senior citizens against a traditional order.
NOTE: Aminata Diamond Sillah is a Sierra Leonean lawyer who studied both in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
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