"Monarchy is way past its
sell-by date not just in Nigeria but everywhere. It’s an anachronistic, vestigial
remnant of a primitive past that invests authority on people by mere accident
of heredity. Any authority that is inherited and not earned, in my opinion, is
beneath contempt. Emirship isn’t only a
primeval anomaly in a modern world, it is, in fact, un-Islamic. In Islam,
leadership is derived from knowledge and the consensus of consultative
assemblies of communities called the Shura, not from heredity. Monarchies in the
Muslim North, which have constituted themselves into parasitic, decadent drains
on the society but which pretend to be Islamic, are grotesque perversions of
the religion they purport to represent. Anyone, not least one who makes pious
noises about equality, that is denied the unfair privileges of monarchy is no
victim.
Most importantly, though,
Sanusi embodies a jarring disconnect between high-minded ideals and lived
reality. He rails against child marriage in public but married a teenager upon
becoming an emir. ... He expended considerable
intellectual energies critiquing polygamy among poor Muslim men, but he is
married to four wives. His defense, of course, would be that he can afford it,
and poor Muslim men can’t. Fair enough. But transaction-oriented reformists
lead by example. Sanusi habitually
fulminates against the enormous and inexorably escalating poverty in the north,
but even though he is an immensely affluent person, he has not instituted any
systematic mechanism to tackle the scourge of poverty in the region in his own
little way. Instead, he spends
hundreds of billions of naira to decorate the emir’s palace, buy exotic horses,
and luxuriate in opulent sartorial regality. And, although, he exposed humongous corruption
during Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and dollar racketeering during
Buhari’s regime, he is himself an indefensibly corrupt and profligate person."
Farooq A. Kperogi, March 14, 2020
*******
(By Farooq A. Kperogi) - Ganduje is a Monster,
But Sanusi Is Not a Victim
Governor Abdullahi “Gandollar” Ganduje is no
doubt a contemptibly philistine monster of avarice and debauchery who dethroned
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as Emir of Kano because he couldn’t stomach the former
emir’s disapproval of the electoral fraud that brought him to power.
There is also no doubt
that Sanusi’s unrelenting public censures of the rotten, if time-honored,
cultural quiddities of the Muslim North discomfited many people who are
invested in the status quo, and this became one of the convenient bases for his
ouster.
But Sanusi isn’t nearly
the victim he has been cracked up to be by his admirers and defenders. First,
he rode to the Kano emirship in 2014 on the crest of a wave of emotions stirred
by partisan politics and came down from it the same way.
Even though he wasn’t
initially on the shortlist of Kano’s kingmakers, APC's Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso
(who is now in PDP) made Sanusi emir in 2014 to spite PDP’s President Goodluck
Jonathan and shield Sanusi from the consequences of his unmasking of
multi-billion-dollar corruption at the NNPC. Apart from his unceremonious
removal as CBN governor for his whistle blowing, he was going to face other
untoward retributions from the Jonathan administration, but his appointment as
emir put paid to it.
Now, Sanusi lost his
emirship to the same partisan politics that got it for him in the first place.
In an ironic twist, he was made emir by an APC government for making privileged
revelations that disadvantaged a PDP government, and was removed as an emir by
an APC government for his overt and covert acts that could have benefited the
PDP in 2019.
In other words, Sanusi’s
emirship was molded in the crucible of partisan politics and was dissolved in
it.
Nonetheless, Sanusi,
given his intellectual sophistication and pretenses to being an advocate of
egalitarianism, had no business being an emir. Monarchy is way past its sell-by
date not just in Nigeria but everywhere. It’s an anachronistic, vestigial
remnant of a primitive past that invests authority on people by mere accident
of heredity. Any authority that is inherited and not earned, in my opinion, is
beneath contempt.
Emirship isn’t only a
primeval anomaly in a modern world, it is, in fact, un-Islamic. In Islam,
leadership is derived from knowledge and the consensus of consultative
assemblies of communities called the Shura, not from heredity.
Monarchies in the
Muslim North, which have constituted themselves into parasitic, decadent drains
on the society but which pretend to be Islamic, are grotesque perversions of
the religion they purport to represent. Anyone, not least one who makes pious
noises about equality, that is denied the unfair privileges of monarchy is no
victim.
Most importantly, though,
Sanusi embodies a jarring disconnect between high-minded ideals and lived
reality. He rails against child marriage in public but married a teenager upon
becoming an emir. When the late Pius Adesanmi called him out, he told him to
“grow a brain.” He suddenly became the patron saint of conservative Muslim
cultural values.
He expended considerable
intellectual energies critiquing polygamy among poor Muslim men, but he is
married to four wives. His defense, of course, would be that he can afford it,
and poor Muslim men can’t. Fair enough. But transaction-oriented reformists
lead by example.
Fidel Castro, for
example, stopped smoking when he campaigned against it. It would be nice to say
to poor, polygamous Muslim men, “Why are you, a poor man, married to four wives
when Sanusi, a wealthy man and an emir, is married to just one wife?”
That would have had a
much higher impact than his preachments. In spite of their moral failings,
Buhari, Abba Kyari, and Mamman Daura would be much more effective campaigners
against disabling polygamy by poor Muslim men than Sanusi can ever be because
they are monogamists even when they can afford to marry four wives.
This is a legitimate
critique since Sanusi has a choice to not call out poor Muslim men who marry
more wives than they can afford since polygamy is animated by libidinal greed,
which is insensitive to financial means.
Sanusi habitually
fulminates against the enormous and inexorably escalating poverty in the north,
but even though he is an immensely affluent person, he has not instituted any
systematic mechanism to tackle the scourge of poverty in the region in his own
little way.
Instead, he spends
hundreds of billions of naira to decorate the emir’s palace, buy exotic horses,
and luxuriate in opulent sartorial regality.
And,
although, he exposed humongous corruption during Goodluck Jonathan’s
administration and dollar racketeering during Buhari’s regime, he is himself an
indefensibly corrupt and profligate person. In two well-researched
investigative pieces in 2017, Daily Nigeria’s Jaafar Jaafar chronicled Sanusi’s mind-boggling corruption as emir of Kano, which apparently didn’t abate until he was
dethroned.
Sanusi was ostensibly a
Marxist when he studied economics at ABU, which explains why he exhibits
flashes of radicalism in his public oratory, but he is, in reality, an
out-of-touch, unfeeling, feudal, neoliberal elitist who is contemptuous, and
insensitive to the suffering, of poor people.
He supported Jonathan’s
petrol price hike in 2012 and even wondered why poor people were protesting
since they had no cars, and generators, according to him, were powered by
diesel, not petrol!
When his attention was
brought to the fact that only “subsidized” and privileged “big men” like him
use diesel-powered generators, he backed down and apologized. But I found it
remarkably telling that until 2012 Sanusi had no clue that the majority of
Nigerians used petrol-powered generators to get electricity.
In a
September 1, 2012 column titled, "Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s
Unwanted 5000 Naira Notes," I noted that Sanusi was
"one of the most insensitive, out-of-touch bureaucrats to ever walk
Nigeria’s corridors of power."
Again,
in my December 10, 2016 article titled, "Dangerous Fine Print in
Emir Sanusi's Prescription for Buhari," I wrote: "If you are a poor or economically insecure
middle-class person who is writhing in pain amid this economic downturn, don’t
be deceived into thinking that Emir Sanusi is on your side. He is not. His
disagreements with Buhari have nothing to do with you or your plight. If he has
his way, you would be dead by now because the IMF/World Bank neoliberal
theology he evangelizes has no care for poor, vulnerable people."
On
April 6, 2017, I wrote a Facebook status update that anticipated Sanusi’s dethronement and predicted that he
might be president after his dethronement. I wrote:
“Did you pick up on the
cryptic but devastating critique of Kano State Governor Ganduje’s government in
Emir Sanusi’s wildly trending Kaduna speech? That’s gotta hurt. Remember that
the power to appoint and dethrone traditional rulers rests exclusively with
state governors. Now, pissing off the federal government AND the state
government AND an entire region’s conservative cultural elites with bitter,
uncomfortable truth-telling is a lethally combustible mix.
“I make no pretenses to
possessing oracular powers (because I don't), but I predict that, like his
grandfather, Emir Sanusi II will be deposed. But, unlike his grandfather, he
may end up becoming Nigeria’s president after his dethronement. Kano’s loss
would then be Nigeria’s gain which, in a strangely circuitous way, would also
be Kano’s gain since Kano is part of Nigeria.
“Sanusi shouldn’t be
Kano’s emir; he should be Nigeria’s president. I have strong disagreements with
the neoliberal orthodoxy he subscribes to, but it would be nice to have a truly
informed and educated man as president for once.”
Now, do I still want
Sanusi to be Nigeria’s president? I am not too sure anymore. First, I doubt
that the forces that got him out of the throne would allow him to become
president, but should he decide to run for president in 2023, people who will
vote for him should realize that he is neither a saint nor a victim.
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