NEITHER the Kano State government nor the deposed Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II acted wisely in the messy traditional and political affairs that culminated in last week’s dethronement saga in the state. The matter could have been better handled. But both parties chose to approach it lackadaisically. The dethronement, it must be admitted, was a long time coming; but suddenly on Monday, almost like a bolt from the blue, the Kano State government announced the deposition of the 14th Fulani emir of Kano. In less than one week, however, the sting had been taken out of the deposition bite. Unwilling to let due process run its course, the state sealed the emir’s fate while investigations were yet to run their course, hurried him out of the palace, and banished him to Nasarawa State. The state of course falsely denied the banishment part of the affair, passing that unseemly buck to security agencies who were themselves flustered by the whole saga. But few doubted that the affair was unavoidable.
No governor and no emir had been so unready for the consequences of a loudly proclaimed and acclaimed deposition. The deposed emir hugged monarchical martyrdom with a characteristic frenzy that puzzled his admirers and supporters, and mystified the governor, Abdullahi Ganduje. Barely a few years after mounting the famous stool of the Kano traditional throne, Emir Sanusi had boxed himself into becoming a radical whose ideology showed neither clarity nor consistency. All that was evident is that he regularly cocked a snook at the governor, baited him to do his worse, and despite repeated moves to broker peace with the governor, felt he owed more to his brazen and provocative ideas than to his traditional oath and subordination to modern political authority. He was a modern intellectual lounging on a very ancient and traditional stool. Balancing the demands of the two became for him an ordeal.
Emir Sanusi’s nearly six years on the throne taxed his character and mental fortitude to the limit. He is supremely confident in his intellectual ability, and constantly backs it with deft oratorical deployments. It is not often that a man possesses these virtues in abundance. Nor is it all the time that a man, possessing such gifts, adds to them an almost uncanny ability to circulate with unmatched aplomb among the country’s leading business, political and intellectual elite. And as if nature is partial to him, it then further endows him with a fervour and bellicosity that help him to market his ideas and, when necessary, put gloss on his habitual inconsistencies and contradictions. He was fallible, as his more than five years on the Kano throne showed, but his bravura performance, his boldness, and his defiance lead his opponents to either abandon their positions or question their own standing and logic.
It is fair to say Dr Ganduje was more intimidated by Emir Sanusi’s defiance than by his own inadequacies and foibles as a governor. But only the deposed emir can answer why, with such exaggerated sense of accomplishment, he nonetheless preferred to push his luck so far to the point of finally embracing martyrdom. In the last three years of his reign, he pushed that luck to its elastic limit. He was never the most scrupulous of professionals, particularly in the finance sector where he made his name, and he felt continually restricted by the rules and guidelines of the sector that nurtured him to public acclaim. But just as a feeling of ennui began to sweep over him, he resorted, as was his custom, to brinkmanship that mixed elements of hubris with insolence and a lack of reflection.
Many analysts have suggested that the deposed emir could have managed the throne differently and far better than he did, and to a different and perhaps pleasant outcome. No one debarred him from ventilating his ideas and flaunting his oratorical gifts, but even he ought to know that the country’s traditional stools lack the executive powers they used to have centuries ago. He could challenge the retrogressive and feudal systems that have hobbled and ossified the North, but who says he should wave his radical manifesto so irreverently and sometimes so flippantly under the nose of the ruling elite. He was expected to be mindful of the idiosyncrasies of the throne and the expansive countervailing powers of the government, and to sensibly navigate the rapids and waterfalls which he must encounter from year to year. But he clearly lacked both the patience and the wisdom to ensure his own survival and the well-being of the monarchy. His ideas and his style may be modern, but nothing says they were also expedient. He is an intellectual, but he obviously listens only to his own counsels, failing to study the leadership styles statesmen before him so solidly projected.
The problem then with Emir Sanusi, quite like his grandfather who was also deposed as emir, was his lack of moderation, inability to understand and manage the governor, and failure to coax Kano’s complex system to his worldview. His deposition was not inevitable. He made and prided himself a martyr and hastened his own fall. He probably sees the deposition as liberating, allowing him the leeway and platform a popular rebel like him needs to propagate his ideas and showcase his oratory. He can almost swear beneath his breath that he would make his traducers in Kano and elsewhere pay for their hypocrisy, since he would no longer be constrained from letting them have a piece of his fiery mind. But if he were to suddenly acquire the wisdom he failed to project on the Kano traditional throne, he would ensure that nothing he says or does should reflect the malice and lack of moderation common to plebeians.
Emir Sanusi simply wished himself into martyrdom because he was not as endowed with wisdom as he is endowed with a great intellect. His nemesis, Dr Ganduje, who is the public face of a conniving and now suspected state government, is even less wise. Emir Sanusi had a very large ego; but deposed, he has nothing left to fear or lose. The governor on the other hand lives in a glass house. By deposing the emir, and running a government of doubtful ethical soundness, he has thrown more than a thousand stones. He will not be spared. Wisdom should have dictated to him to keep the emir close to him pissing out than kick him out and risk his prolonged pissing in. Dr Ganduje will soon find out that investigating and publishing details of Emir Sanusi’s alleged financial infractions will pale into insignificance beside his own alleged contractual shenanigans.
The Hausa-Fulani North against which Emir Sanusi directed much of his diatribe is regarded by many as ultra-conservative, meaning that he was a regional misfit in their midst. It is also suggested that by the time of his deposition, the emir had so lost favour with the region’s traditional and political elite that it was near impossible to save him despite the best efforts of the former military head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar. There is little doubt that his admonitions and criticisms nettled the elite, and a significant number of northern leaders couldn’t care less if the emir stayed on the throne or was deposed. But Kano is a little different, for the Hausa-Fulani North is not an unbroken vista of conservatism or reaction. Kano has been a long-standing bastion of radical politics, sometimes violently opposed to the region’s dominant ideology. The state was, therefore, an unlikely candidate to smother the seemingly radical philosophy of Emir Sanusi. But even Kano had grown weary of the fiery monarch, and had begun to long for some normality, regardless of the support major political players like former governor Rabiu Kwankwaso gave him. The state may be largely radical, but it is almost evenly split between the country’s two dominant political parties, a partisanship undifferentiated by style, morality or ideology.
Radicalism or conservatism played little or no role in Emir Sanusi’s deposition. Dr Ganduje cannot be ideologically categorised, especially given the ethical morass in which he has allegedly immersed himself. Indeed, the resignation with which Kano indigenes acquiesced to the deposition should illustrate to the deposed emir the quandary in which he threw Kano by his immoderate actions and statements, not to say the infinite contradictions that dog his monarchy and person. Kano, like any other city which has experienced deposition, will survive and retain its cultural, religious and political flavour. The deposition will have little consequence. Emir Sanusi instinctively knows this and has sensed the futility of challenging the action of the state government. He will thus move on sure-footedly to the next phase of his life, and he will more likely flourish than fade away, for he is immensely gifted. The same cannot be said of Dr Ganduje. He has done little to lay a solid foundation for his political future; and while the Hausa-Fulani dichotomy that sometimes constitutes an undertow to northern politics may still be noticeable or even produce some ripples now and again, his fate will be determined by forces and factors totally unrelated to that subtle cultural contrast.
There are conspiracy theories about the future of Emir Sanusi, particularly relating to a possible interest in the presidency, say in 2023. It will not happen. The tragic silhouette through which the Buhari presidency is viewed today has gingered abundant caution in Nigerians regarding how they assess their aspiring leaders. Neither the immoderate Emir Sanusi, despite his vaunted intellect and robustness, nor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna, despite his boisterousness and intelligence, possesses the vision, temper and democratic credentials needed to found and drive a modern nation. The deposed emir will furiously mine the goldfield availed him by a blundering Dr Ganduje, and he will get a lot of recognition in Nigeria and some parts of the world. But he is unlikely to be able to shake off the vices that made his deposition urgent and possible. There is more to being a traditional ruler, just as there is more to being the leader of a nation. As both Emir Sanusi and President Buhari have shown in Kano traditional affairs and All Progressives Congress (APC) affairs respectively, it takes so much to be a leader that neither feigned radicalism nor disguised lethargy can satisfy the prerequisites.

By Idowu Akinlotan