Alhaji (Dr.) Ado Abdullahi Bayero (CFR, LLD, JP) died on June 6, 2014 at the age of 83 years. He was the Emir of Kano from 1963 to his death. Bayero was seen as one of Nigeria’s most prominent and revered Muslim leaders, who was a successful businessman and had worked as a banker, police officer, MP and diplomat. He was one of the strongest and powerful emirs in the history of the Hausa land. Bayero was born on July 25, 1930 to the family of HajiyanHasiya and Abdullahi Bayero and into the Fulani Sullubawa clan that has presided over the emirate of Kano since 1819. He was the eleventh child of his father and the second of his mother. At the age of seven, he was sent to live with Maikano Zagi.
He started his education in Kano studying Islam, after which he attended Kano Middle School. He graduated from the School of Arabic Studies in 1947. He then worked as a bank clerk for the Bank of British West Africa until 1949, when he joined the Kano Native Authority. He attended Zaria Clerical College in 1952. In 1954, he won a seat to the Northern regional House of Assembly.
He was head of the Kano Native Authority police division from 1957 until 1962, during which he tried to minimize the practice of briefly detaining individuals and political opponents on the orders of powerful individuals in Kano. He then became the Nigerian ambassador to Senegal during which he enrolled in a French language class. On October 22, 1963, he succeeded Muhammadu Inuwa as Emir of Kano, becoming the 13th Fulani Emir of Kano and the 56th ruler of the Kano Kingdom. Bayero was a former chancellor of the University of Nigeria and served as the chancellor of the University of Ibadan.
Bayero became emir during the first republic, at a time when Nigeria was going through rapid social and political changes and regional, sub-regional and ethnic discord was increasing. In his first few years, two pro-Kano political movements gained support among some Kano elite. The Kano People’s Party emerged during the reign of Muhammadu Inuwa and supported the deposed Emir Sanusi, but it soon evaporated. The Kano State Movement emerged towards the end of 1965 and favoured more economic autonomy for the province.
The death in 1966 of many political agitators from northern Nigeria, and the subsequent establishment of a unitary state, consolidated a united front in the northern region but also resulted in a spate of violence there, including in Kano. Bayero was credited to have brought calm and stability during this and later crises in Kano.
He was a patron of Islamic scholarship and embraced Western education as a means to succeed in a modern Nigeria. The constitutional powers of the emir were whittled down by the military regimes between 1966 and 1979. The Native Authority Police and Prisons Department was abolished, the emir’s judicial council was supplanted by another body, and local government reforms in 1968, 1972, and 1976 reduced the powers of the emir. During the second republic, he witnessed hostilities from the People’s Redemption Party led government of Abubakar Rimi.
In 2002 he led Kano elders’ forum in opposing the onshore and offshore abrogation bill.
Ado Bayero was seen as a vocal critic of the Islamist group Boko Haram. On January 19, 2013, he survived an assassination attempt blamed on the insurgents, which left two of his sons injured and his driver and bodyguard dead, among others. He is succeeded by his brother’s grandson Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
May his soul rest in jannatul firdausi!
