Dahiru
Hassan Kera
It is the norm rather than the exception that majority of people toe the official line while expressing unreserved support and unflinching loyalty to those in positions of authority and power in order to reap perceived pecuniary benefits from such authority or figures on the basis of ethnic, religious or sectional affinity. This leads to turning a blind eye to the excesses, depredations and societal vices that are capable of low-necking our values and contemporary standards as a people.
It has become a feature of the Nigerian way of life that people who are dogmatic, principled or courageous enough to speak out on issues of state or national interest are branded with all manner of names and innuendoes while dragging them to the social media as the platform to excoriate and blackmail them, their position, relatives, friends or associates. Therefore, rather than address the crux of the matter raised by those courageous gadflies, the affected and grieved politicians and their professional blackmailers trickily divert public attention by descending into the murky terrain of character assassination and scandal mongering of unprecedented proportions.
Indeed, one of the prominent and eminent personalities who has suffered unfettered mudslinging and unbridled character assassination is the former Central Bank Governor and the incumbent Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi (II). It’s evident that right through his professional and public service stints, especially during his tumultuous tenure as the CBN Governor under the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, Sanusi’s dogma and commitment had disallowed him to fold his hands with tongue-tied and muffled on issues of national interest. During his days in the CBN, while all manner of sycophants and hangers-on in the political, economic and corporate arena were assuring the President and his kitchen cabinet that they were performing superbly; and that the economy was on the right track, it was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who seized the gauntlet to raise the alarm when he pointed out that there was discrepancy in the nation’s foreign exchange profile as a result of massive withdrawal of funds that were not properly reflected in official records.
A cacophony of voices rose against him, calling him all sorts of names just as they also accused him of acting a script handed to him by General Muhammadu Buhari, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and other leaders of the opposition then. Other fiercer voices accused him of trenchant hostility, ethnic chauvinism and unbridled animus against then President Jonathan.
Irritated by Sanusi’s position, loyalists of the then president both within the Peoples Democratic Party and external forces in the private and public sectors orchestrated his immediate sack. This was in spite of the fact that his wake up call was influenced by unvitiated patriotism and an unquestionable desire to cleanse the Augean Stables before it was too late.
The then embattled CBN boss was to emerge from the conflagration as a hero both nationally and globally as Nigerians in their millions lined up to support his whistle blowing exertions while foreign financial analysts slammed the Federal Government for its obdurate financial profligacy and recklessness which in vindication of Sanusi’s alarm had plunged the country into recession.
However, those conservative and even parochial segments of the Nigerian society that felt that Emir Sanusi would be considerably less vocal and outspoken because of his traditional lungi as the Emir of Kano, were in for unpleasant surprises as he has fortuitously stirred the hornet’s nest on several occasions most famously when he chastised the APC-led Federal Government for pursuing wrong-headed economic and fiscal policies that were further impoverishing Nigerians.
He warned that if care was not taken, it would end the Muhammadu Buhari presidency in the same ditch that the Jonathan administration had landed in. Once again the present administration’s allies rushed in spontaneous defense of its policies while insinuating that the emir has some hidden scores to settle with the Buhari government. This is a bitter irony given the fact that those same allies had applauded Lamido Sanusi, then CBN governor, when he famously took the Jonathan government to the cleaners in 2013.
However, no other controversy seems to have elicited the copious level of venom rancor, bitterness and unbridled calumny against Emir Sanusi than his unapologetic championing of gender rights and the educational development of the girl-child and marriage abuses in the country, particularly in northern Nigeria. The impassioned emir had called for the eradication of cultural and traditional practices that curtail the educational advancement of young girls and men marrying multiple women without means of maintaining them and their kids. But rather than address the issues and untoward practices raised by the Emir of Kano, the perennial critics, naysayers and persistent traducers have gone to town once again assailing the unassailable royal father with accusations that he is crafting an anti-northern agenda in order to curry favor with his business, political and professional acolytes from the southern part of the country and in western financial circles.
It’s no longer news that the Kano State Governmnet is not comfortable with how the emir criticises the Ganduje rail project as a misplacement of economic priority and a waste of the state’s money while citing similar project in Rivers State that ended up as a prodigality.
Since then, political treasure hunts on the emir’s spending in the emirate began through the pages of newspapers and online platforms. The Kano State Government has through the state assembly constituted a committee to probe the emir on alleged embzzlement, a situation many pundits believed would conversely consume the Ganduje government than the emir. It’s obvious that the fued between Ganduje and his former boss, Sen. Kwankwaso is something to worry about. Adding the Sunusi issue seems that the government is compounding its problems by biting more than it can chew.
Emir Sanusi cannot be threatened by the Ganduje move to dethrone him, as according to him: “the reality is that everything in this world is fragile. Life itself will come to an end and you lose money and position and loved ones all the time. The only thing we have control over is who we are and what we stand for. Being a coward or a sycophant will not add one day to your life or one day to the term of any of the things you hold dear. The worst silence is that which happens in the face of injustice.”
There is nothing more to add to the sage wisdom of Emir Sanusi. Those who have ears let them hear.
Kera writes from Kaduna
