Having followed, with great heartache, how Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, as the then Central Bank Governor, literally undermined his principal and then President, Goodluck Jonathan, I had silently prayed that a day like this would come, especially, after the APC structure foisted him on Kano as Emir.
I should, therefore, be gloating at the fate that has now befallen him as Emir – a fate which has seen his empire curiously restructured within 72 hours. The once powerful Kano emirate has now been reduced to five autonomous communities, with Sanusi hanging onto one of them.
I should also be gloating because the action of Governor Ganduje and the Kano State House of Assembly has proven that ‘restructuring’ is not really as difficult as we sometimes paint it to be. But I’m not excited. In fact, I’m sad. Sad that both the Presidency and the APC establishment cannot see the tragedy in Kano beyond the need to clip the wings of Emir Muhammad Sanusi II. I’m sad that we are ready to throw away the baby with the bath water just because we want to deal with Sanusi who, I’m told, clearly overstepped his bounds by covertly (or overtly) ‘working’ for the opposition PDP during the last general elections.
Have we forgotten that it was for allegedly working for the then opposition APC, against the ruling PDP, that Sanusi was rewarded with the throne? Must we now destroy the throne in order to punish Sanusi for doing exactly what we know him for? Is there no way of dethroning him, like was done to his grandfather, and maintaining the sanctity of the throne?
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Of course, I have made my enquiries and discovered that not a few people were uncomfortable with Sanusi’s disposition to telling truth to power. That the stool required a lot more conservatism than the make-up of a Sanusi would give. I was reminded that his predecessors said worse things to their sons in government, but always told them privately, not on the pages of the newspaper or on live television. I, for one, can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I heard the late Ado Bayero speak in public, let alone speak English. Despite his peerless command of the Queen’s language, the late Emir usually spoke through interpreters. That added even more myth to the throne, which Sanusi’s garrulousness tended to demystify.
I was told the story of how partisan politicians wanted to capitalise on a former Kano Emir’s vote, on election day, by telling the people to vote whoever the Emir voted for. I’m told of how the then Emir discovered this and resolved to merely show up on election day just for the symbolism of it. On other instances, he took his ballot paper and thumb-printed for all the parties on the ballot, thereby rendering his own vote invalid. It was his own little way of saying that all the contestants are his people and that he does not have preference of any one. It is a clear distinction from what we are hearing from the grapevine, happened during the last general elections, when members of a particular political group were said to have even been meeting at a section of the palace; when palace staff and families were allegedly told who to vote for, etc. But all these are speculations.
I have also been reminded that it is not all of the old Kano Emirate that is against this decimation of the centuries-old emirate. I’ve been reminded that some of the newly created emirates actually predate the Kano Emirate, as we’ve come to know it over the last two centuries. I have been told that it is for this well accepted emirate statuses that the heads of these new emirates were never addressed, as District Heads, but retained their titles of Sarki (Emir), even under the old Kano Emirate arrangement.
However, many of us outside of the North, who hitherto revered the Emirs of the House of Danfodio, would continue to hold it in the same awe, now that we know that five such leaders could emerge in 72 hours, just like any other Warrant Chief. The North has definitely lost something major. Incalculable damage has been done to our collective national heritage.
Unfortunately, I did not set out to write about Sanusi and the demystification of the Kano throne. Rather, I’m more concerned about this current season of curious legislations and executive actions. I’m shocked that a bill was sent to a state assembly on Monday, passed first and second reading and was passed by the House on Tuesday and transmitted to the governor. By Wednesday, the governor, who had told the world that he could not wait for the bill to get to his table, signed it into Law, and By Thursday, new Emirs were presented with their staffs of office. It seemed a case impatiently going through the process to arrive at a predetermined answer. So, I would rather leave Sanusi to stew in his own sauce, for the days are full of mischief.
We surely live in very interesting times. And it’s getting more interesting, as the May 29 handover date approaches. While many are retooling to return to their present office for a new tenure, others are clearing their desks to hand over to their chosen cronies, as yet others are reluctantly leaving office to handover to, sometimes, their worst enemies – in anticipation of a most hostile takeover, and mutually unfriendly handover. Be it in Imo, Kano, Bauchi, Oyo, Ogun or Gombe, exiting governors, lawmakers, ministers, etc. are desperately covering their tracks and ensuring that life on the other side is not too rough, but the incoming ones, especially those from antagonistic political camps are also sniffing around for potential scandals that the outgoing regimes were too careless to cover up.
Until recently, the main concern of incoming governors, for instance, had always been the case of last-minute looting by exiting administration. Exiting regimes have been known to not only empty the state’s cash reserves in the banks, but also cart away furniture, cars and other government property – a development that sometimes sees agents of the yet-to-be-sworn-in government, issuing directives to the state’s bankers to freeze accounts of the state governments. And curiously, because Nigeria is a jungle, the banks actually obey, now that the outgoing government is already a sitting duck.
But the exiting politicians have now upped their game. They are not only looting, they are also now tweaking the statute to ensure that they do not get caught, and that the looting continues into perpetuity for them.
This probably explains the rash of curious, and in some case, mischievous legislations and executive pronouncements, as we approach the end of the current tenure.
In Bayelsa State, for instance, lawmakers of the state House of Assembly, many of whom had spent less than four years in the House, approved a mouth-watering pension and severance package for themselves. Yes, in a country where pensioners from the civil service have been made to go through hell and back for pensions that never come, politicians who did nothing but loot the public treasury for four years, are passing bills to enable them legally parasite on the system for the rest of their lives. Sponsored by Peter Akpe, Leader of the House, the Bayelsa bill approved a monthly payment of N500,000 for the Speaker, N300,000 for the Deputy Speaker and N100,000 for other members of the House.
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But if the lawmakers did not give a hoot about the feelings of Bayelsans, in passing this their self-serving bill, Countryman Governor, Henry Seriake Dickson, himself a former federal lawmaker, would not join in this heartless disregard of poor Bayelsans. He put his feet down against the bill, refusing to sign it into law. Dickson has saved the day.
Like Bayelsans, the people of Kano also came to close to that sorry pass. Barely 48 hours after the state Assembly passed the curious bill, empowering Gov. Ganduje to decimate the Kano Emirate, the lawmakers dusted up their own bill as well. They too were demanding life pension for themselves. And since one good turn deserves another, it was expected that Ganduje would oblige the legislators and also sign their own bill into law. Luckily, he too declined – at least, for now. But if he finally obliges,very soon, the entirety of Kano State’s allocation would go into paying workers’ salaries and lawmakers’ pension. That, of course, means that the army of uneducated children and unemployed youths would keep growing exponentially. Someone, definitely, is playing with fire around a keg of gunpowder.
In Bauchi, the outgoing state assembly has repealed its earlier law on the recovery of looted assets of the state. It is noteworthy that this was the same law with which the outgoing government kept its predecessors, and a handful of former state functionaries, who inevitably went into opposition at the birth of the now-outgoing administration. However, having lost election and realising that the incoming government might likely give them a taste of their own medicine, the outgoing politicians are now battling to ensure that they do not serve their own heads to their enemies on a platter, hence the last-minute repeal of the law.
Meanwhile, to muddy up things a little bit for the incoming enemy government, the outgoing government, which placed embargo on employment into the civil service all these years, has suddenly lifted the embargo, and is now bloating the already bloated civil service. Of course, it would not even have to pay them any salary before May 29, 2019. That would be a headache deliberately created for the new government, which would have the unenviable task of ‘sacking’ people from work as soon as it takes over. That’s the first political landmine. Gov. Kayode Fayemi is currently battling with the same problem in Ekiti.
In Imo, outgoing governor, Rochas Okorocha, who failed to install his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu, as successor, and who ran a deceptive free education policy for all of eight years, last week established three new universities, even when the state cannot conveniently fund the existing ones. Now, the first problem the new PDP government, under Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, would confront is closing those clearly unviable new universities. The host communities would see him as having taken away their own democracy dividend. It does not matter that this dividend was a Greek gift ab initio. Now, does mischief have any other name!
It seems that exiting Nigerian political office holders, are usually reluctant to leave office. Or feel they should punish all of us for voting them, or their cronies, out of office, so they want to punish us the electorate one way or another: Thus, the resort to muddying up the place for incoming administrations.
Of course, all these curious legislations are not restricted to the states. Earlier last week, the House of Representatives passed the bill, establishing the South-east Development Commission. After playing politics and frustrating the bill for all of four years, the lawmakers, with barely two weeks to the end of the life of the 8th Assembly finally passed the bill. The snag, however, is that President Buhari is not likely to accord the the expedited action Ganduje gave to the bill from his own lawmakers. Buhari is likely to take his time before signing. And if he does not sign before the end of this Assembly, the bill expires, and the next Assembly, if it is interested, would have to start from the beginning again. Somebody is obviously playing games with the South-east. But it is all part of this season of government by mischief.