Between Emir Sanusi, Governor Ganduje and President Buhari, By Rotimi Fasan
POLITICS DIGEST – President Muhammadu Buhari has made clear his lack of interest in the feud between Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Sarkin Kano and Abdullahi Ganduje, the Kano State governor. When he wants to, the president knows how to watch those he couldn’t care about bruised from the sidelines. Ever complacent, he would look on and watch things fester. His silence in such matters is more eloquent than his often few words.
But this time, Buhari is telling Nigerians he is a constitutionalist and so will not “interfere” in any matter that would portray him in a different colour. He was a constitutionalist when Bukola Saraki took on Bola Tinubu in July 2015 as he’s been on many similar occasions and even now in the battle between Godwin Obaseki and Adams Oshiomhole.
In spite of appeals from Sanusi’s well-wishers, Ganduje has remained implacable and is determined to cut the outspoken former Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank to size. He has carved four new emirates out of the existing one Sanusi, like his predecessors, presided over as permanent chair.
With the additional emirates, Sanusi’s influence as the most important voice of the traditional emirate of Kano has been muffled if not silenced. This was the first salvo from Ganduje. But he has since tucked in a few more punches, issuing humiliating ultimatums that a chastised Sanusi who could see the ugly writing on the wall had but to comply with – or risk losing his prized jewel?! In this feud, Ganduje holds the ace, both the yam and the knife, and Sanusi is learning to speak with far more caution than he was known for or accustomed to.
The crown jewel of his life ambition was to ascend the throne of his forebears as the Sarkin (Emir of) Kano. Sanusi coveted this position even more than he did the office of the CBN governor.
This was the paradox of a man whose cosmopolitan grooming belies his interest in the feudal institution of an emirate. It is this conundrum of his contradictory position that has apparently set him at odds with the powers that be, both in Kano and Abuja. For, make no mistake about it, Sanusi’s travail is as much rooted in Kano as it is in Abuja. It is why Buhari would not “interfere” in his trouble with the incredible Mr. Ganduje who is poised to make Sanusi sweat or fall to his knees.
Everything Sanusi did before becoming the paramount ruler of Kano was geared towards achieving that singular ambition. And it would seem that he could not set a foot wrong after he became emir. All appeared to be working out well. He could look back and, probably, had a laugh or two at the expense of the likes of Goodluck Jonathan who charted his course out of the CBN.
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Yes, Sanusi was a happy and apparently fulfilled man. Except that the outspoken ruler is fast realising, in a classic Shakespearean sense, that to be the emir is actually nothing, at least nothing as being so safely. Macbeth wanted to be king and he did become one. But having become king, the next question was if he could remain king safely, given the circumstances surrounding his emergence. I am not aware that Sanusi was a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress. But he appeared to have his sympathies for the party or at least the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari.
This was probably why after Buhari won the 2015 election, Sanusi saw it fit to pay a thank-you visit to Tinubu, the man who more than most made Buhari’s ambition to be president a reality. Perhaps, it was in this mood that he felt the need to correct by way of criticisms some of the missteps of the Buhari government. He, perhaps like others who supported the Buhari administration in its challenge of the Peoples Democratic Party-led government, felt responsible for Buhari. He was critical of some of the economic policies from Abuja.
In 2016 during the 15th joint planning board of the National Council on Development Planning, he criticised the debt servicing profile of the Buhari administration which committed as high as between 30 percent and 40 percent of the country’s revenue to servicing debt that is thereafter channelled into recurrent expenditure.
Sanusi thought even less of the foreign exchange policy of Buhari, saying anyone, including himself, could become a billionaire by simply staying at home and manipulating the “foolish” forex policies from Abuja. Three years down the line, Sanusi repeated more or less the same criticism of Abuja, demanding in 2019 that Buhari put an end to petroleum and electricity subsidy. Sanusi’s words must have felt like knife stabs in the soft underside of Abuja.
He is not your typical “royal father” who was expected to live in royal obsolescence, to be seen and not heard. Sanusi spoke and his sharp intellect made his criticism cut to the bones. Soon, he extended his criticism to the Northern elite and more closely home to the governor of his state, who had been fingered in a high-profile allegation of corruption. Ganduje, in a footage he and his supporters would later claim was doctored, was seen stuffing American dollars, alleged bribe money, into his flowing gown. Buhari himself made light of this allegation. It was one of those instances he chose not to “interfere” in matters not under his purview.
Sanusi was not sold on Ganduje’s politics. He thus withheld his support for the governor’s re-election. This, in addition to open criticism, was too much for the governor to bear. He found ready allies in other sections of the Northern ruling and political elite that felt Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, was being too vocal and political. It was time to silence him and Ganduje became the instant head of the assault team. Sanusi was asked to give account of the revenue accruable to the Kano emirate and his expenditure profile which they insinuated did not look as sparkling clean as the monarch’s ready criticism of others would suggest. The fears Sanusi nurses now cannot be and is not from those he defeated to claim the throne of his fathers.
The origin of his fears is rooted outside the palace. He could not have reckoned with a potential nemesis in the complexion of a Ganduje or, indeed, an APC-led Federal Government, after the near-miss he had as the CBN governor under the PDP-led government of Goodluck Jonathan. Many have called on Buhari to call a truce between Ganduje and Sanusi. Last week, during Ganduje’s visit to Buhari, the president practically told him to “carry go”, as the matter was before the Kano State House of Assembly. He would not want to interfere. Buhari has heard no evil. He will see no evil.
