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| Emir of Kano sanusi lamido sanusi |
He was man of
the moment this past week in this gullible Republic was the Emir of Kano,
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, as he mounted the rostrum in Kaduna signaling the battle
for the minds of the electorate for the 2019 elections.
The emir
made a lot of high sounds while delivering the keynote speech at KADINVEST 2.0,
an event organised by the Kaduna State with his buddy, the governor as host.
The event
held simultaneously with President Muhammadu Buhari’s formal launch of the
Economic Growth and Recovery Plan for a period of three years, covering
2017 to
2020.
The emir
was fiery in his indictment of the conservative north when he said: “We are in
denial. The North-west and the North-east, demographically, constitute the bulk
of Nigeria’s population, but look at human development indices, look at the
number of children out of school, look at adult literacy, look at maternal
mortality, look at infant mortality, look at girl-child completion rate, look
at income per capita, the North-east and the North-west Nigeria, are among the
poorest parts of the world.”
Poorest of
the poor “As far back as 2000, I looked at the numbers, Borno and Yobe states,
UNDP figures, Borno and Yobe states, if they were a country on their own, were
poorer than Niger, Cameroon and Chad. “Nobody saw this because we were looking
at Nigeria as a country that averages the oil-rich Niger Delta, the industrial
and commercial-rich Lagos, the commercially viable Southeast, and you have an
average.
“Break
Nigeria into its component parts, and these parts of the country are among the
poorest, if it were a country. And we do not realise we are in trouble.”
I will
decode Sanusi’s fears about these zones if Nigeria breaks up alongside
El-Rufai’s take that the North West standing alone is like Afghanistan in the
days ahead along the recent affirmation of “One Nigeria” by Britain.
The emir
also used the occasion to lampoon Buhari’s economic model as he declared: “The
Federal Government of Nigeria is spending 66 percent of its revenues on
interests on debts, which means only 34 percent of revenues is available for
capital and recurrent expenditures.
“That
model cannot work. If you look at the 2017 budget of the Federal Government, I
sometimes wonder what Nigerian economists are doing? In the 2017 budget presented
by the Federal Government, the amount earmarked for debt servicing is in excess
of the entire non-oil revenue of the Federal Government, but that is not the
problem. The problem is that it is a budget that is even going for more debts.”
A Day for
El-rufai
But it was
a day he held up his host as about the best thing happening in the North now as
he reacted to jejune comments by Zamfara governor that he has a god who
punishes the sins of only the poor with meningitis.
“A
governor actually said it was caused by fornication? If Nasir El Rufai sits
with investors in London or Abu Dhabi and tells them what he is doing, they
will come and invest here. There is a battle of ideologies going on. A real
battle without bombs or bullets being thrown (my words). We should stop
allowing human beings appropriate our religions for selfish reasons.
“I commend
El Rufai for his investment in education and for engaging investors. Growth
will not come from rising oil prices or from borrowing and spending government
money, it’ll come from investments.”
El-Rufai
had prepared us for this season when Bloomberg quoted him to have said in South
Africa that a lot of politicians are now talking as a result of President
Buhari’s ill health which makes many of them feel that he would not run for a
second term.
He said:
“Because of the feeling that the president may not run for a second term,
people are already gearing up. Some politicians want President Buhari’s job
because of his ill health.”
Marketing
the candidate for 2019
I do not
shy from positing that the emir is already marketing his candidate for 2019 and
that is why I am not impressed by his sophistry. And for those gullible enough
to think he is really interested in moving the North away from this “13th
Century mindset”, what was the emir displaying when he stormed CBN in royal
robe as CBN governor?
Was his
ordering AIG in Kano to keep 14 year-old Ese Oruru in abduction because she
already converted to Islam a 21st Century mindset?
Where was
this new thinking when he was taking a 17-year old Adamawa into matrimony?
Just three
weeks ago he was in London advocating that Nigeria’s educational system should
allow the inclusion of Arabic education into the mainstream.
The
refusal to recognise and value this learning, he said, is a costly by-product
of British colonialism, which only recognised English-language literacy.
According
to him, it feeds the structure of power and inequality that currently exists
and leads to resentment because these millions, who in many nearby countries
would be counted as literate, feel marginalised.
The
practical outcome of this, he said, is of not only a population of millions
that is limited from being useful and productive, but one which is susceptible
to manipulation by extremists.
I know a
reformer when I see one!
Yinka
Odumakin is a political activist and national publicity secretary of Pan-Yoruba
socio-cultural group, Afrenifere.
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