In an interview two Thursdays ago, former governor of Kano State and leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, disclosed that the splitting of the Kano Emirate into five emirates in 2019 as well as the dethronement of Muhammadu Sanusi II in 2020 would be revisited. In May 2019, former governor Abdullahi Ganduje had assented to the Kano State House of Assembly bill splitting the emirate. With the assent, the emirate was split into five: Kano, the surviving rump, and Rano, Bichi, Karaye, and Gaya. Barely a year later, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II was deposed, for, among other things, disrespecting the office of the governor, and land racketeering. Dr Kwankwaso insisted that the former emir was deposed because of Dr Ganduje’s inferiority complex. The former governor, however, countered by flaunting his own PhD and his wife’s professorship, mocking his traducers for not having professorial wives.
The Kano quagmire has become a huge entanglement, punctuated by bitter quarrels, trenchant language, and now almost irreconcilable differences triggered by a spectacular falling out due to unmet expectations of loyalty. Dr Ganduje was twice deputy governor to Dr Kwankwaso (1999-2003; 2011-2015), though punctuated by a two-term interregnum filled by ex-governor Ibrahim Shekarau. (They have rich CVs in Kano: highly educated, urbane, articulate, but cantankerous and unforgiving). Days after the Supreme Court gave judgement in the last governorship election dispute, Dr Ganduje invited Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, a civil engineer who also brandishes a master’s degree in Business Administration, and Dr Kwankwaso to abandon their party, the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), and defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC). He, however, sarcastically added that he would automatically become their Jagora (leader). The invitation has incensed the duo, Dr Ganduje’s sense of humour being lost on them. Though Kano’s leading politicians have so much in common, particularly the more than a decade of camaraderie between Dr Kwankwaso and Dr Ganduje, the Kanawa are likely to remain irreconcilable and will continue to bait one another.
It is mainly in this context that the promised review of the Kano Emirate split should be understood. Dr Kwankwaso will remain adamant until it proves politically costly. It is obvious why he is at the forefront of campaigning for the review of the emirate balkanisation, but it is not altogether clear that it makes political sense to champion the cause instead of the governor. Gov Yusuf hails from Gaya, one of the beneficiary emirates consequent upon the Kano Emirate split. Whole new infrastructure and economies have followed the split; reversing history now will be more contentious than before the split. But this has not deterred Dr Kwankwaso. According to him: “Honestly it (the Kano emirates issue) is one of the things that nobody has sat with me to discuss so far, but I am sure we are going to sit and see how to go about it. Is it going to be allowed, demolished, corrected, or whatever? It will be revisited, and what’s supposed to be done will be done. There were a lot of things and this was a trap. All these things were not done in good faith or intention. It was brought with some bad intentions which every one of you here and our listeners are aware of. Sometimes you come with things that are good and they turn out to be bad while sometimes you bring bad things and they turn out to be good…”
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For now, two things seem uppermost in the mind of the NNPP leader. One, he wants the Kano Emirate reunified. The previously monolithic emirate has a nostalgic hold on him and perhaps on many other Kanawa. It was a symbol of bigness, power and influence. But has the rump Kano Emirate become less influential in the cultural and political scheme of things in the state, and indeed in Nigeria where everyone is still besotted to Kano as a thriving and powerful emirate and entity? It is doubtful; for water is finding its level and course, especially after five years. To begin rebuilding the emirate through reunification will probably throw up fresh uncertainties. Will it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie, regardless of the politics that underscored the balkanisation? As the Hausa idiomatically put it, “A bar kaza a cikin gashin ta’. It is, sadly, very tempting not to let bad enough alone. The itch to tamper with things based on sometimes indefensible or untenable sentiments is always high. That the split was also ‘bad intentioned’, as Dr Kwankwaso said, and coming from, of all people, the hated Dr Ganduje, seems especially galling to the leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement and protector of the emirate council.
Two, somehow, either because of the goodness of his heart or for reasons not even he can properly decode, Dr Kwankwaso wants the ‘historic wrong’ done to Emir Sanusi II redressed. The deposed emir was not even Dr Kwankwaso’s first choice when he was appointed in 2014, a year before the former governor’s second term ended. Obviously he has grown to like him immensely. But since the NNPP controls the legislature, the lawmakers can of course be made to do the NNPP bidding. However, the emir wasn’t just deposed for thumbing his nose at Gov Ganduje, he was also probed for unregulated and liberal spending habits, and then queried for land racketeering. The NNPP will have to get all those inconvenient details expunged to legitimately return him to office. Reinstating Emir Sanusi II may not be the chief goal of Dr Kwankwaso, but he will do anything to rub Dr Ganduje’s nose in it.
Targeting and trashing his former deputy, who is now chairman of the APC, may, however, be far easier than managing his new mentee and governor, Mr Yusuf. On both the emirate matter and possible reinstatement of Sanusi II, the more candid and less bashful Dr Kwankwaso has thrust himself forward and spoken more authoritatively than the governor. He forgets that a new sheriff is in town, and his obtrusions will in due course be resisted more and more as state affairs get more volatile. It is inevitable. All it takes is a little more consolidation by the governor, and the new helmsman will begin to assert himself, differ from his mentor in policy perspectives, and eventually strike out from under the shadows of his leader in whose government he was once a Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport between 2011 and 2015. Sooner or later, Mr Yusuf’s mollifying and conciliating rule will contend with Dr Kwankwaso’s fierce and adamant disposition until something gives. No state has yet balked this trend. It won’t begin with Kano.
