I was a pupil in class seven in then Kukah Senior Primary School located between Sabon Gari, where we lived, and Fagge in Kano, when he became Emir of Kano on a beautiful clear day on October 22, 1963. The memory of his coronation at then Festival Stadium (now Sani Abacha Stadium) inside the city wall was etched in my mind because of the circumstances that surrounded his ascension to what, without doubt, was and probably remains the most powerful emirate in the North and one of the most powerful in Nigeria.
Nominally, Kano Emirate has been number four in order of precedence after Sokoto, Borno and Gwandu. But with a population even back then of over 5.7 million, it was the most populous in the region. It was also easily the wealthiest, as reflected in its exports of ground nuts – remember its famous groundnut pyramids? – cotton and tobacco, worth nearly £18 million, according to Professor Alhaji Mahmud Yakubu in his 2006 book, Emirs and Politicians: Reform, Reactions and Recriminations in Northern Nigeria (1950-1966) .
The emirate’s wealth also reflected in the salary of its most powerful emir, Alhaji Muhammadu Sanusi, Alhaji Ado Bayero’s half brother and the grandfather of the new emir, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; Alhaji Muhammadu earned a then princely annual salary of £12,004, more than double the salary of the premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sokoto, at £4,800. He had succeeded his father, Alhaji Abdullahi, in January 1954, following the father’s death.
The road leading to Alhaji Ado’s ascension in October 1963 began with the “abdication” of Alhaji Muhammadu on March 28 of the same year, following an administrative enquiry into the finances of the Native Authority (NA). As the most powerful emir in the region, the charismatic Alhaji Muhammadu, who also doubled as a leader of the Tijjaniya sect in West Africa, had a very close and cordial relationship with the premier. This, however, did not seem to have extended to the premier’s ministers and other subordinates who saw the emir as overbearing and arrogant.
The opportunity for these disaffected subordinates of the premier itching to take the emir a peg down came when the salaries of the NA staff fell in arrears by a month early in 1963, something unheard of in those days. The NA applied for a loan from the regional government to tidy things over and was granted. But this led to tremendous pressure on the premier to probe the NA’s finances. Eventually he bowed and appointed Mr. David Joseph Mead Muffet, a Special Duties Officer in his office, to head the enquiry panel.
Predictably, the panel found the emir guilty but he was allowed to “abdicate” on a pension to the sleepy town of Azare in Bauchi emirate. He eventually died on April 5, 1991 in Wudil, near Kano, where he had been allowed to relocate to by the first civilian governor of Kano State, the late radical politician, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi.
Upon Alhaji Muhammadu’s abdication, he was succeeded by his cousin, Alhaji Muhammadu Inuwa, whom, in any case, the colonialists had preferred for the emirship when Alhaji Abdullahi died in 1954. The new emir reigned for only six short months. And so less than a year after we had gone as pupils of Kukah Primary School to witness the coronation of Alhaji Muhammadu Inuwa at the Festival Stadium, we trouped back again to witness that of Alhaji Ado.
Before he became emir he had been elected a member of the Northern House of Assembly in 1954, one of the youngest. He resigned in 1957, the year I entered Tudun Wada Junior Primary School, and became Wakilin Doka, head of the Native Authority Police. At that time, two of my uncles, one of whom is still alive, were in the police. That, plus the frequent visits he often paid to a neighbourhood in Sabon Gari where he had friends, gave us a distant occasional glimpse of the dashing young prince destined to become one of the longest reigning traditional rulers in the country.
As the story is often told, his ascension couldn’t have been more fortuitous; he had merely returned home from his station in Senegal as Nigeria’s ambassador on a condolence visit over the death of Alhaji Muhammadu Inuwa when he was reportedly told he had been chosen as the next emir.
That ended his career as a diplomat and started one of the longest and most successful reigns of any traditional ruler in Nigeria. For, in the 51 odd years of his reign, Kano not only consolidated its status as the commercial capital of the North, it became the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria, next to Lagos, the original capital of the country before the movement to Abuja. It could even be argued that under him Kano became even more cosmopolitan than Lagos because not even the country’s former political capital, and still its commercial capital, could boast of two civilian governors – Alhaji Sabo Bakin Zuwo, a Nupe, and Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, a Babur – and many more commissioners and senior public officers, who were first and second generation settlers in the city. Incidentally, Malam Ibrahim’s father, Shekarau, was a chief inspector in the NA police at the time Alhaji Ado became Wakilin Doka.
Naturally, his reign was not without its moments of crises, the most serious of which was the mass killings of Igbos, which started in Kano and spread to other parts of the North in 1967, riots that eventually led to the country’s civil war which ended in 1970 after three years. It must have been a truly trying moment for the emir, some of whose closest friends were Igbos, most notably Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, then a brigade commander in the city.
It took the uncommon courage of the emir, along with Colonel Muhammed Shuwa, who had led a group of officers, to confront the mutinous soldiers in the barracks to bring an end to the riots; initially the soldiers had refused to disarm after they had been rounded up from the township into the barracks and ordered by Shuwa to disarm. It is not hard to imagine the carnage that would have occurred if the soldiers had stuck to their guns.
Again in 1981, a political confrontation with Governor Abubakar Rimi led to widespread riots as a result of which the governor restricted the traditional homage paid to the emir by his village and district heads for a long while. In 1984, the military regime of General Muhammadu Buhari imposed a travel ban on him and his close friend and confidant, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, for travelling to Israel at a time Nigeria had no diplomatic relations with the country.
More recently the emir had faced at least three assassination attempts, the most serious of which almost succeeded but for one of his body guards who took the bullets in his attempt to shield his master. This was in the January 13, 2013, attack on his convoy by elements suspected to be members of Boko Haram, of whom he had been highly critical.
The emir faced all the crises stoically and survived all the assassination attempts to live to the grand old age of 83.
As one of the most powerful and longest reigning traditional rulers in Nigeria, he served the country in various capacities, among which were as chancellor, first, of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and then of University of Ibadan.
His death in the early hours of Friday June 6, came as a great shock to Nigerians, especially as he had just returned from a medical trip abroad and had held court shortly after to receive homage from his chiefs and well wishers. He has left behind a worthy legacy that will keep his name alive for a long, long time, if not for ever.
May Allah forgive his mistakes, reward his exertions and grant him aljanna firdaus.
And may his grand nephew, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who has succeeded him, live long enough and be guided by Allah to take the tumbin giwa to even greater heights as one of the most accommodating cities not only in Nigeria but in the world.
