Home OPINION COMMENTARY Sanusi Lamido, The Best President Nigeria Will Never Have

Sanusi Lamido, The Best President Nigeria Will Never Have

If the man formerly known as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had carried out a dispassionate SWOT analysis on his good self, he would have opted for a political career instead of ascending the throne of his ancestors. He is too imaginative and effusive to be a monarch because it is a system that inherently neither encourages questions nor open to innovation. That antiquated contraption will never allow the kind of thinking outside the box that he is so adept at. To paraphrase Winston Churchill the 14th Fulani emir of Kano is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” Such a person should be more welcome in Aso Rock Villa rather than in any royal Hanging Gardens.
The last place Nigeria’s former apex banker should be is under the travel restriction of a Local Government Chairman or being blackmailed to have the Kano Emirate decentralized by a hapless State House of Assembly. It is however not easy to be a victim of circumstances especially if you helped in creating those circumstances in the first place. The ascendancy of the current Emir of Kano was against the backdrop of high wire politicking as he is unapologetically a Kwankwasiyya loyalist.
Any analysis of the many Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the former SLS is already in the public domain and do require to be repeated here.  What is not are the real intentions of Governor Ganduje towards His Royal Highness: just clipping the emir’s wings or removing him? Whatever it is, Ganduje is not inspired by good governance or probity. The governor is motivated for political reasons – the revenge kind that would have extensive collateral damage on him whenever he vacates office.
No doubt the petition by Messrs Ibrahim Salisu & Chambers submitted to the state parliament to review the extant law establishing the Kano emirate as the sole royal stool in Nigeria’s most populous state has Ganduje’s finger prints all over it.
As if seeking to decentralize the emirate is not enough the governor has also gone for the jugular. The Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission have reopened the probe it started into the emirate’s finances started and suspended two years ago.
Perhaps for the first time in his illustrious life the emir is now lost on his usual pinstripe quotations from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Friedrich Nietzsche as the governor ruthlessly brutalizes the scion of the Sullubawa ruling house with an abundance of Niccolo Machiavelli.
The million Naira question is who will blink first between the economist and the governor? By exchanging his trademark bow tie for a full blown turban the emir precariously took the route to involuntary self-abdication by voluntary devaluation.
From hobnobbing with development economists and investment bankers his days are now spent listening to usual idle royal gossip, intervening between bickering courtiers and surviving palace intrigues. For such a maverick once known in banking circles as “Sanusi Tsunami” to become a victim of pedestrian political machinations is a bad Humpty Dumpty fall for somebody who in 2011 was eminently listed among Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
If there is ever a Northern First Eleven the emir would be its most valuable center-forward. This is somebody that has all the attributes of a president. He has the clout and capacity to reinvent Nigeria if he had jumped into the political fray. His dedicated followership would have even reflected a true federal character unlike presently with you-know-who.
It is very difficult for me to discern how blue bloods think. That is why I am unsympathetic to the present plight of His Highness. The throne of Kano cannot be said to be on the same pedestal as the President of Nigeria. As a red blooded commoner I sincerely believe the man formerly known as Sanusi Lamido Sanusi would have impacted Kano much more positively on national assignment rather than as emir.
My reason? He has a sufficiency of imagination that would have facilitated the return of Kano’s famous Groundnut Pyramids among other more sustainable “Next Level” accomplishments across Nigeria he would have initiated. Regrettably he is now under the mercy of an executive Hyperbolus – far below his peer in all ramifications but well-armed with the 1999 Constitution and an awful lot of grievance. What an irony!

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