By Chidi Obineche
he has defied odds, defined his persona, either in the precincts of cozy banking covens which he bestrode for nearly three decades or the self- flagellating, constricting, majestic world of royalty. He is his own man dwelling on spaces reserved for angels with gaudy toes.
At the nadir of the banking ladder, he inexorably rolled in the dusts of the nation, sniffed and inhaled it, pulsated in messianic fantasies and impishly let out his words on his feelings and the taste. He caroused the air of oddities, pranced the landscape with dignifying activism, sedating the nation with his desire for an ennobling social order.
His Eminence, The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi 11 is a dandy yeoman of the people. His odyssey rankles with a strain that is not easily discernible. He graces his dreams with a self- sacrificing crux, pathologically unyielding even at great personal risks that often pitch him against officialdom.
No demon can stop him from saying it if he sees it. This week, the revered traditional ruler was found in his familiar tuff. He called for a law to compel Nigerian political and religious leaders, including lawmakers, governors and traditional rulers, to undertake drug test. “Anybody who elements of drug abuse are found in him should quickly resign his position because he is not fit to hold (public) position,” he said in Kano.
And to drive his iconoclastic predilection further, he said he “ was ready and happy to be subjected now to drug test. And if I am found not worthy of being Emir, I will quickly resign because the matter is bigger than what we are talking about.” Hmmnnn! Hate him, love him, he stirs the soul. He is a power house of open iconoclasm. He takes the path of joyous rebellion which Dave Branden many years ago described as that thing “which respects nothing and no one, particularly itself.”
He says what the people loathe to hear because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. He chances on the foibles and thrashes the perceived cant and imponderables. Like George Bernard Shaw submitted years ago, his dictum is that “ The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.” Some see him as a super brat, the rage of a conscience. For good or ill, he has opened windows into men’s souls.
He has built a hallowed standpoint of liberal consciousness. He has implanted a feeling of faith in Nigerians, in their conditions, urging them in a succinct way to stand up on that faith and be strong. He is the free mind that roves and roars. He sees similarity in the dissimilar. He is in his own world with his own words as pebbles. He acts as a symbol of defiance.
In the 1960’s, a whole generation of iconoclasts’ transformed American society in ways never imagined by her founders. This he knows and deploys as arsenal. In his pursuit of the rough truth, his never say die spirit whispers to him to give up only when the last tree has died, the last river poisoned and a scorched earth blooms again with greenery. This condition has placed him on the irreversible pedestal of honour where his lush intellect constantly drives him with the crazy thought that fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, and fear is wrong life. Sanusi chose the path to tread and throb, the passions to plod on. His belief is not the death of intelligence. Nigeria has refused to understand itself. And he convulses with everything that will unbind the bar.
Emir Muhammadu Sanusi 11 (CON) is the 14th Emir of Kano who was crowned on June 8, 2014 after the death of his grand uncle Ado Bayero (who died on June 6, 2014). Emir Sanusi was a successful banker and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He was appointed on June 3, 2009 for a five year term, but was suspended from office by former President Goodluck Jonathan on February 20, 2014 after claiming that a $20 billion fraud was committed at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. He was born on July 31, 1961 and is married to Sadiya Ado Bayero, Maryam, and Rakiya with children.