Senator Shehu Sani: Awakening Aminu Kano?

Senator Shehu Sani: Awakening Aminu Kano?

Last week, Comrade Shehu Sani, senator representing Kaduna central senatorial district, paid a visit to the northern commercial city of Kano to see the families of some eminent politicians who straddled the first and second republic politics of northern Nigeria. They are all no longer with us. They are Mallam Aminu Kano, who was the ideologue of the politics of the masses, Talakawa; Alh Sabo Bakinzo, a major partner of Aminu Kano and himself a second republic governor of the old Kano state who was ousted on December 31, 1983, by the coup that ushered in the twenty-month rule of Gen Muhammadu Buhari; and then Mallam Mudi Spikin, also a major player in the progressive Talakawa politics.

During the visit, the Senator conferred with the families of the three deceased political leaders generally in solidarity and offering his goodwill. It was interesting to hear the voice of the widow of Mallam Aminu Kano in the report as broadcast on radio but all of that is not quite the reason for this piece today.

The question one may ask is “why is Shehu Sani making a visit to families of politicians in Kano and what does he stand to gain given that he only represents a constituency in Kaduna state? Or does he harbor some yet to be known political ambitions beyond being a senator?” Sure enough, these questions may not be out of place, after all one has heard various opinions on the person, or politics, of Shehu Sani, rightly or wrongly, as one who knows very well how to make capital of any occasion that presents in order to boost his profile nationally and internationally. These opinions have been around for quite a while. Recall that it was Comrade Shehu Sani, through his NGO – Civil Rights Congress – that first called for investigations by the Nigerian government into the circumstances that led to the death of Muhammad Yusuf in 2009, the leader of the Boko Haram who, it turned out, was slain in police custody.  That gesture would turn out to warm him up to elements in the group, as he himself would later suggest, to the extent that he would be able to broker the famed meeting between them and former President Olusegun Obasanjo to possibly mediate for possible peace during the early days of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Some people saw all of that on the part of Shehu Sani as nothing but the usual grandstanding that he and rights activist like him, probably all over the world, are known for. For me, a particular event in 2014 seemed to lend some wind to the sails of this perception. The government of Kaduna state passed a law banning the use motorbikes, popularly known as Okada, for commuter transport services in major cities in the state because of the security situation and the safety risk and traffic nuisance they had come to constitute. Shehu Sani and his Civil Rights Congress took the case up for the Okada riders as a rights violation issue and even went to court against the state government. I don’t know how the case ended. But to my mind, I thought that the case for the ban of Okada was self-evident and contesting it would suggest some modicum opportunism.

But a more reflective look at the senator’s visit, in my opinion, reveals a very profound significance that I think Nigerians, and particularly the north, must not miss. Comrade Shehu Sani has presented as a progressive and a pro-masses activist turned politician. He has in fact earned the moniker of “Jagoran Talakawa” – The Masses’ Leader - for himself. Mallam Aminu Kano, along with his cohorts, is the first known progressive from the north, as noted above, under his party Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) which later mutated into the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) in the second republic on whose platform he ran for president in 1979.

For me, Aminu Kano was the first and truest nationalist of his time to emerge from the north. He it was who extended a hand of friendship and alliance across the Niger to Azikiwe’s NCNC in the first republic. His and his party’s interest was simply the uplifting of the Nigerian masses, the Talakawas. He stood up against the northern feudal and elitist interests in the pursuit of the cause he believed in. Probably, if his vision had been vigourously pursued by the north, the lot of her teeming population would have been far better than what obtains today.

It is against this backdrop, therefore, that comrade Shehu Sani’s visit becomes profound. This is a nation that has paid no heed to, or even destroyed, its history. But the truth is that no nation makes any meaningful progress without memory. The Senator has resurrected a certain memory that the north and the nation at large could use in this journey or nationhood. He has reaffirmed that he is progressive and for the Talakawa by this significant gesture of invoking the kindred spirits of Mallam Aminu Kano, Sabo Bakinzo and Musa Spikin. He has shown us in no unclear terms the interests of whom he will represent in the senate. We shall watch him. He must stay faithful, loyal and honest.

 

BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Thur July 9, 2015; p3

El-Rufai, Education and Ramadan Iftar things (conclusion)

El-Rufai, Education and Ramadan Iftar things (conclusion)

The twenty-first century is a century of knowledge. It is so far a century in which information doubles every other year, and, at the pace things are going now, it will even be more than it is now in a few years. The society that is able to get its people sufficiently equipped to cope with this deluge of information and knowledge, by being able to process and profitably deploying them, is the one that can be said to be fit to compete, and if it does well, be a leader and an economic power house.

So far, leadership in Kaduna State, and the nation at large, has mostly been about grabbing creature acquisitions and most of the people at the helm have only been too happy to give the masses anything to distract them and opiate them into not paying attention to what government should be doing. That way they, the leadership class, will continue unabatedly in their ravaging and plundering of the commonwealth. Yes indeed, some of the political leaders we have had have literally fed our energetic youths with drugs and other harmful substances in their quest to hold on to power and access to the commonwealth: it was an expedient strategy and they stopped at nothing to deploy it. Any wonder, then, the rate of drug and substance abuse among youths in northern Nigeria?

In some instances, that expediency demanded that they sponsored pilgrimages and shared foodstuff during Ramadan and other periods of religious festivity; it also demanded that they spent state resources to wed divorcees so as to appear to care about the spiritual lives of the people they were leading. But the truth of their actions lay in the crypts of their sinister minds. Those policies were as good as the drugs they supplied the northern youths even to the grave in order to tighten their hold on power. Alas, Karl Marx was true on this one: religion is the opium of the masses.

It is however refreshing and heartwarming that El-Rufai, again, has seen the lie and moral injustice, and even the sin, in that status quo and, thus, decided to make a clean break to the point of putting his political future on the line. It is also exhilarating that he has identified, as a cardinal thrust of his government, the development of the immense human capital in Kaduna state through education instead of, say, the exploration and exploitation of the huge deposits of the many solid minerals in the state.

Let me digress here to refer to the clamour for solid minerals and even oil by northerners that has been on since some two or three years ago, in response to the persistent posturing of Niger-deltans regarding “their” oil. I did a piece to that effect in November 2013, entitled “Oil and Gas Exploration in Northern Nigeria: Playing with Fire”, in which I argued that “for a people to want to build an economic base on natural resources in the 21^st century, which is an age of knowledge, is nothing short of a tragedy. It is even more so when one considers the story of Nigeria and oil – the Niger-Delta, particularly – in the last fifty or so odd years. It has been a story of tears and blood. There is nowhere in the global south that petroleum, and any other natural resource for that matter, has been explored and exploited that such activities have not left tears and blood in their trail. They have always served to fuel wars and more wars.” The piece may be found in the online archives of this paper or on my blog, www.zwahus-cathartics.blogspot.com.

Indeed the northern Nigeria and her leadership have got to think smart and, like Chief Obafemi Awolowo did in his day, Governor El-rufai has blazed the trail in Kaduna State. In his inaugural speech on may 29, 2015, education featured most prominently: “Without education I will not be standing before you today,” he said, “a poor boy from a hardscrabble village who lost his father at a young age but who nevertheless got the opportunity of a decent education, which took me from a village school to Barewa College to Ahmadu Bello University and ultimately to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. That educational journey prepared me for this day.” He went on to add that “I cannot emphasize this point enough, especially to all our children from however poor a home and however distant a village… no matter the inevitable mistakes that we make from the decisions that we take, I promise you today that I will work myself to the bone in the service of our children.”

The governor ended his speech by saying that “the fate of Kaduna is in our hands. The future of our children depends on our toil… Four years from now, by the grace of God and the active support of you all, we will all be able to say that the leaders in whose care you have placed your affairs today have given their all for the brighter future that we all seek.”

Is it too much for northern Nigeria as a whole to, for the future of their children, give up these ephemeral political gratifications and opium wrapped in religion?

 


BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Thur July 2, 2015; p2