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OPINION: One Kano, Two Emirs

Published

2 years ago

May 28, 2024

By Suyi Ayodele

There can be only one Oba (king) in a palace. That was how our forebears arranged our traditional settings. The saying in Yoruba that Oba kìí pé méjì láàfin, sùgbón ìjòyè lè pé méfà láàfin (there can be no two kings in a palace but there can be six chiefs), underscores the wisdom of our forebears. Modernity has since changed that. The Nigerian political class has further bastardised the setting. Nowadays, kings sleep as kings and wake up as commoners. Palaces used to be sacred in the days of our fathers. They are no more today! Nothing is sacrosanct anymore in our palaces. History has it that the first time an Oòni of Ife travelled out of his palace, all other obas in Yorubaland vacated their thrones until the Oòni returned. That is our culture; that is our tradition. Nowadays, kings travel from their domains to attend birthday gigs and other ludicrous social gatherings!

Today, our Obas, Emirs and Obis are all over the place chasing contracts and seeking favours from politicians. Monarchs wait for hours in the reception areas just to see common commissioners. Many wait at Government Houses endlessly to book appointments with the almighty governors. From the North to the South, East to West, occupants of our traditional stools are appointees of governors and influential politicians. Many monarchs who are without blue blood got to the thrones because they belong to the right political camp. A large number of them bought their ways to the palaces with good money. We have lost it with our traditional stools, and we may not get it right again; at least, not in this generation!

Kano has been in the news in the last five days. There are two Emirs of Kano in that ancient city now. The two occupy the section of the palace they could grab before the other came. And they did that at the dead of the night. In my place, a man does not enter his house through the window. Emirs of Kano are entering their palaces through the windows, and in the dead of the night. The night is reserved for thieves, the wicked ones and Our Mothers. But Royals now choose the stillness of the night to climb their forebears’ thrones! Kano will never be the same again. This is not a curse, but the reality of the situation now in that commercial city. We have our politicians to thank for that. When a town changes monarchs the way a nursing mother changes diapers, the town cannot be the same again. We have histories to back up this assertion.

One day in August 1967, Oba Muhamadu Olanipekun, the Zaki of Arigidi Akoko, Ondo State, woke up to a huge noise by his palace. He quickly dressed up. So did his Olori. One of the palace guards rushed into the inner chamber to inform Kabiyesi about the noise. A huge crowd had gathered to attack the palace. That was the second of such in three months; the May 1967 rebellion having been successfully repelled. Zaki was enraged. He went to the inner chamber and came out holding the powers Arigidi gave to him when he was enthroned. A man dies but once. Kabiyesi would not be disgraced twice by the same people. Enough is enough! But the Olori had a different idea. She went on her knees, chanting Kabiyesi’s praise names. She told the Oba the enormous powers he was holding. She affirmed the potency of the wand in the king’s hands. She said Kabiyesi could destroy the entire people if he wished. That was why he was their Zaki. Then she added a caveat. If Kabiyesi used the power he was holding, he would be like the fabled hunter, who killed an elephant with his fila (cap). She told Kabiyesi the wise saying of the elders: ojó kan ni òkìkí ode a fi fìlà p’erin (the fame of the hunter who kills an elephant with his cap lasts but one day). She besought Kabiyesi to leave the palace.

She assured His Majesty that in years to come, the same people would come begging him to come back to the throne. Reason prevailed. Kabiyesi went back to the inner recesses of his ancestors to break kola nuts. Olori went outside to meet the people. She begged that the Zaki should be allowed to leave the palace in peace. The people agreed. Kabiyesi and his household departed. A few loyalists from Imo and Agbaluku Quarters of the town joined those from Arigidi Oja Quarters (royal family) to follow Zaki Olanipekun out of town. The mob set the palace ablaze! All attempts to install a new Zaki from outside the Arigidi Oja quarters were unsuccessful. The town drifted. Development became stalled and stunted. Twenty-five years later, the elders of Arigidi Akoko came together. They needed development in the town. But first, the injustice of the past must be corrected. They sent for Zaki Muhamadu Olanipekun. They begged for forgiveness. In 1992, just as his Olori predicted 25 years earlier, the Arigidi people brought back their Zaki to the throne. A visit to Arigidi Akoko today shows that a town can only develop when there is peace.

Ooni Ogboru was the forebear of the Giesi ruling house of Ile-Ife. He was on the throne for over 70 years, according to history. His chiefs got pissed off because he had stayed too long on the throne. They wanted fresh blood. So, they conspired and got Ooni Ogboru dethroned. They did that by asking the old monarch to come to Atiba Square to see an object. As soon as the Ooni got to the square, they shut the palace doors against him. The old monarch knew that there would be repercussions for the treachery. He did not fight. Rather, he relocated to a place known as Ife-Odan, and he settled down with his family members and loyal subjects who followed him. Rejoicing that they had gotten rid of the old monarch, the chiefs appointed a new Ooni. But calamity struck, not once, multiple times! In six months, six different Oonis, or Ooni designates died! Nobody knew what killed them. Emissaries were sent to Kabiyesi, Ooni Ogboru to come back to the throne. The old man refused. Instead, he sent his son, Giesi to be the next Ooni. That was when the town began to enjoy stability.

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Before Ooni Ogboru, there was Alaafin of Oyo, Alaafin Ajuan or Ajaka, who was also dethroned. The people accused him of being too peaceful. They needed an Oba who would be a warmonger. They chased Alafin Ajaka out and banished him to Igbodo. Sango, his younger brother, was installed as Alaafin. And for seven years, Alaafin Sango showed the people what is known in the street parlance as shege. For the seven years he was on the throne, the entire Oyo Kingdom fought battles upon battles. The oba was too restless. At his death, Sango was deified, till date. The people then made a comparison. They knew the peaceful era of Ajaka was more desirable. So, they sent for him and crowned him Alaafin for the second time. But then, Ajaka had become a changed man. According to The Rev. Samuel Johnson’s account of the second reign of Ajaka, the Alaafin waged about 1,060 wars! (See The History of the Yorubas, page 175-183).

One of the ‘current’ Emirs of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, also known as Muhammadu Sanusi II or Khalifa Sanusi II, became the Emir of Kano on June 8, 2014. He succeeded his late great-uncle, Ado Bayero. Due to his inability to control his tongue; as he carried on the way he was when he was the Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the government of Abdullahi Umar Ganduje dethroned him on March 9, 2020. His cousin, Aminu Ado Bayero, was enthroned in his stead. The dethronement of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II followed that of his grandfather, Mohammadu Sanusi I, who was deposed in 1963, having reigned as the Emir of Kano for just nine years. The beneficiary of that deposition was Sanusi I’s brother, Ado Bayero. It was therefore not shocking, when upon the dethronement of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II in 2020, his nephew, Aminu Ado Bayero, was appointed the Emir. In Kano, it has always been the case of Gambari pa Fulani, ko lejo ninu (when a Hausa man kills a Fulani man, there is no case).

Ever since the June 9, 2020, removal of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II as the Emir of Kano, the city has been on the edge. A section of the city loyal to the deposed emir never left anyone in doubt that it would do anything possible to bring back the former CBN governor to the throne. The opportunity came when in the 2023 governorship election in the state, Ganduje could not win the state for his All Progressives Congress (APC), and the state slipped into the hands of Ganduje’s estranged godfather, Rabiu Kwankwanso’s New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), and Abba Kabir Yusuf became the governor. From May 29, 2023, the new governor, Yusuf, has dedicated his energy and state resources to undoing everything Ganduje did in his eight years. One of such was the last Friday event when the governor signed the bill passed by the Kano State House of Assembly, abolishing the five new emirates Ganduje created in 2020, into law. By that singular act, Aminu Ado Bayero ceased to be the Emir of Kano and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, who was dethroned as the 14th Emir of Kano, was returned as the 16th Emir of Kano. Since Friday, May 24, 2024, till date, Kano has been on edge. Ado Bayero, obviously backed by shielded federal power, also returned to Kano as the Emir. In Kano today, while Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II occupies the main palace in the city (Gidan Rumfa Palace), Bayero occupies the Nasarawa Palace in the same city! The question to ask is: who is the authentic Emir of Kano?

While the next few months would, no doubt, witness a lot of legal fireworks in Kano and other courts across the northern state, one thing that is certain is that wherever the pendulum swings, the Kano throne has lost its virginity! The sacredness of that throne is lost, I daresay, forever. I do not know why Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who accepted his dethronement in 2020 with equanimity, fought behind the scenes to come back. I equally wouldn’t know why Aminu Ado Bayero would abandon the doctrine of his faith that Allah gives, and Allah takes, to want to do a fight-to-finish in this matter. All that my mind tells me is that there is something enticing about the Kano throne that the royals are not telling us. Why are royals not behaving as nobles again? Wherever Ganduje is today, I need someone to tell him that the legs of the corpse he buried four years ago are sticking out of the grave!

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[OPINION] Jan 1 Resolutions: Why I Write What I Write

Published

5 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

As I write this, I am listening to a line of the song of my favourite Jamaican reggae music superstar, Peter Tosh. It is a 1979 track entitled Jah Seh No, in his Mystic Man album. When life becomes too convoluted for me to comprehend, when it seems I am running mad, I run into Tosh’s embrace. But, running to Tosh for an embrace is problematic. Tosh himself was like a madman. He was unconventional, an iconoclast who didn’t see life from the prism of the living. A devout adherent of the Rastafari faith, he was highly spiritual, was a poet, philosopher and a staunch defender of African rights. At some point, life broke Tosh’s will, long before his assassination on September 11, 1987, aged 42, in Kingston, Jamaica. It would appear that his musical preachment made little impact. He was repeatedly assaulted by Jamaican police and once had his skull cracked by them. The charge was his illiberal smoking of marijuana. So, in this track, Tosh bore his frustration with orthodoxy and the system thus: “Must Rastas bear this cross alone and all the heathens go free? Must Rastas live in misery and heathens in luxury? Must righteous live in pain and always put to shame? Must they be found guilty and always get the blame?

Tosh’s Jamaica of 1979 bears similarities with today’s Nigeria. Jamaica wore, like an apron, significant economic instability. This led to intense poverty and inequality driven by global economic shocks, domestic policy choices, capital flight, and political violence. The aftermath was massive hopelessness.

The attendant hopelessness in Jamaica fired the muse of reggae musicians. They saw naked poverty as catalysts for their songs. For instance, in 1976, Maxwell Smith, known professionally as Max Romeo & The Upsetters Band, sang in Uptown Babies Don’t Cry, about a little lad hawking Kisko, a popular brand of ice pops, on Kingston streets and shouting “Kisko pops! Kisko pops!”. He also sang about another lad who, as Star newspaper vendor, shouted, “Star News, read the news!”. They were embroiled in existential survival, said Romeo, and “help(ing) mummy pay the fee, for little junior to go to school.” For Tosh, in his Get Up, Stand Up, Jamaicans must stand up for their rights while Bob, apparently frustrated by the system, in Time Will Tell, sang confidently that ”Jah would never give the power to a baldhead to come crucify the dread.”

But the Jamaican governmental and political leadership, epitomised by Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, kept on taking advantage of the people’s hopelessness. Nigeria of today is yesterday’s Jamaican mirror on the wall. The hopelessness in the land has the capacity to break the most impregnable will. Everything seems to be upside down. Seaga and Manley are replicated in Bola Tinubu and Abubakar Atiku. Or Peter Obi and other scavengers for power.

Everything is shrouded in a fog. Hope of retrieval of country from the jaws of political carnivores recedes by the day. This year, prelude to election year, will even be worse. Foes will stab friends and friends will stab foes, not in the back, but in their very before. War has begun, says So-kple-So. That line reminds me of Ghanaian Akan poet, Kojo Senanu’s poem, “My Song Burst” in the A Selection of African Poetry, authored by him and Theo Vincent, which recited that Akan war song.

Physical or psychological repression is writ large. Impunity reigns like a malevolent incubus. Those are actually not the ailment. The disease is the Nigerian people. The way Nigerians’ minds have become warped, significantly captured and compartmentalized into a binary, is mind-boggling. Never have Nigerians’ minds operated in a gross profile as this. Tribe, religion, and political parties determine where everyone stands. No one sees rot and maggots but opportunities. Everyone is running a rat race to take a bite of Nigeria’s carrion. Our sense of judgment has been significantly recalibrated. When I read comments by some otherwise knowledgeable and brilliant people on visible rots in the polity, I feel I am falling into depression. Yet, a part of me warns not to take Nigeria seriously. If you run mad and then die, Nigerians would piss on your graveside.

Many times, I have toyed with the option of abandoning this thankless ritual of column-writing which I began in 1998. It is a killing ritual for which, not only don’t you get paid but you are insulted for daring to have a voice. Maybe I could find sanity in silence and abandonment of my voice? After all, Reno Omokri and Daniel Bwala have found redefinition in becoming the biblical Lot’s wife. But my mind tells me I would face hell on earth and would even not rest in peace. But the truth is, where I stand has potentials of running me mad. Permit me to be immodest, those who know me know I have an ecumenical spirit that cannot hurt a fly. But when I sit behind my laptop, I am like a possessed Yoruba deity of smallpox called Sonpona. Chaos, otherwise known as upside-down, which Fela said has its meaning too, is meaningless to me. Everywhere I turn, I see chaos and my head spins, threatening to explode. Even when I cannot totally extricate myself from the rot in the land, I am grieved like a pallbearer. Yet, another part of me tells me that order and chaos are Siamese, built into a profile by the Omnipotent.

As 2025 spun into oblivion, I stood to make a New Year resolution. But before I did this, I checked the literature of resolutions. It offers no comfort. Over a century ago, specifically on January 1, 1887, Rudyard Kipling, English journalist and novelist, attempted to drill into the philosophy of resolutions. In a timeless poem which explored the human desire to make New Year resolutions and the failure that attends it, he gave a tribe of New Year resolution makers a short-lived hope. He did this in a poem he entitled Little-Known Poem on New Year’s Resolutions. Billions of people in the world make resolutions on New Year’s Day. But, said Kipling, there are trials and tribulations in resolutions. In seven short stanzas, Kipling took readers on a journey. He begins by listing vices he wants to give up. They hung on him like an apparition. Chief among the vices were alcohol, gambling, flirting, and smoking. But in each of the stanzas, as he proposes a resolution, he proposes contrary sentences that nullify the resolutions and even justifying their reversals.

Matthew Wills, in his Why New Years Falls on January 1st: Why do we celebrate the beginning of the New Year on the first of January?, took the world on a journey on the frivolities of January 1st. Julius Caesar, he said, is why. The eponymous Julian calendar, said Matthew, began in Mensis Ianuarius (or Januarius) 45B.C. The month of January, he further reminded us, is named after the Roman god called Janus. Janus is a god who had two faces. While one faces the future, the other faces the past. Janus was however perceived, according to Wills, as “the god of beginnings, endings, and transitions, or, more prosaically, doors and passageways.”

Among the Yoruba, just like Jews’, the agricultural season marks the beginning of the year. For them, the newness of a year is defined by their philosophy of time, which they also approximated in the saying, the next season is here so, don’t eat your yam seedling, «Àmódún ò jìnnà, má jẹ isu èèbù rẹ». Season and time, to the Yoruba, are expressed in an embodiment of words like àkόkὸ (time around), ìgbà (season) and àsìkò (specific season) which they most times deploy interchangeably. The people also have sayings which speak to their conception of time. For instance, late professor of philosophy and my teacher at the University of Lagos, Sophie Oluwole, in one of her works, “The Labyrinth Conception of Time as Basis of Yoruba View of Development” published in Studies in Intercultural Philosophy (1997), cited Yoruba saying to illustrate this. “Tí wón bá ńpa òní, kí òla tèlé won kí ó lo wò bí won o ti sin ín (when today is being killed, tomorrow’s attendance at the murder scene is necessary so that it could see where the corpse of today is buried and for it to know how it too would be interred). The two other Yoruba sayings Oluwole cited to illustrate time and season are, one: “ogbón odún ni, wèrè èèmí ni” (this year’s wisdom is next year’s folly) and “Ìgbà ò lo bí òréré, ayé ò lo bí òpá ìbon” (a life span cannot exist ad infinitum; it is not vertical, and is unlike the straightness of the barrel of a gun).

These were all I reflected upon as I proposed to make a 2026 Resolution. The self-imposed road of a columnist I tread is a lonely, hard road strewn with briers and thorns. I remember the sermon of another Jamaican reggae great, Jimmy Cliff. It is a hard road to travel and a rough road to walk, he counseled. Many times, you are lonely, dejected and rejected on this road. You open your mouth to speak but wordless words ooze therefrom. Just as Tosh lamented in his “Must Rastas bear this cross alone and all the heathens go free?” volunteering anti-establishment opinion is like carrying a cross. Many times, I am inundated by family and friends to turn apostate of my belief. They fear death or state castration. Can’t the world see? Don’t they see the pains, grits and uncertainty on this road? Don’t they know that there is lushness, flourish and plenty on the other side? If I neglected these for a carapace-hard travel, I thought I would be hailed. No. Why is one who chose this lonely road the demon? And those who sup in the bowl of destruction heroes? Why? No response. Only echo of my own silent voice.

In this dejection, Audre Geraldine Lorde came to my rescue. Lorde was an American professor, philosopher, feminist, poet and rights activist. She was also a self-described Black lesbian. Lorde got romantically involved with Mildred Thompson, American sculptor, painter and lesbian she met in Nigeria during FESTAC 77. In a paper she delivered at the Modern Language Association›s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977 with the title, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Lorde gave insight into the pains she encountered on account of her beliefs: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

It could also mean pain or death, but she said, “learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength” and that “I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken.” Gradually, said Lorde, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, my silences had not protected me.” She died of liver cancer in 1995.

Yes, this is a rough, lonely road. It could be excruciating when you see friends, especially ones in government, desert you because they don’t want to associate with you. You walk alone like a deranged alchemist. Some even ask why, with your endowment and ascription, you live comparatively like a pauper. Your views are criminalized. Where you stand is not popular. But both madman Peter Tosh and lesbian Audre Geraldine Lorde give the will to trudge on in the New Year, regardless. Lorde was loud in my head with her admonition. After her initial apprehension of a mastectomy resulting from a breast cancer, she said: “I was going to die, sooner or later… My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear.”

There and then, I made a bold vow, a New Year resolution: I will continue to speak truth to power. Regardless.

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What I Saw After A Lady Undressed Herself — Pastor Adeboye

Published

7 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has recounted a remarkable experience in which he said a woman was miraculously healed after prayers.

Adeboye shared the testimony while speaking at the RCCG annual gathering, describing the incident as a clear demonstration of divine intervention and the power of prayer.

According to the cleric, the incident occurred during a visit to a city where he had checked into an undisclosed hotel.

He said the lady approached him, greeted him and insisted on following him to his hotel room despite his objections.

“I told her, ‘Please don’t put me into trouble, I can pray for you here,’ but she insisted on following me,” Adeboye recounted.

He said that upon getting to the hotel room, the woman revealed the condition that prompted her persistence.

“When she pulled her dress up, what I saw shocked me. Her body was covered with scars,” he said.

Adeboye explained that he immediately began to pray for the woman, adding that he did not mind being loud during the prayers.

“I began to pray for her, and before I knew it, all the scars were gone,” he said.

The RCCG leader described the experience as a powerful testimony of faith, stressing that it reinforced his belief in prayer as a tool for healing and transformation.

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Missing N128bn: SERAP Demands Probe Into Power Ministry, NBET Expenditures

Published

8 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately order an investigation into allegations that more than N128 billion in public funds is missing or has been diverted from the Federal Ministry of Power and the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc. (NBET), Abuja.

The allegations are contained in the latest annual report of the Auditor-General of the Federation, published on September 9, 2025, which highlighted multiple cases of financial irregularities, undocumented payments, ents and suspected diversion of public funds across both institutions.

In a letter dated January 3, 2026, and signed by SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation called on President Tinubu to direct the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, alongside relevant anti-corruption agencies, to promptly probe the findings and ensure accountability.

SERAP stressed that any individual found culpable should be prosecuted where sufficient admissible evidence exists, while all missing or diverted funds should be fully recovered and paid back into the national treasury.

The group further urged the president to deploy any recovered funds to address the deficit in the 2026 budget and help ease Nigeria’s growing debt burden.

According to SERAP, Nigerians continue to bear the consequences of entrenched corruption in the power sector, which has contributed to persistent electricity shortages, frequent transmission line failures and unreliable power supply nationwide.

The organisation argued that addressing corruption in the sector would significantly improve access to regular and uninterrupted electricity.

The civil society group described the allegations as a grave breach of public trust and a violation of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), Nigeria’s anti-corruption laws and international obligations, including the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

Detailing the audit findings, SERAP noted that the Ministry of Power failed to account for over N4.4 billion transferred to the Mambilla, Zungeru and Kashimbilla project accounts, with no evidence provided on how the funds were utilised.

The Auditor-General expressed fears that the money may have been diverted and recommended its recovery.

The report also revealed that the ministry paid over N95 billion to contractors for various projects without documentation or proof that the projects existed or were executed.

Additionally, more than N33 million was reportedly spent on foreign travels for the minister and aides to attend international events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai without required approvals from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation or the Head of Civil Service.

Further concerns were raised over unaccounted expenditures, including over N230 million on the GIGMIS platform and more than N282 million paid as non-personal advances to staff beyond statutory limits, all without adequate documentation.

At NBET, the Auditor-General uncovered multiple cases of irregular contract awards and payments. These include over N427 million in contracts awarded without evidence of procurement advertisements, more than N7.6 billion transferred into purported sub-accounts of unnamed beneficiaries, and over N9.3 billion paid to Egbin Power Plc without documents to authenticate the transactions.

The audit also cited payments exceeding N8 billion made without proper record-keeping, over N420 million paid to ineligible consultants without evidence of services rendered, and more than N1.1 billion spent as extra-budgetary expenditure without approval from the Minister of Finance or the National Assembly.

Other questionable expenditures highlighted include payments for vehicles without due process, unapproved legal fees, undocumented staff welfare packages, and consultancy services not captured in approved budgets.

SERAP warned that if decisive action is not taken within seven days of the receipt or publication of its letter, the organisation would consider legal steps to compel the government to act in the public interest.

Citing constitutional provisions, SERAP reminded President Tinubu that Section 15(5) of the Constitution mandates the abolition of corrupt practices, while Section 16 obliges the government to ensure that the nation’s resources are managed to promote the welfare and happiness of all citizens.