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The Sultan is naked By The Sultan of Sokoto, on behalf of his fellow ‘nobilities’ from the northern states used the opportunity of their Kaduna meeting with President Obasanjo to ‘courageously’ tell Mr. President the home truths about the realities of the socio-economic situation in the north and its despicable attendant consequences in the life of the Talakawas. The speech of the sultan harped on hunger, joblessness, abject poverty, high level of illiteracy and pervasive insecurity that threatens peace and shakens the foundation of our democracy.
Many perceived the speech of the sultan as been heroic and uncommonly brave and principle. Gauging by the standard and behavioural pattern of most traditional rulers in the country, notoriously reputed for inured sycophancy and compliance-mentality, the sultan, standing before the president and ‘lambasting’ the president with the truth is indeed unique and ‘courageous’. However, the courage of the sultan and his fellow colleagues must be differentiated with a quotation mark so as not to award them an ‘undeserved medal’.
Either the sultan and his colleagues have forgotten so soon or they calculatively want us to forget so soon. Whichever way those of us with common sense and strong memory cannot agree that the prevailing socio-economic morass and the wretch done to the lives of the masses of the people is simply the ‘lonely’ handiwork of the Obasanjo led federal government in power now for four years eight months. If the sultan, the emirs and their protégés nobility among the northern minorities have had the courage to tell IBB, Shonekan, Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar, all tyrants of international disrepute, the home truth they told Obasanjo, they could have save our people from their pervading state and of cause save our ears from their later day courageous speech.
The role the sultan and the emirs of the north and their royal counterparts from the south played in supporting, reinforcing and glorifying military dictators like IBB and Abacha is worse than the role played by the Pope and the Vatican Church during Hitler’s third Reich. The nobility in the north headed by the sultan like their counterparts elsewhere are guilty of committing historical crime. They are guilty of betraying our people by collaborating and working with the enemy. Memories of their solidarity visits to the late despot Abacha and his ministers and military administrators still sticks in the brain of those of us with no suicidally short memories. They aided and abetted infamy. They campaigned against democracy. They hold the mic and turned their palaces into third pro-government praise chapel after FRCN and NTA at the time the nation was held hostage and the reign became that of terror and terrorists.
The Abacha dictatorship brought out the real ‘fatherliness in our royal fathers. It was the government that killed Shehu Musa Yar’adua, Ken Saro Wiwa, Alfred Rewane, Bagauda Kaltho, Kudirat Abiola. It was the regime that jailed Chief M.K.O. Abiola, Lawal Gwadabe, Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransome Kuti, Femi Falana, Olu Falae, Ibrahim El-Zazzaky. It was the regime that chased Julius Ihonbvere, Bola Tinubu, Bolaji Akinyemi and co. It was the regime that constantly trailed and chased Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar. It was the regime they supported and benefited from and it was the regime they invested a lot of energy urging us to ‘co-operate’ with. They called Abacha ‘a hero’. They praised him for ‘performing’. Their word for us is to ‘understand Abacha’ ‘support Abacha’.
Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki is one of them. When he was unceremoniously deposed and clamped into detention in Zing, Taraba State, none of the emirs or their appendage nobility raised an eyebrow. When Shehu Musa Yar’adua, also one of them, holding the ‘Tafidan Katsina’ title was arrested, framed up in a coup and killed in Abakaliki prison, they never spoke against the defunct junta’s action. None of them even had the courage to visit Yar’adua’s family to register a condolence. Because they do not want to incur the wrath of their God, Abacha. When the nation’s prison was stocked with hundreds of political prisoners including rights activists, labour and student leaders, the intelligentsia it arouse no sympathy in the nobility to call for their release. Now they want Obasanjo or Tinubu to ‘free’ Al-Mustapha, Bamaiyi and Co.
The underdevelopment of the north in comparison with the other part of the country has to do more with the past activities of the sultan and the emirs than with the Obasanjo administration. Had the nobility prevailed on IBB to use part of the proceed of Gulf War Oil Windfall to rehabilitate street urchins and invest in education, the menace of street begging and the problem of illiteracy could have been significantly reduced if not completely solved. Had the nobility prevailed on Abacha to shelve the two million-man-match and use funds to assist collapsed manufacturing industries in Kano and Kaduna, thousands of jobs could have been saved.
We cannot tell the sultan to shut up. This is democracy everyone is entitle to his or her opinion. But we can tell him that he and his royal collaborators had by their role under the military have now led us to where we are. We can tell him to give us a break. March 2004
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