And so one of the last of our political titans went the way of all mortals last week. Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, Dan Masanin Kano, was one of the few remaining feathers in a national political cap that has seen much better days. The country mourns him; its leaders at all levels gushed in his adulation and poured out their hearts for him. He was wrapped in the warm sentiments of those who know what it means to lose a great man. The grave does not complain of overcrowding.
Alhaji Yusuf was a great man. He was an impressive man, entirely, in my view, without cant or hypocrisy. Many of us would remember him for his oratory. But he was much more than the power of his words or his deft delivery of even soporific speeches. He was gifted with the garb. He never forgot that. Nor did he ever shy away from using his great talent.
I first met Alhaji Yusuf sometime in 1983. In his second term in office, President Shehu Shagari decided the way out of the moral morass suffocating the country was to reclaim the soul of Nigerians through an ethical revolution. He chose Alhaji Yusuf to drive this novel concept in national rebirth. I was editor of the New Nigerian at the time. I decided I needed to be educated on his new national assignment. I took off from Kaduna to Lagos to see the only man I believed could competently educate me on what the ethical revolution was all about.
I met Alhaji Yusuf at a private residence in Victoria Island. I did not book an appointment with him. I just walked in, was announced by his security detail and he very gracious asked me in. I found him sitting alone in the modest and modestly furnished living room. A man with a regal sense of sartorial elegance, the former Nigerian representative to the United Nations, was as usual resplendent in his signature baban riga. I found him pretty warm. Such warmth usually puts reporters at ease in the presence of big men.
He offered me a cup of tea. I am not a tea drinker but there was no way I was going to be rude to him by turning down his generosity. So, over cups of tea and biscuits, we chatted. We talked generally about the country, the NPN government and of the alleged corruption among the president’s ministers. I asked him if the president thought the antidote against corruption was his ethical revolution.
He was silent for some time. Then he told me that corruption could be tackled from several angles and that the ethical revolution was directed at the conscience of Nigerians.
He said, warming up to his oratorical flourish: “Both good and evil reside in the conscience of men. Evil men shut the door against the throbbing of their conscience. That is why you see people do things and you wonder if the almighty brought them into this world entirely devoid of conscience. So, yes, I think the president is right to think of making us to heed the small voice in our heads. A nation without a conscience is a God-forsaken nation.”
I asked him what his responsibilities were as the main man set to drive the ethical revolution. What exactly was he supposed to do? Again, he was silent for some time. He sipped his tea as he considered my question. I sipped mine to steady my beating heart. He said, “Dan, they gave me a baby. No one told me what to do with the baby. No one told me to feed the baby when it is hungry; or give it water if it is thirsty. So, I am holding the baby, wondering what to do with it.”
I think I felt a cloud of confusion float across my face. He must have noticed it because he then went on to explain to me that the president had not told him what to do. He said he was waiting for the president to spell out his schedule of duty, ”because, you see,” he said, “this is not my idea. I do not think it is right for me to interpret the president’s idea as I see fit because I might be wrong and the whole concept would fall on its face.”
That wrapped up our discussion.
The next time I met Alhaji Yusuf was sometime in 2012. The Northern Media Forum that I chair, felt disturbed by the many groups and voices all claiming to be speaking for the north. We identified 19 of them. We then decided to invite their leaders to our meeting so each group could tell us what they set out to do. Alhaji Yusuf headed the group called The Northern Elders Forum. He was the only one among the leaders of the 19 different groups that responded to our invitation. He came to our meeting held in the board room of the Leadership newspapers in Abuja. He had lost his sight but his voice remained as firm as ever. His memory was pretty sharp too.
He spoke of the First Republic and the great dreams of the nationalists with passion. He spoke about the unquestionable patriotism of the much vilified-politicians of that era: particularly the premiers of the four regions, Sir Ahmadu Bello, (North), Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, (East), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, (West) and Chief Dennis Osadebay, (Mid-West). He spoke of a country whose aspirations for greatness had been thwarted by acts of commission by those he said crowned themselves as our saviours. Then he broke down. We were taken aback. We fell silent, touched by this great man who entered politics as a very young man, who dreamed of and worked towards our country achieving greatness and played his part as minister and as our country’s voice in the United Nations.
I did not think he was trying to romanticise the past. He wept because he was obviously pained by the failure of our country to rise to its greatness. He wept for a country that had failed to fulfil the promises of its independence to itself and its people. He wept for a country bastardized by actors on the political stage whose dreams centre on graft and venality. He wept for our missed opportunities. He wept for a country in the throes of resurgent ethnic chauvinism. He wept for a country assailed by a cocktail of security challenges. He wept for a country unable to weld its many nations into one nation. He wept because he lived long enough to see what has become of Nigeria, the most populous black nation in the world that once led Africa but is now led by lesser and poorer Africa nations. And I suspect he wept too because he felt truly saddened by the fact that the present generation of Nigerians unfairly blames his generation for all the problems the country is saddled with today.
The last time we met was in Kano in 2015 at the reception held for Mallam Garba Shehu, by the Kano State Government on his appointment as one of the two presidential spokesmen. He held the audience spell bound with his reminisces and oratory. I was the key note speaker at the event. Would you believe the organisers made me speak after the Dan Masanin Kano? It was unfair.
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