Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Thursday faulted the deposition of the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, describing it as “innate travesty of justice.”
In a statement titled, “FOR WHOM THE GATES OPEN WIDE”, Soyinka stressed that the conduct of Kano state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, was at par with “repudiated” colonial order.
According to him, it is an action “that out-feudalized feudalism itself, and is synonymous with authoritarianism of the crudest temper.”
The Nobel laureate said, “The record shows, in this particular instance, that it is one that embodies modernized cronyism and alienated pomp and power – never mind the cosmetic gestures such as almajiri reformation.
“It has proved one of the worst examples of a system that enables even the least deserving to exercise arbitrary, unmerited authority that beggars even the despotism of the most feudalistic traditional arrangements.”
While hailing the deposed Emir, he said Governor Ganduje was misadvised in removing Sanusi whom he described as an “Islamic scholar, royal scion and seasoned economist,” saying days of reckoning await the governor.
Soyinka said: “Why, I am not certain, but I do have the feeling that the palace gates of the Kano emirate are not yet definitively slammed against this Islamic scholar, royal scion and seasoned economist. It is just a feeling.
“Closed and bared, or merely shut however, the doors of enlightened society remain wide open to Muhammad Sanusi. As for his current crowing Nemesis, a different kind of gates remain yawning to receive him when, as must, the days of governorship immunity finally come to an end. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. The list is long; there are comrades in impunity awaiting their day of reckoning. The files remain open, and the nation remains on the watch. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but sooner or later, they arrive.”
He recalled that Sanusi was “one-man EFCC sanitizations squad in the banking system taking on the powerful corrupters of that institution.”
“Unblinking, he trod on the interests of powerful beneficiaries of a worm-infested sector and, in the process, created permanent enemies. By contrast, confidence in immunity has catapulted his tormentor to the ranks of the most notorious public faces of the disorder that Sanusi strove to eradicate.
“Obviously, vengeance lay in wait, and he was not unaware of it. The signs were omnipresent and Sanusi acknowledged their imminence. I know this for a fact. Apart from exchanges some mutual associates – we held, not so long ago, a phone conversation during his visit to London, just after the shrinking of his domain signaled the commencement of a systematic attrition of his status.
“I assured him I would shortly fulfill my long-standing promise to pay him a visit. He sounded very much aware of the impending fall of the axe of vengefulness and power primitivism. I can testify that he remained totally unfazed,” Soyinka wrote.
