An outspoken ruler mired in conflicts is ousted without warning from his palace and banished under armed guard into an uncertain exile beyond the borders of his realm.

This is not the plot of a Shakespearean tragedy, but the real-life drama that has played out in northern Nigeria’s influential Islamic emirate of Kano as traditional leader Muhammadu Sanusi II was unceremoniously deposed by the local governor.

The sudden fall of one of the country’s most revered hereditary rulers on Monday rattled the 1,000-year-old kingdom — and has shown the difficult balancing act facing the ancient monarchies of modern-day Nigeria.

Sanusi, also known by his birth name Lamido, had been a mould-breaker since ascending to the throne of the emirate of millions in 2014 after the death of his great-uncle.

The 58-year-old former central bank governor was already known for his outspokenness when he claimed the title and carved out a reputation as a moderniser willing to criticise practices like having multiple wives and children without being able to support them.

He was also not afraid of taking on the powerful politicians running northern Nigeria — lambasting them for leadership failures.

“It’s no secret that many of our political leaders are inept and not well educated,” the emir wrote back in 2017.

“Nigerians have learnt from experience not to expect much from them.”

The ruler’s main nemesis — and the man who ultimately unseated him — was regional governor Abdullahi Ganduje.

Ganduje suspected the emir of backing his political rival and had already divided up his territory and launched a corruption probe to try to bring him to heel.

On Monday their feud came to a head when Sanusi was unexpectedly removed for “total disrespect”.

“The governor decided that enough is enough and moved against him,” said Adewunmi Falode, a history professor at Lagos state university.

“It’s a signal that the ultimate power rests with the government while the emir is just a symbol of spirituality, culture and tradition without real power and influence.”

The deposed ruler was detained by police at his palace before being spirited out of Kano to exile in a remote village in another state where he is expected to remain incommunicado.

– ‘Seen not heard’ –

There are dozens of traditional rulers across Africa’s most populous country.

They have no official constitutional powers but are important cultural custodians who often wield great influence over their followers.

Relics from a period when monarchies dominated this region, they rely now on regional governments for their funding and their succession is regulated by elected officials.

While they lack practical power, their patronage can be key at elections when Nigeria’s notoriously cutthroat politicians jostle for votes.

But their role remains ambiguous — and when Sanusi began to talk up some complained that he was overstepping the boundaries and flouting the strict protocol of the palace.

“It is an established custom that the emir should be seen not heard,” a Kano court insider told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“But Sanusi violated that important tradition and would talk like a parrot anywhere, anytime and on any topic — this eroded the mystic and prestige around his person in the eyes of the people.”

That could in part explain the muted response to his removal on the streets of his former kingdom.

While moves to depose previous emirs provoked deadly violence in decades past, this time around there have been no major protests.

– ‘Archaic practice’ –

If anything highlighted the uncomfortable divide between modernity and tradition that the monarchies straddle — it was the nature of Sanusi’s removal.

The lightning move to turf him out was down to a powerplay typical of the political tussles of contemporary Nigeria.

Within hours a replacement had been installed — and the former ruler released a video message pledging his allegiance.

But the decision to detain and banish Sanusi to an undisclosed location proved controversial.

Amnesty International’s Nigerian branch complained on Twitter that “placing him incommunicado violates his human rights”.

The tactic dates back to the days when the British Empire dominated Nigeria with its strategy of divide-and-rule and would exile leaders viewed as troublesome.

“The archaic practice of banishment of deposed Emirs, a colonial practice, has no basis under Nigerian law or the constitution,” Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud, a lawyer for Sanusi, said in a statement.

His legal team insisted they would go to court to challenge the legality of his treatment.

“We are totally perplexed at the resort to this practice in present day Nigeria by its political leaders.”

Source: AFP

Nigerian authorities transfer top Shia cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, and his wife to a dilapidated prison, where many detainees have so far died due to lack of medical attention.

A High Court ordered the Department of State Services on Thursday to transfer the cleric and his wife, Zinat, to the Correctional Center, in Kaduna State, Northwest of the country.

Sheikh Zakzaky, who is in his mid-sixties, lost the sight of his left eye in a 2015 raid by security forces, that left more than 300 of his followers and three of his sons dead. His wife also sustained serious injuries during the raid.

He has been kept in custody along with his wife and a large number of his followers ever since.

Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) said on Thursday that any attempt to take the couple anywhere other than a hospital will put them in further jeopardy.

The IMN described the move as a “mischievous” attempt by the government to humiliate “our leader, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, and subjecting him to further hardships.”

The IMN said the facilities at the Kaduna Central Prison are dilapidated.

They said it is the same prison where some survivors of the December 2015 raid perished due to lack of medical attention.

“It can therefore never be a substitute for appropriately furnished medical facility that can take care of their urgent medical needs,” the group said in a statement.

It said that by sending them to this prison, the government had “chosen a path of dishonor and shame in charging the Sheikh and his wife for aiding and abetting alleged offences they couldn’t prove in the same court against hundreds of his supporters.”

“They refused to diligently pursue the case, but rather use one flimsy excuse or the other to delay making any progress in the case because of their knowledge that they don’t have a case against them,” the IMN added.

Earlier this year, the IMN accused the Nigerian government of having poisoned Zakzaky in jail after “large and dangerous quantities of lead and cadmium have been found in his blood.”

Back in August, the couple was transferred to India to receive medical care. Days later, however, they had to return to Nigeria after they had “lost all faith” in the prospect of receiving proper treatment there, according to the Islamic group.

“Since that return, the Sheikh and his wife have been largely held incommunicado. No contact with their legal representatives was given and only a minimal contact with doctors and even that only after the Sheikh’s wife took seriously ill in detention.” the IMN said. .

Source: Presstv

President Muhammadu Buhari and the Federal Government have been told not to stay aloof and watch the alleged ongoing genocide in the English speaking part of Cameron. Already about 35,000 people from Southern Cameroon are said to be taking refuge in Cross River State which shares boundary with Cameroon. This is as a Community leader from Southern Cameroun who lives in the United States, Edwin Ngang, said that the political elite from the Southern Cameroun have been cowed by the government of the country.

 A group of people under the aegis of Nigerian Ambazonian Sovereignty Recognition Society, NASORES, explained that Cameron had been encroaching on the Nigerian territory in Boki axis of Cross River State after taking over Bakassi Peninsula. National Director of NOSORES, Hon. Cletus Obun said that timely intervention of President Buhari would be of tremendous relieve to Nigeria that is sorrounded by Franco-phone countries.

Obun, who was a former member of Cross River State House of Assembly representing Boki State Constituency said, “The targeted aim of shrinking the Nigerian territory is too painful and must not be allowed. “We will not stand aloof and watch people who are much in our image be maltreated, dehumnised and annihilated.” He called on the Federal Government “to campaign for the permanent solution to the problems of the indigenous minority English- speaking peoples of Cameroun by calling for an exclusive referendum on the choices of restoring their independence as Ambazonians or staying as Camerounians.

“To campaign for an “international peace-keeping force” to enforce NASORES’ call for an immediate cessation of hostilities between the Cameroun armed forces and the Amba fighters. “To plead that the Federal Government of Nigeria return to playing its natural role of peace making through conflict preemption and prevention not only in the Gulf of Guinea region; where its own immediate security is being threatened but in the rest of Africa by invoking the principle of territoriality. “To encourage Nigeria that now braced by this sacred jurisprudence of the principle of territoriality that is acknowledged Byau constitutive charter article 4(b), and by “the threat to peace” clause in United Nations charter article 51 and by its global commitment in the 2005 UN “responsibility to protect” (r2p), a unilateral intervention by the federal government will be the right thing to do since it will stop the ongoing war and its accompanying targeted genocide of the English-speaking peoples of Cameroun.”

He recalled with dismay the judgment that ceded Bakassi to Cameroon, adding,”we considered the known and surreptitious politics surrounding the so-called World Court judgment on Bakassi Peninsular and the consequent Green Tree Agreement. Neither Nigeria nor the people of Ambazonia find solace in this.” Continuing, he said, “I am sure that you are aware of the socio-political and economic storm raging over Southern Cameroun. Peaceful demonstrations demanding for a free and independent State have been met by repressive reprisals.

 “Now, the government of President Paul Biya in Northern Cameroun has, in the bid to asphyxiate the bourgeoning demand for the Republic of Ambazonia, a part successor to the “Federal United Cameroon Republics, resorted to mass arrest, annihilation of perceived champions of the struggle, pogroms in small enclaves, graduated to full scale genocide since 2017 against the patient, oppressed and deprived people of Ambazonia. “To the uninformed, this blood-strewn canvass for sovereignty appears distant, faint and inconsequential. But to any Nigerian patriot and for anyone with inbuilt sensors to see beyond today, the conflict in South Cameroun should naturally grip attention, arrest focus and prick conscience. “It is even more pragmatic for Nigeria and Nigerians to look not only with a sense of human sympathy at the trails of the Ambazonian people but must search again with filial-feeling drawing on the sense of nostalgia, as to how things were, before we arrived at the current separateness occasioned by pencils drawn over cardboard sheets by the colonial authorities and the regrettable misfortune that was the February 11, 1961 so-called referendum.

“The time has come to call on the international community to discard the blanket of silence woven over Southern Cameroun while the region is on a wild loop of fire. It is time to speak up and let the various treaties, convention and accords binding on the member-countries of the United Nations begin to take their cause. “And we count that Nigerian authorities take this great and honourable leap not just as the giant of Africa but a direct beneficiary of a peaceful and quickest resolution of the conflict.

“This could be seen in the refugee burden that Nigerian is bearing and the peace initiatives she will be forced into, if the Ambazonia war independence flies to heights unimagined. We recall what Nigeria lost in men and material to the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo now in Burkina Faso, and elsewhere in the world “Historically, the people being beaten, maimed and killed by the government of Cameroun were once affiliates of Nigeria. These were citizens of the British-administered Cameroun. They had representatives at the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly and parliamentarians from there were among the best you could anywhere in the world at that time.

“Through the manipulation of an uninformed elite and the lukewarm attitude of some Nigerian leaders at that time, this key territory was allowed to slip off the radar of Nigeria. By a small margin, the British-administered Cameroun voted to merge with other parts of Cameroun. “That political marriage has not worked. The north has been and continues to constitute a wobbling cog in the progressive ambition of Southern Cameroun. What the departure of British-administered simply meant that Nigeria was stripped of any neighbor with a cultural and linguistic similarity.

“You are aware that our nation is surrounded by Francophone nations, who sometimes even conspire against issues of security and trans-global diplomacy. While Ambazonia can no longer be a full part of Nigeria as it was in the past, the possibility having a closer ally in aspects of economy, diplomacy, cultural ties and reliable proximity to one looking after the other, is too titillating to be ignored. “Any effort in the direction goes to fulfill the dreams of nationalists like Chief Obafemi Awolowo who saw a possibility in Nigeria flaunting her strength across West Africa not only in the way she settles conflicts but also in extension of her economic and cultural propensities to her immediate neighbours. Let me say the formation of Nigerian- Ambazonian Sovereignty Recognition Society, is preceded by the creation of a similar organization through what has now been internationally dubbed the Calabar Declaration.

“The “Ambazonian Liberation Movement” (ALIM) of Nigeria is a brainchild of the indigenous people of Nigeria of the Bakassi extraction and who continue to draw sympathy from a large spectrum across the Nigerian society. It is needless to stress how, Nigerians who hassled, chassed and pushed out of the ancestral homes following the ill-fated judgment which ceded wholesome Nigerian territory to Cameroun. “Many of our kindred are in refugee camps, other are roofless, in squalor and with no sense of dignifying living because the government of Cameroun regards and treats them as adversaries or intruders. ” This is a major determinant in our decision to take up the gauntlet and plead with our countrymen and women to see the war in Southern Cameroun as ours to win through Diplomacy of Necessity while discarding the lies fueled through the tunnels of deceit, cover-up and crass intimidation.”

 Also briefing Edwin Ngang said: ”It is terrible and so sad that these wounds have resurfaced, but I fear it was always going to be thus with the exclusion of the English-speaking minority from the affairs of state. ”The only practical solution, from a distance, is a political settlement with either a United Nations or African Union peace-keeping contingent being placed on the ground to enable an immediate cessation of violence, ensuring a humanitarian protective intervention and a cooling- off period to create the conditions to allow an equitable settlement to be hammered out. “Building on lessons learned, autonomy but not separation in a close-knit federation is the formula for lasting peace and should be embraced as a solution. ”We have to admit the real and/or perceived denial of justice to a people is what creates radicals from moderates. This is because is its denial HOPE at the same time bringing hopelessness- all of these the breeding ground of extremism. “Another instance of hesitation that ended up as denial of justice to Ambazonians in Viscount waverley’s floor speech is when he invoked the sanctity and primacy of the rule of the law.”

www.vanguardngr.com

Nigeria president Muhammadu Buhari on Friday was reported to have moved to intervene in a power tussle between the political and traditional authorities in the north central Kano State.

Tensions had been high in Kano over a move by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje to oust the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II after a fallout deemed to be political in nature.

The Daily Nigerian portal cited an inside source at the presidency as confirming the news. Other portals have since reported same.

“You know the president hardly interferes in matters of states. But on this issue, the president had to just interfere. The president is not happy with the governor for taking the unpopular decision of balkanizing the emirate and making moves to dethrone the emir.

“The president therefore summoned Ganduje on Thursday and directed the Director-General of the DSS to call for emergency meeting with governors of the North West.

“The governors are led by the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, who first met and briefed the president on the matter on Thursday,” the source is quoted to have said.

Buhari’s intervention comes on the final day the Kano State government had given to the emir to respond to a query of financial misappropriation and to explain why he should not be suspended.

Reports say the fallout between the two men was due to perceived support of the emir for the main opposition candidate in this years gubernatorial elections which Ganduje won after a supplementary vote to secure his final term in office.

The Emir, a former Central Bank governor, has had his powers split after Ganduje split the Kano Emirates – which dates back to centuries – into five. He appointed four extra emirs with the same powers as Sanusi.

Source: Africa News

Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari surprised many when he did not deliver a speech at his inauguration on Wednesday.

The 76-year-old former military leader faces a long list of challenges, including combating a sluggish economy, high unemployment and a decade-old Islamic insurgency.

Buhari will need to create jobs if he is to turn around the country’s fortunes over the next four years. Nearly a quarter of the workforce is unemployed and most of its 190 million people live on less than $2 a day.

“Our expectation is that Mr President will now focus more on the issue of security, employment and agriculture because these are the core areas,” said Basil Ejidike, who chairs the APC in southern Anambra state.

Reactions to inauguration

Some social media users were critical of the absence of a speech. Software developer Tosin Olugbenga called it was a “missed opportunity”.

“It is an opportunity for the president to speak to Nigerians and give further assurance of his commitment to a better Nigeria,” he said in a tweet.

A nation in trance

Buhari now has a second chance to turn campaign promises into policies aimed at stimulating economic growth.

Nigeria’s economy grew by 1.93% last year, its fastest pace since the recession. Growth of 2.1% is forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for this year, though that would be among the slowest rates in Africa.

Tackling insecurity across much of the country is already a priority. The military is fighting jihadist group Boko Haram and an offshoot linked to Islamic State in the northeast, while contending with communal violence over grazing land in central states.

A separate surge of bandit attacks and other violence in the northwest has forced 20,000 to flee to neighbouring Niger since April, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday.

REUTERS

As many as 39 people have died in election-related violence in Nigeria, as the country awaits the results of this weekend’s voting in what is forecast to be its tightest poll since the end of military rule in 1999

Current President Muhummadu Buhari, 76, a former military ruler is seeking a second term on an anti-corruption platform.

He faces off againstbusinessman Atiku Abubakar, 72, a former vice president who has promised to expand the role of the private sector.

The election was held on Saturday, but violence and problems with electronic voting machines meant voting continued in a small number of places before polls closed on Sunday.

The ballot was initially due to take place last week, but was postponed just hours before it was due to begin, with the authorities citing logistics.

PIncumbent President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari

Nigeria’s 73 million eligible voters chose from a pool of more than 70 presidential candidates, although only those from the two main parties — Mr Buhari and Mr Abubakar — are seen as having a chance.

The President last year publicly denied social media claims he died and was replaced by a Sudanese clone, and also courted international controversy in the past by suggesting his wife “belongs in the kitchen”.

The Situation Room — which represents more than 70 civil society groups — gave Sunday’s figure of 39 deaths, citing data from Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence.

In one incident, seven people were killed in a shootout between Nigerian army troops and a gang.PMahmood Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),said an electoral official had been shot dead by unknown people.

The president’s office declined to comment, while the opposition candidate Mr Abubakar condemned the violence in a statement.

“No politician’s ambition is worth the blood of any innocent Nigerian,” he said.

The number of deaths reported by Sunday was below the final death tolls in previous elections in Africa’s most populous country, but in the past most unrest has taken place after results were announced.

P Nigerian election observers watch votes being counted

What’s at stake?

A credible and relatively calm poll would open a new chapter in the chequered political history of Nigeria, where nearly six decades of independence have been tarnished by military coups, endemic corruption and secessionist movements.

“From Tuesday onwards we should have a substantial number of results,” said Festus Okoye, an election commission official.

The contest between Mr Buhari and Mr Abubakar, commonly called “Atiku”, hinges on revamping an economy struggling to recover from its first recession in 25 years, which it slipped into in 2016 and emerged from in 2017.

P Electoral officials compile voting results

Nearly a quarter of the workforce is unemployed, while the cost of living has also risen rapidly.

Mr Buhari has focused his campaign on rooting out corruption, but critics say there have not been any significant convictions in his first term.

Mr Abubakar has said he would aim to double the size of the economy to $900 billion by 2025.

Reuters