In his reaction to the dethronement of the former Emir of Kano by the Kano State government, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday described the conduct of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje against Lamido Sanusi as authoritarian, crude and pathetic.
Soyinka, in a statement, said the Governor Ganduje lacked friends, who could have saved him from himself, adding that the Sanusi he thought he had humiliated has demonstrated that he is one of the greatest reformers even of the feudal order.
The accomplished man of letters said Ganduje’s conduct was part of the repudiated colonial order, which was characterised by “authoritarianism of the crudest temper.” Soyinka described Sanusi as “a one-man EFCC sanitisation squad in the banking system taking on the powerful corrupters of that institution.”
“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” he added.
He also stated that Sanusi was one of the early warning voices against religious extremism whose bitter fruits Nigeria is currently reaping.
“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,” Soyinka added.
