A Royal Radical: The Muhammad Dikko Yusuf Story (II)

On 8th August 1950 a group of eight people in Kano came together and formed Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU as a political party. The members were largely connected together in their opposition to the management style of the native administration in Northern Nigeria. The party had distinct leftist learnings, showering itself with Marxist rhetoric […]

On 8th August 1950 a group of eight people in Kano came together and formed Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU as a political party. The members were largely connected together in their opposition to the management style of the native administration in Northern Nigeria.

The party had distinct leftist learnings, showering itself with Marxist rhetoric about re- distribution of wealth, and most significantly aiming the arrowhead of its attack on the emirate system that was claimed to trample the poor. Significantly, the dominant political structure in northern Nigeria was established by Northern People’s Congress (NPC). NEPU as an alternative political structure struck a chord – for while the NPC was for the powerful and the ruling elite, NEPU was touted as the poor man’s alternative route to power, or at least, equity in the distribution of national wealth and emancipation of the poor who were forced to work as cheap labor for repressive rulers in various emirates of northern Nigeria. This will strike a chord in any individual who is compassionate-and explains why intellectuals and pampered youth who did not suffer the wears and tears of life, readily jumped on the NEPU bandwagon.
While NEPU was established as a coalition of interests heading towards the same direction in 1950, the groundswell establishing it started long before then, reaching the ears of students like M.D. Yusuf-where the NEPU rhetoric found a ready substrate-then finishing high school in Kano, considering that some of the NEPU members were his friends. By the time he finished high school at The Law School/School for Arabic Studies in 1947, he was already a converted radical. NEPU seemed to awaken a deeply recessed concern for the poor and down trodden in him. This was a paradox – a royal prince from an opposing ruling house, embracing radical politics. M.D. Yusuf’s attachment to radical politics was so strong that when he returned to Katsina at the conclusion of his schooling in Kano, and joined the Katsina Native Authority system in 1947, he became a labor unionist, becoming a Secretary to the local union of N.A. officers, perhaps a precursor to current NULGE. Becoming a unionist, then became the JAMB which secures entry into the university of radicalism. It therefore became easy for him to spearhead moves to get a branch of NEPU established in Katsina, where he was made its leader-startling a laid-back traditional leadership that never imagined its own would bring in challenges.
Despite his radical activities, he continued to move through the machinery of the civil service, transferring his services from Katsina N.A. to the Northern Nigeria N.A. in 1954, which gave him a platform to expand his horizon by attending a series of courses at prestigious institutions including Christchurch College, Oxford. These series of enrichment courses polished his worldview and expanded his horizon. Although he was later sent to London as a sort of recruitment office for the Northern Government in 1961, soon enough he felt his thirst for a bigger picture in the scheme of life would be best quenched by a Federal service; so he requested for a transfers to the Federal Government. This was denied. His life in London was not fully revealed in the book; for, again, it would be illuminative to know if he had come across other radical elements in the UK from African countries on the throes of independence.
In 1962, while he was still in London, he received the first instruction that catapulted him into the corridors of power. His request for transfer of service from the Northern Government to the Federal Government has been approved. He was to report to the Federal Police Force of Nigeria where he was appointed a Deputy Commissioner of Police. This was a bit of a shock to him, as he never envisaged joining any uniformed service. He, however, dutifully reported.
M.D. Yusuf was chosen because of his proven sterling qualities-despite the rhetorical radicalism of unions and NEPU membership, which his superiors probably never took seriously, otherwise he would not have been nominated to such a sensitive post in the first place. His rapid elevation to the post became necessary because, as the British were departing, the need for competent hands to replace them became all too evident. M.D. Yusuf was as competent as you could get.
It was clearly understood, being part of the ‘establishment’ he could not engage in radical politics during the years he was with the Police Force. The book did not tell whether M.D. Yusuf faced struggles between his initial desire to see to the emancipation of his people and his new role as the ‘keeper of the realm’. However, there are more than one ways to executive a revolution. Thus while he was not actively involved in radical politics-impossible at any rate in an era when all politics, whether radical or non-radical had been suppressed by the military machinery-he was actively involved in recruitment of young people into the Police Force and helping to open doors for hundreds into other spheres of the civil service. He thus became ‘Jagoran Talakawa’ [Peoples’ Hero] long before some latter day textbook Marxists stumbled on the dusty and cobwebbed term and re-domesticated it.
He subsequently became Police Commissioner for Northern Nigeria and Head of Special Branch during the Nigerian civil war, rising to the pinnacle of Inspector General of the Nigeria Police Force. In the intervening years he became a living front-seat witness to the theater of violent changes that took Nigeria through a succession of leaders, from civilian to military in Nigeria’s First Republic.
He left the Nigeria Police Force at the rank of Inspector General in 1979, after 17 years (1962- 1979) of service – a period of liberty, humane and tolerant service. That freed him to return deeply and squarely into radical politics which he placed on pause in 1962. But this was more than just a reconnect; it was a homecoming.