Mystery of these thrones

It reminds me of my road trip from Kaduna to Sokoto two days after Sultan Muhammadu Maccido’s death in a plane crash in 2006. At least 50 VIP convoys overtook me on the road, my worst road trip ever. They were not even the biggest VIPs; those ones went by air.Newspapers have been awash with […]

It reminds me of my road trip from Kaduna to Sokoto two days after Sultan Muhammadu Maccido’s death in a plane crash in 2006. At least 50 VIP convoys overtook me on the road, my worst road trip ever. They were not even the biggest VIPs; those ones went by air.
Newspapers have been awash with stories of Emir Ado Bayero’s death. Radio and television stations are discussing it endlessly. Online newspapers were devoting a lot of space to it and the social media were overflowing with the issue. That should make any curious observer to wonder: where in the Constitution can I find the office, status, powers and duties of the Emir of Kano?
Our Constitution is one of the bulkiest in the world. Apart from the Indian Constitution, I know of no other national constitution that is bulkier than our own. Yet, nowhere in its pages is there any mention of a sultan, emir, shehu, oba, obi, chief or amanyanabo. Their powers and duties are not spelt out in the Constitution, which however accorded elaborate mention to many other offices. The loss of few other persons whose offices have received elaborate constitutional mention will receive the kind of public interest and attention that the death of the Emir of Kano generated.
Our elected office holders must ponder about this. Since 1999 this country has described itself as a democracy. However, here is an institution that is everything but democratic. Traditional rulers are not elected. In most parts of the country the office is not open to all citizens, only to male members of certain ruling houses. You would have thought that traditional rulers’ offices would be abolished when the constitution came into force but so far no court has dared to pronounce their existence as alien to the constitution and no legislative house, state or federal, has moved in that direction either.
You would have thought that local government reforms beginning from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s would have entirely crippled the royal fathers by now. The courts were taken away from their control. Their police forces and prison services were taken away and merged with Federal agencies. Finally the Native Authorities through which they ruled at the local level were dissolved and were replaced by elected Local Government Councils. The rich Native Authority Treasuries were removed from them and now answer to Local Government chairmen. Any institution that underwent this constitutional battering should be a shadow of itself by now but royal fathers appear to be growing in visibility and influence, not shrinking. Sure they are not the “centre of the action” in what matters most these days, i.e. contract awards, but they are a huge repository for legitimacy and influence.
Why is it that every politician who is running for elective office runs to the royal father to seek his blessing, publicly and privately, and gets a photo opportunity which he trumpets on television and in the newspapers? The first stop in any city or town for a touring presidential or governorship candidate is the royal father’s palace. The only notable presidential candidate in Nigeria’s history who did not visit royal fathers was Chief Obafemi Awolowo; maybe that was one of the reasons why he never won the election. Sitting governors, president and other powerful officials also routinely visit royal fathers, as do company directors, trade union or NGO officials that are holding a meeting in any town. Surely there is something to it?
People who have held public offices that are more exalted in the constitution and that controlled juicier state coffers turn around to seek royal thrones afterwards. Some of them abandon juicy public offices they are holding to sit on an old throne. Among the royal fathers in Nigeria today, there are former state governors [Auwal Ibrahim, M.D. Jega, Alfred Diette-Spiff], former ministers [Domkat Bali, Edmund Daukoru], Army Generals [Muhammadu Sa’ad, Yahaya Abubakar, Muhammadu Sani Sami], a federal permanent secretary [Oba Erediauwa] and a police AIG [Rilwanu Akiolu]. Yesterday a former Governor of the Central Bank joined their ranks.
When you visit a royal father’s throne, all you see is a line of ancient chairs, some decorated old walls, colourful robes and turbans and some courtiers sprawled around the courtyard, blowing ancient-looking horns or weather-beaten drums and chanting often incomprehensible incantations. They call out the names of people who died decades or even centuries ago. You often wonder what it is all about, but there must be something to this institution that has shown more survival abilities than the beetle.  

Kola from Dora Akunyili

When I heard about the death of the former Information Minister and former NAFDAC Director General Professor Dora Nkem Akunyili on Saturday, I thought about the only private meeting that I ever had with her. It was sometime in 2009. Sunday Dare, whom I met a year earlier at the Voice of America office in Washington DC where he was head of the Hausa Section, told me he had just returned home and had been appointed Special Assistant to the Minister of Information. He wanted me to meet his new boss.
Of course I had heard so much about her. By 2009 there were two public faces of Dora Akunyili. The first was as DG of NAFDAC, a highly successful, extremely dynamic, totally committed, media savvy public officer who was engaged in a deadly struggle against one of this country’s worst scourges, i.e. fake drugs. Two film clips that I saw on television were particularly unforgettable. One was of Akunyili storming a major fake drug depot in Onitsha. The second was of her in the back alleys of an Indian city, negotiating with a small time Indian drugs maker to “procure” fake drugs for sale in Nigeria. Her second, less well regarded face was as President Yar’adua’s voluble Information Minister pushing the “Rebranding Nigeria” project.
I went to her house at Maitama on a Sunday afternoon as arranged. She was alone in the house with a maid. She came down to meet me in the living room, dressed in very simple home attire and wearing bathroom slippers. She was totally relaxed and we conversed generally about Abuja and the country. She made no specific request and did not complain about anything that Daily Trust did, as I feared she would.
When I was about to leave, Mrs Akunyili went to an adjoining room and emerged with a whole huhu of kola nut. She opened it; it contained 100 large white kola nuts of the kind that my grandfather liked very much. She offered it to me as a gift. I readily accepted it because I thought Daily Trust’s ‘No Thank You’ policy, which bans staff members from accepting “kola” from news sources, did not include the literal kola nut. Still, I was in a quandary. I was wondering what I would do with it. I had not chewed kola nut for many years and I didn’t know anyone in Abuja who chewed kola nut.
As she saw me to the door, Prof Dora Akunyili cheerfully revealed the source of all the kola. She said she was in Azare the day before and had visited the Emir of Katagum, who gave her the kola as a gift. Malam Adamu Adamu, during one of your frequent trips to Azare, please tell His Royal Highness the Emir that his kola nuts ended up in my house.