Understanding ongoing reforms in the Sultanate

On-going developments of changes or dispositions being conducted in the Sultanate by Sultan Sa’ad must therefore be perceived and understood within the framework of a reformist, endowed with the requisite qualities of experience, vision and courage. That is, a reference to recent appointments of District Heads and dispositions of other custodians of traditional authorities in […]

On-going developments of changes or dispositions being conducted in the Sultanate by Sultan Sa’ad must therefore be perceived and understood within the framework of a reformist, endowed with the requisite qualities of experience, vision and courage. That is, a reference to recent appointments of District Heads and dispositions of other custodians of traditional authorities in accordance with history and traditions of the Sultanate. Not only is the action in accord with yearnings of the mass of the people, it is as well, correcting the corruption and assaults wrought on the Sultanate by erstwhile political leadership in the state which, for obvious reasons of political and family expediencies, engaged in a systemic bastardization of time-honoured traditional institutions. One or two instances would suffice to elucidate.

Using the leverage conferred on the governor by a law earlier enacted by the state government, the then governor, Alhaji Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa created a Bafarawa District and unscrupulously went on to install his biological father as the head  of the new district. That act of crude show of nepotism and abuse of power at once, ran contrary to the two hundred year-old traditional geopolitical configuration of the Caliphate, just as it went against a cardinal traditional criterion of appointing a District Head. While district headship is largely conferred on descendants of Usman Danfodio, there are certain traditional rulership, such as those of Sarkin Yakin Binji, Baraden  Wamakko, Galadiman Durbawa and Sarkin Kabin Yabo that are conferred only, and strictly, on scions of the lineage of certain personalities who played key roles in the military and intellectual movements that led to the initial successes of the Jihad in what is today known as “The Seat of the Caliphate”. The ancestors of the late Sarkin Gabas 1 and District Head of Bafarawa, Alhaji Dalhatu Usman were among the tribes not identified with scholarship nor were they fighters in the course of the Jihad. It was therefore clearly against history, tradition and precedence that late Dalhatu Usman should be appointed a District Head. Same anomaly characterized the location of the headquarters of the district at Bafarawa which, all through history, was a mere village under the sovereignty of Isa District. The recent appointments of Alhaji Bunu Hassan, a direct descendant of Usman Danfodio as the District Head, the renaming of the district of Bafarawa to Gebe  as well as the relocation of the headquarter to Gebe town are therefore, actions taken in tandem with history and tradition.

Also to be regarded as nothing short of correcting a past anomaly is the relieving of Alhaji Isah Bajini Galadanchi of his appointment as a Senior Councillor in the Sultanate Council and his membership of the State Council of Chiefs. Here was a situation where overtime, occupants of the office of Galadiman Durbawa had functioned only as the District Head of Durbawa and a member of the seven-man body of king makers saddled with the sacred duty of selecting a Sultan. But in line with an undeclared mission of emasculating the Sultanate, the then Governor Attahiru Bafarawa appointed a well known protégé and politician in his camp, Alhaji Isa Bajini, as the District Head of Durbawa with the added portfolios of a senior member of the Sultanate Council and member of the state Council of Chiefs. It is noteworthy that the sitting occupant of the stool, was removed on clearly trumped up charges of misdemeanour.

Obviously, if the ravages were not checked and reversed as it were, it would have been just a matter of time before the denigration, by way of politicization of the sultanate, got to a level where it would become no more than a whimpering department of the Government House. Concerned and enlightened indigenes of Sokoto became rightly fearful that the Sultanate was fast on the path to being denuded of its independence and non partisan status and inevitably, its reverence and relevance as the custodian of the culture, tradition and history of the people. Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III is therefore on the right path by his on-going courageous and highly welcomed moves aimed at restoring the glory, grandeur and prestige of the Sultanate. In this clearly herculean but very imperative endeavour, it is good news that the Sultanate enjoys the support of the present political authority in the state which has demonstrated in words and deeds, its disposition towards redressing the wrongs visited on the Sultanate Institution by its predecessors. Starting with abrogation of an obnoxious law that removed from the Sultanate Council the powers to appoint, post and discipline District and Village Heads, the administration of Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko is known to have been providing all the other necessary support needed by the Sultanate in the task of cleansing the Augean stable for the continuous glory and relevance of the Sultanate.    

 Bawa writes from 57, Ghana Road, Malali, Kaduna