Farooq Kperogi on Tinubu and the “Yoruba Emir” of Kan

The power struggle for royal supremacy between Muhammad Sanusi II and Aminu Ado Bayero recently took a sharp ethnic turn when Hashim Dungurawa, the Kano State chairman of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of shielding Bayero from deposition and disgrace due to his “Yoruba lineage”.

Dungurawa warned that the President’s attempts to use his allies in Kano and Bayero’s alleged Yoruba background to maintain Bayero’s position would not succeed, and that they would demonstrate this in 2027.

According to Dungurawa’s ethnic-centric reasoning, Kano had a Yoruba emir from March 2020 to May 2024, as lineage typically refers to patrilineal descent in many Nigerian cultures, including Kano.

Interestingly, it was actually Muhammad Sanusi II who initially instigated the spread of these rumors in 2020 following his own deposition and Bayero’s appointment as his successor, aiming to undermine Bayero’s legitimacy.

This is not the first time Sanusi has engaged in such ethnic provocations. In the past, he made false claims about individuals’ ethnic backgrounds, such as wrongly stating that Garba Shehu’s parents were from Edo, in an attempt to discredit them.

The question remains: what evidence supports the unlikely assertion that Aminu Ado Bayero has Yoruba roots, despite his strong resemblance to his late father, Ado Bayero?

His mother, Hajia Maryam, who passed away in 2021, was the daughter of Zulkarnain “Sulu” Muhammadu Gambari, the 9th emir of Ilorin who died in 1992. In essence, she was the older sister of the current (11th) emir of Ilorin.

No Yoruba person considers the Ilorin ruling family as anything but Yoruba-speaking Fulani people, but Sanusi and his ethnic supremacist supporters view the family’s locational, linguistic, and possibly genetic, association with Yoruba people as a “stain” on the “purity” of their Fulani identity.

The Yoruba emir displayed empathy towards the suffering of his people and candidly informed the Yoruba president about the hardships caused by his policies without any fear of repercussions. On the other hand, the unfiltered Fulani emir praised the Yoruba president for the impoverishment of the people and the destruction of their livelihoods.

The sycophantic and cruel Fulani emir, who revels in the economic turmoil of the people, is causing speculation among his subordinates that the truth-telling emir is receiving preferential treatment from the president due to ethnic solidarity.

It is possible that the Sultan of Sokoto has traces of Yoruba (and perhaps Kanuri) ancestry, which led to his defense and protection by the Tinubu administration against a planned removal by Sokoto’s APC government for his alleged sympathies towards the previous PDP government under Aminu Tambuwal.

Vice President Kashim Shettima emphasized the importance of safeguarding, promoting, and projecting the Sultan as an institution that represents an idea crucial for the nation’s growth during the North-West Peace and Security Summit in Katsina State on June 25.

The reality that Sanusi and his supporters avoid acknowledging is his lack of popularity in Kano. He is the only former emir in recent memory whose appointment sparked a violent mass uprising because he was not among the princes recommended for the throne by the kingmakers. Sanusi Ado Bayero, the older brother of Aminu Ado Bayero, was the preferred choice of the kingmakers.

Most individuals are aware that a key supporter of Aminu Ado Bayero comes from a wealthy family in Kano and holds a strong dislike towards Sanusi while maintaining a close relationship with Tinubu. The members of NNPP are well-informed about this fact. They understand that Bayero’s maternal ties to Ilorin (which Tinubu and his associates do not consider as “Yoruba”) are not central to the current issues.

Furthermore, they are aware of the agreement between Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Tinubu, which required Kwankwaso to spare Bayero in return for a favorable Supreme Court ruling and a potential ministerial position in Tinubu’s cabinet. Kwankwaso’s breach of this agreement by dethroning Bayero deeply disappoints Tinubu.

Beyond these matters, the dangerous game of reactionary ethnic purism being played by Sanusi and his supporters in the political sphere could have severe repercussions on identity formation in the North.

The North, including the Muslim North, is a complex blend of various ethnic backgrounds held together by a common bond. In the Muslim North, this bond is Islam, which is fostering a new sense of ethnic identity from a mix of different backgrounds. To discredit or isolate a Kano emir due to his maternal lineage from the outskirts of the North sends a message to the people from that region that they are unwelcome and do not belong.

This situation brings to mind the significant mistake made by northern Muslim elites during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo, a mistake from which the North has yet to fully recover.

Obasanjo missed an opportunity for the North to truly embody its “one North, one people” motto, and it was a missed chance. Among all of Nigeria’s former regions, the North was the only region that remained united and unbroken until the regional system was dissolved. Suddenly, due to Obasanjo’s appointments, a northerner who was a Christian was no longer considered a “northerner.” Even a Muslim northerner like Ibrahim Ogohi was not seen as a true “northerner” unless he met certain criteria.

Sanusi himself—and all emirs in the Northwest—have locational, linguistic, and genetic association with Hausa people, just like the Fulani emirs in Nupeland have locational, linguistic, and genetic association with the Nupe people. Ethnic cosmopolitanism is central to the originative imagination of the Dan Fodio caliphate.

The idea that Aminu Bayero is of “Yoruba lineage” because his mother was a Yoruba-speaking Ilorin Fulani princess is misguided, counterproductive identitarian essentialism, that is, the pretense that there is such a thing primordial ethnic purism that is “unblemished” by interconnectedness with other identities.

The claim that Tinubu is protective of Aminu Ado Bayero is particularly ironic because Ado Bayero was one of only a few traditional rulers who had the courage to tell Tinubu that his economic policies were strangulating the people.

In February this year, he told First Lady Remi Tinubu to let her husband know that ordinary people were in pain. “Although, we have several means of communicating to the government on our needs and requests, you are the surest way to tell the President the happenings in the country,” he said. “We get information daily that essential commodities and cost of living are high, and people are suffer.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned newspaper columnistand United States-based Professor of Journalism. ,