ENCORE
It was Martin Luther King Jr, who rightly opined that “a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.”
The above can be said of one of Nigeria’s great patriots Mallam Aminu Kano, on whom we shall continue and conclude today’s discourse.
Pre-Independence and First Republic
In furtherance of nation-building, a new progressive union led by Aminu Kano and composed of progressive-leaning teachers and some radical intellectuals such as Magaji Dambatta, Abba Maikwaru and Bello Ijumu, emerged to fill any vacuum in political radicalism in the region. The members were largely connected together in their opposition to the management style of the native administration in Northern Nigeria. In 1951, the party contested for seats in the Kano primary elections and was fairly successful. However, with the formation of the Northern People’s Congress, Mallam Aminu began to face formidable challenges, especially in two federal elections. In 1954, Aminu lost a federal House of Representatives seat to Maitama Sule and in 1956 Aminu failed to clinch enough votes to win a seat on the Northern Regional Assembly. It wasn’t until the 1959 parliamentary election that he succeeded in gaining a major regional seat. He won the Kano East federal seat as a candidate of NEPU, which was already in alliance with the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). While in the federal House of Representatives, Mallam Aminu was deputy Chief Whip.
After the First Republic was cut short by a coup, Aminu Kano later served in the military government of General Yakubu Gowon as a federal commissioner for health.
Second Republic
After 12 years, the military government, in September 1978, lifted its proscription of political parties. As a devoted politician and human rights activist, during the talks for the formation of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), which subsequently became the ruling party, many people in the party were against the idea for the selection of Mallam Aminu as its presidential candidate because they were of the view that Mallam Aminu may end up taking placards to protest against the government forgetting that he was the President! He eventually became the leader and presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) in the Second Republic. In the following months, five newly formed parties began to emerge: the Nigerian People’s Party, the Unity Party of Nigeria and three others. Among them was the People’s Redemption Party, led by Aminu Kano, Sam Ikoku, and Edward Ikem Okeke. The party leaned towards a populist framework and enjoyed the support of prominent labour leaders such as Michael Imoudu. In 1979, the party presented Aminu Kano as its presidential candidate but he could not muster enough votes to win. Nevertheless, the party won two gubernatorial seats.
Mallam Aminu Kano’s imperishable strides and reformist ideas
After leaving his colonial masters to enter politics, Mallam Aminu’s first mission in politics was to fight external colonial domination and achieve freedom for Nigeria. The second mission was to fight internal oppression so that forced labour by the Emirs and subjugation by local oppressors were stopped. The subsequent local government reforms ensured that traditional rulers were removed from direct administration, as they were removed from controlling the local courts, native police and the prisons. These two objectives of entering politics were accomplished in his lifetime.
His third main mission in politics was the emancipation of women. In practicalising what he preached about women emancipation, he chose Mrs. Odinamadu as his running mate for the presidential election in 1983 under his party, the PRP, the first Nigerian politician to give women such high visibility in public life. He taught his wife how to ride the bicycle. He taught some of his associates how to read and write in English. When he went to Sudan and saw how they integrated Islamic schools with modern education, he came and set up the first Islamiyya school model in Kano. His main concern throughout his life was how to get everyone educated and productive. Mallam Aminu was really a visionary who was ahead of his time. Women in Northern Nigeria did not even have the right to vote during the First Republic. They were not involved in national development efforts and public affairs generally. The 1979 Constitution guaranteed universal adult suffrage for all, regardless of sex, and Mallam Aminu was one of the architects of that constitution. Decades before the Beijing Declaration on Women, Mallam Aminu was already an advocate for women’s full emancipation to enable them actualise their full potential.
Aminu Kano co-founded the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), as a political platform to challenge what he felt was autocratic and feudalistic actions of the Native Northern Government. NEPU was founded on the principle that the poorest of the society, the talakawa, the abandoned and disinherited ones, needed the protective cloak of political leadership. The big men of traditional politics supplied the tanks and battering rams for the rich to rob the destitute, protect those who did not need it, and enrich the wealthy who suffered from excess. It was a party whose leaders and followers experienced all manner of humiliation because they refused to succumb to those who had elected themselves masters of society and assumed the powers of gods.
The potency of his platform was strengthened partly because of his background. Mallam Aminu’s father was an acting Alkali in Kano who came from a background of Islamic clerics, Aminu Kano also brought up Islamic ideas on equity on his campaign trail during the First Republic.
At the time of his death, he left behind only one house, which is now a research centre for Bayero University, Kano; one wife, Hajia Aishatu, who is still alive; one daughter, Hajiya Maryam; one radio, one TV and one farmland.
He had no account anywhere in the world; he left only a few naira under his pillow the day he died – a genuine democratic humanist who practiced what he preached.
An airport, a college and also a major street are named after him in Kano. The house where he lived and died and was buried has been converted to the Centre for Democratic Research and Training, under the Bayero University, Kano. In fact, at his death, Mallam Aminu was described as the Mahatma Gandhi of Nigeria.
Indeed, Prof. Chinua Achebe rightly stated in his tribute that “Nigeria cannot be the same again because Aminu Kano lived here.”
Onnoghen: The allegory of a dysfunctional state (1)
INTRODUCTION
I knew it would come sooner than later. When Justice Walter Onnoghen’s travails started in January, I predicted that the cabal was out to rubbish him. They desired to bespatter him with the paintbrush of shame, odium and obloquy in such a way as to make him visibly unfit for the position of the CJN. They went after his jugular, using the CCB/CCT.
The CCT was unrelenting: it discarded its earlier precedents, ignored court rulings barring it from trying Onnoghen. It was the case of the falcon not hearing the falconer.
The Court of Appeal became complicit. It refused to deliver judgments in Onnoghen’s cases argued before it over six weeks ago. Nigerians watched Onnoghen being lynched. Onnoghen was tried in the media, criminalised, humiliated.
The Bench kept mute (as usual). The Bar became lily-livered. Lawyers whispered in hushed tones. Some even supported Onnoghen’s excoriation as if that massaged their over-bloated egos.
So, Onnoghen, faced with the reality of the situation, knew that his faith had been pre-determined by the cabal, signed, sealed and delivered.
Otherwise, how can NJC hold that it decided not to delve into the allegations relating to assets declaration levelled against Onnoghen because they were “subjudice,” yet, convicted him on the “compelling petitions” written by EFCC and others, when the said petitions remained in the realm of mere unproven allegations? I am yet to be shown a law that makes allegations or suspicion, no matter how grave, a conviction against a citizen of Nigeria, without arraignment, trial or due process.
It was simply a case of working from the question to the answer.
So, Onnoghen did the reasonable thing under the circumstances. He invoked section 306(1) of the Constitution. He resigned.
The section provides as follows:
“Save as otherwise provided in this section, any person who is appointed, elected or otherwise selected to any office established by this Constitution may resign from that office by writing under his hand addressed to the authority or person by whom he was appointed, elected or selected. (2) The resignation of any person from any office established by this Constitution shall take effect when the writing signifying the resignation is received by the authority or person to whom it is addressed or by any person authorised by that authority or person to receive it.”
By resigning, Onnoghen removed the wind from the sails of his traducers. He shamed them. He disallowed them from humiliating him to the last, dragging his name further in the mud.
Those who are guffawing and backslapping each other should bury their heads in shame. Onnoghen even saved the spin doctors in the Presidency from bothering about the nightmare of the impossibility of garnering two-third majority votes of a rabidly independent Senate to remove Onnoghen. That would have been the eighth wonder of the world. This is because of the provisions of Section 292 (1) of the 1999 Constitution, which state:
“A judicial officer shall not be removed from his office or appointment before his age of retirement except in the following circumstances – (a) in the case of – (i) Chief Justice of Nigeria… by the President acting on an address supported by two-third majority of the Senate.”
To be sure, Onnoghen, who was suspended from office on January 25, 2019, had pointedly accused the EFCC of levelling “malicious and speculative” allegations against him, concerning alleged car and monetary gifts, some as far back as 2008! It did not matter to Onnoghen’s traducers that there was no way Onnoghen could receive gifts to pervert the course of justice in two cases (mentioned by the EFCC) that involved eminent Justices such as Musa Dattijo Muhammad, Clara Bata Ogunbiyi, Kudirat Motonmori Kekere-Ekun, Ejembi Eko, Sidi Bage, Katsina-Alu (then CJN), Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad (Acting CJN), John Afolabi Fabiyi, Olufunlola Adekeye, Suleiman Galadinma and Bode Rhodes-Vivor.
(To be concluded next week)
Thought for the week
“The government should do its job. The government’s job is, in fact, to run the country, to manage the country, to govern the country. And governance is an important thing, not application where it suits one so, to micro control where it suits them on the other hand.”
–(Ratan Tata).