Tope Adeboboye
Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero’s story will, without a doubt, make an interesting read. A son to the 13th Emir of Kano, Alhaji Bayero was yesterday announced as successor to the deposed Mallam Muhammad Sanusi 11 who has since been banished from the city.
Until his appointment as new Emir of Kano, yesterday, Alhaji Bayero was Emir of the newly created Bichi Emirate in Kano State.
In January 2009, the reporter had an encounter with the charismatic royal at his palace in Kano. He was then the Sarkin Dawakin Tsakar Gida in Kano and District Head of Dala.
At 23, he had obtained a first degree in Mass Communications and Political Science from the Bayero University, Kano, and was undergoing the mandatory one-year youth service at the NTA, Makurdi. Two years later, between 1986 and 1987, Alhaji Bayero was at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Oakland, California, in the United States, studying hard to become a pilot. By 1988, the prince was helping Kabo Air ferry passengers from Kano to Lagos and other cities. But in 1990, at the relative age of 29, he had abandoned both journalism and piloting. He headed back to Kano, got married and became the district head of Dala, Nigeria’s largest local government area. Welcome to the world of Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, son of the Kano monarch, a trained journalist and pilot, and Sarkin Dawakin Tsakar Gida in Kano.
As a pilot, he literally controlled the lives of his passengers. Far up in the firmament, thousands of feet away from the earth, Aminu Ado Bayero ferried hundreds of passengers between Lagos and Kano several times in a week. He loved flying with a passion and he thought he would remain a pilot for life. But fate had other plans.
“Interestingly, I never wanted to be a pilot,” confessed the personable prince in his palace in Kano. “All I wanted to do was journalism. That was why I studied Mass Communications at BUK. And that was why I had my youth service at the NTA. I was with the production unit, though my specialty was in the print. So when I came back, I even applied to work with The Triumph newspaper. But when I was about to get the job, the owner of Kabo Air, who is a close associate of my dad, said he wanted to send people abroad to undergo a flying course. He contacted my dad and my dad said he should contact me to know if I was interested. That was how I went into aviation. It wasn’t planned. But that was my destiny.”
But his destiny, apparently, wasn’t restricted to just steering passenger jets in the sky and landing them without any mishap. The handsome prince had barely spent a few years with Kabo Air when he was summoned back home to take up more responsibilities within the prestigious Kano traditional institution. His dad and emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, invited the youthful prince home and asked if he would love to become a district head.
And what was his response, the reporter enquired. And he promptly replied: “When my dad the emir asked me to go and think about it, I said, Your Highness, I don’t have to go and think about it. I will do whatever you want.”
So the young man abandoned the prestigious diploma he obtained at Oakland as well as his calling as a pilot and headed back to Kano. There, in 1990, he took a wife and took up the headship of Dala District.
The perks of the office of the district head must be awesomely alluring for him to dump aviation totally, you interjected. Maybe not, he informed.
“Let me give you an example,” he began. “As a pilot, maybe I am flying everyday and I’m paid N5,000 a day as allowance. But when my father asked me to come and be a district head, I had to forfeit all of that and start working in the civil service. Now, I’m in the civil service career. So when you talk of the benefit, especially the financial benefit, maybe I could have stayed where I was.”
But there were other attractions, you suggested. He agreed. Hear him:
“The thing that inspired me was, first and foremost, I was born into this family. My father, my grandfathers and great-grandfathers, about 13 of them, were all emirs. And certainly, as the emir, he’s cannot be all over the place. My dad was a career diploma when he was drafted to become the emir. So first and foremost, this is something that you were born into. And if you run away from it, you are saying, let it be dead. Secondly, I look at it as serving my people. For instance, I was a pilot. Everyday, I will take a hundred passengers from Kano to Lagos and from there I will carry them back. Yes, I’m serving them. But come to think of it, I’m a district head now. I have over a million people in my district and everybody is entitled to come and meet me whenever there is a problem or they think they need my attention about something. If something good comes, they come to me, or if it’s something bad, they still come to me. So I feel it’s still serving them in a wider perspective. Once you are born into this you become a custodian of the tradition and religion. That is the first.
“Secondly, there is that motivation in serving the people. A lot of people will prefer that they bring their dispute to you instead of going to the normal conventional court. If two people are having a dispute in my district, I will bring you here and sit you down and bring elders here. Each of you will say your case and I will settle it for you here amicably. In a conventional court, it might drag for months and years.”
After being a journalist, a pilot and a district head, what would the prince want again from life? He paused. Then he spoke. “I’m a son of the emir. My great grandfathers were emirs. The ultimate ambition is to one day become an emir myself. So my prayer is that I will succeed my father as the emir.”
Well, that wish has been granted, as Alhaji Bayero has been named as new Emir of Kano.