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Home Arts

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi: Reflections of an intellectual gadfly

11th June 2021
in Arts, Literary Review
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Sanusi Lamido Sanusi: Reflections of an intellectual gadfly
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By Henry Akubuiro

For the Good of the Nation, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Alfa Books, 2021, pp. 509

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi comes across as an intellectual gadfly dancing on  the scrotum of a fiendish predator. He is at home with dialectics, and controversies always trail his profuse mental energy. At fora, on the pages of newspapers and in interviews, Sanusi has demonstrated a great capacity as a public intellectual. This book, For the Good of the Nation, took ten years to berth, and it’s a bountiful harvest. 

A book in five parts, it is a collection of essays presented to the public or written at various times, addressing a myriad of issues, ranging from politics, polity, Islam, identity, history and nationhood. Where topical issues are flawed by ideologues, Sanusi attempts to illuminate them with compelling facts. He plays the devil’s advocate sometimes. Never a fundamentalist, he seeks to salvage Islam from cloyed perspectives and defends its application when righteous. One thing that runs through this book, needless to say, is his firm belief in the pan Nigerian project, which explains why he challenges orthodoxies that encourage ethnic subservience, and mapping out strategies to save the floundering ship. Sanusi, hence, lends himself to those species that Albert Einstein had in mind when he said, “Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”

In his Foreword to the book, Nasir El-Rai, the current Governor of Kaduna State, offers the book to “anyone that desires to learn the plain truth about our country, its contradictions and the ways out of our national quagmire”. Professor Pius Adesanmi of blessed memory, in the introductory note, lauds that “it’s one thinker’s attempt to evolve heuristic paradigms for engaging the many fault lines that have beggared  every effort to forge a unified postcolonial nation.”

Both El-Rufai and Adesanmi scored a bull’s eye here. Readers interested in Nigerian political crises would find the first part of the book useful, as Sanusi dissects Identity, Politics & Democracy. Today, the drumbeat of restructuring has become frenetic. In “Issues in Restructuring Corporate Nigeria”, a 1999 piece, Sanusi addresses the need to restructure the Nigerian superstructure, delineating the individual parts and the nature of limits of their connectivity, its objective and subjective variables. Sanusi argues that the northern bourgeoisie and the Yoruba bourgeoisie have exacted their pound of flesh from the Igbo since the end of the Civil War, and, “If this issue is not addressed immediately, no conference will solve Nigeria’s problems”. Sanusi, a Muslim Fulani, is “convinced that we tend to exegerrate our differences for selfish ends…” (p. 25).

Still in this first section, Sanusi treats values and identity in the Muslim North, the islamisation of politics and the politicisation of Islam, as well as Muslim leaders and their myth of marginalisation. He even rises in defence of Father Mathew Kukah when he was chastised by fellow Muslims. Sanusi is flummoxed by ethnic bigotry and the subversion of democracy. Flip over to page 80-87 for a dialogue with a critic, which is Sanusi’s open sesame to his worldview —one that clarifies erroneous misconceptions about him, setting a prism for us to see him better. 

The politics of Shari’ah and its acrimonies when it was introduced in Zamfara and other northern states at the turn of the new millenium  thereafter got Sanusi talking in the second part of the book —Reflections on Shari’ah. It’s a section non-Muslims would find revelatory, too, as Sanusi talks about Shari’ah, Islam in Northern Nigeria, justice and poverty in the region. Sanusi xrays the stereotype of the northern Muslim in Nigeria as a never-do-well and charts a new part for the Ulama to mobilise the citizens towards economic empowerment. 

In the third part of the book, Sanusi addresses gender related issues, especially as it affects women in Muslim, taking into account  comparative jurispudence. He attempts to answers questions bordering on class and gender as they relates to the political economy of Shari’ah, plus sex, pregnancy and the Muslim law.

Sanusi, in the fourth section, delves extensively into the realm of Islamic theology and philosophy. He deconstructs revolutionary Islam and Nigerian democracy, and explains succinctly the botherline of Muslim communities living in a secular nation, among others. 

In the concluding part (interviews), the 14th Emir of Kano and former CBN governor, says on the way forward for Nigeria:”… we need to address those issues that keep us back… So, engaging the moment is critical, rather than spending time thinking about the future without doing anything concrete at the moment.” For the Good of the Nation is a must-read for all. 

Rapheal

Rapheal

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Comments 1

  1. Dr Uche Kalu says:
    1 year ago

    The basic fact of the matter here is that Islam is indeed a crackpot
    religion of peace,which has no place whatsoever in our 21st century.
    Prophet Mohammed the founder of the Religion of Islam was a bandit,
    a mass murderer, a paedophile, a terrorist and indeed a very very bad
    man to have been a Prophet of an Omnipotent, an Omnipresent , an
    Omniscient and an Omnivolent God like our Christian God of Love.
    No never!
    The tents of Islam on Dar- Al- Islam,which clearly defines a system in
    which no other system is tolerated does make our harmonious
    cohabitation with our Hausa/Fulani Compatriots absolutely impossible.
    The current Hobbessian State of Nature in the country is a living
    testimony thereof.
    Pope Benedick XVl in qouting the 14th Century Byzantine Emperor
    Manuel Constantine Paleologos wrote,” Show me just what Prophet
    Mohammed brought that was new,and there you will find things only
    evil and inhuman such as the command to spread by sword the faith he
    preached .”
    Emperor Constantin Paleologos who lost Constantinople, the Capital of
    his Byzantine Empire to the Uthman Turks simply referred to the muslims
    as beasts.
    He warned all Christians of the then world that they would be committing suicide by not confronting the beasts.
    The Emperor called on men of stout heart to hold at bay the invading dumb brutes,by thrushing their spears and sword into them,so that they the beasts
    will know that they are fighting not against their own kind but against the masters of the animals ( the muslims).
    Sir Wiston Churchill on Islam,was reported saying,qoute,” How dreadful are
    the curse that Mohammed lays on his votaries!
    Besides the fanatical frenzy,which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
    in a dog,there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.
    The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident has its slovenly
    system of agriculture,sluggish method of commerce,insecurity of property
    exist where the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
    The degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement the
    next of its dignity and sanctity.
    The fact that Mohammedan law,every woman must belong to some man
    as his absolut property either as a child or wife or concubine must delay the
    extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be great power
    among men.
    Individual muslim may show splendid quality- but the influence of the
    religion of Islam paralyses the moral develpment of those who follow it.
    No stronger retrograde force exist in the world.
    Far from being moribund Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytsing
    faith. It has alreay spread throughout Central Africa raising fearless worriors
    at every steps and here it has not the security, is not sheltered in the Science
    against which it had vainly struggled anaigst etc etc..” unquote.
    The basis for the continued togetherness of the Native Nigerians with those barbaric, bellicose and murderous Niltotic Troglodytes,the Fulanis and their willing tools,the Hausa/Kanuri muslim mongrels is no longer possible.
    The time has come for us Nigerians to go our fucking separate ways in
    peace than resort to yet another civil war, because the muslims can’t live
    and let live.
    Since after the Amalgamation of 1914,which created Nigeria as a country,
    our Fulani Compatriots and their Hausa/Kanuri willing -tools have
    continuously and consistently been washing our lands , forests, mountains,
    rivers and streams with the innocent blood of our Kwa/Bantu people.
    Out there are their Jihadist Killer Squads: the Ansaru,Boko Haram, Fulani
    Killer Herdsmen and ISWAP waging an incipient war of genocide against us
    Native Nigerians.
    How long must we continue to be folding our arms and watch the ongoing
    daily pogroms and ethnic cleansings of our fellow native Nigerians from
    their ancestral lands by the aliens Fulanis?
    Enough is enough ojare!
    Nigeria We Hail Thee.Lol!
    No the status quo ante bellum!!
    Down with Hausa/Fulani Islamic Hegemony!!!

    Reply

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