Creating 5 Emirates In Kano Was An Assault On The System

The Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has submitted that it was an aberration for former Governor Abdullahi Ganduje to have created five Emirates in Kano.

According to him, the action was an assault on an entire system.

Speaking during a recent interview with some select journalists in Kano, Sanusi, who was recently reinstated as the sole Emir of Kano by Governor Abba Yusuf, said what is going on in Kano is not about him as a person, but about It is not about the history and culture of the people of Kano.

He argued that Ganduje by his action, attempted to create something out of nothing, thereby distorting an entire system.

The traditional ruler said Kano existed before the creation of Nigeria, and that is why no law would be found in the Nigerian constitution that created the Kano emirate. He therefore questioned how the Kano State House of Assembly got the constitutional right to amend something that was not created by the Constitution and does not even exist in the Constitution.

In his words: “I am making this point so you understand that this is not about me versus somebody. This was an entire assault on a system. Even if you want to do it, if it has been well-motivated, if the people of Rano, or the other people want an emirate and the state government says they want to, there is a way of doing it. You sit down, ask who the ruling families are, and look at the history. This is how you do it, this is the process, and you do it in line with our culture and tradition.

“The Kano emirate was not created by the Nigerian constitution. The emirate existed before Nigeria. The Kano emirate existed before the Sokoto Jihad. Even Uthman Danfodio did not create the emirate. All that happened was that some of his disciples waged a Jihad in Kano and conquered Kano, but Kano was in existence.

“You will never find a law in the Nigerian constitution that created the Kano emirate. So, how does a State Assembly get the constitutional right to amend something that was not created by the Constitution and does not even exist in the Constitution? The laws you will see are emir’s appointment and deposition law. It already presumes that there is an emirate, but how do you appoint an Emir? Therefore, when he wanted to create these emirates, he could not find the laws to amend. He started by amending the emir’s appointment and devolution law, which the court struck down.

“So, he had to do something out of nothing and created emirates, new emirates that never existed. Something called a Kano emirate with eight local governments has not existed in our 1000 years of history. The same thing with the Bichi emirate, none of them existed in 1000 years of history. A new governor comes and says this is an attack on our system and an attack on our collective history. We have to deal with it.

“That is all that happened. It was not targeted at any individual, at any family, at any person.”