Letter to Their Royal Highnesses

By

Mahdi Shehu

shehuks@yahoo.com

 

 

Very much unlike certain individuals who assume a role or leadership out of fear and against “their personal wish and desire “I am writing this letter believing in each and every phrase I inscribe and insisting that it is not only timely and expedient to do so, particularly now, but firmly convinced that it is long overdue.

 

  As a young child in the very early sixties, then in my primary school, I could have, under no duress, but on my own volition, swore that, my Emir then, Late Alh. Usman Nagogo was next to God either out of ignorance or owing to young age or both. As a young school boy that was my perception of him. Perhaps owing to the way we watch keenly how our seniors, our parents, grand parents etc   revere him so much. Of course in addition to his reserve nature. Not given to public functions unless those that are consistent with his status and those held high by his subjects where his presence is epicentral and non-negotiable. The easiest and cheapest way one could catch his glimpses is on every Friday at the mosque wh ere he happens to be as long as he is in town.

 

Many school children of my age that time were very much willing to defy chilly cold of hamattan or scotching heat of the sun or drops of rainfall to line up the one lane township road of Katsina province then, in our green while green school uniforms, holding the flag of Nigeria and waving it to the Emir when passing through our streets on his way out of town and back. Substantial parts of my experiences are what obtained in different emirates of that period.

 

Tracing your history and that of the Institution you represent from ancient antiquity makes very interesting reading. Your great grand parents were people  of outstanding courage, warriors of  high repute and people with sufficient fear of God, consideration for their subjects plight and most importantly always conscious of the transient nature of life itself and hence fearful of the inevitable date. They maintained relatively decent life style capable of making them to adapt to changing situations and circumstances. They  become focused on preaching to their subjects on the basic issues of proper understanding of TAUHEED (oneni ness of God), correct performance of the routine acts of worship, teaching Islamic standards of behavior and placing emphasis on the Sunnah as opposed  to the Bidi’a which due largely to prevailing ignorance that had infested numerous acts of worship and behavior. But even then there were some royal fathers whose primary aim was not service to God and people.

 

Your highnesses, most of your multitudes that are being addressed as royal fathers, including the older ones among you alive, could not assume the role of your earlier and much earlier predecessors because you were not cut and prepared for that. Mainly because you were not sufficiently and relevantly equipped and prepared with the required Islamic knowledge and scholarship necessarily needed for that all important assignment of presiding over and managing people and their resources. Your predecessors might have tried impacting you that discipline but for some certain reasons you could not be molded to serve that purpose.

 

Unlike your great grant parents, who were both Emirs, Imams and Khadis (Judges) owing to their vast knowledge, fear of  Allah (S.W.A) and aspiration for heavenly kingdom, most of you elected and opted for the worldly kingdom while allowing the heavenly kingdom to presumptuous, chances, guesses and empty wishful aspirations. This is clearly evident from your preferences for fashion and competition in cars, horses, castles and frequent foreign trips even on flimsy excuses. The result is that majority of you consciously substituted your Royalty for this world and your subjects gradually become confident that you have derailed.

 

This pathetic derailment did not start from you but you completed the circle to a point beyond comment. One may recall so many instances but the following might suffice to give an insight into how old royalty has been thrown to the dogs. In Fairness to some of you and painfully too you thought and had a mistaken belief that to betray the subjects is part of royalty.  In the sixteenth century there lived an Emir in Katsina, called Sarkin Katsina Yusuf who was a man of outstanding courage and unique warrior of his time. He fell out with his subjects because he was stealing their chickens which made the subjects to stone him out of Katsina town never to return till today.

 

Most of you Sirs swallowed your destruction and debasement pills long ago and it has since started germinating. When public funds, meant for the welfare the people were being dolled out to you, you accepted with gratitude even though, most of you did expend the said monies in the best interest of your subjects. But you saw such funds as a replacement of the exclusive treasury you use to control in the past uninterrupted. Very recent examples may suffice here:

 

In 1987, Col. Garba Duba as he then was decreed as the sole administrator of Sokoto state (Comprising the present Sokoto, Zamfara and kebbi states) that all Local governments then were to contribute seven (7%) of their monthly statutory allocations to the Emirate councils. In march 1995, the Late military administrator of Kano state, Col Abdullhi Wase, himself the son of a first class Emir in  Plateau state ordered the federal pay officer in Kano to deduct three (3%)  directly from the statutory allocations of all the local governments in Kano state for the upkeep of the Kano Emirate Council.

 

By the end of 1996, 5% deduction from local government monthly allocation took a national character and dimension after it was recommended by the so called committee of traditional rulers and leaders of thought headed by Lt. General J.T Useni. From 1996 to May 1999 emirates and other traditional councils in the country had a field day. Within that period Katsina Emirate collected the sum of N288 million (an average of N8 Million per month) Kaduna N252 million, Kwara N 162million, Sokoto N 198 million, Kebbi N 102 million, Jigawa N 126m. Gombe   N 63 million, Nassarawa N 63 million, Kwara N 91 million, Kogi N 103 million, Niger N 137 million, Jigawa N143 million. These figures from the office of the federal Accountant general indicated that huge sums of monies were channeled to all the Northern Emirate councils with nothing to show for it. Worst of all we never heard for ones that they have submitted their emirates annual audited accounts talk less of seeing anything on the ground.

Money in the custody and under the trust of pubic officers belongs to all of us. When such monies are appropriated by either the Local, State, or Federal Governments, whether under military or civilian dispensation, they are so appropriated for definitive purposes - societal human and physical development. Those appropriating such monies are not giving out their personal monies. Such monies must therefore be expended for the purposes they are meant for through due, open, prudent and transparent process and must be accounted for as at and when due. Audited accounts of such monies must be prepared and made public for stakeholders viewing, claims and objections. In this period of value for money Audit, all Audited transactions must of necessity b e attached to one activity or the other.

 

The public is gradually becoming aware that when monies meant for the development of the society are rightly or wrongly appropriated to your institution it is as good as dead monies because neither would their impact be felt largely, nor are they seen in physical manifestations and worst of all they are not accounted for. You may not believe it, but the truth is that this lack of financial transparency and your ignorance or refusal to properly account for people’s monies that find their ways to your till is part of many reasons why your influence is fast eroding, your integrity being questioned even by people close to you and your status gradually declining.

 

Your royal Highnesses, some of you go out of their ways to do very un-royal things and yet expect that people will still continue to hold you in high esteem. You cannot have your cake and eat it alone. It is either you conduct yourself with royal dignity or you derail at the cost of your good will. There is no mid-course to it. For example, on 19th February 2003, several serial Bank drafts were prepared by one of the commercial Banks along Ahmadu Bello way Kaduna in the names of very senior and other prominent Royal Highnesses. The said drafts emanated from the current account of one of the powerful politicians currently holding a prominent public office. The amounts on the grafts were colossal. It was not until April 3rd 2003 that the Maji dadi of one of you went round some of your houses distributing those drafts on the instruction of one of your oldest in the name of a gift from that politician.

 

Before April 14th 2003, all except four (out of 84 serial drafts) had been cashed at various branches of the Bank nation Wide. Initially, one was cautious not to make blanket interpretation of the so-called gift but the broad day light robbery of peoples mandate during the April 19th 2003 (April fool election) election and the manner most of you opted and elected to react and conduct your selves gave further definition of those d rafts most of you cashed through proxies just before the April 19th rape an Democracy. Those monies were meant to enlist your silence and look the other side when truth was being substituted with falsehood, when your subjects with dissenting views are being assaulted and when lies are being peddled in wholesale and retail measures.

 

Painfully, you did not stay there; you went further to Aso rock and state government houses to congratulate “the winners” as a away of showing your appreciation and gratitude for the April 3rd cash gift through bank drafts. By this highly avoidable blunder and summersault, which saw you looking the other side, turning the other cheek and “joining them” because you refused to beat them, you finally nailed your royalty coffin thereby wittingly or unwittingly compromised the good things associated with your self acclaimed exalted and relevant institution. No wonder progressive elements of the then NEPA, NEPU, PRP, UPGA MBPU etc. always try to distance themselves from your institution having v ery well understood your capacity.  

 

I am pretty sure that by now you must be fully aware that a lot many of what you proudly call your subjects have parted ways with you. You stand millions of kilometres away. Not only because you abandoned them at the dearest time they needed you (May 1999 to date) but by watching you as you openly romance with an illegal, questionable and fraudulent Federal and certain State governments, thereby contributing in no small way in destroying all the essential fabrics of Nigeria and Nigerians for just a worldly consideration, which portrayed and or brought out your cowardice and or greed, insensitivity or naivety in clear colours.

 

There is no better way to see your cowardice or naivety than through very recent examples. You have been watching for the past 6 years how Obasanjo and this selected Yoruba kinsmen keep on using their judiciary to keep under lock and key, prominent Northern military officer’s Al-mustapha, Bamaiyi, Danbaba etc. on flimsy grounds and fictitious allegations without putting any reasonable effort to see them out, more so when most of you benefited from particularly Al-mustapha who made it possible for most of you to see his late Master Gen. Abacha for one personal problem or the other. Before your very eyes, Chief Omesore, a prime suspect in the murder of Chief Bola Ige is not only a free man today but is part of the Senators who make laws for Nigeria today.

 

Consider the way your counter parts put in all their efforts in ensuring that none of their sons or daughters is persecuted, frustrated or insulted by the Obasanjo government. You may recall your conspiracy of silence when Salisu Buhari was at the receiving end and the rumblings of your counter parts when Bola Tinibu’s case (Toronto credentials) became public. Salisu Buhari lost out (justifiably) and Tinibu stayed put and even re-emerged for the second term. See also how your same counter parts stood firmly behind the former disgraced Inspector General of Police, Tafa Bologun. Very recently all of them visited Obasanjo at the villa to put in a word on behalf of the embattled Tafa Bologun. And believe me, so long as Mr. Obasanjo remains on the helm of affairs of Nigeria, for that long Tafa Bologun might remain a free man.

 

Your other silent characterizations soon came to light when some of you were (as part of the political patronage) appointed as state Amirul-Hajj’s or made part of the Federal entourage. All members of your close families became part of those to enjoy free pilgrimage with preferential treatments at all stages. Only for you to come back home and write a Hajj report, where in you claim successful completion when in reality you only succeeded in travelling to Mecca with members of your close families at government’s expense in Allah’s name.

 

Most of you out rightly refused to associate yourselves or even identify with the Shariah project because you were afraid what will become of your chair and turban, knowing fully well that successful implementation of Shariah will automatically checkmate all your silent excesses and derailments.

 

Just take an up to date inventory of your fleet of vehicles, mostly purchased from the tax payers money and delivered to you in “appreciation” and contrast it with the dwindling living standard of those people you call your subjects and it will be clearer to why most people don’t care whether your institution survives the current onslaught or not.  This is against the backgrounds that have seen you constantly asking and bargaining for constitutional role. You may need to be reminded that in a true democracy, public offices are not given as gift rather if you are serious about having a constitutional role for your institution, you should be ready to join any of the registered political parties and I will recommend PDP for those who have not yet joined it. Test your popularity in any of the next coming elections and you will discover the real 21st Century status of your institution in the eyes of the public.

 

It is not by a share chance or coincidence that your fathers and their fathers hardly knew what government houses looked like or how to make an appointment to see someone at either the Dodan Barracks, Aguda House, or Aso Villa.  Neither do they visit private homes. It was a matter of principles and personal choice.  This makes it the more that you should properly look inward with the view of changing your ways or mending your approaches before you are reinvented by power drunken political upstarts.

 

These and many others of your despicable actions made it possible for even local government chairmen and Governor’s with questionable mandates to summon you to government house at will where you spend hours waiting for them because they have paid the price for the music and must therefore dictate the tune 

 

 

In the circumstance, your subjects have no option left to them than to continue insinuating that their royal fathers are now marooned in politics. Hence are politically bias because some of you are part of the biggest beneficiaries of the current political dispensation and they can hardly be faulted in thinking that way. One must conclude that if such are the royal fathers then God save the subjects. And if such is the thinking of the subjects then God save the royal fathers. And if that is what democracy is all about (institutional neutralisation and destruction) then God save democracy and God save Nigerians. Amen.

 

Mahdi Shehu

shehuks@yahoo.com

mahdi@wwlkad.com