PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

A Word For The Emir Of Borgu

It is nearly three years ago this month when I wrote a piece on the Borgu emirship tussle, a piece that stirred the hornet’s nest in Niger state. The emirship tussle started in February 2000 following the death of Alhaji Musa Mohammed Kigera III, as the emir. In keeping with the tradition of the emirate, its kingmakers met shortly after Kigera’s death to select a new emir. At that time only three of the five kingmakers were alive. They unanimously chose Alhaji Halliru Dantoro from a list of 12 contestants. Dantoro was Kigera’s younger brother from the same mother.

For some strange reasons, the Niger State Government rejected the kingmakers’ choice. One reason it gave was that there were only three surviving kingmakers whereas in the history of Borgu no fewer than the full compliment of the kingmakers ever chose an emir.

This was rather unconvincing because under the Borgu native law and custom, three kingmakers including the Baakarabonde, their head who also holds a veto in the selection process, form a quorum. The second reason the government gave was that the kingmakers tied Governor Abdulkadir Kure’s hands by sending him only one name. This too was unconvincing as no law said the kingmakers must send more than one name to the governor.

After rejecting Dantoro, the governor expanded the kingmakers list through executive fiat. He then ordered a fresh selection. Dantoro quickly went to court and obtained a stay of execution order. The kingmakers, with the apparent backing of the government, ignored the order and went ahead with their selection. This time they picked two names, still with Dantoro on top of the list. Their second choice was Alhaji Isiyaku Musa Jikantoro, Dantoro’s nephew, and at the time a commissioner in Kure’s cabinet. Not surprisingly Kure picked Jikantoro. Again, not surprisingly, Dantoro went to court to challenge his rejection and replacement by Jikantoro.

For over two years the case dragged its way through the courts until finally – well almost finally – the Federal Court of Appeal in Suleja under Justice Muntaqa Coomassie ruled in favour of Dantoro. Predictably the Niger State government appealed to the Supreme Court.

It was before this appeal that I wrote my article which ruffled not a few feathers in Niger state. In the article I had pleaded with the state not to drag matters any further for the sake of peace in the state and in the interest of the people of Borgu.

“The ruling of the Federal Court of Appeal under Justice Coomassie”, I said, “shows quite clearly that the amendment of the rules of the game by executive fiat is unsustainable. The Niger state government should eat humble pie and not drag the matter any further. It should, for God’s sake and for the sake of peace and harmony in Borgu and in Niger State, accept the choice of Senator Halliru Dantoro as the Emir of Borgu.”

The government ignored my humble plea and went ahead to appeal to the Supreme Court. The appeal was pending when I took a journalist colleague of mine who works in Lagos from Abuja Airport to Minna to keep an appointment with General Ibrahim Babangida. The plan was for me to drop him off at Babangida’s residence and return to Abuja to attend to my own businesses. Unfortunately – or was it fortunately? – Babangida traveled unexpectedly that morning but was expected back later in the day.

To kill time while awaiting Babangida’s return, I suggested to my friend that we go to Government House for a chance meeting with Kure whom he had never met. Luckily the governor was in town and luckily he quickly granted us an audience.

For nearly two hours Kure took time to explain to my friend and me how he had become such a misunderstood governor among many Nigerlites, especially those of us in so-called diaspora. The case of the emir of Borgu took much of those two odd hours. Of all the things people have said about his rejection of Dantoro as emir, he said, none has pained him as the suggestion that he was acting at the behest of Babangida. “Wallahi, tallahi,” he said repeatedly “kuna kwasan alhakin Babangida” meaning those of us insinuating that he took orders from Babangida over the Borgu affair were offending God, because we were lying against Babangida.

His main reason for rejecting Dantoro, he said, was that Dantoro had shown himself as unworthy of the leadership his people by holding such a huge grudge against his elder brother, the late Kigera, that they were never on talking terms. Dantoro, he said, rejected every attempt to reconcile him with his elder brother who, on his part was more than willing for such reconciliation. The Qur’an, he said, was clear about such an attitude because it said any Muslim who, for whatever reason, refused to speak to his brother Muslim for three days running, “is not one of us”. He had other reasons for rejecting Dantoro, he said, but none had anything to do with speculations about why the relationship between Dantoro and Babangida had gone sour years after Babangida, as military president, moved Borgu emirate out of Kwara State into Niger.

At the end of our conversation, Kure gave myself and my friend a pledge. He swore by Allah and said that if Niger state loses its appeal, he will swear in Dantoro as emir the following day. About one year later the state lost its case. Kure, to his eternal credit, kept his word.

When this happened, I said to myself, well, well, all’s well that ends well. For months after this development I tried but could not reach Kure to congratulate and thank him for keeping his word. The postponement nearly three weeks ago of the formal installation of Dantoro as emir suggests that my congratulations and thanks would have been premature.

This time, however, it seems to me that the emir himself is essentially to blame for keeping alive a crisis which, like a bad dream, has simply refused to go away. Not only has the crisis refused to go away, this time, it seems to have grown from a crisis local to Niger State into a huge national controversy involving at least three governors – those of Lagos, Delta, and Adamawa states – and the vice-president and even the president himself.

The latest twist in the crisis surfaced when, barely three days to Dantoro’s formal installation on February 19, the Niger State government announced that it had cancelled it and gave no new date. Shortly after that it sent in an amendment bill to the State House of Assembly for the deposition and appointment of emir of Borgu. The bill received a record hearing and was passed into law in next to no time.

The postponement of Dantoro’s installation was not the first in the state. That of the current Etsu Nupe, the chairman of the State’s Council of Chiefs, was postponed thrice while that of the Etsu of Lapai, the governor’s home town, was postponed twice. However, that of Borgu was the first time the executive would seek an amendment of the law appointing and deposing an emir in the state. This showed quite clearly that there was more to the postponement of Dantoro’s installation than met the eye.

The first sign that there was trouble in store for Dantoro was a story in the Sunday Tribune of February 13, titled “Tinubu, Ibori, Boni consolidate on New Party”. According to the story the three governors were to use the turbanning of Lagos State governor, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as Jagaban Borgu, as a cover to review their plan to form a new party that would challenge the ruling PDP in the light of the well-known mutual hostility between President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar, an hostility which has fueled speculations that Obasanjo was dead set against handing over power to his deputy in 2007.

According to Sunday Tribune, Tinubu’s turbanning was also to provide cover for Atiku Abubakar to make an in-road into Niger state as the home-state of General Babangida, who, like the Vice-President, is widely believed to have his eye on the presidency in 2007.

Three days after this story, Dele Alake, Tinubu’s Commissioner for Information and Strategy, took out full page adverts in several newspapers to dismiss Tribune’s story as false. “”The insinuation that Asiwaju Tinubu would use the chieftaincy event to send shockwaves to the political machinery of the PDP or any group or any individual in Niger state”, said Alake, “is simply childish”.

Apparently the Niger State Government did not think the matter was childish. First, said sources close to the governor, the emir did not inform Kure he was inviting his Lagos, Delta and Adamawa counterparts for his installation, much less inform Kure he would turban Tinubu as the Jagaban Borgu the day after his installation. Kure got to know only after Tinubu called him to ask for accommodation.

Second, Dantoro had reportedly planned to construct a royal box at the installation ground in which, apart from himself and the governor, only five of the invited royal fathers would sit. These were the Sultan, the Ooni of Ife, the Shehu of Borno, the Alafin of Oyo and the Etsu Nupe, as the chairman of the Niger State Council of Chiefs. This arrangement would have confronted both Niger State and the Etsu Nupe with a protocol nightmare, for the order of precedence in the old North puts the emirs of Gwandu, Kano, Bauchi, the Lamido of Adamawa and the emirs of Katsina and Zaria ahead of the Etsu Nupe, in that order. And emirs do not take a breach of this protocol lightly even though there is not much they can do about such a breach should it occur.

These alleged infractions of the emir, however, were merely the last straw to break the camel’s back. Long before then the governor had queried the emir for traveling locally and abroad without as much as informing the chairman of his local government or the governor, never mind seeking their permission. Kure had also queried him for flying the national flag on his car and using the national coat of arms on both his car and his letter-head, in breach of the law. Again, he was alleged to have used the state allocations to his emirate to renovate his private residence rather than the palace. Worst of all, a reply to a letter he had allegedly written to the Vice-President assuring him that he will deliver his emirate to the vice-president in 2007 in appreciation of the vice-president’s support in his fight to become emir, somehow found its way into the governor’s hands.

Some or all of these allegations may or may not be true but speaking to several Nigerlites, including some of those sympathetic to Dantoro, it seems to me that he does not want to let bygones be bygones. Because he has become emir inspite of the state government and inpsite of the hostility of some of the movers and shakers of Niger state, he seems to believe he will also survive as emir inpsite of them all. Therefore, rather than try and mend fences, he seemed to delight in antagonizing just about everyone who opposed his emirship. For example, he has often been heard to boast that many an emir have seen the back of governors who challenged their authority, and if Kure thought he would be an exception, he would need to think again, especially since he has only two odd years left as governor. Dantoro as a very experienced politician should know that such boastfulness is not an attribute of good leadership.

Again since becoming emir, he has not stretched a hand of friendship and reconciliation to his relations in the rival camp, including the children of his predecessor. Instead, one of his first acts as emir was to sack those of them working in the emirate council including the secretary of the council. Again, Dantoro surely knows that vindictiveness, like boastfulness, is not an attribute of good leadership.

Here Dantoro can obviously borrow a leaf from Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim, the Emir of Suleja, who became emir inspite of implacable opposition from the Suleja kingmakers. Unlike Dantoro, Alhaji Awwal had the support of government and would therefore not have needed to placate the local opposition. That, however, would have been unwise. He has therefore done everything possible to reconcile with his kith and kin. I am reliably informed that recently, he, for example, pleaded with the governor to appoint Alhaji Suleimanu Barau, whom the kingmakers had preferred, the Chief Liberian of the soon to be established state university. Barau has been a librarian at Bayero University, Kano, before he left to contest the Emirship of Suleja.

Dantoro is emir today because God wanted him to be. However, as a much experienced and a well-learned person he should know that the same God may only sustain him there if he does not unnecessarily antagonize the constituted authorities in the state and if he is seen to be just and fair to all his subjects whether or not they opposed his succession as emir.