“I Would Resign From being the President To Be Emir Of Kano” – Sanusi

The Kano empire, conquered by Fulani Uthman Danfodio was the most prosperous province in the entire empire.

by Hamza Suleiman

Former CBN governor, the highly intellectual world acknowledged Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has been appointed the new Emir of Kano, Nigeria’s second highest Muslim leader as the mantle holder in a historic lineage of one of Africa’s greatest dynasties. He assumed the historic top monarchical office  after the death of Emir Ado Bayero (1967-2014).

Kano is a historic city known at the time of the colonialists as perhaps the greatest kingdom in Africa. In those years the Kano empire was involved in massive trade across the Sahel. Over 1 million Hausa slippers were exported every year from pre-colonial Kano. Lord Lugard, the first governor general of Nigeria estimated in 1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in existence in the whole of just the Kano province of northern Nigeria. He described Kano: ‘Commercial emporium of the western Sudan.’ Of its wall, he said, ‘I have never seen, nor even imagined, anything like it in Africa.’

The Kano empire, conquered by Fulani Uthman Danfodio was the most prosperous province in the entire empire. Of course, European colonization with the division of the nations and obstruction of the trans-Saharan commerce, reduced the economic capacity of land-locked Kano as it diverted most of Africa’s trade through the coastal regions whose cities naturally became more prosperous.

The soft spoken, articulate, intellectual whose world acknowledged works in both literature and finance inspire and challenge any figure on earth today, was recently asked, coincidentally, at a function, about his thoughts on ascending the throne or becoming the president of Nigeria. With a smile, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had answered in these lines, “I do not know my destiny, but what I do know is, if I am to be Emir, I will never resign that office to be president, but if I am president of Nigeria, I will resign that office to be Emir.”