Opinion
Lamido, Jega celebrate NEPU @ 71

Dr. Nuruddeen Muhammad
Yesterday, Sunday, the 8th of August, 2021, I accompanied His Excellency Dr Sule Lamido (CON) who was the speaker at a symposium organised by the Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Studies, Bayero University Kano (Mambayya House) to commemorate the 71st anniversary of the founding of the Northern Elements Progressives Union (NEPU), with the theme; ‘Politics of Principles and the Phenomenon of Political Party Defections in Nigeria’.

Sule Lamido
The event which held under the distinguished chairmanship of the cerebral Dr. Tijjani Muhammad Naniya, also had the ebullient Dr. Auwalu Anwar as the sole discussant. While Professor Attahiru Jega, Professor Dandatti Abdulkadir, Dr. Akilu Sani Indabawa, Professor Hafiz Abubakar, Professor Sule Bello, Dr. Nasir Fagge, former NEPU/PRP regional, federal and state parliamentarians, women and youth leaders from across the country, notably Kano, Jigawa, Katsina and Kaduna States all ran incisive commentaries.

Prof. Dandatti Abdulkadir
The cacophony of voices were as fierce as they were sharply different in tone, content and delivery. But by far, that which stood out and generated most responses was Dr Lamido’s lead assertion that the raison d’etre for the NEPU/PRP ideological and political initiatives was to liberate the common folks (the Talakawas), first from the clutches of the combined reppression of the colonial overloads and their willing surrogates in the Native Authority establishments in Northern Nigeria, and the restrictions placed on them in political participation, aspirations and freedoms.
He forcefully argued that the movements have achieved on both counts as the children of yesterday’s Talakawas are today the new overloads and oppressors who deny their fellow Talakawas quality leadership as presidents, governors, parliamentarians, ministers, council chairmen and their councils. He concluded that the movements (atleast as organised political actions) should rest and cease to exist. And that today’s progressives should instead leverage around available political opportunities/platforms to confront the existing selfish order using present day political sentiments and realities as mobilization tools.


Prof. Hafiz Abubakar
But recalling copiously from memory, the lead speaker canvassed for an ideological graft transplant from the NEPU/PRP days in ways that the moral and ethical characters of both politics and governance of today can benefit from the sound value systems of old oder.
He narrated how he first resigned as a member of the House of Representatives in Lagos in 1983 purely on moral grounds, and then flew to Kano to convince the then Governor Alhaji Abubakar Rimi to do same as the governor of the old Kano State when the duo defected from the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) that gave them the mandates in the first place.
He then described the present phenomenon of political party defections in Nigeria as the worst form of corruption.
This profound submission drew a symphony of responses from today’s PRP practitioners who are mostly academics. Leading the park was Professor Attahiru Jega who argued that without justice in leadership and the level of impunity as is the case today, the NEPU/PRP cause has just begun and asked Sule Lamido to come lead the national onslaught.
Many other PhDs and Professors joined in the call that Lamido would later say lacked sufficient local and broader national political insight. It is significant to note that I was to totally align myself with the Sule Lamido’s perspective of the argument only yesterday, having engaged with him for over a decade on the same exact topic as the Jegas had done yesterday at Mambayya.
I am now fully convinced that the NEPU/PRP politics exclusively represented yesterday’s political sentiments and realities in the North with no much utility for either our present political and social circumstances or broader national appeal.

Sule Lamido, Dr Nuruddeen Muhammad and other guests
The Mambayya rendezvous is prehaps the only remaining theatre in Nigeria where political practitioners, activists and ideologues meet political researchers, theorists and even wannabees in a real time intellectual brawl. Bayero University Kano is both creative and thoughful in this annual ritual. Mallam Aminu Kano and his comrades had lived a very politically active, intellectually robust, and ideologically/philosophically sound lives to deserve this honour.
When academic excellence and classroom sense meet self taught philosophers and the practical hands on the streets, a cetain unique flavour emerges. Yesterday’s flavor has unfortunately left a distinctively sour test in my mouth. The fact that the Talaka is today his very own oppressor is a very bitter pill for some of us to swallow. And even more bitter is the second fact that the second on coming liberation of the Talakawas (from themselves this time around) will have to invent it’s devices with no NEPU/PRP emotional relic to rely on.
This, on a very personal note, was a befitting way to round off my three weeks extended sallah visit in Jigawa.
Dr. Muhammad was Nigeria’s former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs & Federal Minister of Information as

Opinion
The need to restore the prestige of Kano Pillars FC

Isyaku Ibrahim
There is no doubt whenever you talk about Enyimba of Aba in Nigeria’s top flight who won the competition nine time, the next team that will come to your mind is Kano Pillars that lifted the trophy on four good occasions. But nowadays,it seems the Kano darling is losing its prestige, recognition and above all popularity in the local league.
This was as a result of lack of total commitment, determination, tenacity, patriotism,diligence and seriousness which the side was known for in the past.

To say the fact, the pyramid City lad was previously rated among the traditional teams in the top flight as they have established and tested players that would not disappoint their teeming fans no matter where they are playing.
It was based on this late Rashidi Yekini while watching the team at Adamasingba Stadium now Lekan Salami Stadium in Ibadan said if he was to play for a local team he would prefer to lace his boot for Kano Pillars ahead of others.
The reason he Said was simply due to excellent free flow football of the team but now it seems that has gone for bad.
When the club was established as early as 1990 among the objectives behind was to boost the name of the state through football and beside that win trophies with a view to competing favourably with others.
While those behind the idea should be commended to a large extent for their foresight in that respect in view of how the team is now a household name in the round leather game countrywide but there is the need for a collaborative effort with a view to normalising things in the ancient city side as the club has now stepped down from its aforementioned aims and objectives.
It is painful that the team’s main priority nowadays was not to lift the league as the case was previously but to survive relegation which was baseless,laughable and nothing to write home about considering their past experience particularly when they were based at Sabongari Stadium.
Definitely,this season is almost over as Remo Stars are as good as being crowned the winners of the event
The best option for Sai Masu Gida is to start early preparation for the upcoming season through putting their house in order aimed at restoring their winning culture as the teeming fans are tired of flimsy excuses on the reason behind their lack lustre performance year in year out.
Honestly, what they are basically hoping for is to see the club matches theory with practice through grabbing the trophy or at least earning one of the three continental tickets in the country.
optimistically this is achievable with the full support of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf coupled with that of his laborious and submissive Deputy Comrade Aminu Abdulsalam, good management, superb technical crew and the support of ardent fans who are always with the side in either thick or thin.
Ibrahim is a Director Public Enlightenment at Kano State Ministry of Special Duties.

Opinion
In defence of Prof Abdalla Uba Adamu’s beautiful quip on Kano – IBK

Prof. Ibrahim Bello-Kano (IBK)
Double Professor Uba Abdallah Adamu has angered many non-Kano people resident in Kano by his famous, widely circulated quip, an aphoristic description of Kano in which says the anyone tired of (living in) Kano is tired of life. Prof Adamu’s appraisal of Kano is based on a sound premise and a powerful emotional logic. Prof. Adamu’s comment has a powerful pedigree. On the arguments of the highly acclaimed French sociologist and space theorist, Henri Lefebre in “The Production of Space” (1974), it can be shown that Kano, especially the city and the metropolitan area, has three characteristics, typical of the greatest cities in the world since Antiquity:
1. It is a conceived space (an urban area, complete with a series of interlacing and interloping and interlocking urban designs since the 9th century). Kano was already a city and an urban space well before 1903. It’s one of the oldest urban areas in the Sudan.

2. It is a lived space, complete with the everyday experiences of its inhabitants and their emotional identification with it. Hence the many “quarters of the city”— from Alkantara, Alfindiki, Ayagi, to Mubi and Gwangwazo and beyond those.
3. Kano is also a practiced/practised space, with its inhabitants, visitors, and emigré population working to “practice up” the city in their daily lived experiences and within its urban and emotional spaces. That’s the truth of Prof. Abdallah Uba Adamu’s hyperbolic reference to Kano as a barometer of happiness or depression.
Prof Adamu is also correct in that most immigrants to the city never leave it, even if their last name may indicate other towns or cities. Already, Kano is one of the most truly cosmopolitan cities in Nigeria, surpassed only by New York, London, and Abidjan. In 1958, almost a decade before Lefebre’s book, the philosopher of science and urban studies, Gaston Bachelard published “The Poetics of Space” in which he argues that to live, or to choose to live, in a place, say the Kano metropolis, is already to enact an emotional act, and an existential event, in and for which Kano is already a resonant space of intimacy, or an intimate place of lived subjectivity. This is the case because one cannot live in Kano, even for a brief period, without (seeking to) creating a home, a nest, and an intimate space of “Kano beingness” or a Kano-based “being- in-the world”. That’s why Kano evokes and resonates with a strong emotional identification with it. When I was about 8 years old, I was told, on visiting the Dala Hill, that God had planned to create a holy city in Kano, but a dog urinated on the hallowed ground, and that’s how the divine plan was moved elsewhere. Of course, that story is clearly apocryphal, yet it shows how the Kano people are intensely proud of their places and spaces. So, Prof. Abdullah Uba Adamu’s hyperbolic and surreal description of Kano is essentially correct and pleasingly poignant. Many emigré groups are unhappy with his remarks, but if you live in a place, earn a living in it, or draw opportunities of all kinds from it, then you have got to love Kano, the most romantic of cities, a city full of dreams, aspirations, emotional highs and lows, and learn to identify with its fortunes. Kano, the city of gold and piety, recalcitrance and hope, modern politics and ideological contestations; the city of majestic royalty; the city of women and cars, as Shata once described it. Kano… the great Entreport. Kano, your name will endure through the ages. Cheers.
Ibrahim Bello-Kano (IBK) is a Professor of English at Bayero University, Kano.

Opinion
Kano: My City, My State

By Huzaifa Dokaji
Kano is not a place you reduce to a headline or dismiss with a stereotype. It is a city with too many layers for that- too much memory, too many voices. This is the Kano of Muhammadu Rumfa, the ruler who gave it form and vision, and of Ibrahim Dabo, the scholar-king. The Kano of Kundila and Dangote, where wealth meets ingenuity.

It is the Kano the British once described as the ‘London of Africa,’ the Tripolitans praised as ‘a city like a thousand others’, each one magnificent—and its own people, knowing its complex social and ideological chemistry, named tumbin giwa, the intestine of an elephant: vast, winding, and full of hidden depths.
Kano has always carried many lives at once. It is the home of Shehu Tijjani Na Yan Mota and the sanctuary of Abdullahi dan Fodio when he felt the revolution had been betrayed. It is Madinar Mamman Shata and the home of Aminu Ala, the author of the philosophical Shahara and masterfully composed Bara a Kufai. This is the same Kano that made Dauda Kahutu Rara, the master of invective lyrics, and Rabiu Usman Baba, the Jagaban of Sha’irai.
Here, contradictions do not cancel each other, they coexist. It is the city of yan hakika and yan shari’a, of Izala and Tariqa, of Shaykh Rijiyar Lemo and of Shaykh Turi. It is the Kano where people will argue passionately about doctrine, then share tea afterward. Where silence and speech, mysticism and reform, are all part of the same long interesting yet boring conversation.
This is the Kano of the diplomatic Emir Ado Bayero and combatant Muhammad Sanusi II. Of Rabiu Kwankwaso, the red-cap-wearing jagora, and of the agreeable Ibrahim Shekarau. It is that same Kano of the incorruptible Malam Aminu Kano and Dollar-stuffing Ganduje. The cosmopolitan city of Sabo Wakilin Tauri and of the saintly Malam Ibrahim Natsugune.
If not Kano, then what other city could birth Barau Kwallon Shege, the bard of the profane, and welcome Shaykh Ibrahim Nyass, the towering saint of the mystics? Where else but Kano would you find Shaykh Nasiru Kabara- scholar and Sufi master- sharing the same cityscape with Rashida dan Daudu and all the remembered and forgotten Magajiyoyin Karuwai? This is the Kano of yan jagaliya and attajirai, of the sacred and the profane, the pulpit and the street. The Salga and of Sanya Olu and Ibedi streets. Kano has never pretended to be a city of one truth, its greatness lies in the multitude it carries.
So when people speak carelessly about Kano, they miss the point. Kano is not a relic. It is alive. It debates itself. It holds its tensions with pride. And like Adamu Adamu said, “the story of this enigmatic city is simple and straight backward – and , in the end one can only say Kano is Kano because Kano is Kano – and that’s all; for; it is its own reason for being.”
You don’t explain Kano. You respect it.
This was first published on Huzaifa Dokaji’s Facebook account.
