Opinion
A reply to Dan’uwa Rano’s from makafi to awakai: the display of blind plotics and political idolatry
Ibrahim Bello-Kano
I’ve read Danuwa Rano’s post as a trained and professional critic of prose works, both fictional and non-fictional (the kind of writing in which the writer and the narrator are the same person, and in which there is a direct mode of address to the purported reader of the writing, the text). Thus, my response to this post, shared on this platform, is three-fold.
1. The writer, Danuwa Rano, is a well-known member or sympathiser of the APC in Kano and a supporter of an aspiring APC candidate for the position of the Gov. of Kano State, despite his critical yet digressive comment on the Gov of Jigawa, Namadi, Abubakar Rimi, and Aminu Kano, to cite just those three. In my academic field, we train our students in the literary criticism of non-fictional texts to look for the writer’s MOTIVE for writing. Usually, in this kind of writing, the writer does not reveal his motive (which is usually hidden) for writing directly but takes detours, digressions, and other textual strategies of establishing some nuggets of “authenticity”. Just a ploy to deceive the unsuspecting or the gullible reeader, to say the least. If and where the writer is well known, we also seek to read his previous works, including his podcasts, interviews, or open attitudinal-ideological stance in relation to public discourse.
2. We also probe the text for its linguistic “unsaids” or “non-saids”, namely its TONE and the perspectival presentation of events and people (we call this reading or interpretive strategy “symptomatic reading”). It’s interesting that the writer himself reveals that his text was inspired by a previous one critical of Kwankwaso and the Kwankwasiyya movement, written by Auwal Anwar.
3. After a thinly veiled ideological bad faith on the part of Danuwa Rano, he delves into a moralistic discourse, namely that God/Allah has created human beings with dignity and with self-worth, higher than those of the animals such as “goats”; and much more integrative than the blind (“makafi”). But Danuwa Rano is clearly not very educated in how language, in this case Hausa and English, work. In language, in Hausa, we call or regard someone that is a maestro, a highly gifted person, in any vocation or an endeavor, as, or by describing him as “shege” or “maye” in or about something that we admire or value (masterly). Why is that? Language has both DENOTATION and CONNOTATION. In any Hausa dictionary, the denotation of “Shege” would be “bastard” (illegitimate within the marriage-kinship and cultural system). But when used in the context of connotation, “Shege” describes someone with admirable skills, in appreciation of his or her skills, mastery, and distinguished capacities. Alas, this is what Danuwa Rano has missed. So, in every linguistic comminity, symbolism, figuration, and emblematic descriptions are never far away from the symbolic sphere of experience. Here’s another example from the English language. Expressions such as “evil genius” and the Latinate “maestro” exist because symbolisation or figural descriptions are creative, a way of coming into the undecidable space of appreciation and appropriation, including the anxiety about what we denote in the cultural-linguistic game, and in our unconscious.
4. Rather bizarrely and crudely, perhaps even maliciously, Danuwa Rano fails to see, blinded by his ideological moralism, that whenever the Kwankwasiyya people call themselves “makafi” and “awaki” they are, in fact, ENGAGING IN the SYMBOLIC PARODY of their opponents, that is, those who criticise them for being resolute and committed political agents in a certain way. To borrow a metaphor from Michel Foucault, it is the Kwankwasiyya people’s way of “self-presentation” in the political and democratic arena. Indeed, it was the same process at work when the British Workers called themselves “Chartists” (based on their Charter of Demands). But we know that a group of human beings cannot be a List or a Charter. Rather, in language, any group can identify with a colour (“Red” for communists and Marxists; Green for Muslims; or with emblems (the Crescent Moon, The Cross, or the Hammer and Sickle, or just an Effigy; a country’s or a state’s “coat of arms”). Should we assume, then, that the Kwankwasiyya followers are physically, intellectually, or ideologically blind? But if they were, they would not work for someone, Senator Kwankwaso (RMK), that they couldn’t have literally “seen”.
5. Danuwa Rano is such a poor writer, such a poorly educated person on how language and symbolisation actually work, that he mistook a figural statement as intransitively real and factual. What a pity! In fact, I am tempted here to cite the famous argument of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, that language as such is only a doxa (opinion) rather than (a) truth (episteme). In this view, language is a kind of rhetoric and thus inherently rhetorical. For example, in the Hausa “Kirari” system, any one can call themselves a lion, a mouse, an elephant, or even a fox, or even, indeed, a “merciless killer”, one who does not and would not spare his enemies. I recall, in my youth, my father admiringly calling my mother “uwar garke” (“the mother of the herd”, his herd) but does that mean she was a cow, the female head of a herd of cows? Certainly not!
6. It is a mark of Danuwa Rano’s ideological project that he mistakes linguistic and symbolic parody for the literal thing. Hence, his weak, unconvincing, and flat moralistic attacks on RMK and the Kwankwasiyya people. The latter are saying that they are deeply committed to their political projects, that they are not the typical political opportunists, fortune chasers, and the “fair weather people” that one finds in the Kano APC. In addition, the Kwankwasiyya “Makafi” are also saying that they see clearly where their principled allegiance lies.
7. If Danuwa Rano were a careful, perceptive thinker or writer of political innuendo, he would have seen something prevalent in the history of Kano since the 18th century, namely the tradition of following religious, sectoral leaders, as seen in the mass of committed followers in Kano of the Tariqa, the Shia, and the Izala, to mention just those three. It’s hard not to find a Kano man or woman that is not openly oriented to those three groups.
8. It is, without a doubt, the same temperament that one still finds in the secular political sphere in Kano. Expecting otherwise in the political sphere of the community is either short-sighted or willful blindness or sheer ignorance, all all three. Or, one might ignore all this in furtherance of his un-stated ideological-political agenda.
9. Let me reiterate a point that I have always argued in public: Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso is, without a doubt, a veritable political leader for many reasons. There is not one politician in Kano today who has the deep and wide charisma as to draw a huge crowd of enthusiastic supporters, with the charm and grace that can score, or in fact has scored, over one million votes in Kano State in the elections. His party’s candidate for Governor scored well over a million votes in the 2023 elections. Even Tinubu lost in Lagos in the 2023 elections (only scored anout 600, 000 votes). For that reason and many others (RMK’s cosmic patience, personal Promesean and Sysipusian endurance, his political sagacity and capacity for brilliant and moving political oratory— the “Ma-a-ha chant”), he is the target of disgruntled enemies, the object of deep malice but that is obscured or hidden as “objective analysis”.
10. But hate him or love him, despite Kwankwasiyya movement or not, one must accept that RMK is simply the modern expression of the new politics that is gripping the imagination of young people and that of perceptive, politically committed intellectuals, those who know what is at stake in the political future of Kano State and Nigeria as a whole.
11. Imagine a political leader, the one whose previously opportunistic followers had deserted when he left office, the man who stayed out of power and elective office for eight years, the man who founded a political party within eight months to the national elections, and yet him and his party swept the board, won virtually all the elective offices, including the Govenorship. I daresay such a man, RMK, is naturally the target of malice, envy, and bruised political egos. Danuwa Rano’s virtuperations on RMK and the Kwankwasiyya movement is one more example of crudely malicious, badly conceived, poorly written attacks on modern Kano’s most successful person and his movement.
Ibrahim Bello-Kano.
Saleh Adamu Kwaru
The milestone of Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves crossing $54.08 billion for the first time in nearly 18 years reads like a triumphant headline. On paper, it represents a towering financial fortress built by the Central Bank of Nigeria through steady oil revenues, aggressive monetary tightening, and unprecedented diaspora inflows. Yet, beneath these dazzling macroeconomic figures lies a deeply agonising paradox. For the average Nigerian, the euphoria of $54 billion in the vault feels less like a shared national victory and more like a cruel illusion—a distant celebration taking place in glass towers while the everyday citizen fights an exhausting daily battle for basic survival.
To understand the profound emotional disconnect felt on the streets today, one must travel back to December 22, 2008, the last time the reserves touched $54.21 billion. Eighteen years ago, that same numerical figure existed in a fundamentally different world. In 2008, a dollar exchanged for roughly ₦118 to ₦135. A worker earning a modest salary could walk into a market with dignity, buy family foodstuffs, pay rent comfortably, and still hold onto a sense of quiet hope for the future. Fuel was subsidised, school fees were manageable, and the middle class was a living, breathing reality rather than a fading memory. The reserve target then felt aligned with an atmosphere of tangible stability and shared prosperity.
Fast-forward to 2026, and the stark contrast breaks the heart. Today’s $54 billion reserve sits alongside a naira that trades around ₦1,315 to ₦1,390 per dollar—a staggering depreciation that has quietly eroded the life savings of millions. Where a bag of rice or a tank of petrol once took a minor fraction of a monthly wage, it now demands entire paycheques. The removal of energy subsidies, compounding transport costs, and an unyielding inflation rate have turned simple household decisions into nerve-wracking dilemmas. Parents stand in markets clutching cash that shrinks in real time, staring at prices that mock their hard work, forced to make heart-wrenching choices between feeding their children and paying for medical care.
The emotional plight of the ordinary Nigerian is defined by suffocating fatigue—the feeling of being trapped in an economic storm while reading news of a national windfall. There is a deep, unspoken grief over lost lifestyles, abandoned dreams, and the endless hustle that no longer yields a comfortable life. Every morning, millions wake up to navigate long commutes and skyrocketing living costs, carrying the emotional weight of a middle class that has been slowly wiped out. The daily narrative is no longer about building wealth or planning for retirement; it has been reduced to an urgent, high-stakes operational goal: surviving until tomorrow.
Ultimately, while $54 billion in foreign reserves provides necessary structural armour for sovereign credit ratings and currency stabilisation, a balance sheet cannot feed a hungry family or heal a weary spirit. Until the strength of those reserves filters down into stable food prices, affordable transportation, and genuine relief at the local market stall, the figure will remain an abstract triumph. The true measure of Nigeria’s wealth can never be captured solely in foreign exchange ledgers. It will only be realised when the ordinary citizen can finally breathe a sigh of economic relief and feel the dignity of their hard labour restored.
By Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Ph.D
As the 2027 general elections draw closer, political conversations in Kano are increasingly dominated by competing claims about which party has the stronger machinery and which political bloc is better positioned to win the state.
Much of the debate, however, is driven by sentiment, personality politics and social media narratives. A more useful approach would be to examine the numbers, electoral history, political structures and the movement of key actors across the political divide.
The Kano of 2019 was not the Kano of 2023. And the political configuration approaching 2027 is different from both.
Before making my argument, I believe it is important to put my political background on record—not as a credential, but to establish that my assessment is informed by some firsthand experience of the political structures under discussion.
My Kwankwasiyya journey did not begin in 2012 after I benefited from a foreign scholarship. It dates much further back.
My late father, Alhaji Isa Aliyu Danzabuwa, was a politician known to many in Kano’s political circles, particularly those associated with Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. From the early 1990s until his death in 2005, I grew up seeing politicians, especially from Bichi, regularly visit our home.
If political commitment could be inherited, I would say politics is in my blood.
My active participation in partisan politics began in 2007, when Hon. Ahmad Garba Bichi was the PDP governorship candidate. Ahead of the 2011 elections, I also worked actively for the victory of the PDP and Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, then the party’s governorship candidate.
As a young graduate, I served as a polling-unit agent at Shagari Quarters and participated in Kwankwasiyya’s “Dawo-Dawo” rallies across several local government areas under the coordination of the late Alhaji Balarabe Musa Kalla, the late Mustapha Sani Kabara and Hon. Mustapha Buhari Bakwana, alongside friends and colleagues including Akibu Isa Murtala, Bashir Ali Usman, Badaru Auwalu Yola and Abba Ben Umar, among others.
On election day, we spent the night at Guringawa Ward and later slept at the INEC office in Kumbotso Local Government Area before accompanying the ballot boxes to the state INEC office. I was also part of the celebration that followed the victory, beginning at Senator Kwankwaso’s Gandu residence.
We did these things without expecting appointments, contracts or personal benefits. We were motivated largely by the belief that the government we were helping to bring to power would provide better governance.
That experience gave me an opportunity to see, from the grassroots, how political mobilisation, organisation and electoral structures worked within the Kwankwasiyya movement.
It is from that perspective that I approach the 2027 question—not with hostility towards any political movement, but with an attempt to examine the available facts.
The Kano of 2019
The argument that APC has never had sufficient political strength in Kano does not stand up well against the electoral record.
In the 2019 presidential election, the APC candidate polled 1,464,768 votes in Kano State, compared with 391,593 votes for the PDP.
More significantly, the APC won all 24 National Assembly seats in the state.
At the state level, the APC won 30 of the 40 State House of Assembly seats and secured victory in 28 of the 44 local government areas in the initial governorship election.
Although the party trailed by 26,655 votes before the supplementary election, it eventually won the governorship by 8,982 votes.
These figures are important because they challenge the simplistic assumption that Kano elections are determined exclusively by the popularity of a single political personality.
If personality alone determined electoral outcomes, the PDP, led in Kano by Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso at the time, would arguably not have suffered such a comprehensive defeat in 2019.
The lesson from that election is that political popularity matters, but so do party structures, organisation, alliances, resources and the ability to translate political support into votes.
What Changed in 2023?
The political landscape changed dramatically before the 2023 elections.
The APC presidential candidate received 517,341 votes in Kano State—a substantial decline from the party’s 2019 presidential tally.
The party also suffered major losses in the National and State Assembly elections.
In Kano Central, the APC lost all 11 House of Representatives seats to the NNPP. It also lost one seat in Kano North and five in Kano South. At the State Assembly level, the party lost 17 seats to the NNPP.
In the governorship election, the NNPP defeated the APC by 128,897 votes.
That was a significant margin, and the result should not be minimised. But it is equally important to understand the circumstances in which the election took place.
The APC entered the 2023 election deeply weakened by internal divisions and the departure of several influential politicians.
Among those who left the party, particularly in Kano South, were figures such as Hon. Kawu Sumaila, Hon. Kabiru Alhassan, Gwani Ali Bukar Makoda, Hon. Safiyanu Harbau and others.
Similar political losses occurred in Kano North and Kano Central, including the departure of former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau, who continued to command considerable political influence through the Shura movement.
These defections did more than change party membership. They transferred political experience, grassroots networks, mobilisers and organisational structures from one political camp to another.
In other words, the 2023 election was fought with an APC that had lost some of its most important political assets, while its principal opponent had gained many of them.
That distinction is crucial when comparing 2023 with 2027.
The Political Equation Heading Into 2027
The political equation has changed again.
The defection of the serving governor and a considerable number of his political associates has altered the balance of political structures across Kano’s 44 local government areas.
Several structures associated with the Kwankwasiyya political family—including CRC, Kano Proper, scholars, Lafiya Jari, Kwankwasiyya, NNPP and Option A structures, Jagorori, LGA caucuses, interstate teams and contact committees—have experienced significant defections.
Based on my knowledge of some of these structures, I estimate that a substantial proportion of their members have moved to the APC, with some structures losing as much as 70 per cent of their personnel.
That estimate can, of course, be debated and should ideally be tested against independently verifiable membership and electoral data. But the broader phenomenon is difficult to ignore: political actors and grassroots organisers who previously operated within one camp are now increasingly distributed across another.
These are not merely names on a list.
Political structures are valuable because they consist of people who know the wards, polling units and communities; people who understand voter mobilisation; people who can coordinate agents; and people who have established relationships with local political actors.
Such networks take years to build.
The movement of prominent political figures has also been substantial.
Among those who have moved away from the Kwankwasiyya camp are Ahmad Garba Bichi, Audu Kirare, Dayyabu Maiturare, Baffa Sani Gaya, Ali Bukar Makoda, Isiyaku Ali Danja, Dr Danyaro Yakasai, Surajo Harisu Danbatta, Umar Haruna Doguwa, Gambo Sallau, Garba Hungu, Yusuf Ogan Boye, Dr Baffa Bichi, Hamza Maifata, Muhammad Ahmad, Butu-Butu of Rimin Gado, Tijjani Abdulkadir Jobe, Ali Madaki and many others.
The significance of these movements should not be assessed merely by the number of political leaders involved. Their importance lies in the networks that accompany them.
A politician who changes parties may bring with him political organisers, ward leaders, supporters, campaign coordinators and longstanding relationships.
This was precisely what happened to the APC ahead of the 2023 election when several of its influential figures defected to the opposition.
The difference now is that the direction of movement appears to have changed.
Structures Matter
One of the mistakes political observers often make is to confuse social-media visibility with electoral strength.
A party can dominate online conversations and still struggle at the polling unit.
Conversely, a political organisation may generate relatively little noise online while maintaining an extensive grassroots network.
Elections are ultimately conducted at polling units.
Between the political speech and the final result lies an enormous organisational chain: voters must be identified and mobilised; campaign structures must function; polling agents must be recruited and trained; transportation and communication must be coordinated; results must be collated and monitored; and political alliances must remain intact until the final declaration.
This is why political structures matter.
The 2027 contest in Kano should therefore not be reduced to the question of which politician is more popular or which party has the louder supporters online.
The more important questions are: Who controls the grassroots structures? Who has functional ward and polling-unit networks? Who can mobilise voters? Who can maintain those structures throughout the campaign? Who can coordinate election-day operations? And, ultimately, who can convert political support into actual votes?
The Numbers Must Speak
None of this means that the APC has already won Kano.
Elections are not won by historical comparisons alone, and political structures can change rapidly.
The APC will still have to manage its own internal contradictions, accommodate its new entrants, maintain cohesion and convince voters that its platform deserves their support.
Likewise, the NNPP and Kwankwasiyya should not be written off. They retain significant political assets, loyal supporters and a political identity that has been built over many years.
But acknowledging those strengths should not prevent an honest assessment of the changes that have occurred.
The central point is simple: 2027 is not 2023.
The APC that contested Kano in 2023 is not necessarily the APC that will contest Kano in 2027. Similarly, the political structure that propelled the NNPP to victory in 2023 is not exactly the same structure approaching the next election.
The movement of political actors has altered the equation.
Therefore, anyone attempting to predict the outcome of the 2027 Kano election should look beyond political noise, emotional attachment and social-media trends.
History provides the context. Numbers provide evidence. Structures provide the machinery. Alliances provide additional strength. And voters ultimately provide the verdict.
The most responsible way to analyse Kano 2027 is therefore not to ask who is making the most noise, but who has the numbers, the structures, the organisation and the capacity to turn political support into votes.
When the votes are eventually cast and counted, it will not be social media that determines the winner.
The numbers will speak.
Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Ph.D, is a commissioner Ministry of Livestock Development, Kano State.
Aliyu Ismail Diso
It is with a heavy heart and a profound sense of sorrow that I pay this tribute to a true friend, a brother and a remarkable human being, Malam Bello Muhammad Sharada, whose life was cut short on August 31, 2026, at the age of 56.
My relationship with Bello did not begin yesterday. We knew each other from childhood, when he was only about 10 years old and I was three years his senior. Our families had a long-standing relationship strengthened by close friendship and intermarriage. My stepmother, Hajiya Amina Misau, popularly known as Hajia Ya, was the younger sister of his father, Alhaji Muhammadu. From those early years, a beautiful bond of friendship, affection and mutual respect developed between us.
As the years passed, that bond grew stronger. What began as childhood friendship eventually became something much deeper. Bello was no longer simply a friend; he became a brother to me.
He was a man of admirable character, kindness and compassion. He had a special way of relating with people and bringing warmth and happiness to those around him. His words of encouragement, his philosophical understanding of Islamic teachings on brotherhood, and his willingness to stand by his friends and family were among the qualities that made him exceptional.
For many years, we shared memories, experiences, challenges, laughter and countless moments that I will forever cherish. Our lives also took us through different stages of the journalism profession, a field to which he devoted much of his life.
Bello was deeply involved in print journalism. He served as an editor of Al-Tajdid Islamic Newspaper of Jama’atu Tajdidul Islam in 1996, under the Chief Editor, Malam Aminu Aliyu Gusau, Modibbo Gusau. While he devoted himself largely to print journalism, I pursued broadcasting. Our shared professional interests, however, continued to bring us together.
In 2007, we worked as research assistants to Malam Ibrahim Ado Kurawa, the former Director-General of the Research and Documentation Directorate at the Kano State Government House. Bello later served as editor of Demokuradiyya a Yau, a Hausa newspaper, while working as a desk officer responsible for newspaper production and management under the Research and Documentation Directorate.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, Bello will be remembered for the lives he touched through his words, wisdom and personal relationships. His pen was not merely a tool of journalism; it was an instrument through which he sought to influence behaviour, enlighten society and inspire the younger generation.
His writings, particularly those shared on social media, reflected his deep thoughts, wisdom and understanding of life. Even in his final days, his thoughtful reflections left messages that continue to resonate with those who followed his work.
His death has created a painful emptiness that words cannot adequately describe. Yet, in the midst of this grief, I find comfort in the beautiful memories he left behind.
The calibre and number of people who gathered at his funeral prayers testified to the impact he had on the lives of others. It was a powerful demonstration that Bello lived among people with kindness, friendship, simplicity, firmness and mutual respect.
My dear Bello, you may have left this world, but you will never leave our hearts. Your friendship, brotherhood, wisdom and memories will remain with us.
May Almighty Allah forgive your shortcomings, accept your good deeds, have mercy upon you, grant you eternal peace and admit you into Jannatul Firdaus.
To the family you left behind, especially Mubarak and his 11 siblings, I pray that Almighty Allah grants you strength, patience and courage to bear this immense loss. May He comfort the entire family and grant you the fortitude to carry on with the values and legacy he left behind.
Rest in peace, my dear friend and brother.
Aliyu Ismail Diso, is a veteran journalists in Kano.
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