| PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)
Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has described Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, who dethroned Muhammadu Sanusi II from the throne as Emir of Kano, as authoritarianism of the crudest temper.
He also described the governor as the most notorious public face of disorder being propelled by the immunity he enjoys.
Professor Soyinka, who was reacting to the dethronement of Sanusi in a statement, explained that confidence in immunity has catapulted Sanusi’s tormentor to the ranks of the most notorious public faces of the disorder that the deposed emir Sanusi strove to eradicate.
The Professor said it is a pity that Ganduje lacked friends who could have saved him from himself, adding: “insofar as one can acknowledge certain valued elements in traditional institutions, the man he thinks he has humiliated has demonstrated that he is one of the greatest reformers even of the feudal order. That is beyond question, a position publicly manifested in both act and pronouncements.
“By contrast, Ganduje’s conduct, apart from the innate travesty of justice in this recent move, is on a par with the repudiated colonial order, one that out-feudalized feudalism itself, and is synonymous with authoritarianism of the crudest temper.”
He said of Sanusi Lamido: “unblinking, he trod on the interests of powerful beneficiaries of a worm-infested sector and, in the process, created permanent enemies. By contrast, confidence in immunity has catapulted his tormentor to the ranks of the most notorious public faces of the disorder that Sanusi strove to eradicate. Obviously, vengeance lay in wait, and he was not unaware of it. The signs were omnipresent and Sanusi acknowledged their imminence.
“Most important of all, and most pertinently for the nation, Sanusi was one of the early warning voices against religious extremism whose bitter fruits the nation is currently reaping.
