Islamophobia , Arewaphobia or Sanusiphobia

The term Islamophobia came to be widespread in usage post 9/11; and like the other English derivatives of phobia such as aquaphobia (fear of water), acrophobia (fear of height), arachnophobia (fear of spiders), fear of computers or cyberspace (cyberphobia), fear of foreigners (xenophobia), fear of opinions (allodoxaphobia) among others, I have coined Arewaphobia- understandably from the mischievious and irrational fear of the north / the northerner.

But quite unlike the phobia of water, spiders, space, crowd, walking, washing, bathing and even of ideas, Islamophobia, like “Negrophobia”, (albeit taken care of by the broader arms of the word racism) is both irrational, cynical, spiteful and scornful. The word “phobia” remains one of those unending suffixes -add anything you fear to the word and a new vocabulary is born. By extension, the scornful, irrational, spiteful and unfounded fear of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi since it berthed on Nigeria’s socio-political and spiritual harbor has refused to go away - if ever it will. Sanusiphobia is the condition.

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I was first drawn to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi by the repetitive nature of his name which was similar to mine in the wide expanse of ABU’s intellectual promise. Daily Trust and Weekly Trust were the twin darlings of every northerner after the fall of New Nigerian Newspapers. The quality of print, layout and content were good enough to match their southern dominated rivals in the Newspaper arena. Their crop of good writers and great columnists among whom were Aisha Umar Yusuf , Habu Dawaki (an excellent motivational writer cum speaker), Aliyu Tilde, Sam Nda-Isiah (now publisher of Leadership) Adamu Adamu and his then “…Definitions in Humour”, Garba-Deen Muhammed  and his “Barkbyte”, Mohammed Haruna, Al-Bint’s Diary  co. were such a delight to read. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s articles appeared from time to time and I was always pleasantly amazed at this Lagos banker who wrote so well. The banker wasn’t just discussing balance sheets and risk management, he was writing on Islam as well form the depth of scholarship. He wrote not just on economics alone but on politics, good governance, philosophy, law, public policy, international relations, history, etc. He was, I must confess, too deep for my interests at the time so I never really paid scrutinizing attention to his writings beyond the superficiality of a procrastinating young chap. Now I wished I had devoured his articles way back.
 
I would later be amazed at Sanusi’s intervention on the adultery case of Amina Lawal in an article which he titled: “Amina Lawal: Sex, Pregnancy and Muslim Law”. It was somewhere around the time that my enquiry led me to the discovery of the scholar, banker and philosophical Sanusi as a student of knowledge who actually went in search of further understanding of his religion is Sudan. It was a scholarly pursuit for a blend of not just economics and Islam but of this world and the one to come. After all Islam taught all muslims to seek knowledge- all kinds of beneficial knowledge. But the press continually emphasized his Islamic studies and sharia degree for obvious reasons. That he read and later taught economics in ABU was secondary.

Sanusi would come to limelight as it were upon the expiration of Chukwuma Charles Soludo‘s term at the CBN. The politics of whether or not to appoint him by Yar’adua played out surreptitiously and all sorts of theories were born. To those who thought Soludo was the best thing to have happened after Adam Smith, they argued that his consolidation exercise was such an ingenious move that should have earned him the Nobel Prize and another term to do greater things in CBN. To others, the risk manager extraordinaire who had held sway at First Bank and contributed in no small measure in seeing that she was not caught in the bursting bubble of the global credit crunch had something exceptional about him. I thought so too. But then how did northerners survive in the southern dominated banking industry I had wondered. If Sanusi could be such respected risk manager and could hold on through the long haul and eventually make the MD of First Bank (the first northerner to be so appointed since its inception in 1894) then he had to be something else. And something else he was.

However, to me, like a couple of other fashion enthusiasts, Sanusi’s trademark bow ties sold him off as an eccentric. But it didn’t stop at the bow ties. His widely white striped suits sold him off as unconventional. They weren’t simply the type of plain suits you saw on stylishly suave and trendy bankers; and even at that they weren’t your normal suit cuts. They seemed like a combination of vested pine stripe zoot suits and a safari jacket all rolled up in one.
 
Back then as a “freshman” / “Jambite” in ABU, that name that resembled mine; that kept dropping those rich articles had made a subconscious impression. The name Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had such great resonance with me. A couple of years after ABU, thanks to the internet, my readings would lead me to Gamji where Sanusi and a host of other northern intelligentsia among others whose articles did make and those that could not make it to mainstream newspapers were published and neatly archived. It was there that I came across “Buharism: Economic theory and political economy” - an ex-ray of the political economy of General Muhammadu Buhari’s twenty (20) month rule as Head of state. The article was both a scholastic and economic autopsy; and indeed a political intervention.
 
By the time it was announced that Sanusi would succeed Soludo, the press had successfully created an image of a Sharia man who was to be feared for his Islamic bent. Suspicions were awakened by all and sundry; the northern roots of Sanusi were also stoked to present him as another  backward malam who had no business being in banking in the first place let alone head the CBN.  It was during his screening at the senate that Sanusi shut his critics and haters up (both genuine and conditioned) with his sterling performance. It was brutally frank; impressive and such a rude awakening for the hate -feeders or hate-fed and cynics. His oratorical display was amazing, his diction impeccable. He was and still is a delight to watch and listen to.

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By all accounts; going by Sanusi’ impressive outing in the NASS, the doubting thomases had seen a refined gentleman, a scholar and banker who understood his brief; different from the creation of the press. Here was a fearless man already picking holes in his would-be boss’ 7 point agenda when he pointed to the superfluity of them and called for their right-sizing! And who else but Sanusi would be so daring and blunt? 

Great expectations were thus born and “everybody” seemed to go to bed with the comforting assurance that a round peg had been found for a round hole. Sanusi did not disappoint. He soon went into the morgue and dug out the corpses like the risk expert he was. The banks were terribly stressed as we would discover; and contrary to what prophet Soludo had declared as our insularity from the global financial meltdown, Sanusi rescued the banks. But more so was that he saved the lives of depositors who might have died if the banks had suddenly collapsed.

From Oceanic to Intercontinental to Finbank et al, Chief executives were exposed. They ran helter skelter looking for straws to clutch at. True to type the press went to work; to do what they knew how best. Conspiracy theories were reborn among which were that Sanusi was on a revenge mission directed at Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental bank. They claimed that both men’s paths had crossed on a bitter note and Sanusi as a governor of CBN was using his office to exact his pound of flesh. I don’t know if same could be said of Cecilia Ibru and others but the inanity of those postulations are that the critics underplayed the reality of the stressed nature of the banks and the excesses of their Chief executives.
 
On the other hand, the conspiracy theorists and the press raised the ethnic flag. They claimed that Sanusi was playing the ethnic champion in trying to destroy the banks southerners had built; and in a country where the twin lenses with which virtually everything is viewed are religion and ethnicity, it made a lot of sense in some quarters. But then are the northerners not the most under-banked people in Nigeria? Are they not the poorest in Nigeria by aggregate? If Sanusi had looked the other way and taken all that prophet Soludo said about our impermeability to the global financial crisis and the banks had foundered, it wouldn’t have been the north or northerners who would have suffered it the most. It would have been the bulk of the importer exporter barons, the Alaba international dons, the Aba and Arianrin merchants, the ICAN unlimited men and women who provide the bulk of the human resource capital of the banks, insurance and allied financial services.  How many northerners actually keep their money in the bank? How many are actually bankers in comparison with the other ethnic majors? So in reality Sanusi saved their monies, their jobs and their lives. He did the job he was appointed to do by the Federal Government yet he was the ethnic bigot! He didn’t remove Erastus Akingbola and replace him with a Modibbo nor did he remove Cecilia Ibru and replace her with a Safiyya; he did whatever he did in conjunction with the CBN board amongst who are men and women of diverse faiths and ethnicities.

Then came the issue of Islamic banking and its gargantuan criticisms. All attempts to make Nigerians understand that it was even Soludo, a Christian, as CBN governor not Sanusi, who actually set the stage for Islamic banking fell on deaf ears. That it was a banking system successfully in operations in Europe and other parts of the western world did not make sense to those looking for the bad. So long as Islam had been added to the equation it had to be fought tooth and nail. And then came the press with the “aha I told you Sanusi is an Islamic fanatic with an agenda to Islamize Nigeria! He sacked our CEOs, has introduced Islamic banking and then gradually he’ll turn Nigeria into an Islamic republic!” Trust Nigerians they jumped onto the bandwagon of unfounded hate and criticism and called Sanusi all sorts of names. Interestingly CBN’s deputy governor Tunde Lemo is not just a Christian he is a reverend. Sanusi is not Sheikh Sanusi; he is addressed as just Mallam (a northern appellation for Mr) and I ever wonder the kind of minced meat the Nigerian press would have made of him if he bore that appellation “Sheikh”. In all of these turbulent waters, Sanusi’s sack has been called for by those who feel he is acting out a religious cum ethnic script as well as those who are just outrightly cynical and bereft of objectivity.
 
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi would make headlines again upon his investiture as the Danmaje of Kano. Sanusi is of royal descent. He is a prince of the Kano’s ruling dynasty; son to Muhammadu Sanusi, the eleventh emir of Kano. But then something tragic had happened before the turbaning/investiture could take place. On 3rd June 2012, Dana aircraft crashed into a building at Iju-Ishaga, Lagos killing all 153 passengers on board. CBN lost ten (10) of its staff in the tragedy. The president declared three (3) days of national mourning for the victims. Sanusi’s investiture had already been scheduled for June 8 2012 and by then the three days of national mourning was over. Sanusi obliged the emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero and was so turbaned. A section of Nigerians mostly non-northerners and non-muslims were enraged. They felt Sanusi was insensitive to have in the midst of the tragedy that befell a whooping ten officers of the CBN still find time to attend to the drama in Kano! “How cruel” they thought. But in truth Sanusi is a Muslim and a northerner. Being a CBN governor would not stop him from praying five times a day neither would it stop him from speaking Hausa or eating tuwon masara or wearing gari/babanriga or alkimba or changing his name simply because some people do not like muslims or northerners.
 
In Islam, if the critics had bothered to educate themselves, death even though solemn and melancholic, is seen as the end of one life and the continuation of another. Muslims do not mourn past three days save a woman mourning her husband (who does so for four months and ten days). The seven days and forty days addition to other deaths, the sadaqa and fidda’u are later day innovations brought into the fold of Islam. It was with the prism of self rather than the other that Nigerians viewed the marriage of  Maimuna Ayene’s brother, Ndako Mijindadi, at whose behest Maimuna was visiting Nigeria and perished in the plane crash with her husband, four kids,  sister, mother in-law and two other relatives (one of the saddest tales of that crash). The couple were muslims and they had not done anything wrong within the sphere of Islam. Similarly, Sanusi had not violated the laws of Islam or those of Nigeria; nor had he those of CBN but the cynical press and uninformed people went to town calling Sanusi names. Interestingly, the judging publics also belong to faiths, cultures, and hold idiosyncrasies that take pride in “celebrating death” for which they feast, drink, party, indulge in spending sprees to thank God for a life well spent!
But the drama was far from being over. Sanusi’s colleagues at the CBN requested him to drop by in his royal regalia so they could catch a glimpse of the newly turbaned Danmaje. He obliged them to the opprobrium of the Nigerian press and countless number of Negro-Europeans who partly thought that African culture was such a boring waste of time. How a man greatly educated (schooled at Kings College Lagos, ABU Zaria, International University of Khartoum, Sudan), as widely travelled, as exposed, as polished and as “civilized” as this condescend to wearing such traditional costume to the Central bank of Nigeria? But then for all the years Sanusi wore his eccentric bow ties and off- the- trend suits, he was seen as a gentleman! Shouldn’t we openly declare the European conquest over since they have conquered us in our heads and minds? Shouldn’t Europe and America just leave us alone with the comforting belief that we have long gone past the point of return; and that we will do their bidding forever and ever? How true the words of Kwame Nkrumah “A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not [a] master of its own destiny”. And by the way don’t men and women in the NASS wear their native dresses to NASS? Don’t even bankers and other workers wear traditionals to work on Fridays? Does President Jonathan not wear his south –south regalia all of the time? If Soludo had visited CBN with a horn in hand and a red feathered cap it would have been normal; if Fashola had gone to Alausa in his “Eyo” apparel it would have further put Lagos on the tourist map but Sanusi’s crime is that he is both a northerner and a Muslim at the same time so he is criticized by those who know so much but truly know so little- how sad.
 
Still not yet out of the woods, Sanusi had recently taken a radical step towards restructuring the naira with the introduction of the N5000 note and the conversion of lower denominations to coins-. The call for his sack hasn’t been as pronounced as on this occasion. The move until its recent suspension by the President has been seen in many quarters as pro-IMF, pro-elite and largely anti people with the fears that inflation would rise and the naira would lose its value. But then those who had been sponsoring write ups against Sanusi; disguising themselves as “Renaissance Professionals” from the early days of the banking tsunami and all those who just want the man sacked have found their voices once again. They are calling for his head once again for daring to propose a restructuring of the naira. I must however clarify that until its suspension, I hadn’t been personally convinced of its merits and I have criticized his methods in online fora. However, we should learn to criticize based on the issues and leave the person’s religion and ethnicity out of it. Unfortunately, that is what the Nigerian press needs to do to stay in business.
 
No doubt Sanusi has had his fair share of blunders and controversies chiefly among which, in my opinion, was his donation to Kano’s bomb blast victims. Boko Haram had devastated many parts of the north before Kano; and the argument that Kano recorded the singular highest casualty in one strike does not hold water. The belated donation to Suleja’s victims did not absolve him. It was, for me, an afterthought and all unnecessary courtship with controversy. That ground didn’t seem neutral. The fact that he is from Kano, its Prince, and one with a media induced baggage of religious and ethnic leaning should have stopped him from even giving that donation a second thought. In Nigeria, such mis-steps are never forgotten. Never mind that the press never mentioned the precedence set by Joseph Sanusi who as CBN governor made similar a donation to Ikeja bomb blast victims of 2002. “It is hard to see the good in people when you’re only looking for the bad”. Imagine this tweet I came across: “what is more disturbing is your endorsement of Sanusi's destruction of banking sector with his jihad"!  Another referred to him as a Boko Haram in CBN. Dele Momodu has recently written of him in his article “The Bully called Sanusi” calling him everything including a good material for a dictator. What could be more preposterous?
 
I am also not his spokesman. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi can do more to defend himself. But by my assessment, Sanusi is a patriot. He is not an ethnic bigot; and he is not an Islamic fanatic (whatever that means). He is a great and rare public servant. He loves his country, his religion and his culture and that does not make him any less human than those who care less about theirs. He sure has his short comings but he is only human. He hasn’t asked that the staff of CBN to take the oath of Muslim belief – the Kalimatus shahada or follow him to mosque. He hasn’t asked CBN staff to speak Hausa or eat tuwon masara with him. He hasn’t asked Tunde Lemo, his deputy, to stop being a Reverend so what is it with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s critics? Islamophobia , Arewaphobia or just Sanusiphobia?
 
Aliyu Bala Aliyu
Masters Student, Public and International Affairs,
University of Lagos
email: [email protected]
blog: www.illuminationzz.wordpress.com
twitter: @AliyuBalaAliyu
 

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