A weekend in Kano

I spent the last weekend of August in Kano on a film project, and thankfully, there was enough time left to tour the sprawling metropolis. This was my fourth and most intensive visit. I first went in 1995; but it was a transit stop as I headed out to Katsina as soon as I landed at the airport. I returned in 2001 and 2006 to organise public events for the banks I worked for then, but there was no time for sightseeing. This time, I was eager to see the city.

We arrived around 7pm on Thursday from Abuja on Rano Air, a regional airline founded three years ago by the petroleum and cooking gas magnate, Alhaji A. A. Rano, a Kano indigene. The following day, Friday, August 30, started with a visit to a hospital built and donated by another prominent indigene and former minister of finance, Shamsuddeen Usman, to the people. It was a humbling experience.

Established in 2010 as a community health centre, the facility has since grown into a major health provider, offering an assortment of services, especially to women and children. Aminu Sudawa, the health centre’s management committee chairperson and Magdalene Madaki, the midwife supervisor, gave us detailed briefings on how helpful this facility has been to the poor, as we toured the complex. About 250 to 300 deliveries are recorded every month in addition to over 50 outpatients that come in every day for treatment. Known as Gidauniyar Alheri Community Health Centre, it is located in Garangamawa Ward, Gwale LGA of Kano. All its services to the people are provided free.

Three years ago, the hospital went into partnership and collaboration with the French charity, Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders), and this has helped to boost the medical treatment of women and children, with great benefits, including addressing the challenge of maternal and neonatal mortality in Kano. Madaki is actually a staff of MSF on secondment to the facility. The collaboration with Doctors Without Borders has also assisted in offering family planning services, care of the newborn and capacity building to the staff of the hospital. Not far away from the health facility is the Gidauniyar Alheri Microfinance Bank, also established by the former minister, to provide banking services to the people and help expand financial inclusion and entrepreneurship in the community.

Philanthropy is increasingly playing an important role in filling the gaps left by the failure of the state to fulfil its obligations to the people. In the last few years, I have written extensively on the good works of philanthropic organisations like Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation; The HOW Foundation and Inoyo-Toro Foundation. The newest among them, the Shamsudeen Usman Foundation (SUF), to be formally launched on September 26 in Abuja, was established by Usman’s children as a tribute and honour to their father. It will focus on education with specific offerings on AI and its deployment in the classroom. SUF will complement the works of the Gidauniyar Alheri Foundation whose main focus is health, education and enterprise.

Kano is a massive commercial centre with a huge population (18 million-20 million); over 100 markets and malls; hundreds of mosques and many wealthy men. We visited Kano Central Mosque, a prominent landmark and worship place that can accommodate up to 50,000 worshippers. It is situated in the city centre near the emir’s palace and features a blend of traditional and modern Islamic architecture. It was built in the 15th century but has undergone several expansions and renovations.

The three markets we visited were the GSM market where telephones and phone accessories are sold; Kantin Kwari market, renowned as one of the nation’s biggest textile depots and Kurmi market, established around the 15th century; it is the oldest in the state and is a go-to place for books and traditional medicines. Kano state has 44 LGAs, the highest in the country, but it appears to be a one-city state, just like Rivers and Lagos. You rarely hear of any other town in this state apart from Kano.

Kano is made up of the city, which is the original and ancient town that has been around for centuries and was once surrounded by high walls; and several settlements such as Fagge, Tarauni, Sharada, Sabongari, Bompai, etc. Inside the city are old traditional buildings and narrow winding roads, many of them going back for centuries.

Since the mode of transportation in those days was horses, camels and donkeys, there was no need for wide roads. Sabon Gari was initially created for non-indigenes but has since become a cosmopolitan area with wide, tree-lined roads and modern buildings. That’s where we had lunch Saturday afternoon at a nice restaurant called Igwe’s Palace. What a name!

My most memorable outing was the visit to the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, and one of the city’s business tycoons, 96-year-old Dr. Aminu Dantata. We also visited the Kano Museum which is rich in history and culture. Known as Gidan Makama Museum, it was built in the 15th century as the emir’s palace. The museum contains artefacts and exhibits on Kano’s history and culture. Many thanks to Nura Aminu, the museum’s tour guide, for showing us around. A jolly good fellow!

The current palace is a massive compound, a small city on its own, with schools and a hospital inside. I first visited the palace in 2001 as part of the management team of a bank. Alhaji Ado Bayero (1930-2014) was on the throne. Today, his nephew, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, with the regnal name, Muhammad Sanusi II, is the emir. We were led to the palace by Dr Usman who, incidentally, had taught the emir microeconomics in his final year at ABU in 1981.

Since then, the two men have enjoyed each other’s affection immensely, and the emir seems to have followed in Dr Usman’s footsteps in his professional journey. Dr Usman was an executive director at Union Bank and UBA, and later the chief executive of NAL Merchant Bank (now Sterling Bank) before he was appointed a deputy governor of the CBN in 1999. Sanusi was general manager at UBA; executive director and later chief executive of First Bank, before he was appointed CBN governor in 2009. Both men were also students of Kings College, Lagos, at different times.

The emir holds Dr Usman in high esteem and spoke glowingly of his attributes as a man of character, integrity and uprightness. ‘’In the 43 years that I have known Dr Usman since 1981 when he returned from the London School of Economics and Politics to take up a faculty position in the department of economics at ABU, and taught me in my final year, till today, I have never heard his name being associated with a whiff of scandal or corrupt activities. He has never been invited to the EFCC or police station for interrogation or anything,” the emir told me Saturday evening.

By now, Usman has excused himself from the meeting to catch another appointment, leaving us with the emir alone. Sanusi was resplendent and noble in his robe. His face fresh, he sounded ebullient and happy; relaxed, calm and eloquent as usual. I congratulated him on his return to the throne and reminded him of the few times I have met him in Lagos after he was dethroned in March 2020. I then asked him to speak on his memoir which he’s already written, but not yet published, and his contributions to another book that would be launched in September.

The emir is one of the co-authors of a book edited by Dr Usman that will be publicly presented in Abuja on September 26. Titled, ‘’Public Policy and Agent Interests: Perspectives from the Emerging World’’, the book is a unique publication on both the impetus for and impediments to growth and development in emerging economies. It provides a fascinating and penetrating insight into the workings of government and the boardroom, in terms of policy formulation and implementation, economic management as well as the overall growth paradigm in the developing world, with Nigeria as a case study. In the book, Sanusi provides detailed explanations of the intrigues, power play and scandal that led to his ouster as CBN governor in 2013 and emir of Kano in 2020. The book is simply unputdownable!

With all its commercial activities, Kano requires huge investments in road infrastructure. Its road network is in a pathetically bad shape. With an IGR of N43.3 billion in 2022, Kano is underperforming comparator states like Kaduna (N77.1 billion in 2022), Rivers (N172.8 billion in 2022) and Lagos (N651 billion in 2022). Even Akwa Ibom with very little commercial activities grossed N35 billion that same year. Kano government should do better in revenue generation and invest heavily in revamping roads and creating economic opportunities for the huge number of its young people.

We returned to Abuja Sunday afternoon, filled with both exciting memories of the visit and regrets for the slow death of domestic tourism due to rising insecurity. The 1980s and 1990s were full of fun as we crisscrossed this vast nation, observing the change in weather, vegetation and cultures as we moved from region to region. Those days are now a distant memory as kidnappers, bandits and terrorists now prowl our highways.