Isma’il Hashim Abubakar, PhD
Being one of the followers and now among proponents (perhaps pioneers) of Jafarology, an ongoing hypothetical intellectual formulation of a school of thought that seeks to document, survey and study the scholarly legacies of Shaykh Ja’far Mahmud Adam from multiple angles and diverse approaches, I ought to blindly oppose, like many fellows, anything favourable connected to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. The reason for this is apparent: Shaykh Ja’far, my favourite scholar, had a bitter polemical engagement with Sanusi, and the duo exchanged hot tirades that escalated to the use of deregulatory labels and scathing monikers to attack each other.
As someone who always aspires to operate objectively and dispassionately, in addition to having conducted a broad investigation on the pros and cons of the dispute between the two prominent figures, I feel it a duty-bound and personal responsibility to reveal what many people are oblivious of, mainly as thousands of people rely on the recorded and widely circulated sermons of the late Shaykh Ja’far against Sanusi to not only point to the latter’s lack of competence to rule the Islamic society of Kano but to go to the extent of excommunicating him.
My decision to join issues with Sanusi’s critics on this saga, most of whom I believe are sincere, was informed by the desire to clear many misconceptions and set the record straight. Perhaps it will sound shocking if I boldly suggest that were Shaykh Ja’far alive today, having witnessed the many transformations in Sanusi’s career and the onerous memorable developments witnessed as a result of his adventurous capacity in the various roles he served, including as the 14th Emir of Kano, the late prominent cleric would have hailed and applauded Emir Sanusi in the same degree, if not higher than, he praised a few traditional figures.
During his reign before the government of the day’s interruption, Emir Sanusi presided over a lively empire that revived, to a greater degree, the culture of intellectual debate and involvement of scholars and luminaries in various fields in the decision-making exercise. Sanusi’s leadership in prayer, his daily free-feeding scheme for the poor and regular comments on the goings-on, which were sometimes controversial, were all rendered dormant by his dethronement. Therefore, in as much an admirer of Shaykh Ja’far criticises Sanusi relying on the positions of Shaykh Ja’far on the former in some respects, one cannot help but align with Sanusi for epitomising what Shaykh Ja’far had been preaching, perhaps more than many of his peers who served similar roles as his.
Having conducted my PhD research and written the thesis on the career, thoughts and ideas of Shaykh Ja’far and awarded a doctoral degree in July 2023 by Mohammed V University, Rabat, I present below a section in which I examine the engagement between the cleric and Sanusi, a social analyst by then. Enjoy.
Ja‘far had a bitter engagement with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi for the latter‘s critical view of the Shari‘ah project and other issues associated with Islam and Muslims in Nigeria. In one Friday sermon, the content of which was partly reflected in a newspaper interview by the Weekly Trust with the late Shaykh, Ja‘far depicted Sanusi as (a nominal) Muslim who imbibed some features of hypocrisy, which then informed his criticism of Islamic values and Shari‘ah, while attacking Muslim governors who were committed to the return and implementation of Shari‘ah. Ja‘far argued that Sanusi, who was then residing in Lagos, did not, conversely, pen a single essay to condemn the massacres of Muslims by the OPC in the Southwest. Ja‘far further expressed disappointment over what he regarded as a brazen act of Sanusi, who paraded himself as a social critic and intellectual, only to rubbish northern Muslim leaders who, in their effort to resist the marginalisation of Muslims by President Obasanjo, held meetings in Kaduna on the issue.
Ja‘far‘s dismay over Sanusi‘s rubbishing of Muslim leaders who complained of marginalisation of Muslims by the Obasanjo administration was a reference to Sanusi‘s article in which he argued that having fewer Muslims in the executive arm of the federal government was nothing scary, as scholars like Ja‘far and the northern leaders were ―needlessly – crying out. In the words of Sanusi, to reduce Obasanjo‘s crime to the number of members of the Muslim elite he has appointed-or rather not appointed – to key positions and to pretend that if we had more Muslim appointees,then Muslims would be better off automatically, to say this, is to speak from an ethically blind perspective (https://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi48.htm).
Sanusi‘s concern that there was virtually no difference between Muslims and non-Muslims in terms of performance and citizen-concerned leadership was, to a large extent, correct. Ja‘far himself mostly criticised Muslim politicians who, in some regimes, dominated the echelons of power but failed to solve the myriad problems of their people, while in some occasions, he indirectly upheld the records of some non-Muslims who did better than their Muslim counterparts in some capacities. Nevertheless, equitable representation and centralisation of power are important ingredients of democratic dispensation, the absence of which has the potential of throwing political entities into chaos. Sanusi‘s criticism came at a time when sentiments among Muslims over marginalisation were heightening. Not only that, but it came at a time.
Obasanjo was convening a national constitutional review conference, which was seen as a robust chance to further shut out Muslims in the scheme of things. After all, despite being in the minority, Christians were given slots for delegation,which outnumbered Muslim delegates, hence the too much anxiety from the Muslim quarters.
When he took a swipe at Sanusi about Shari‘ah, Ja‘far was obviously referring to Sanusi‘s arguments in some of his writings where he portrayed the Shari‘ah as a tool for politicians to promote their popularity, while in essence, not applying the Shari‘ah to themselves but limiting it to the poor. Similarly, Sanusi had intensely criticised some rulings of Shari‘ah courts, which passed hudud verdicts over convicted criminal cases like flogging in the case of fornication, stoning for adultery and amputation for thievery. This had, at the time, led many Muslims in the country to conclude that Sanusi was a secularist Muslim or even a Marxist pursuing an anti-Shari‘ah agenda. But at the same time, he earned accolades and commendations from the Southern press and intellectuals who hailed him as an enlightened, progressive, reformist, modernist Muslim, etc.
Ja‘far‘s Friday sermon and newspaper interview were greeted with Sanusi‘s ripostes in which he challenged Ja‘far‘s view of him and descended on the Kano-based scholar‘s personality. Sanusi dismissed Ja‘far as “an unknown quantity that rides on the back of religious fundamentalism to gain social relevancy” but also described him as “a Nigerian who was educated on the charity of Saudi Arabia and whose mosque and school – his source of livelihood – are funded by Arabs (http://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi49.htm).
This attack opened floodgates of defensive rejoinders from supporters of both Ja‘far and Sanusi, with some accusing the latter of pontificating about his “privileged background” and someone who “can tangle with the Karl Marx‘s of this world but not Qur‘an and Sunnah”, hence he “could not contribute to his society and religion as Sheikh Ja‘far does”. Although he admitted that Sanusi‘s response was too offensive for a respected scholar like Shaykh Ja‘far, one defender of the then-Kano prince observed that Sanusi‘s arguments were “not entirely bereft of its merit and sound judgment”, particularly his call for the adoption of “national identity”, rather than clinging onto ethnic and geographic proclivities.
Whatever the case, Sanusi seems to have developed an ambivalent position toward the Shari‘ah project in Nigeria, either because of the persons involved in the project or due to some personal interpretations of his on the Shari‘ah codes which might differ from the mainstream conception of Shari‘ah. As an independent thinker and intellectual, a quasi-Islam scholar, Sanusi is sometimes a complex person who is too difficult to predict. As opposed to Ja‘far‘s allegation that there was not a single instance in which Sanusi mounted a public discourse in defence of Islam, some other developments showcased Sanusi siding with Shari‘ah and championing the cause of some
fundamental aspects related to it. In one conference held in London in 2005, Sanusi not only defended the Shari‘ah but also juxtaposed it against Western legal values, pointing out the defects and hypocrisy in the normalisation of free sexual relationships with multiple women while ridiculing polygamy, the myopic legal protection of a murderer by not subjecting him to the same death process, etc (http://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi51.htm).
Similarly, in one other article, Sanusi countered the growing sentiments from Christian quarters about the potential of Shari‘ah controversy to plunge Nigeria into crisis, arguing that it was the portrayal of Shari‘ah in a bad light, that was an “attribute of injustice, this tendency to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it that will destabilise Nigeria, and not introduction of sharia”. Exonerating the Zamfara State government from some unfounded stories related to Shari‘ah implementation, Sanusi accused Christian leaders of threatening peace in the country by convening conferences to propagate anti-Shari‘ah rumours, calling on Christians to “judge Shari‘ah by what the Shari‘ah is” while arguing that “the historical church is no yardstick for measuring Islam”. Sanusi boldly declared that if “Christians fear intolerance from Shari‘ah, or accuse Islamic law of being barbaric, therefore, it is because their knowledge of Shari‘ah is limited to the bible and their experience under catholic popes which led to rebellion and secularism” (http://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi8.htm).
Therefore, Sanusi advised one Christian-owned newspaper, the Guardian, to listen to the Zamfara state government. It is time to know that the Qur’an and Sunnah enjoin creating a just and honest society and protecting freedom of religion and conscience. It is time to ask those who feel there are legal problems to go to a court of competent jurisdiction. Alhaji Ahmed Sani has repeatedly said his priorities are good government, education, poverty alleviation, and moral rebirth. He has assured non-Muslims of the full protection of their rights. He has never declared Zamfara an Islamic state (see http://www.gamji.com/sanusi/sanusi8.htm).
Above all this, as detailed in chapter two, it was when Sanusi served as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria that Muslims finally got the approval for non-interest banking and financial transactions, otherwise known as the Islamic banking system, to operate despite the vehement rejection by Nigerian Christians. Sanusi, who was once hailed by Christians and upheld as “progressive” in the Southern press, had quickly transformed into an agent of Islamization of Nigeria and was labelled with different dismissive names. Sanusi was subsequently promoted in the Muslim milieus as a hero and champion for Muslims and Islam, particularly as Christians united against him, calling for his removal from his post as CBN governor.
Interestingly, although this development was realised in 2012, five years after Ja‘far‘s assassination, Ja‘far‘s public discourses were full of advocacy and agitation as early as the late 1990s for the introduction of interest-free, Islamic-compliant banking and financial transactions.
Furthermore, when Sanusi became the emir of Kano in 2014, he transformed into a religious scholar who not only closely related with scholars, some of whom were members of Ja‘far‘s circle, but he uniquely led religious functions like serving as an imam and giving a weekly sermon, addressing the topic of public concern, much tallying with the way Ja‘far had been advocating for Muslims rulers. Sanusi built a reputation as one of the few traditional chiefs who used to boldly challenge the policies of governments, a move that largely contributed to his deposition in 2020 by the Kano State Government. As shown elsewhere in this chapter, Ja‘far gave special emphasis on the role he envisaged Muslim rulers to play in defending the interests of their subjects and uplifting them in multidimensional spheres of life, and this seemed to be one of Sanusi‘s priorities as the emir of Kano. It is safe, therefore, to trace some fundamental areas of convergences between the two fearless figures, born nearly the same year and at some point both went to Sudan and studied at the OIC-funded International University of Africa, Khartoum.
If Ja‘far were alive when Sanusi navigated the later developments that catapulted his prestige among religious leaders and ordinary Nigerian Muslims, Ja‘far would have been most outspoken in celebrating the achievements recorded by Muslims through Sanusi. Interestingly, as two informants have revealed to me and later confirmed to me by Sanusi himself, before Ja‘far died, a meeting was arranged by Sanusi‘s mother where the duo had reconciled, understood each other and sheathed their swords.
Isma’il writes from Rabat and is reachable via ismailiiit18@gmail.com.
