SULTAN: Media Watch Group warns Wamakko, Northern leaders against using politics to destroy traditional, religious values
By KEMI KASUMU
The Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria (MMWG) has warned Northern political leaders including a former governor of Sokoto State, saying their politicisation of traditional and religious institutions in the region will have its consequences.
The group made this warning following media reports alleging that the Sokoto State Governor, Ahmad Aliyu, was planning to dethrone the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, a development that Nigerians across ethnic and religious borders have kicked against.
This was even as the MMWG seized the opportunity of the call to warn other traditional and religious leaders in the country, who allow themselves to be pushed into “political partisanship and parochialism”, to desist.
In a strongly worded press statement released on Tuesday June 25, 2024 and sent to The DEFENDER, the Media Watch Group said: “it is very disheartening that our royal, traditional and religious institutions are being desecrated by politicians who remove highly revered and respected traditional rulers, especially in Northern Nigeria like political office-holders.”
READ ALSO LET’S UNMASK THE ROOT: Wamakko not Governor Ahmad Aliyu has declared the war on Sultan
This, the group in the statement signed by its National Coordinator, Ibrahim Abdullahi, said “must stop as it is unacceptable and nauseating.”
It maintained that Muslim royal institutions in Northern Nigeria from time immemorial were greater in the sight of man and God than that of politicians.
According to the group, “the towering position of the Sultan of Sokoto and leader of all Nigerian Muslims is far greater than that of any traditional ruler or that of any religious leader in Nigeria.”
It, therefore, admonished political leaders all over the country to learn a serious lesson from the unwarranted removal of the Emir of Kano by the Kano State Government, which it said has turned out to be problematic for the state government following the court ruling over the unfortunate action.
The group said it is sacrilegious to note that deposition of Emirs and appointment of new ones based on political consideration is a negation of Islamic principles of “Allah is the overall Possessor of absolute power who gives it to whoever He wishes”, urging all political leaders in both the North and South of Nigeria to stop politicisation of royal stools so as not to relegate the most dignifying positions to nothingness.
It, however, appealed to all Muslims all over the country not to entertain any fear about the magnificent position of the Sultan of Sokoto and President General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), presently held by Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar.
The MMWG described the present Sultan as the best ever enthroned because of his leadership qualities, generosity, commitment and great foresight for Islamic development in Africa in particular and the world at large.
The Muslim Media Watch Group, reacting to Monday’s publication of The DEFENDER with straight exposition of the brain behind the Sokoto crisis as former Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, warned him to desist as Sultan is not just leader in Sokoto State but in the entire Nigeria.
It then implored the former Governor of Sokoto State and current political leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Sokoto State, Senator Aliyu Magatakada Wamakko not to tow the route of a former Kano State governor who, it said, is now in dilemma of what to do over the “fire he ignited in Kano that refused to burn due to Allah’s abundant mercy.”
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The Muslim Media Watch Group of Nigeria (MMWG) is a body of Muslim journalists and other professionals, who believes in the power of media to correct bad practices and encourage values and ideals for the betterment of the Nigerian society. “It is also committed to high professional media practice, ethics and values so as to promote peace and enhance development in the Country,” the statement concluded.
In his article, titled, “LET’S UNMASK THE ROOT: Wamakko not Governor Ahmad Aliyu has declared the war on Sultan”, and released from his Diasporan abode where he does “outside looking inside” in defence of any unjustly treated Nigerian, Abanikanda Olumoro agreed with President Kashim Shettima’s comment that said, “Yes, the Sultan is the Sultan of Sokoto but he is much more than that. He represents an idea. He is an institution that all of us in this country need to jealously guard, protect, promote, preserve and project for the good of our nation.”
He, however, clarified his agreement with the vice president was not approval for Federal Government interference in chieftaincy affairs that are constitutional responsibility the state.
According to the article, whereas the current Governor Kano is only correcting the bastardisation of over 1,000-year-old Kano Emirate by previous administration’s 2019 law that bulkanised the Emirate into five this reducing Emir of Kano to Emir of eight metropolitan local governments of Kano City and restored the lost glory of the place to one united Emirate of Kano under one Emir, what Sokoto State Government plans to do is returning the North to cultural defects that Kano has now walked past.
Olumoro said, “The Governor of Sokoto State, Engr. Ahmed Aliyu Sokoto, the first Sokoto township indigene to ever govern the state, is now the next Governor of Nigeria to be in the eyes of the storm by his recent action sacking some 15 District Heads in an attempt putting him up like want to rewrite history by now taking upon himself the powers of control of affairs of the Sokoto Caliphate, removing all the powers of the Sultan of Sokoto and reducing him to mere turban giving mmonarch after he must have ended the business of politically selecting who becomes a traditional ruler (District Head) in the Caliphate. God forbid!
“Governor Aliyu should not reopen now in Sokoto, a wound caused by another politician but which Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has succeeded healing in Kano. Half a word is said to the wise children a good home, when it gets into him, it becomes a whole meaningful word.
“From my comfort zone here in the UK, I would want to give to the Sokoto State Governor the best advice any serious state leader would ever be opportune to have by telling him how not to allow some vested interests in the political realm of the state push him into starting an anti-institution war that neither he nor those pushing him to start it will be able to finish,Abanikanda Olumoro warned.
He said, “I am speaking through my only means of communicating being provided by a Nigerian media platform now because I have watched patiently and seen enough since the governor announced those decisions of deposing those District Heads in Sokoto in April 2024 and I have also been able to see that singular action shows that he was out to ridicule the personality of the Sultan but, alas, what I see coming after that will be worse than he plans for the great, world class monarch, because the Sultan is bigger than anyone of the plotters thinks.
“Those actions taken have now sparked controversies as they put the innocent Governor in the eyes of the storm to say that he has declared a war on the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, and his entire Sultanate Council, Sokoto, as he made the decisions under untenable excuses to remove the historic powers embedded in the Sultan, which is a history said to be older than Nigeria itself.
“However, from the look of the Governor Ahmed Aliyu that I know, and he being a Sokoto township son of the soil, I believe he is not responsible for this sacrilege but is being pushed to put a fight against the Sultan and we know that Wamakko is behind all of these things. He should not allow Wamakko to push him into crisis and war he will start but cannot finish.
“Let me be frank with you, Wamakko himself has always said it that Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar helped him especially when he was removed twice as sitting Governor to get back to his seat in the Government House. I am also telling you, during my several visit to Sokoto during Wamakko era, I saw that it was this Sultan who attracted all of the activities that you are saying now making the state boom into the place. Do you want to talk about how several organizations fix their conferences to hold in Sokoto and how airlines now began to operate Lagos-Abuja-Sokoto and Sokoto-Abuja-Lagos or direct Lagos-Sokoto or Sokoto-Lagos route (private) or you want to talk about how all Nigerian religious and traditional institutions and leaderships now see Sokoto as headquarters of culture and history that they now choose to visit? This Sultan, a retired General-turned monarch, has been behind all of those things. It is because of him that people choose to visit Sokoto but Wamakko, who himself was fully a beneficiary of the benevolence of the Sultan during his eight years in power as Governor, is now the one wanting to bite the same finger that fed him.
“Wamakko should also be told that we, as Nigerian lovers and followers of this Sultan, will not hold the current Governor of Sokoto State responsible for show of ungratefulness towards the Sultan as an embodiment of Great Nigerian Institution with his pet project of peace, unity and development of Nigeria. It is him, former Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko that we will hold responsible because we know that he is only using Governor Aliyu to achieve his aim of fighting the unputdownable Sultan. If you go ahead with it, I see regret at the end of it all. Caution, the only way to stop the imminent war before it commences.
“We started hearing this misbehavior of Mamakko ahead of 2019 general elections when his supporters would go to the frontage of the Sultan Palace said, ‘We will have a new government and we will have a new Sultan’. As God would have it then, they failed in the governorship election and Wamakko, as it is now clear to us, and his cohorts at the time failed to convince Retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidency in their behind-the-scene campaigns of calumny to make it believe that Sultan of Sokoto His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, was pro-Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) monarch working against the Buhari’s administration.
“We saw it all as they were sponsoring media writes up from saying Sultan took N650 million Nigeria Sokoto State money to buy a private house in Abuja to other reports including those in which they wrote that a very prominent traditional ruler, that is known to be the most influence both in North and entire Nigeria was behind certain insecurity and the rest. They all hid behind one finger and shame would never let them come out place and clean to mention the name of the traditional ruler.
“We thank God that Buhari resisted their evil plots and he is resting peacefully in Daura, Katsina State today. It is also believed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu too will not allow himself to be convinced against the Sultan, first, traditional matter is local and Governor Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto, who we know respect the Sultan so much and well, will not allow somebody who is from nowhere and known not anywhere near royalty to push him to destroying the Usmaniyyah Throne that has been preserved for well over a century.
“We pray that God will help the Governor against a so-called politician, who after having spent and enjoyed his own eight years tenure as governor of Sokoto State, now on his second term to complete eight years as Senator representing Sokoto North at the Nigerian Senate wants to ruin his career by making him do things that will have adverse effects on his future as a personality and the future of his children and his entire family.
“Sokoto State, like Kano State people, should stand up against this uncharitable and unpatriotic behavior of the politicians whose target is no more or less than to destroy the values of the people of Kano because when the traditional institution and cultural heritage of a people are destroyed, the values are lost. God forbid.”
