SLS

WHEN you see someone who pokes fingers in others’ eyes with reckless abandon, it is either he doesn’t care about being poked, has no eyes to be poked or feels covered enough not to be poked. One such fellow is Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, His Royal Highness. As a banker, he sacked a president. As a religious-cum-royal leader, he is about sacking another. The sacked president could not sack him, it is doubtful if the about-to-be sacked president can.

Megidan Kano is gradually building a different image from the ashes of the combustible over-proud princely banker. A whistle-blower is emerging. It is a different kind of advocacy, using loyal insiders to trouble the inside. He is no longer inside but all his ten fingers and toes are inside the nation’s financial trough where odious stenches into an already fouled firmament. When His Excellency, the Emir of Kano was to be crowned, this column predicted that nothing, not even the spirituality of the second-most important throne in Islamic Nigeria, would temper him.

SLS is showy, his erstwhile friends who egged him to become an unrepentant sit-inside-piss-inside kind of fellow in last government must now contend the bullish, fearless and fiery him they encouraged to blossom under his former employer, who was considered a weak and weakened Nigeria’s CEO.

Because the popular side is now almost always the crooked side, the unconventional, even in faith and ministry, has strong appeal for me. Such becomes stronger when it is a part pulling out of the whole, to expose the shenanigans that bonded the whole together before the falling apart.

It is doubtful that moment would come for SLS as Nigeria’s man of valour. His past, person, personality, purposes and pursuit, would likely make such impossible. SLS, our knight in shining armour? But didn’t Luke 1:37 say with God nothing shall be impossible? But is SLS a Godly person even on account of being a quasi-spiritual head of millions of Islam faithful? What about those salacious stories? What about official building allegedly converted to personal use with peanut paid? What about stories of nepotism and high-handedness while leading the money-home? Above all, what about his no-fussy-about pride, always allowing the blood to scream to loud for comfort in nearly all gathering?

SLS, to many, is too much of a “sinner” to be altruistic in purpose. The chief reason his anti-corruption advocacy possibly rankles countless souls is his politics. As a civil servant, he broke all ethics norms to be political in almost his deeds. At a point in his oppositional role to his then employer, the prince who was ambitious to be king even when the throne wasn’t vacant, was being permutated into the last presidential race as a likely opponent to his then boss. He dines openly with his political friends and is alleged to have used his vantage position in service to oil their politics, both in cash and catch.

He stands accused of being parochial in all interests and will allegedly not become pro-people if his friends’ political interests aren’t at risk.

But does SLS poke into eyes for the sadistic fun? Available facts won’t support such a conclusion. He may be loud but there appears to always be a purpose, even if narrow. Many may loathe his person but he has also helped causes for which the public had desired heroes. He could be ethnic in comportment but he has helped chart commendable national course in the past. The truth is, SLS is a hero and villain rolled into a bundle of contradicting energies.

So, of what benefits is this kingly bundle who gives other royalties sleepless nights, to his fatherland? To his haters, including a cab driver who went into a rage hearing about his criticism of Buhari’s administration to the point of almost losing the wheel and his passengers, a surgery would be required to take the SLS they loathe away from his message on alleged corruption, which many of such haters confess to like. For the cab man, SLS should shut up because it was his allegation of humongous sleaze under Goodluck Jonathan that served as the death kneel for his re-election bid. You want to ask why such patriotism should become a disgusting leech? It turned out the cab man was still mad with him because Jonathan lost re-election. His kind may never forgive SLS.

Irrespective of the purpose SLS was serving then which activities and characters woven around him suggested was purely political. It stands to his credit that his howling about some missing billion petrol-dollars (the figures kept changing until it stood at 12 billion dollars) wasn’t completely a hoax. Jonathan’s administration’s audited but unaccounted figure too kept changing but the bottom-line was that the issue was never scratched to the bottom. The exposé will eternally stand in SLS’s credit.

Exposing alleged fraud to weaken Jonathan’s administration should be and was easy for SLS as an insider. His current voyage in Muhammadu Buhari’s administration must have been a tougher task. In a government running an undisguised police state, it requires courage pulling out boiling nuts that could completely demystify Buhari and the mien that won the presidency.

Buhari simply ran on corruption issue to become the candidate. Incidentally, southerners in his party believed more in him and rescued his ambition after northern delegates went en masse for Atiku Abubakar and Rabiu Kwankwaso. Did those northern delegates know “something” their southern counterparts were oblivious of? I pass that to history.

To be continued