A man does not fight to reclaim a shadow. He does not spend his wealth, his years, his very name, to sit on a throne that has no weight. When Sanusi fought from exile, when he set up a palace in Kaduna, when he dragged the law through every court from Kano to Abuja, he was not fighting for a ceremonial chair. He was fighting for what that chair represents: authority, lineage, and the right to shape the soul of a people. If the emirate were truly beneath the position of a local government chairman, would any sane man burn such energy to reclaim it? The struggle itself is the proof. The throne matters.
My questions are: Who benefits when we are told that our traditional institutions are empty symbols? Who smiles when the Hausa man is persuaded to look away from the fact that he cannot be emir in his own grandfather’s land? The one who sits on that throne, that is who. The one who inherits a title that his great-grandfather seized with a sword, while our great-grandfathers were made to bow. The call to dismiss the emirates as inconsequential is not wisdom. It is a lullaby sung to keep us asleep.
A Hausa child born today in Kano will grow up seeing a Fulani emir. He will grow up seeing that the kingmakers are not his uncles. He will grow up learning that the highest traditional office in his city is reserved for a name that does not sound like his own. And then he will be told that this does not matter. That power is now in the local government chairman. That he should focus on elections and budgets and forget the palace. But tell me, if the palace does not matter, why are Fulani families fighting among themselves to control it? Why did Sanusi and Ado Bayero and all the rest pour their fortunes into that struggle? Because they know something we are being asked to forget. The palace is not the government, but it is the face of the people. It is the mirror in which a community sees its own dignity.
When a people cannot see themselves in their own traditional institutions, something fractures. It is not a fracture that bleeds. It is a fracture that goes deep, into the bone of identity. The Hausa man who accepts that he can never be emir in Kano or Zazzau or Katsina is not being practical. He is being asked to accept that his ancestors were conquered and that their descendants deserve no restoration. That is not peace. That is the continuation of conquest by other means.
We are not asking for war. We are asking for a mirror. We are asking that the face of our traditional leadership should look like the face of our people. Not because we hate Fulani, but because we love ourselves. Any man who tells you that the emirate does not matter is either deceived or deceiving. The throne matters. The title matters. The name of the one who sits there matters. And until a Hausa man can aspire to that throne in his own homeland without being told it is not for his kind, we have not yet woken from the long sleep of 1804.
Let’s us not be persuaded to look away from what our eyes see and our hearts feel. The emirate is not nothing. It is everything. And that is exactly why we must speak.
~Adam Rabe Kafinta (Khaleed Yazeed)
Wakilin Yamma Youth Development Network
Katsina State, Nigeria
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