Sule Lamido: Mai Billen Gado is 60

By DR. ABBAS BAKHTIARI_____________________________________________________________

By Sani Adamu Maigatari, Umar Kyari, Umar Danjani Hadejia, Bala Yargaba & Adagbo Onoja
On the 60th birthday of Sule Lamido,
today, some people should come for
ward to interrogate what may be extravagant but irresistible to describe as the Lamido phenomenon in Nigerian politics.  After all, interrogating and challenging almost everything is what is different about Sule Lamido.  In doing so, we hope to rescue this birthday from the limited, apolitical frenzy of Happy Birthday stuff and open a reflective flank on the problems and possibilities of the Lamido discourse in Nigerian politics.
  The claim of a Lamido phenomenon needs clarification immediately.  It rests on the point that what started as a rebellious streak has since acquired ideological and organisational logic with Lamido’s membership of the Peoples Redemption Party, (PRP) and the deeper political education it afforded its members.  Thereafter, stubbornness and rebelliousness transformed qualitatively into radicalism of socialist bent, not on account of Lamido’s say so but on account of the fact that  the PRP’s organisational doctrine, the Sawaba Declaration is a socialist document, though with theological/humanist underpinning. 
The point or the difference about Lamido is, therefore, not in how much of a socialist he has been but being able, as a state governor, to do what we have been told that governments do not have money to do for the people.  Or things that we were told were unrealistic or too costly.  Free education, for example. 
Thus, when we say Lamido as a governor is History in the Making, a recognition of the first government in Nigeria to start the business of governance with openly declaring its ideological position.  In his inaugural address on May 29th, 2008, Governor Lamido said “Let me state the ideological background of the leadership of this new government.  It is firmly anchored on the antecedent of Democratic Humanism as defined and epitomised by its chief exponent, Malam Aminu Kano.  That is the only framework by which this government can satisfy the yearnings of the vast majority of our people whom poverty and misery have reduced to conditions unworthy of human beings”. 
  In contrast, others have always declared that they have no ideology, which is why they are all fraudulent because the denial of ideology is an admission of ideological bias
  We contend that when one individual is able to define governance along this line, then he is a phenomenon in a country with no political culture of accountability nor the existence of capacity outside of government to discipline state power and those who wield it.  Like everyone else, Sule Lamido has his flaws.  It would be stupid to deny this.  But so also would it be hopeless not to recognize his ability to suppress all such flaws, supplanting them with a popular logic which he has been able to demonstrate with governmental power.
Certainly, many people do not want to prepare for battle when they are going to see a governor but many people would also prefer Lamido’s ‘aggressiveness’ to the listening but deceptive ways of others.  Pick your choice.
While on this, let us note that his superintendents noted quite early that “this lanky boy has problem of taking orders”.  Instructively, the fear that military career would make him a permanent “yes” man substantially explained a detour from that career line apart from parental disapproval. Even today, when he tells whoever cares to listen that, like some of his classmates at Barewa College like Alwali Kazir, he too must have retired as a General if he joined the army, some of his aides say at his back that it was doubtful if he would have gone beyond the rank of a Captain.  This is because, like his superintendents noted, it was not beyond Lamido, if he made it to the army, to shout ‘who the hell do you think you are’ to a superior officer in a hot exchange. Certainly, he would have run into serious problems if he did this one more time too many because he would be subverting the military logic.  It is possible that, like Murtala, he too could have survived especially by the time he went through the military rites of initiation but it was most unlikely that military orientation would have fundamentally affected his domineering, cantankerous and spicy self.
  In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a few months after assuming duty, he began to complain to no one in particular that it seemed many of his diplomats were more concerned with issues of etiquette than ideology and African identity issues in Nigerian foreign policy. As far as he was concerned, it was an upside-down orientation, the diplomacy of fork and knives. That was a shocker borne out of the questioning or interrogative impulse by which nothing and nobody is too sacred to be questioned or challenged if considered funny.
  Apparently, nobody took offence and was angered by this attribute.  Of all the Nigerian leaders, only General Sani Abacha was infuriated enough to send him to cool his feet in Maiduguri Prisons.  Well, Buhari jailed his leaders but it is understood that even to this day, Buhari is not known to harbour any animosity towards Lamido..  The Nigerian press has been very, very charitable to him since he announced his arrival on the political scene as that PRP Federal Legislator and National Youth leader with a bushy hair that seemed to spell troublemaking.  His aides grumble endlessly about everything but they never leave him and when they do, they almost always return to the fold.  Nobody appears to know what the magic is.  Or could it be that he is simply being the son of his father, as implied in his current folk identity rendered in Hausa as Mai Billen Gado? Whatever it is, today marks a glorious three-scores for Sule Lamido.
The writers are Special Advisers/Assistants to the governor of Jigawa State.