Kano City Wall Restoration: Beyond Rhetoric: rejoinder to Fatima Surajo Yusuf (Mrs)

I read with keen interest a rejoinder on my article The Badala: Obsession ans a Moment in History written by one Mrs Fatima Surajo Yusuf and published in the Weekly Trust of September 11-17, 2004 page 31. The rejoinder seem to be concerned on the opinion expressed about Kano City wall restoration and how Kano people have mishandle this gigantic cultural signature.

Before responding to the outregeous, false, insunuative, unfocused and opologetic claims and unfounded statements made, I wish to state that I have a feeling that Mrs Fatima Surajo Yusuf is a shadow of someone trying to reap what he did not sow. But since he chooses to hide behind a woman, I wish to also assume that Mrs Yusuf is the originator of the article and treat it as such.  Her rejoinder is just as she dismissed mine as an  “ego trip ….a piece of self glorification”. Mrs Yusuf, you cannot eat your cake and have it.

When I wrote my article which was published on May19 and June 19^th, I was only trying to express my gratitude to God for making it possible for me to see Kano city wall being restored in my life time. I did not say other people have not done anything on the preservation and restoration of the city wall, all I said was “The last six years have witness from me a period for the struggle of the restoration of the Kano city wall in particular. I have done everything in my capacity to see that the city wall is protected and conserved, to the extent that many people including friends, colleagues and associate see me as a crazy man obsessed with a relic. Many bluntly told me face to face that I am wasting my time; the city wall is gone forever. This article is purposely written to celebrate a personal victory against adversity, uncertainty, bureaucratic bottlenecks, neglect, irresponsibility and brutal disregard to our history. I intend, in this short article to review my and our struggles that was a dream, which has today become reality. The city wall is not after all gone forever”.

Further more, I did not claim in the write-up that I was responsible for the money or claimed credit for it even though I have every right to say so (Some staff of Gidan Makama museum call on me and told me that due to my internet crusade, the German Government has given them money…..) what I said on the grant was simply “So, I went to see the new Curator Dr. Lekan. I introduced myself to him and congratulated him for the restoration project. He informed me that they got a N 9.9m grant from the German Government to do the work and that a committee is being established for the work. We exchanged cards in anticipation of further collaboration”.

Mrs Yusuf is not happy that I did not mention Yusuf Abdallah, Zubairu Imam and Dr. Sule Bello as well as Mr. Mayo Adediran as having contributed, I am very sorry. But to keep records straight, I feel I must respond to the ‘window dressing pretending attitude’ of Mrs Yusuf. She started as to be expected of people like her by saying she was responding to me “because of the derision in the strong anti-Kano and Kanawa sentiment expressed in the concluding part of the article…which the writer apparently shares with person he met at the Gidan Makama Museum..” This statement is meant to show that someone is against Kano and Kanawa and give her the support of Kano people so that she can have some sympathy and appear to be (an armchair) champion of the Kano heritage.

I think Mrs Yusuf should first of all have a grasp of what Kano is and who Kanawa are (beyond the myopic and uninformed arrogant assumption of some self-claimed champions of the Kanawa heritage) so that she would appreciate what I am going to tell her. According to Yusufu Bala Usman “ The Kasar Kano When we turn to the available evidence of the history of Kano, before and during, the second millennium A.D, we find that the concepts of “the nation” “nationality” “tribe”, “ethnic group” and “the nation-state” as imposed on the rest of the world by European imperialism, since the nineteenth century, are not applicable and are misleading. The Kanawa, the citizens of the sovereign kingdom of the Kasar Kano, were not a racio-ethnic entity. In fact, the key historical process of their formation in the second millenium is the migration into, and within, the area that came to be known as the Kasar Kano of people of diverse origin, from all over Northern and Western Africa, who came to be absorbed assimilated and incorporated as the subjects of the Sarkin Kano and the citizens of the Kasar Kano”

Therefore, the Kano and Kanawa of Mrs Yusuf imagination remains pigments of her unguided imagination. Why should I be anti Kano or anti-Kanawa when I am part of them? If you do not have a reason to hang me for what you too accept is ‘gyara kayanka’ you shouldn’t simplify everything by calling us anti-kano or anti-kanawa, unless you want to suggest that anyone that tells Kano people when they go off the way is anti it. You should remember the story of one Sarkin Kano who during his time