Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, ego is your enemy -By Ayubei Majidadi

“When I listened to the chief of staff…I will call him former chief of staff…you will understand why I call you ‘former’ later,” Mr Sanusi said when he took the microphone at the event. “Next time don’t call me ‘former Emir.’ There is nothing like that“. This is an excerpt from gazettengr.com, an online newspaper.

This brief speech is purported as the statements that the former governor of central bank of Nigeria and the former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made to herald the removal of Kaduna state chief of staff, Mr. Sani Abdullahi. Because he was dubbed the former Emir of Kano, he saw to the removal of Kaduna state chief of staff.

His action and his words explicitly fit into the description of people with unhealthy egos. Ryan Holliday, the author of Ego is the enemy, defined ego as an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition.

In Nigeria people like SLS have the capacity to remove a government official when slighted, because of their connection with a sitting governor or president. These are the people we call progressives in the north, considering their antecedents. We assume they, Sanusi and his ilk, can bring fundamental changes in the structure of the Hausa communities.

Given that , Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and Nasir Elrufai have confirmed their deep rooted arrogance to Nigerians. As if the Kaduna state government belongs to them, they have the arbitrary power to make or mar whoever they like or hate. They do it with impunity and without repercussions. What Mr Sani Abdullahi said has no weight that could pull the state governor to remove him, unless if there are skeletons in their closets.

Good leaders are humble.One day , during the Persian war, a man was sent to deliver a message to the commander of faithfuls, Omar Ibn Khattab . Since their belief was that leaders, at that period, were very rich people, they assumed that he would look opulent. But they were surprised because their assumption was wrong.When the Persian ambassador reached the place where he was supposed to meet Omar Ibn Khattab, he asked to be led to his palace. He was told that he didn’t have a palace. They found him sleeping under a tree.

The leader of the believers, Omar ibn Khattab, was a humble servant of God. In his time the Muslims conquered many cities. No time has Islam spread wider and far than his era. Opulence and power were at his fingertips, but he chose humility over splurge, piety over power and control. You can’t differentiate him from his ragtag followers, who choose to enlighten their captives over enslavement. Unlike Sanusi, Omar Ibn Khattab wouldn’t behave the way Sanusi reacted to the harmless introduction Mr. Sani Abdullahi made to Sanusi. The highest level of wisdom is the ability to regulate ones emotions, such as anger, envy and jealousy, and emotions related to the preservation of the ego.

Does humility mean powerlessness? If Omar liked he would have looked as flashy as those leaders who want splurge. He resorted to look more like a peasant than a royalty and that did not demean him in the eyes of his subjects. By entering their spirit or mirroring them, he became like them. He was able to control a very large empire and he was not as sophisticated as the Sanusis and the Elrufais because he didn’t have modern electronic gadgets at his disposal, and never allow his ego to stand on his way.

Ego is our archrival. The antipode of humility. Although, according to psychology, we are all born with a narcissistic streak in our blood. But others are adept in controlling how they express their ego while others, like the former Emir of Kano, are loose in taming their amygdala, the brain seat for emotions.

It was ego that empowered sunusi lamido sunusi to come public in 2014 with the report of NNPC not remitting some of its transactions into the federal government coffers. His ego has served the country well. It brought the fraudulent activities of some NNPC staff into the public knowledge. Were it not for his judicious employment of the ego at the time, we would have been ignorant of the gross misconduct that’s taking place in the NNPC. The ego that served him well in 2014 is about embarrassing him now in 2021.He was unable to bridle the small, fragile thing, the ego.

Outspoken and well read, he enjoys creating controversies around himself. He always wants to go against the grain, and this was what cost him his positions as the CBN governor and as the Emir of Kano and will cost him more if he can’t control the addiction. Just listen to him for a brief moment and you will not fail to discern conspicuously narcissistic streak in his microexpressions. Everything about him is loaded with ego.

In the era when traditional institutions, such as the one he was once a chair, were sole administrators of the public, his actions in kaduna against the Elrufai’s chief of staff would have been given a perfunctory attention. But things have change, power is now gradually decaying as the result of so many revolutions the world has undergone since then. We don’t expect him to behave like that, going through his record as someone who is liberal and progressive. This has unravelled the hidden motive he has against his subordinates—servitude.

Left to their own devices, Elrufai and Sanusi , will use the state power to promote their personal interest and crush their dissidents as it becomes evident in the recent spectacle. From the standpoint of our political leaders, most especially the governors, their states are like their personal possessions. In my state , personal relationship with a family member of the governor will curry favours for you let alone the governor himself. I know a politician who was asked to step down for an unpopular candidate. Because the governor’s late brother was a friend of the unpopular candidate, the governor’s cronies worked hard to impose him as the party candidate for chairmanship. He is now a local government chairman.

When I first heard about the event that transpired between Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and Mr. Sani Abdullahi, I couldn’t believe my ears. What I know is that this kind of attitude is a symptom of something more embarrassing that Sanusi is hiding. Why was he, the chief of staff, removed after the event if what Sanusi said about him was irrelevant and if Sanusi is not able-bodied to make Elrufai remove him from his position, as the chief of staff? This is also a telling example of the weakness in our government, our political leaders are not limited by the law in their states instead they are the ones the law follows. In contrary the law is only applicable to the people, the hoard. They, the elites, can tamper with it with absolute impunity.