Our attention has been drawn to an opinion article, “Why the Sultan Deserves Abuja Residence,” published at the back page of Daily Trust on Saturday edition of August 12, 2017, by Wazrin Katsina, “Professor” Sani Abubakar Lugga.
In the said article, Lugga vehemently tried to cook a smelly broth of sentiments, hypocrisy and half-truths and manipulated history to justify a clear case of money laundering: the purchase of a N700million guest house for the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, in Abuja.
For a start, the Sokoto Caliphate was established in the first place to among other noble causes, fight injustice and unjust and wicked rulers who misappropriated the commonwealth of their people for callous and selfish ends.
A fact-check revealed that the writer, introduced as professor, has questionable academic records. This is because the highest academic qualifications he claimed to have acquired was a National Diploma in Marketing from Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna.
We begin therefore to wonder how a higher diploma holder metamorphosed into a professor simply by attending “master classes and executive programmes.”
This takes us to the Al-Qalam University, Katsina where he allegedly perpetrated the academic fraud as a professor. At the inception of the university, a committee chaired by the respected Ambassador Tanimu Saulawa was set up to work out modalities for the taking up of the university. Lugga happened to be appointed as the secretary of that committee. He, therefore, appropriated the opportunity by hijacking and sending away all the members of the committee away. Subsequently, he enthroned himself as the sole administrator of the university.
Having converted the university project into a personal project, well-meaning and respected Nigerians such as the Kano-based billionaire businessman and philanthropist, Alhaji Aminu Dantata and elder statesman Alhaji Sani Zangon Daura, among others, stepped in to save the university from his voracious grip.
These elder statesmen set up a committee under the chairmanship of the former Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Alhaji Abba Sayyadi Ruma, to among others, conduct a clinical review of the affairs of the university.
During the staff audit of the university, Lugga was found to be the university’s sole administrator, chairman of the governing council, vice chancellor, the chief contractor, the chief financial officer and a lecturer, all rolled into one.
The committee simply asked him to appear before it to defend his academic qualifications as a professor. But Lugga simply fled. He never showed up for the verification. That incident helped in ending the recurrent eye sore of him bringing palace guards (dogarai) to sit on the floor at the lecture halls in the university during his numerous theatrical and clownish sessions, he called teaching.
This overview provides us with a requisite aperture through which we will deconstruct the criminally imbued persona of Wazirin Katsina and why it wasn’t any surprise his shameless defence of the fleecing of the lean public coffers of Sokoto State, perfected under the cover of purchasing a guest house for the Sultan.
Despite his fraudulent antecedents, we still think the Waziri would not throw decorum to the dogs and justified a prima facie case of money laundering. Let’s assume we even believe the belated narrative of the Sokoto State Government that it indeed bought a guest house for the Sultan, but why did the state government wire the money through the personal account of a staff of the Sultan, instead of the official account of the Sultanate Council? Why didn’t the state government pay the money into the account of the “successful contractor” that won the “bid” for the contract?
The state government’s barefaced lies and cover up was exposed by the Secretary to the Sultanate Council, Alhaji Faruk Umar, in the story published in Daily Trust’s edition of July 27, 2017, where he denied any knowledge of the N700 million allegedly guest house deal. Speaking to Daily Trust in his office, Faruk said, “I am just hearing it from you, therefore I cannot comment on something which I don’t know,” the story said.
It was also reported by the media how anti-graft agencies traced hundreds of millions to the accounts of the Sultan’s trusted aides, originating from Sokoto state government, oil rich Niger Delta states, and some prominent personalities. It is our fervent hope and prayers that EFCC chairman would brave the odds and investigate these cases of alleged money laundering.
Lugga depicted the guest house as a priority to the sultanate. This may have been correct during an economic boom. But a N700 million guest house for the Sultan in this era of economic recession, when the majority of school pupils in Sokoto are without qualified and competent teachers, decent class rooms, and near absence of text books, is a huge joke. What of the rising maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the state, what of the abject poverty and squalor, what of the army of adult beggars and out of school children roaming the streets, what of the recurrent cases of malaria and typhoid diseases ravaging the state?
The hack writer tried laboriously to compare the status of the Sultan to state governors. For the benefit of the writer, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria recognizes/stipulates the positions of the president, vice president, governors and deputy governors, among others. The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), another creation of the Constitution, stipulates/determines the salaries, allowances, medicals, vacation, accommodations, travels, feeding etcetera of these constitutionally-recognised public officials. So, where does the Constitution recognize or mention the Sultan let alone compare him with them as Lugga wasted his time trying to do?
Another issue that provided another valid prism through which the Waziri’s compound ignorance was showcased to the world was his laughable submission that some state governors spend N10billion and above to acquire a guest house in Abuja. Does he know what N10billion can buy?
Is it degrading for the Sultan to stay in a hotel when visiting Abuja? After all, he has been staying in hotels for all these years. Above all, talking about royalty or sanctity of his position, is he above the King of Saudi Arabia, United States President, the Queen of England or even His Holiness the Pope of Roman Catholic? These world leaders usually stay in hotels. Moreover, where does the Sultan stay during his needless globetrotting around the world?
His justification of the guest house based on the conflict mitigation effort the Sultan is doing is the most absurd. Where were the Sultan’s conflict resolution credentials when he allowed a disagreement between two prominent Sultanate Council members: Senior Councillor Magajin Gari Hasan Ahmad Danbaba and a title holder Magatakarda Inuwa Abdulkadir to snowball into a major crisis – fiercely fought on the pages of national dailies – that almost eroded the modicum of respect the Sultanate has?
As the former Emir of Gwandu Haruna Jokolo pointedly asked, why is the Sultan always frequenting the oil rich Niger Delta state of Rivers for conflict resolution and interfaith evangelism at a time when Borno and Yobe states were boiling over Boko Haram insurgency? Let Lugga tell us how many times did the Sultan visit the northeastern states in the last six years. Didn’t the two insurgency-prone states need his conflict resolution evangelism? Or, is it because the two states are too poor that he abandoned them and frequent Rivers state?
Nobody doubts the Sultan’s position in the society. But records at the office of the Secretary of the Sultanate Council revealed that the Sultanate presently owns two mansions in Kado, Abuja where the late Sultan Dasuki and Sultan Maccido stayed whenever they were in Abuja. Is Sultan Sa’ad more different or more important than Sultans Dasuki and Maccido to stay in those mansions?
Wazirin Katsina’s hypocrisy is indeed legendary. Lugga is defending Sultan for some reasons we will expose later. This is because he has been one of the greatest critics of Sultan’s excesses.
Based on this, we are calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to beam its search light on Al-Qalam University and the financial recklessness of Wazirin Katsina. The National University Commission (NUC) should also investigate the academic records used to con unsuspecting ivory towers.
Mr Muhammadu is the Coordinator, Sokoto Conscience Group
