By Mohamed Hussaini
In the political culture of Northern Nigeria, there is a particular category of test that every leader seeking the region’s trust must pass, not in a debate hall, not in a policy document, and not in the carefully managed environment of a presidential campaign rally, but in the unscripted, uncontrolled, and therefore most revealing moments when something is said or done that directly offends the values, the history, and the sacred memory of the people whose confidence that leader is seeking. It is in those moments, and only in those moments, that the depth of a leader’s respect for the north is truly measurable. Not by what they say about the north in their own speeches but by what they are prepared to say in defence of the north when it is being attacked by their own supporters. By that measure, the one that counts most in the court of northern political opinion, Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso have failed a test of the most fundamental and the most consequential kind. And their failure is documented, verifiable, and sitting in the public record for every northern voter to read before casting their ballot in 2027.
The facts are these. In a publicly published article on Opinion Nigeria, a verified Obi supporter responding directly to a pro-northern commentary written by Sufyan Lawal Kabo, whose article on the NDC ticket’s northern viability has been widely circulated within political commentary circles, described Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria, in the following terms. The Sardauna was characterised as a Fulani aristocrat who inherited power from the jihad.
His documented concerns about Igbo political dominance were dismissed as the testament of a conqueror who feared losing his conquered territory. And the legacy of one of the most consequential, most institution-building, most educationally transformative, and most internationally respected political figures in the entire history of northern Nigeria was reduced, in a single contemptuous paragraph, to the frightened posturing of an entitled hereditary ruler defending unearned privilege.
Let those words sit for a moment before we proceed. A Fulani aristocrat who inherited power from the jihad. The testament of a conqueror who feared losing his conquered territory. These are not the words of a political opponent engaging in legitimate historical debate.
They are the words of someone who holds the Sardauna of Sokoto in contempt. Someone who regards his life’s work, the building of Ahmadu Bello University, the establishment of the Bank of the North, the creation of the Northern Regional Development Corporation, the construction of the 16,000-seat Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna, the cultivation of northern political consciousness that gave the region its voice in the first republic, as nothing more than the self-interested manoeuvring of an aristocratic class protecting inherited power. They are words that every northerner who has ever spoken the Sardauna’s name with pride, every student who has sat in the institution that bears his name, every community that has drawn on the legacy he built, and every family that traces its civic identity to the northern political tradition he helped define, has the right to hear, to evaluate, and to hold accountable.
And accountability, in a democracy, begins with leadership. When a political leader is seeking the votes of millions of people, they acquire, as an inseparable part of that solicitation, the responsibility to defend those people’s values, history, and sacred memory from disrespect, even when, and especially when, that disrespect comes from within their own political family. This is not an abstract principle invented for the purpose of this argument. It is the standard that has been applied consistently and correctly across Nigerian political history whenever leaders failed to speak up in the face of insults directed at communities they claimed to represent or to court.
It is the standard that northern voters have applied to every candidate who has ever sought their support. And it is the standard that Peter Obi and Kwankwaso have demonstrably and completely failed to meet in relation to the documented insult directed at the Sardauna of Sokoto by a verified member of their political community in a publicly accessible national publication.
Mohamed Hussaini writes from Bauchi.