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Many Nigerians believe they know everything they need to know about Alhaji Yusufu Maitama Sule, the Dan Masanin Kano, leading politician in the First and Second Republics, and an accomplished orator. But not quite. In this interview with Daily Trust on Sunday, Alhaji Yusufu reveals his other side, the jolly good days when he was master of the Twist dance and a ladies man, and how he once told his teacher, ‘This trigonometry you are teaching us is nonsense. X is x and y is y. There are no bits and pieces.’
As far back as the 1970s, the Maitama Sule brand had become so phenomenal that even in Lagos, the nickname for boys bearing the Sule name was Maitama. How did you build your name brand to be so nationally popular?
Ah, Ah, Ah, Lagos! Lagos was my second home. In fact, I used to be more at home in Lagos than in Kano. After the 1966 coup, anytime I felt moody, anytime I felt uncomfortable, all I had to do was to go to Lagos and spend a couple of days. Not only would I stay there, even my skin would change; I would look fresher.
I liked Lagos because people in Lagos liked me. I was the Onikoyi of Ikoyi (a chieftaincy title in Lagos Island) and the Bada of Lagos, as I was the Ada Ida Akei Igburutu of Calabar. In those days, I remember, parties (social occasions) in Lagos – and Lagos people are fond of partying – would be incomplete without us – that is, me, T.O.S. Benson, J.M. Johnson, I.S. Adewale (popularly called The Boy is Good) and, of course, the late Ooni of Ife, who was then Prince Sijuade. If we were not there, the party was not okay. Even the girls would insist we must be there, otherwise they would not be there.
How did you fuse into the Lagos social life so effortlessly?
If you are humble in life, it will not be difficult for you to mix. Again, coming from Kano, it was not difficult for me to settle down in any community. Kano, like Lagos, is a cosmopolitan city. I grew up in school among the Yoruba, the Igbo, the Syrians, the Lebanese, etc. The largest concentration of the major tribes outside their tribal enclaves is Kano. The largest group of Yoruba outside their Yorubaland are settled in Kano. The largest group of Igbo outside Igboland are settled in Kano. So anybody who had grown up in Kano should be cosmopolitan.
By nature, since my school days, I love making friends; I love to mingle with people. So Lagos being another cosmopolitan place was like Kano to me. I remember when I was a member of parliament, Lagos people, particularly the girls, whenever they learnt I would be discussing the budget, would come to the gallery. I remember the speaker used to warn the spectators in the gallery to stop shouting and applauding because they were not expected to applaud in the gallery.
I became very friendly with the people. When I became a minister, my social life was a continuation of what had been established when I was a parliamentarian. I used to go into the Lagos city driving myself. I had no orderly throughout my days as a minister. I would go into the Lagos city alone, and in many areas, the girls would stop me in the middle of the road, force me out of my car and start dancing and singing, “Omo pupa o, omo pupa l’emi fe,” (‘A fair babe, a fair babe is all I want’, a popular Yoruba song done in the 1960s by highlife maestro Victor Olaiya).
Were you a good dancer?
They used to call me the Twisting Minister, in the fashion of the Twist dance style, which was the fad in those days. Oh yes, oh yes, I twisted. I twisted.
What had your dance fame got to do with the visit of the Queen of England to Nigeria in 1956?
No, I was actually disappointed. I was just telling them about it the other day in Lagos during the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, one of the ministers then. It was Okotie-Eboh who spoilt my chance of dancing with the Queen.
What was something very personal you took away from Lagos?
Yes, I would have married a Lagos girl called Dotun, from the very popular Kessington family in Lagos. I was dating her, I think about 1961, when I was a minister in Lagos. My wives did not like it; they made hell and I made hell, too. Oh yes, I did.
Did your wives win eventually?
Yes, they won somehow. Later, she went to England where she met somebody and asked for my consent to marry him, saying if I didn’t want to marry her, she wanted to marry another man and she wanted my consent. They got married; she got married to one Mr Carew, a banker. When I returned to Lagos later as the Public Complaints Commissioner and her mother died, she brought me the aso oke (woven material), which was the aso ebi (social uniform) to be worn for the burial ceremony.
I even wanted to marry an Igbo girl. Her name was Nana Nwadibia, an elder sister to the wife of Sir Arthur Mbanefo. Her elder sister, Lady Nwadibia, was the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We met in Lagos.
After Lagos, the Maitama Sule brand has endured. How have you sustained it over the years?
As I told you, I like making friends. In life, if you are humble, if you are simple, if you are friendly, if you respect people, if you love people, they, too, will love you, respect you and like you. One good turn deserves another. Nigerians all over like me and I have no reason not to like Nigeria and Nigerians. I must like them. I am not a Kano man alone; I am Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Kanuri, Fulani, Ibibio, Tiv. I am all. I respect everybody.
When I was a boy, either before I went to the elementary school or when I was in the elementary school, in my quarters in the city, I would take a broom and sweep the quarters. Nobody told me to do it; I would do it on my own. I would sweep the whole quarters. I would also go into the mosque and sweep everywhere there, inside and outside. Why won’t people like me?
It was also my habit as a boy to kneel down when greeting elders, even servants in my father’s house. My father taught me to respect them, to kneel down and greet them, though they were servants in our house. People, not only senior people, but even my contemporaries, would send me on errands and I would go gladly. That was how I grew up. In school, I was the errand boy of my seniors. Some people took me for a rascal, but I was a pleasant rascal, a kind of comedian just to please people.
How memorable was life at Kaduna College?
At Kaduna College, we had a dramatic society and I was its president. In those days, there was the annual conference of chiefs in northern Nigeria. Every year, when the chiefs came for their conference, they would come to our school to give us words of encouragement and our principal would ask us to entertain them by staging a play.
Through this, I became a prominent figure in school. However, there was a year the chiefs came for their conference and we had to entertain them, but during a football match, I broke my arm. I was in hospital when the principal sent people to me to find out whether I would still be able to participate in the play to entertain the chiefs. My arm was in a sling but the doctor said I was alright and could hold the arm to act in the play. And I came and acted in the play. They needed me because of the role I played.
That was actually when I started to be politically conscious because the man who started the dramatic society at the college was Mallam Aminu Kano. We did not meet him at school. He was the first president of the dramatic society and wrote most of the plays, most of which were politically inclined: how people were treated in the palace, how the village heads in the districts were beating the talakawa, the plebeians and the common people.
It was for his radical bent that Mallam Aminu Kano did not come to Kano immediately after school because the Emir of Kano at that time identified him, asking who this young man was. They told him it was one Aminu from Kano. The Emir asked, ‘What does he want to do after school?’ And they told him he wanted to become a teacher. The Emir retorted, ‘Not in Kano.’ So Aminu was sent to Bauchi instead of Kano.
Was there any instance you were severely punished in school for doing something really rascally?
Yes, there was. The height of it was that I was nearly expelled from school in my final year. My offence: I was not paying attention in class; I was too playful. But I think the principal realised that, perhaps, I was intelligent but too playful. I remember in one of his reports, he remarked I was too superficial and too much of an exhibitionist. When I read that remark, I exclaimed, “My goodness!’’
But despite all that, he made me a senior prefect. But how did he make me a senior prefect? The boys liked me. On the last day of the term, the final year class was exiting and we were set to take over from them and to know who the new prefects would be. We were at the assembly ground and the principal was announcing the names of the new prefects.
Oh! Before I go on, I want to say our compound (boarding house) was a new one called Montgomery House and one of rascals. They selected rascals from other houses and brought them to make this new one called Montgomery House.
So when, at the assembly, the principal was announcing names of the selected new prefects from each house and he got to Montgomery House, my mates in the House didn’t even allow him mention any name before they started shouting, ‘Senior Prefect, Montgomery House, Mallam Yusufu, Mallam Yusufu, Mallam Yusufu.’ The principal became furious; he had no intention of making me a prefect, let alone the senior prefect.
The second time, the principal began saying, “Senior Prefect, Montgomery House…’,’ but the boys didn’t allow him any freedom, they were just shouting, ‘Mallam Yusufu, Mallam Yusufu, Mallam Yusufu. Hold on, don’t give up!’’ The principal noticed he would get into trouble if he announced any other name than mine. So he simply announced, “Maitama Sule.’’ Immediately after the principal announced me as the senior prefect, the boys started singing and drumming, “Namu ya samu, namu ya samu” (This is our own). The principal stood wondering, then began laughing. It was actually the boys who made me a senior prefect.
Could you recall some of your colleagues at the college?
Most of them are dead. Justice Mamman Nasir was my schoolmate. There were also Oladipo from Ilorin, Oloruntoba from Kabba and Mamman Jega, the father of Professor Attahiru Jega with whom I also trained as teachers at the same time. After school, Jega and I remained as friends until he died. There were also Justice Saidu Kawu, the Madakin Ilorin, a gentleman who died a few years ago, and my very good friend, Alkali Imam from Maiduguri.
You just said you trained as a teacher. So why didn’t you go on to make teaching a career?
I also just told you that right from school, I was politically inclined. So what do you expect? But I will still tell you one interesting thing. When I trained as a teacher, I wanted to be a teacher. I had always wanted to be a teacher. But there was a time the first ministers in the North were appointed; six of them. They discovered that we had no lawyers from the North. The only lawyer from the North then was Abdulrasaq from Ilorin, who was self-trained.
These ministers decided to look around for intelligent young boys from the North to send to England to study Law. They selected three of us. They thought I was intelligent, but I was not that intelligent. They picked Muhammad Bello, the late Chief Justice of Nigeria; Nasir, who later became President of the Federal Court of Appeal, and my humble self. I knew these boys; they were very brilliant in school. These were boys who, after exams and the results were pasted on the notice board, would be looking for their names at the top. If they didn’t see their names at first, second or third, they would start weeping. But I would start looking for my name from the bottom. And, just imagine, we were going to England to study Law together!
In school, while they would be dead serious, I would be playing my pranks. I was not good in Mathematics. In one year, our Mathematics teacher, one Mr Onimole, came to our class and was introducing something he called trigonometry. When he came, the first time he wanted to impress us and he was saying, “a little bit of x plus and a little bit of .’’ To me, it was gibberish. I had to stand up and say, “Excuse me, sir, this is a little bit of nonsense…’’
Did you truly tell him that?
Oh yes, I did! Amazed, he asked, “What did you mean?” I said, “What is a little bit of x and a little bit of y? X is x and y is y. There are no bits and pieces. I will never accept this.’’ He shouted at me, “Get out of my class.’’ Since then, I stopped attending the Mathematics class.
In our last year, our principal, a strict disciplinarian, was our Mathematics teacher, and you had to pass Maths if you must obtain your certificate. He used to tell me, “Maitama, be careful, I am not the type of person of whom advantage can be taken.’’ He insisted that everybody must attend the Maths class and must do Maths. So what I would do was to beg Nasir to give me his notebook so I can copy. One day, Nasir gave me a solution to a sum. He was the only person that got it right. He made me a copy of it. Perhaps, deliberately, he wanted me to get into trouble on the other maths problems. Everybody in the class got the other questions right, but I did not. The one Nasiru gave me right, that I copied from him, nobody got it right except Nasir and myself. The principal was calling us one by one to his table to mark our papers. When I got to his table, he asked me, “Look, Maitama, nobody got this question right except you and Malumfashi (Nasir). Anybody that could get this right should be able to do others. So how come you got all others wrong?’
I started sweating. I said, “It’s God.’’ He said, ‘‘Alright, take this chalk and show this class how God taught you how to do it.’’ Luckily for me, the bell rang and freed me from him. He looked at me and said, ‘‘Next time, I’ll deal with you.’’
So these were the two brilliant young minds selected to go to London with me to study Law. I told myself, ‘‘When we get to London, these two will pass their exams and I will not. Then people will start saying this talkative Maitama couldn’t even pass his Law exams.’ So I didn’t go.
But Law wasn’t Mathematics, so why were you afraid?
It wasn’t really that I was afraid because I was equally brilliant in other subjects. They couldn’t compete anywhere with me in English. Actually, later, many people began telling me, ‘‘Yusufu, you were just being stupid. You would have been a far better lawyer than those two.’’
So how did that chickening out progress to politics?
Sometime after that, the Sardauna called me and reminded me he told me to be his private secretary but I refused. He added that they selected me to go to London to study Law but I said I didn’t like it. He asked me, ‘‘What do you want to do, for God’s sake.’’ I replied, ‘‘What you are doing, sir.’’ That meant politics. He said, ‘‘Good luck to you.’’
A couple of years later, I was lucky to be elected to the parliament. I was the first to represent Kano City in the House of Representatives. Incidentally, I contested against my leader, mentor and guide, Mallam Aminu Kano and defeated him. Mallam Aminu contested on the platform of NEPU, while I contested on the platform of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). But I didn’t know when the NPC selected me to contest against him.
How?
I was in England on a study tour. There used to be what they called an eight-week study tour. During my absence, both the NPC and NEPU were selecting their candidates for election into the House of Representatives in Lagos. That was in 1954. When NEPU fielded Mallam Aminu Kano, the NPC found it difficult to get somebody to contest against Mallam Aminu Kano, who was very popular in the city. Everybody in the NPC was afraid they could not win against Mallam Aminu.
Unknown to me, in my absence, the NPC leaders decided to adopt me as the candidate to contest against Mallam Aminu Kano. On the day I returned from London, Inuwa Wada, the Magajin Garin Kano, called me to his office and said, ‘‘We resurrected you to be our candidate.’’ I replied, ‘‘Sir, but I am not a member of your party.’’ He said, ‘‘You were a member of the party when it was formed.’’
Truly, I was a member. In 1949 when we formed the NPC, I was made its first vice-president. I was only 20 years old then. Later, we broke away from the NPC and formed NEPU. Inuwa Wada told me I was coming back to the NPC, which was an association when it was formed but had become a political party. I still reminded him I was already in a different political
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