Former Emir of Kano, Sanusi Denies Political Interest In 2023

Former Emir of Kano, Mallam Muhammed Sanusi, yesterday ruled himself out of involvement in politics, including running for political office in 2023.

The former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor said he would be heading for the Oxford University in the United Kingdom next month as a visiting fellow at the institution’s African Studies Department.

“People have been talking to me about politics when I was in the CBN. I have never had an interest in partisan politics,” he said in an Arise TV interview”.

He added: “The nature of my family is that we consider ourselves the leaders of the poorer people and you know politics can be very divisive.

“All I can say is that this not an objective for me.”

For him, service to the nation does not have to be through only politics and recalled how he “started off as an academic and after just two years, I completed my masters and went into banking for some reasons. I have been a banker, a regulator, an emir.

“I can’t see the future, so I will take life as it goes.

“I am in no hurry. I see my life as a life of service but I just don’t think that public service is limited to elected office, and any opportunity I have to serve, I will take as long as it is a role I think I am capable of delivering. But I have no immediate plans to go into politics.”

While at Oxford, Sanusi plans to write three books, one of which will be ‘Sharia Society and Identity’.

The second of the planned series will focus on the Central Bank’s response to global financial crisis and the third on the impact of certain interpretations of Muslim family law and cultural practices on the underdevelopment of Northern Nigeria.