Legitimacy and Deference in a Tradition Oriented Society: Observations Arising from an Examination of Some Aspects of a Case Study Associated with the Abdication of the Emir of Kano in 1963

Extract

Over ten years have now elapsed since the then Government of Northern Nigeria, in what has since been represented as a major attack on the institution of Chieftancy per se (Dudley, 1968, and Whittaker, 1970), set in motion the procedure for a Commission of Enquiry into the financial affairs of the Kano Native Authority which resulted in the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sir Muhammadu Sanusi, K.B.E., abdicating and going into voluntary exile at Azare, leaving his Emirate entirely and withdrawing to a life of religious seclusion.

Nothing has been published heretofore concerning the motives or the origins of this enquiry, other than the speculation of some scholars which have been based on only the most scanty corpus of material, but it would seem that, ten years after the event, and after so much water has flowed under the bridge, there would now be no impropriety in disclosing at least some of the broader aspects of the Enquiry as the Commissioner became aware of them. In particular, what has not been appreciated to date is that the fundamental element of the crisis when it occurred was really one of legitimacy.

When Felix Eboue made the observation quoted, it was already too late for France to effect any meaningful shift in colonial policy. When Charles Temple made his, British administration theory had already crystallized along the rigid lines for which Lugard had opted, and, in fact, it was against this very rigidity that Temple was inveighing when he wrote the book from which the quotation has been taken. The problem which each of these authorities was addressing, however, is not one that is applicable to the colonial context alone, or even, necessarily, at all. It is much more generally concerned with modernization and modernism, and especially with the dislocation of the traditional process which the unthinking application of modernistic norms invariably entails.