[ ] The Monday Column 20 years without Yusuf Dantsoho

Today marks exactly 20 years since the death of Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho, one of the most colourful politicians ever produced in Northern Nigeria. I first met Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho in 1991 when I was a reporter at Citizen Magazine. He regularly visited Malam Mamman Jallo, who owned the building that Citizen rented. When we first met, Dantsoho tried to introduce himself but I told him not to bother because I knew him very well through the radio and newspapers during the Second Republic.

Yusuf Dantsoho was the National Publicity Secretary of Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress [ NPC] in the First Republic. He was also the first Chairman of Kaduna Local Government in 1976-78. Within weeks of the lifting of ban on political parties in September 1978, some very vocal Northern politicians shot into the limelight through Halilu Ahmed Getso’s very popular Radio Kaduna political programme Dandalin Siyasa. They included PRP men such as Alhaji Sabo Bakin Zuwo, Mohamed Abubakar Rimi, Alhaji Danjani Hadejia and Alhaji Musa Musawa. NPN’s greatest orator was Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule while GNPP had Hajia Gambo Sawaba, Alhaji Lawal Isa and Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho. Dantsoho was often heard on the program railing against NPN, on one occasion calling its leaders “tsoffin machuta,” which means old crooks. He received as much as he gave; one listener wrote a letter saying, “Kai Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho, akwai tsohon macuci kamar ka?”

During the party primaries of 1992, Dantsoho became a top campaigner for NRC presidential aspirant Alhaji Lema Jibrilu. Alhaji Lema however pulled out of the race after the first round of voting, so Dantsoho crossed over to Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi’s Choice ’92 group. That was how I got to know him very well; my friend Mohamed Lawal was a top Choice 92 organizer and he soon took me to Dantsoho’s house at Irra Road. In turn, Dantsoho called on me at Citizen whenever he went to see Malam Jallo.

In late 1992, I was sent from Citizen to do a major interview with Alhaji Yusuf Dantsoho. I found him sitting in an old cane chair in front of his house. Though he spoke good English, I conducted the interview largely in Hausa in order to draw out his rich store of anecdotes, proverbs and jokes. We went over the story of his long and eventful political life; he had been a member of seven different political parties between 1947 and 1993. antsoho said his father was from Tibati in northern Cameroun. He was a cook to the Germans

Dwho ruled Cameroun up until 1918 and when the British took over from them, a British officer brought Dantsoho’s father first to Lagos and then to Kaduna, where Yusuf Dantsoho was born in 1926. He talked about his work as a Geological Survey Assistant in the early 1940s where he said for months on end, they went all over Plateau and Bauchi provinces scouting for tin and other minerals.

Dantsoho became politically radicalised in the 1940s when he joined trade unions and then the NCNC before he moved over to NEPU in 1950 and became its secretary in Kaduna City. In the early 1950s, Dantsoho used to visit his father who was a cook at the European Hospital [the present Barau Dikko Hospital]. The Northern Region Minister for Local Government Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sokoto’s office was directly across the road from the hospital’s kitchen. Whenever Dantsoho saw Sardauna approaching his office, he stood up and urinated. Sardauna took notice of him and angrily asked, “Whose son is that boy?” PC men soon planned to get even. They had Dantsoho arrested and hauled before the much-feared judge Malam Bako. As he told this story, Dantsoho studied my face to see if I was liberal enough to absorb the offence. Then he said, “Let me tell you what I did. I drank beer, because we used to drink in those days.” He however said unknown to the NPC men, he was the best man when Malam Bako’s eldest son Audu Bako (later the Military Governor of Kano State) got married in 1944. The judge asked for the mug in which the accused person drank beer. When the policeman said he forgot to bring it, Malam Bako summarily dismissed the case.

Dantsoho told the story of NEPU’s famous Lafia Convention in 1954 where he said several party leaders including Abba Maikwaru, Magaji Danbatta and himself complained that NEPU had too many enemies. They said it was difficult to fight the British, NPC, regional government, Native Authorities and the emirs at the same time and they called for a reduction in the party’s enemies. Malam Aminu Kano rejected the idea so they left the party. Dantsoho crossed over to NPC and was warmly welcomed by Sardauna. He soon became NPC’s leading spokesman and had hot daily exchanges with NEPU leader Malam Aminu Kano on Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation’s [NBC] airwaves. Dantsoho also told me why he entered GNPP in the Second Republic rather than NPN as most former NPC men did. He

Nsaid an eminent Northern leader, who he refused to name, asked him to help his son-in-law with his political aspiration. I think Dantsoho was referring to the old Governor of Northern Region Sir Kashim Ibrahim.

Yusuf Dantsoho’s sojourn in GNPP wasn’t a happy one due to the unpredictable character of Uncle Waziri Ibrahim. In 1978, fellow NPP leaders Chiefs Solomon Lar and Paul Unongo asked Alhaji Waziri to choose between the posts of national chairman and presidential candidate so that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe could join the party and assume the other post. Dantsoho said he strongly urged Waziri to accept the proposal but he insisted on having both posts, thereby forcing a split in NPP and the founding of GNPP. By 1982, Dantsoho had enough and he melodramatically carpet crossed to NPN, which he described as the greatest political party in Nigeria’s history.

Uncle Waziri did not take it kindly and he sent GNPP thugs to retrieve the Mercedes 200 car that he gave to Dantsoho years earlier. Fisticuffs ensued. I asked Dantsoho why didn’t give up the car. He replied that when he first went to work for Waziri, he was a very wealthy Kaduna Textiles dealer who made a N3,000 profit every month since the 1960s. He said Waziri gave him the car because his own Mercedes fell into a ditch during a campaign tour of Benue State. “I was very rich at the time,” Dantsoho said. He then looked around at his relatively poor surroundings as we spoke and added, “It was later that rain drenched the big fowl.”

In 1993, when I asked Dantsoho why he would not intervene in the dispute between NRC presidential candidate Alhaji Bashir Tofa and Today newspaper’s publisher Abidina Coomasie, he said, “Abidina wouldn’t listen to anyone. He inherited it from his father.” Dantsoho then told me a story about Malam Ahmadu Coomassie who, as permanent secretary for Education in the North, was also chairman of the Scholarships Board. Dantsoho was a board member. He said Coomassie tabled a proposal to institute quota in scholarship awards because students from the old Kwara and Kabba Provinces took 90 percent of all the Northern scholarships. The entire Board followed him to the Premier’s Office to put forward the suggestion. When Sardauna heard the proposal, he said there should be no quotas within the North. Dantsoho said at that point Coomasie banged the table in anger and Sardauna also banged the table! Other board members dived under desks and chairs while the two big men glowered at each other!

I asked Dantsoho why he parted ways with Alhaji Lema Jibrilu. He said Lema swallowed General Babangida’s “newbreed politics” idea hook, line and sinker. When they went out on campaign tours, Lema shunned meetings with old politicians in favour of youths so Dantsoho warned him, “Just because you see the groundnut pyramids does not mean you have entered Kano.”

Ahuge library of political wisdom, anecdotes and proverbs was lost when Yusuf Dantsoho died on June 16, 1994. May Allah grant him eternal rest.