The turbanning of former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, A B Mahmoud, as Garkuwan Kano has come and gone but not all the pictures from the event. Apart from pictures of the known or big names such as Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Emir of Kano and so on, there were members of what is conceptualised as the ‘NANS’ generation in an impending text.
Two of them can be cited in the cover picture of this story. (Left to Right) they are Cde Issa Aremu of the Imoudu Labour Institute in Ilorin, Kwara State of Nigeria and Cde John Odah, chair of the International Governing Council of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-WA).
That generation followed the generation of the ‘Bolshevists’ proper or the earliest beneficiaries of the anti-imperialism turn as the fulcrum of knowledge in Nigerian universities in the mid-1970s. Signifying that generation is the Garkuwan Kano himself, A B Mahmoud (SAN) to the extreme left in the picture.
In the above picture from the same event is a face of the later ‘NANS’ generation. That face in the picture is Dr. Husseini Abdu to the left. To the extreme right, we again encounter Cde John Odah in his Zanna ‘hula’ with Kano royal touch. Dr. Abdu can be so classified as later generation of NANS because in their time, neoliberalism had so diluted the curricular in the Nigerian university system.
So, just two pictures but conveying so much of history in the current convergence of the Obasanjo’s with the ‘Bolshevists’ of yore, the street battle warriors against SAP and the successor activists they produced. History, we hail thee, indeed, while waiting for whether this convergence can turn into an articulatory moment for Nigeria!
