28-9-2025.

MALAM Mahdi Shehu, the famous businessman and social media critic, should not have wasted his time satirically commenting on the absurd turbaning of Rarara (Dauda Kahutu) as SARKIN MAWAĶAN ĶASAR HAUSA by the Emir of Daura, His Royal Highness, Alhaji FARUK UMAR FARUK, who assumed the throne as the 60th Emir on 28th February.

THE emir and Rarara are a kind of ‘birds of the same feather’, having a couple of things in common. They are ALLEGED to be the TOO educated, and they are NOT averse to the fairer gender. The former, who is in his 90s, enjoys MATRIMONIAL relationship, while the latter is said to welcome all comer damsels.

HADIZA Gabon, a veteran KANNYWOOD actress, who now doubles as a radio host, once visited Abuja to confirm the veracity of the allegations that the Hausa praise singer, Rarara, was the person who distributed I phone 16 and Mercedes GLK to PRESENTABLE members of the fairer gender, who wanted them. With strings attached, of course.

ON hearing what took the actress and radio host to Abuja from Kano, the singer, in his usual jovial manner, bust out laughing, and told the visiting lady that she did not mean what she said. Even when she tried to convince him otherwise, he still refused to give her, CONVINCED that her mission was anything but what she told him.

HE was right, she went to meet with him in Abuja NOT to collect the items, but to CONFIRM that he was indeed the giver. Hadiza Gabon is ALIVE, and one does not lie against the LIVING. You tell lies against the DEAD, because they cannot answer you back. But the LIVING does.

THE current Sarkin Daura introduced the traditional title that ends with ‘Na Ķasar Hausa’. And not UNLIKE other emirates, the titles go to the ‘MOST FITTING’ people in the world.

AND the emir’s RESPECT for EVERY LEADER OR RULER that happens in the country or Katsina state, is LEGENDARY. So legendary that it has in deed become infectious in his emirate, as others within, are also for ALL leaders or rulers, regardless of the respect or lack of it, with which Nigerian citizens have for them.

IF the Daura monarch is SERIOUS about giving out the title of ‘SARKIN WAĶAR KASAR HAUSA’, then the right Hausa singer to confer the title on is ALAN WAKA, who sung an enchanting Hausa song CELEBRATING him. 

I did an article shortly afterwards on 6/4/2025, called, ‘ALAN WAKA: The Baritone Master’, in which I stated that, “The rendition he recently made to the current Sarkin Daura (Honourable, Dr.) Alhaji Umar Faruk, in his immutable baritone voice, made additional impression to me of ALAN WAKA’s immense talent in Hausa music.”

BUT conferring the traditional title on Rarara is tantamount to dancing on the grave of the immediate past president of the country, and DISTINGUISHED son of Daura, who less than two months ago, answered the call of his maker. 

IT is a fact known by political watchers that there was no love lost between the immediate past president, and Rarara, who expected but never got a ministerial appointment during Buhari’s tenure.

Rarara, a hitherto KNOWN Hausa praise singer in his adopted state, became VERY POPULAR and RICH as a result of his ATTACHMENT to the then Presidential candidate, Malam Muhammadu Buhari. But he WENT on RADIO after BUHARI’S tenure, ABUSING and INSULTING the immediate past president, blaming him of ALL the ills afflicting the country.

THERE was also, allegedly, NEVER been a love lost between the Daura emir and the former president. It was alleged that one day Buhari (pre his becoming president in 2015) angrily went to Daura Emirate unannounced and went straight to the seated emir and THREATENED to have him removed as emir if he did not stop the insults on the late MAIGASKIYA, who contested for the presidency against OBASANJO, ÝAR’ADUA and JONATHAN, before he made it in 2015.

 MALAM Mahdi Shehu is someone I know a long time ago. Sometime in 2004, to be exact. We ‘met’ in the office waiting room of a big man, each to see the man. We got engaged in a lively discussion during which we discovered that we came from the same state, though different towns.

SINCE I was getting late for work, and my place of work was a bit of a distance from where we were, I left Malam Mahdi there and rushed away. Whether or not he did see the big man, I left early to be any the wiser.

OUR paths should have crossed in acrimonious fashion in 2016, but being the coward that I still am, I could not bother to respond to his first ‘attack’ on a very ‘Important’ personality in the government I had worked for. Someone else did, and everyone knows what happened afterwards. Mahdi Shehu is the kind of person who never pull his punches. Boxers will tell you what that means.

MAY God save Nigeria from the shenanigans of those who are TOO educated to be among the ‘important’ people in the country.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.