Muhammadu Sanusi II landed in Lagos in a private jet at 11.35pm on Friday, putting all the horrors of the past five days behind him as he reunites with his family.
It was a relieving climax for a day that began with the visit of Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, Sanusi’s leading the Friday prayer in Awe and his speaking about his dethronement philosophically.
Before the prayer though, the order from a Federal High Court in Abuja asking his captors to release him immediately had been issued.
His mother who was eager to see her embattled son also arrived in Awe to meet him and had a few moments with him before they all left the town.
Moments after the police and the DSS operatives stormed the palace to drive him, first by flying to Abuja and then by road on a seven hour gruelling journey to Loko, a town on the banks of Benue River in the central state of Nasarawa. They had rejected Sanusi’s appeal to let him go to Lagos.
Immediately his dethronement was announced, the security agents, throwing caution to the wind, said the emir was banished to Loko, a place with little or no social amenities, based on a colonial law. But the following day, the Emir was moved to Awe, in the same state, on the intervention of Nasarawa governor Abdullahi Sule and the Emir of Lafia, Sidi Bage.
Sanusi’s lawyers went to court on Friday and got an exparte order to free him from his abductors.
He is now in Lagos, where he attended secondary school as a youngster, graduating in 1977 and returned later to spend decades in the banking sector before his appointment as Central Bank Governor in 2009.
He became the emir in 2014.
“We’ve finally arrived in Lagos, In Shaa Allah this drama is behind us now”, tweeted Ashraf Sanusi, one of the emir’s children.
Ashraf also thanked the people of Awe for hosting his dad since Tuesday:
See the video of his arrival below.
